Our colleagues on the Digital Wildfires project teamed up with Oxford Sparks and Jason R.C. Nurse to produce a new video animation for young people about the joys and challenges of social media information. In the words of the Digital Wildfires team: “Keeping Social Media depicts the ways that social media have revolutionised the ways we communicate. Whiles these platforms open up an unimagined volume of ideas and possibilities they also offer anonymity, which increases the chance that both children and adults may take risks and experiment with behaviours they may not consider offline. Our video describes how research can help find ways to tackle some of the challenges posed by social media and invites the viewer to consider how these digital social spaces should be regulated.”
Young people are a highly vulnerable group on social media. Current research (summarised here https://www.nspcc.org.uk/services-and-resources/research-and-resources/2015/how-safe-are-our-children-2015/ ) suggests that 1 in 3 have been victims of cyber bullying and 1 in 4 have experienced something upsetting on a social media site. The ‘Digital Wildfire’ project (www.digitalwildfire.org) explores the spread of provocative and antagonistic content on social media and seeks to identify opportunities for the responsible governance of digital social spaces. As part of this we have spent time engaging with young people and school teachers to find out their views on social media and the harms it can cause.