A new project by the University of Silesia in Katowice, funded by the prestigious Horizon Europe programme, aims to support children's rights and raise public awareness about the risks and challenges children face in the digital environment. The Faculty of Education at Palacký University Olomouc is also involved in the project’s research.
The research project, titled Guardian – Growing Online: How to Protect Our Children in the Digital World?, addresses the phenomenon of so-called "sharenting," where parents share media content of their children through digital technologies on social networks, thus exposing them to the risks of the virtual world. As a result, children lose their privacy, have no control over what information is shared about them online, and may fall victim to identity theft or exploitation. The main goal of the project is to explore the scope and dimensions of sharenting in Europe and East Africa from an intercultural perspective, in order to provide guidance and recommendations on the measures required to respect and protect children's rights in the digital world.
“Knowledge transfer and joint research will not only help parents and their children, but also benefit the project participants themselves by allowing them to gain new skills and professional qualifications,” said Professor Jiří Dostál, head of the Czech research team and a member of the project consortium. “This spring, our colleagues from the Faculty of Education and I had the opportunity to visit the project partner, Polish University Abroad, in London. This visit focused on researching the intercultural dimension of children's rights, privacy, and digital safety, particularly within migrant communities,” Dostál added.
The three-year Guardian project, funded by the Horizon Europe programme through the MSCA Staff Exchanges instrument, has been implemented this year by academic and non-academic institutions from four countries: Poland, the Czech Republic, the United Kingdom, and Kenya. The coordinator of the project is the University of Silesia in Katowice. A member of the consortium is the Faculty of Education, specifically the research team led by Professor Jiří Dostál from the Department of Technical and Information Education. Members of the Czech team from the Faculty of Education include Tomáš Čech, Pavlína Částková, Michal Sedláček, and Dominika Provázková Stolinská.