Just some of the people he can meet on the internet

Document 1: « Just some of the people he can meet on the Internet »

The document we are going to talk about is an awareness campaign realised by the Australian government. It wants to sensitize the parents about the dangers of the Internet for their children, thanks to the photography of a little boy.

First of all, this photography is a close-up of the face of an unhappy child. It’s in black and white which highlights the emotions and makes the atmosphere more serious and strict. Moreover, the background is dark and blurred as if it was representing the Internet dangers, the dark side of the Internet. We can see a slogan “Just some of the people he can meet on the Internet” that could be the title of the document. In the left upper corner there is a screenshot with four types of person. We can imagine that they are the answers of the slogan hidden question: “who could your child meet on the internet?”. Obviously, the cursor have us look to the last proposition which is “paedophiles” and so warns to the danger of sexual predators.

The target of the Australian Government is the parents of digital natives. The goal of the awareness campaign is to sensitize about the dangers that the young children are risking when surfing on the Internet without surveillance.  In fact we can read “your child” at the bottom and there are several elements referring to the Internet. For example the way which every word of the title is underlined or the calligraphy. We can easily understand thanks to these elements and thanks to the catch phrase that we are talking about the dark side of this communication platform.

However, even if the warning part is very effective, the campaign don’t give advices to cope with this dangers. To help and protect the digital natives, it could be interesting to make them discover new hobbies like arts or music. Moreover the parents are responsible for installing firewall programs on the computers of their children and to control and limit the way the children use The Internet.

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