Online Child Safety: Law, Technology and Governance

Although the subject of children's rights and the sociology of childhood and child sexual abuse has been the subject of extensive scholarly deliberation and commentary, there has been very little consideration of the way networks and digital information create a trust deficit, which consequently implicates all non-State actors and civil society. There is a need to understand the dynamics of the multi-stakeholder Internet governance model and the challenges Web 2.0 technologies pose for child protection policy-making. This book fills the lacuna. Online Child Safety: Law, Technology and Governance directs its focus on the governance challenges raised by the problems of ascertaining the integrity, authenticity and reliability of information flows and network infrastructures for our attitudes towards risks facing children and strategies for enhancing their safety in the online environment. It also seeks to understand the nature of convergence and articulates the significance of emerging regulatory trends in the way compliance with child safety norms are defined, communicated and enforced.