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FORSTERK-Forsterkningsmidler

Enhancing the Digital Wellbeing of Norwegian 12-17-year-olds in collaboration with the Public Sector, Industry and Research organisations.

Awarded: NOK 1.0 mill.

1) Dissemination of results from the ySKILLS project to Norwegian researchers, national actors and the general public. This includes four dissemination seminars over two years where international researchers presented new knowledge about children and young people’s digital skills and wellbeing to Norwegian stakeholders: • The first seminar focused on the topic of harmful media content. • The second seminar focused on research about digital parenting and was hosted in collaboration with the Norwegian Media Authority • The third seminar focused on the topic of digital skills • The fourth seminar focused on the topic of digital exclusion and vulnerabilities. This final seminar was opened by Minister for Children and Families Kjersti Toppe and Rector at UiO Svein Stølen. The dissemination seminars have been attended by representatives from, inter alia, the Ministry of Children and Family Affairs, the Children's Ombudsman, the Directorate for Children and Families, the Directorate for Higher Education and Skills, the Consumer Council, the Directorate for Health, IKT-Norge, the Ministry of Justice and Public Security, Kors på Halsen, the Red Cross, Kripos, KS, the Ministry of Culture and Equality, the Ministry of Education, the Norwegian Media Authority, Redd Barna, the Sami Parliament, UiO, NTNU, UiS and OsloMet. 2) Through the seminars and other dissemination work, the project has contributed to the further development of a national R&D network focusing on the topic of children, young people and the media. 3) We have organized interdisciplinary and international research meetings to exchange experiences, insights and strategies for research dissemination with other H2020-funded projects within the same thematic area. This includes an international researcher meeting in Oslo in May 2022 attended by 80 researchers from four H2020-funded projects - ySKILLS, CO:RE, DigiGen and Digymatex. The meeting included presentations of all research projects as well as thematic discussions around digital skills and vulnerabilities in addition to methods and ethics. It also included a reception at the Town Hall in Oslo hosted by Mayor Marianne Borgen. 4) We have produced and published a short, animated film to help researchers explain to children what rights they have when asked to participate in research. The film is part-financed by the Digiskills project. It is also a collaboration with our H2020 funded projects ySKILLS and CO:RE, as well as the national research ethics committees in Norway (FEK). The purpose is to convey what research is and what rights children and young people have as informants in an easily understandable way. The film will also help to increase the opportunities for children and young people to participate in research and be a helpful tool for researchers who engage in research with children and young people. The film was released on 28 September 2022 and has been translated into 12 languages. More languages are expected. The film has been produced under an Open Access license. The film is available, among other things, on the CO:RE project's website and on YouTube. See https://core-evidence.eu/posts/open-source-movie-childrens-rights-as-research-participants. 5) We have also, in collaboration with students at the Department of Media and Communication, UiO, produced a range of research dissemination films focusing on different aspects of children and young people’s media use, risk and digital skills. A selection of these is available on our website here: https://www.hf.uio.no/imk/english/research/projects/digiskills/films/ 6) We have published feature articles, columns and research articles and reports in this area.

We have exceeded our commitment to producing publications including both academic articles and reports with translated introductions in Norwegian. We have also produced numerous reports in both English and Norwegian on various aspects of children and young people's digital media use and competence. These reports and articles are available on our website. We also actively disseminate our research in relevant media outlets and a number of our outputs have received significant media attention. Seminars: Four seminars have been organised as part of the project to allow the network to meet and to discuss the findings and implications of the Youth Skills project. These were held in November 2020, February and November 2021 and June 2022. The first two were organised as digital workshops due to the Covid-19 pandemics. The themes covered include harmful media content, digital parenting, digital skills and digital vulnerabilities. In spite of the exceptional circumstances of the Covid-19 pandemic, the seminars were in general well attended by members of our R&D network and researchers. In addition to these seminars we also organised a large researcher meeting in Oslo on 5-7 May where 80 researchers from 4 H2020-funded projects attended. Website, Newsletter and Social Media: We connected and disseminated information of relevance to our network via a number of digital channels provided by the University of Oslo. These included the mailing list service ‘Sympa’, and the Website, which runs on Vortex and has the potential to include blog posts. We also subscribed to the Mailchimp Newsletter service to establish a project newsletter (6 issues per year), as well as to Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and Instagram. Videos for 12-17 Year Olds: We have launched an animated film - produced together with researchers at ySKILLS and CO:RE, and part-funded by Digiskills - which will help researchers explain to children what good research is and what they should consider before agreeing to participate in a research project. The film is currently available in 12 languages, including Norwegian and English. Together with students at IMK we also produced 15 short videos to disseminate the key findings of our research to Norwegian children and adolescents and other stakeholders. These are available on our website and have been shared in our social media channels.

Digiskills will provide a wider range of Norwegian actors with access to the knowledge developed in the Youth Skills project. In doing so it will increase the impact of Youth Skills for Norwegian research and society. Youth Skills involves 15 international partners who explore how digital skills are developed by children and adolescents aged 12-17 years old. It will enhance our understanding of digital skills and propose a framework for their measurement. Digiskills will create a network of Norwegian academics and public sector and industry practitioners and disseminate the findings of Youth Skills to this network. The key findings will be translated to Norwegian, in a way that is relevant for Norwegian actors and practitioners. As children and adolescents aged 12-17 are our main stakeholders, we will also disseminate research to this group by producing video segments of relevance to them. Our project network will be developed in collaboration with our application partners who represent both academic and public sector actors currently concerned with developments in this field, and with how Norwegian children use digital media. Drawing on the skills and expertise of this core team we will invite relevant actors to join our network, our mailing list and to receive our newsletter. We will also invite this network to four workshops during the course of the project. Furthermore, we will invite the leaders of the other work packages in the Youth Skills project to come to these workshops and present their findings to our network. These presentations will focus on the development of digital skills; present longitudinal research; explanatory and foresight modelling; and in-depth studies on the role the Internet plays in the lives of vulnerable children. A Norwegian study, exploring this in the context of children who visit self-harm sites, experience cyberbullying or use the internet excessively will be included in these work packages.

Funding scheme:

FORSTERK-Forsterkningsmidler

Funding Sources