Alert or Alarmed?

We constantly hear of warnings about dangers to our children. One such warning was through the Howard Australian Government's NetAlert Campaign. This consisted of a multi media campaign with a strong "stranger-danger" warning for young people and parents going online. It quoted research stating that over half young people online were in contact with 'strangers'.

The National Interest on Radio National, which is part of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, has done a very interesting investigation around the campaign. Host Peter Mare, through a tortuous FOI request , eventually obtained the original research report and found some unusual interpretations of results. For instance young people were asked if they communicated with people they had not met face to face, which was used in the campaign as indicating the more sinister sounding stranger contact. Peter discusses this with Dr Jane Burns, from the Inspire Foundation. Dr Burns explains how netfilters not only stop inappropriate but helpful information as well, and how disadvantaged kids use the net via public places for social networking.

You can listen to the program here and there should be transcript appearing over the next week or so.