Grants:IdeaLab/Active, informed and responsible digital citizenship
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The project should strive to educate the public on active and informed Responsible Digital Citizenship in order to prevent the victimisation of online users, harassment, and cyberbullying. It should seek to change attitude and values in dealing with and witnessing bullying, cyberbullying and cybercrime. In addition to potential targets, communication should also focus on bystanders and witnesses to act and break their silence to create a crime-unfriendly environment.
International best practices should be compiled and the action campaign (program) should be validated by experts on crime prevention, child safety, digital security, education professionals, etc.
Main pillars are: the Event Handling and Institutional elements which includes prevention.
Project idea
editWhat is the problem you're trying to solve?
editInappropriate and illegal behaviour online, cyber crime. The public’s knowledge of online predatory practices and how to prevent them is limited. The public lacks understanding of the meaning and practicing active, informed and Responsible Digital Citizenship. The general understanding about the behavior of bullying and cyberbullying by the teachers’, students’ and parents’ is extremely low, and they do not have the information nor the ability to effectively address such behaviors. A large part of society does not think the irresponsible use of the internet presents real dangers and believes that bullying is an acceptable part of growing up (including cyberbullying).
What is your solution?
editTo develop a comprehensive international online and policy solution incorporating the below elements.
The project should strive to educate the public on active and informed Responsible Digital Citizenship in order to prevent the victimisation of online users, harassment, and cyberbullying. It should seek to change attitude and values in dealing with and witnessing bullying, cyberbullying and cybercrime. In addition to potential targets, communication should also focus on bystanders and witnesses to act and break their silence to create a crime-unfriendly environment.
International best practices should be compiled and the action campaign (program) should be validated by experts on crime prevention, child safety, digital security, education professionals, etc.
Main pillars are: the Event Handling and Institutional elements which includes prevention.
The Event Handling element includes: prevention practices, education and training and information segments on how to prevent, recognize the effects of and handle bullying and cyberbullying as well as the organization segment at implementation. Besides preventive communication to the potential target, getting the bystanders and witnesses to report bullying cyberbullying and cybercrime should also be prioritised, thus lifting most responsibility off the targets and victims. A supporting application called the Anti Bullying Integrated Solutions (ABIS) (suggested name) could aid online reporting, proof and documentation and monitoring.
Strong emphasis should be placed on preventing introductory behaviors by educating on critical thinking, effective and aggression free communication. In the efforts of preventing the development of bullying and cyberbullying, introductory behaviors such as school violence and aggression are could also be virtually handled via mediation, conflict resolution. Restorative practices could be applied to restore the initial (pre-aggression) state.
The Institutional element conducted in parallel with the Event Handling element, should focus on prevention, policy solutions raising public awareness, obtaining additional and continuous funding and government lobbying in order to prioritize sustainability. Legislative lobbying should be conducted in order to responsibly amend the necessary laws and regulations as well as to introduce new anti-bullying and cyberbullying laws. The institutional element can coordinate the legal taskteam advising on US-EU legislation vs country specific efforts.
In order to most effectively implement and manage change in values, attitude, organization and processes. the program implementation strategy should follow the PRINCE2 or like project management methodology and standard Change Management practices.
Implementation strategy should address organization, process and policy changes. Content based online training to teachers, program champions and liaisons could be the first step in engaging the audience.
The program should place an overwhelming effort on prevention, on changing attitude, values, while providing information on how to exercise diligence, caution and behave responsibly in life and online in order to avoid negative situations. However, it should be recognized that no prevention effort is perfect. Therefore the program should also address situations once the problem already happened. Online information should educate on how to recognize targets and victims by recognizing the effects of harassment and cyberbullying and how to effectively handle those situations.
All presentations and online videos and webinars should drive to eradicate complacency and to motivate bystanders and witnesses to get active, report situations and offer constructive help in any investigation, thus creating a crime-unfriendly environment.
The project should also focus to change the school environment and the attitude regarding bullying and cyberbullying. It should motivate bystanders to step up against and report bullying and harassment online, thus creating an unsecure environment for the bully. The ABIS (Anti-Bullying Integrated Solutions) application allows for easy documentation and reporting bullying, further deterring the bully from committing his actions in school or online.
The education element of the project should teach about responsible digital citizenship, how to behave online, the Do’s and Don't’s on what to post, what to comment and share online. It should also inform about rights and legal consequences.
As a preventive measure part of the project should educates students on Effective Communication in order to avoid misunderstandings, virtual Mediation and Conflict Resolution in order to peacefully solve conflict and restore balance, as well as tolerance regarding people with different economic and social status, religion, sexual preference, physical appearance and ability and disability.
The social (societal) element of the project inshould involve an institutional approach, where a wider level of marketing, PR, news articles, blogs, Radio and TV interviews bring the anti-harassment and cyberbullying message and information on Responsible Digital Citizenship to the public. Information on Responsible Digital Citizenship should cover online behavior from safe internet connections to sharing personal information online and the responsible behavior on social sites.
Communication should be focused to motivate adults not to accept bullying and cyberbullying in school, at work, in relationships at home and in public. The communication element of the program should educates on the effects of cyberbullying, and the legal consequences of the methods of harassment, cyberbullying such as libel and the defamation of character and the illegal use of pictures and intellectual property, etc.
The main goal is to fill a gap on anti-bullying, harassment and cyberbullying initiatives and to educate on responsible digital citizenship. This project would the first and only international antiy harassment/bullying/cyberbullying project to-date which uses corporate project management and change management practices
It would shine light on a double-standard mentality regarding prevention, where society can exercise diligence and sufficient preventive measure in certain areas (such as not parking in dark streets, brushing teeth, etc,) and totally neglect prevention in others, completely relying on reactive measures, addressing the problems, once they already happened.
Our mission should be to aid society in a progressive and positive evolution to behave responsibly and to be more tolerant in the virtual would, with obvious residual benefits in the real world.. The increasing extreme behavior in society deems necessary those prevention projects which can educate people to be more constructive and responsible.
The project should also entail an international survey to measure the public’s knowledge, perception and occurrence of various criteria related to bullying, cyberbullying and responsible digital citizenship. It should specifically measure the students’, teachers’ and parents’: • knowledge about bullying and cyberbullying, • the parents’ teachers’ awareness of their children and students behavior online, • attitude towards bullying and cyberbullying, • knowledge of appropriate online behavior, • frequency of committing bullying online and online, • frequency of being a target of bullying and cyberbullying, • knowledge of various online predatory practices, • familiarity of terminology, • knowledge of various solutions once the problem already happened.
Upon implementation, the main objective of the project would be to • to educate the public about harassment and cyberbullying • how to effectively recognize bullying and harassing behavior in real life and online • form public opinion to condemn such negative behavior • Educate to prevent the victimisation of online users and students and public figures from becoming targets of online trolling and cyberbullying. • Efficiently stop bullying and cyberbullying situations • Educate on prevention methodologies (aggression free communication, critical thinking and responsible digital behavior).
Secondary (mid/long-term) objective would be to form public opinion about predatory online behavior, about purposeful distribution of mis/disinformation online, and about other negative online behavior displayed while expressing opinions on political, social and economic positions. Overall, help to develop a more tolerant and progressive social attitude in the cyber arena.
Another unique element to the project is that it is divided into two focus parts. The Event Handling element dealing with local implementation, and the Institutional element, which targets to impact change on national and social level and involves a lobbying factor to impact change on a legislative level.
The two elements working in parallel, taking the professional implementation approach in mind, can ensure a successful nationwide implementation sustainability not just in schools, but in other organizations impacted by workplace bullying and public bullying.
Anti Bullying Integrated Solutions (ABIS) could offer the ability for online and app reporting, dashboard in-house recognition, monitoring, process execution and communication.
The project content and program approach must be validated in each state via a local group of professionals to ensure the Change Management local acceptance milestone (buy-in) criteria.
Depending on country/region, pragmatic content and strategy changes may be required depending on social, infrastructural differences as a result of the workshops
Bullying, cyberbullying and cybercrime is a global element. As societal differences increase due to economic, social, national and other differences, paired with the cyber-tools and applications increasingly becoming cheaper and more available, special attention should be dedicated to help to inform the public on their responsible use. Europe and its member states are no exception to this global phenomenon.
We must inform and educate so our values can evolve with the technological advances in order to prevent cybercrime. The program was developed combining international best practices. It was then adjusted to local social and economic specifics for implementation and sustainability.
Goals
editGet Involved
editAbout the idea creator
editManager of public foundation focusing on responsibility, social progression. Previously, global policy and process manager for a multi-corp, responsible for simplification, harmonisation and automation.
Participants
editEndorsements
edit- Yes, this could be done and would have a very wide-spread and long-term beneficial effect on the whole internet. It is not a short-term program and we can't expect immediate effects on Wikipedia. It would mostly be done off-Wiki, but there is no reason that the WMF couldn't contact Facebook, Twitter, maybe the Khan Academy, or even Reditt, and educational institutions to form a consortium of sites to deal with an overall problem on the internet. Smallbones (talk) 15:58, 13 June 2016 (UTC)
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editWould a grant from the Wikimedia Foundation help make your idea happen? You can expand this idea into a grant proposal.