Public understanding of regimes of risk regulation: Focus groups with citizens and consumers

This report investigates the nature of public understanding of risk and regulation. Issues of risk and regulation are both significant for the public and recognised as such by them. It shows that the public has strong and diverse views on the regulation of the risks they face in their daily lives, and is often critical of the ways in which risks are managed. This raises key issues for regulators and other stakeholders concerned with risk management, public awareness and consumer rights and responsibilities. As part of the ESRC-funded research project, Public Understanding of Regimes of Risk Regulation, part of the SCARR network, the authors conducted sixteen focus groups with a cross-section of the UK public. The discussions ranged across risk and regulation issues broadly, though two sectors - communications and financial services – were explored in detail

Children’s rights online: challenges, dilemmas and emerging directions

In debates over internet governance, the interests of children figure unevenly, and only partial progress has been made in supporting children’s rights online globally. This chapter examines how the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child is helpful in mapping children’s rights to provision, protection and participation as they apply online as well as offline. However, challenges remain. First, opportunities and risks are positively linked, policy approaches are needed to resolve the potential conflict between protection on the one hand, and provision and participation on the other. Second, while parents may be relied on to some degree to balance their child’s rights and needs, the evidence suggests that a minority of parents are ill-equipped to manage this. Third, resolution is needed regarding the responsibility for implementing digital rights, since many governments prefer self-regulation in relation to internet governance. The chapter concludes by calling for a global governance body charged with ensuring the delivery of children’s rights

Representing citizens and consumers in media and communications regulation

What do citizens need from the media, and how should this be regulated? Western democracies are witnessing a changing regulatory regime, from "command-andcontrol" government to discursive, multistakeholder governance. In the United Kingdom, the Office of Communications (Ofcom) is required to further the interests of citizens and consumers, which it does in part by aligning them as the citizen-consumer. What is meant by this term, and whether it captures the needs of citizens or subordinates them to those of consumers, has been contested by civil society groups as well as occasioning some soul-searching within the regulator. By triangulating a discursive analysis of the Communications Act 2003, key actor interviews with the regulator and civil society bodies, and focus groups among the public, the authors seek to understand how these terms ("citizen," "consumer," and "citizen-consumer") are used to promote stakeholder interests in the media and communications sector, not always to the benefit of citizens

Urban Sustainability: Discourses, Networks and Policy Tools.

Il volume presenta una ricerca comparativa sul tema della sostenibilità dello sviluppo urbano. La comparazione è avvenuta tra alcuni centri urbani in Italia (Firenze, Bologna) e in Gran Bretagna ( Edimburgo, Leicester) sulle seguenti politiche urbane: restrizione del traffico urbano e sostenibilità ambientale; localizzazioni dei centri commerciali, del commercio al dettaglio e sostenibilità ambientale; spazi verdi e loro gestione e sostenibilità ambientale. Il volume termina con l'indicazione di una serie di caratteristiche che le politiche urbane settoriali dovrebbero avere per orientare lo sviluppo urbano in modo sostenibile