How to communicate to youngsters about Internet safety March 22, 2008
Posted by Malene Charlotte Larsen in Children, Internet Safety, Youth.8 comments
The Danish Media Council for Children and Young People has launched a new campaign about Internet safety aimed at children and young people. The campaign features a fictional character, the 32-year old Hjarness, who has profiles on many different social network sites and uploads pictures, videos and all kinds of personal information about himself (and his friends) on the Internet.
Hjarness has a YouTube profile, an Arto profile, a WordPress blog and his very own homepage. He has also written an article about Internet safety for the online magazine Artomania.
I think this is a really interesting way of communicating to youngsters about Internet safety. Among other things, Hjarnees advises children and young people to put their full name, address, phone number and e-mail address online and to upload embarrassing photos and videos of their friends. There is no finger-wagging here, and the young people seem to really get the point and find Hjarnees really funny.
The campaign is targeted 13-16-year olds and the message is “Life online is what YOU make of IT”. Read more about it here.
New office March 17, 2008
Posted by Malene Charlotte Larsen in Aalborg University.2 comments
Today I moved into a new office a the University. The office is a one-man office, which will be quite a change as I am used to sitting in a five-man open office space. However, I am excited to have my own office and I think that the peace and quite will be an advantage when I start writing my dissertation (which I plan to start doing after this semester).
Also, I now have a much nicer view facing the main building of Department of Communication:
[The view from my new office.]
For the locals; I now live in room 3.008, 2nd floor on Kroghstræde 1. Feel free to come visit 😀
The online and offline symbol of a heart March 6, 2008
Posted by Malene Charlotte Larsen in Language, Offline, Online, Youth Culture.7 comments
As some of you might know, I have started taking pictures of “offline walls” (aka graffiti). Especially, when I am out giving talks all over Denmark and have a lot of waiting time in public spaces such as train or bus stations.
As I have mentioned before, it seems that the online way of communicating has affected the offline. Symbols that most often belong to Arto profiles or Facebook walls can now be found on actual, physical walls.
Yesterday I was in Assens and had some time to kill in the local bus station waiting room. Here, I found a message saying “I love you” along with two drawings that capture both the online (<3) and the offline symbol of a heart: (the highlights and the blurring of the last name have been made by me):
I have many similar examples of online symbols or references being used in the physical public space. I find this interesting in relation to my PhD project, as it says something about how the boundaries of online and offline communication and relationships are blurred – and how the virtual space is represented IRL and vice versa.
On this specific wall I also found references to Arto profiles. It’s all about being OnLife 🙂 ❤
My PhD Blog 