Campaign promotes respectful online behaviour

The online world is an exciting place, connecting people and providing opportunities that wouldn't have been thought possible just a couple of generations ago. While young people go online to connect with others, create and access information, and engage in social networking, gaming and instant messaging, this connectivity also offers new avenues for violent, threatening or harmful behaviour, such as cyberbullying, exposure to pornography and violence, and access to information and activities that pose risks to personal safety and wellbeing. Creating awareness that people should think before they act online has never been more important.

Dr Philippa Collin, a Research Fellow from the Institute for Culture and Society (opens in a new window), has helped develop the KeepitTame campaign (opens in a new window), part of the Safe and Well Online project, a five-year study into the role of social communications for promoting young people's safety and wellbeing funded by the Young and Well Cooperative Research Centre (opens in a new window). 

KeepitTame is the first of four campaigns that will be developed and evaluated in the study. It aims to create awareness among young people about the consequences of their online decisions and appeared on 20 of the most popular youth websites, including Yahoo7, YouTube, Guitar World and MetroLyrics. An advertisement on each webpage featured an animated mobile monster, which asked visitors whether they would post a hurtful image of a fictitious character, Jenny. The animation grew to full screen and the user followed Jenny's experience of the consequences of having the photo posted and how she takes control of the situation by activating privacy settings and using reporting tools.

"We worked with sector partners and more than 130 young people from around Australia to develop an understanding of the key behaviour we wanted to promote, the issues to be addressed and the ways in which young people interact with each other on social network services," says Philippa.

The Safe and Well Online team is now examining the effectiveness and impact of this campaign using longitudinal and digital tracking.

"Engagement was extremely good – the click-through rate to the full campaign was four times the industry average," says Philippa. "And the average time spent on the actual campaign site was more than two minutes, so we know most people were viewing the whole video experience. But what we really need to know is what behaviour change might be associated with engagement with the campaign."

Philippa and the Safe and Well Online  team, in partnership with young people, community, government, sector partners and the digital media industry, have recently commenced the next phase of research with a Strategic Round Table at UWS involving school and sector representatives including the Australian Federal Police, the ACMA, Google, the Butterfly Foundation and the Cybersafety Programs Section, Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy.