Audiovisual Sexual Risks for Children on the Internet: Social Representations, Scientific Knowledge and Political Ideologies within European Parliament’s Debates

Abstract First paper “Audiovisual Sexual Risks and the Internet: social representations within European Parliamentary debates” The European Commission’s policy on children protection toward audiovisual sexual contents available on the Internet is based on a multi-stakeholders approach to regulatory, self-regulatory and co-regulatory initiatives. Several public meetings are held at the European Institutions. Aim: Our research focuses on the ones taken at the European Parliament between 2001 and 2016 and concerning the implementation of the Audiovisual Media Services Directive (2010/13/EU), the Directive on combating the sexual abuse and sexual exploitation of children and child pornography (2011/92/EU) and the Better Internet for Kids program (COM 2012 196 final). Methods: The corpus was composed of 45 European parliamentary debates. Methodologies for data analysis were content analysis (AtlasTi), and Alceste method (Iramuteq). Results: First, anchoring and objectification are identified through images and metaphors of the Internet and online audiovisual risks, especially sexual ones. Second, 4 clusters were identified: 1. European issue; 2. Sexual exploitation and child-pornography; 3. Risks; 4. Positive use of the Internet. Third, relevant themes, such as international dimension of crime, and rapidity of technological change.