Available in the upcoming ICA Virtual Conference, Sonia Livingstone's keynote address tackles questions relating to children, young people and the internet; media and digital literacies; the mediated public sphere; audience reception for diverse television genres and public understanding of communications regulation.

For the past decade, Livingstone has been researching the ways in which children gain access to and experience of new media, especially the internet, in their home, school and community. The rapid and apparently overwhelming rewriting of everyday life but online technologies, especially mobile and social media, poses some fascinating challenges for research. Is childhood being radically transformed? Is the internet now bringing up our children, replacing parents and teachers in a highly immersive networked culture?
 
Although techno-optimism is strong, in relation to children it is the anxieties, even moral panics, that dominate the agenda - just as they always have in the history of once-new media. Through the EU Kids Online network, which Livingstone directs, she has had a fantastic opportunity to collect a substantial and original body of empirical data, and to debate its significance with a lively multidisciplinary research network internationally. This work has also drawn her into the multistakeholder policy community seeking to maximise opportunities and minimise risks for children and families online. In this lecture, Livingstone reflects on the key findings and lessons learned, focusing on the thorny question, too often misunderstood, of the relation between risk and harm, in order to advance an evidence-based framework for policy intervention and, of course, for much-needed further research.

About the Presenter:

Sonia Livingstone is Professor of Social Psychology and Head of the Department of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Recent books include Audiences and Publics (edited, Intellect, 2005), The Handbook of New Media (edited, with Leah Lievrouw, Sage, 2006), Media Consumption and Public Engagement: Beyond the Presumption of Attention (with Nick Couldry and Tim Markham, Palgrave, 2007), Children and the Internet (2009, Polity) and Media Regulation (with Peter Lunt, Sage, 2012). She was President of the International Communication Association (2007-8).

The ICA Virtual Conference will feature keynote addresses by three eminent global communication scholars: Lance Bennett, Ruddick C. Lawrence Professor of Communication and Professor of Political Science at the U of Washington; Hans Henrik Holm, Jean Monnet Professor and Professor in World Politics at the Danish School of Media and Journalism; and Sonia Livingstone, Professor of Social Psychology and Head of the Department of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics.