Abstract
This chapter focuses on the methodology and findings of the Blurred Lives Project - a crossnational, co-participatory exploration of cyberbullying, young people and socio-economic disadvantage. The two-year project (2017-2019) was funded by Erasmus+ under Key Action 2: Strategic Partnerships for School Education and was led by 5 EU partners from Northern Ireland, England, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands. The Blurred Lives Project focused on the online experiences of 14-16 year olds in schools in disadvantaged urban areas in each partner country and aimed to facilitate pupil voice through the creation of resources and/or recommendations for teachers, pupils, parents/carers and social networking providers. The title of the project is a reflection of the shift in recent years from the “wired” to the “wireless” child and the consequent blurring of online and offline identities, realities and experiences for many young people whose social interactions are increasingly dominated by mobile technologies (Slee, Campbell & Spears, 2012; Spears & Kofoed, 2013; Ofcom, 2018).
In the first phase of the project an online survey was completed by 400-700 pupils in 5+ schools in each country, and explored pupils’ online access and negative experiences. Pupils were first invited to provide background demographic information and to detail the nature and extent of their regular online activity. They were then asked to describe a nasty or unpleasant online experience that had happened to them personally over the past couple of months, to indicate who they had reported it to (if anyone) and what happened as a result. They were also asked to describe a nasty online experience that had happened to someone else they know well, and to describe anything nasty or unpleasant that they had done themselves to someone online over the past couple of months. Finally, the survey invited the young people to provide suggestions as to how teachers, parents/carers and friends could help more.
This chapter focuses solely on the second phase of the project which aimed to provide upto-date resources (“intellectual outputs”) for teachers, pupils and parent/carers, and make important recommendations to social networking providers, building on ideas from the pupils themselves and so acknowledging the importance of hearing the voice of young people from disadvantaged backgrounds who may be often overlooked. This was done through a combination of Sequential Focus Groups and Quality Circles (both of which will be
discussed in more detail below), carried out intensively with two classes of 14-16 year old pupils in each country. The first Sequential Focus Group was used to present some of the findings of the survey and to explore pupils’ online experiences in more qualitative detail. There followed a series of Quality Circles where pupils worked in groups with experienced facilitators to create original resources for particular audiences: teachers, pupils, parents/carers and social networking providers. The number and length of each Quality Circle session varied between schools and countries, depending on school timetables and availability of time. However, in each case pupils were encouraged and empowered to work together (often outside normal friendship groups) with a common purpose to design appropriate and targeted guidance and/or resources, and to share their resources with others in their class or year group or senior teaching staff from their school.