Panic in the Classroom!: Youth, internet & the mobilization of risk via federal policies

“Panic in the Classroom!: Youth, internet &

the mobilization of risk via federal policies”

Console-ing PassionsUniversity of Missouri, Columbia

April 11, 2014

Dr. Jacqueline Ryan Vickery, Ph.D.Assistant Professor

Department of Radio, Television, & FilmUniversity of North Texas

jvickery.comjacqueline.vickery@unt.edu

@JacVick

Collective harm

Individual risk

avoidance

>

PANIC!

Risk

Harm

Monitoring, Surveillance,

& Interventions

Rimm

study

1996 Communications Decency Act

Panic

CDA

Time articl

eRimm

study

Each society has its regime of truth, its

“generalized politics” of truth; that is,

the types of discourse which it accepts

and makes function as truth, the

mechanisms and instances which

enable one to distinguish true and false

statements, the means by which each

is sanctioned…the status of those who

are charged with saying what counts as true.

- Michel Foucault

Children’s Online

Protection Act (1998)

“Perhaps we do the minors of this country harm if First Amendment protections, which they will with age inherit fully, are chipped

away in the name of their protection.”

U.S. District Judge Lowell A.

Reed

1) Awareness & education

2) Acceptable use policies

3) Curriculum

Filters & direct government regulations

Self Regulation

Collective Regulation

Children’s Internet Protection Act (2000)

1)Obscene 2)Pornographic3)Harmful to

minors

Public schools & libraries

receiving E-rate

discounts

Deleting Online Predators Act (2006)

ACCESS

WHAT

WHO

Policies to protect children online

Crimes against

children

Knowledge linked to power, not only

assumes the authority of ‘the truth’ but

has the power to make itself true. All

knowledge, once applied in the real

world, has real effects, and in that

sense at least, ‘becomes true’.

Knowledge, once used to regulate the

conduct of others, entails constraint,

regulation and the disciplining of practices.

- Stuart Hall

The discourse of cyber-safety and cyber-

censorship manufactures consent through

a hegemonic force that overlooks the

invasion of online advertising or marketing

strategies targeted at children…I contend

that the mainstream articulation of cyber-

paranoia attempts to reach the consent of

parents and educators by asking them to

see some internet content as value-laden

(i.e. nudity, sexuality, trigger words, or

adult content) while disguising the interests

and authority of profitable commercial and

computer industries (in the form of

advertising, marketing, tracking, and filters).

- Julie Frechette

Protecting Children in

the 21st Century Act

(2007)

“Panic in the Classroom!: Youth, internet &

the mobilization of risk via federal policies”

Console-ing PassionsUniversity of Missouri, Columbia

April 11, 2014

Dr. Jacqueline Ryan Vickery, Ph.D.Assistant Professor

Department of Radio, Television, & FilmUniversity of North Texas

jvickery.comjacqueline.vickery@unt.edu

@JacVick