BROAD project: Broadening the Range of Awareness in Data Protection

Starting from January 2009, the Center for Media and Communications Studies (CMCS) is the coordinating institution of a new EU funded project on "Broadening the Range Of Awareness in Data protection (BROAD)"   

The BROAD Project, to be developed in the next 18 months (starting from February 2009), is a collaborative effort of Hungarian and Dutch not-for-profit organisations representing a new and an old Member State of the EU, to raise awareness in the area of data protection and information privacy by using innovative means and methods.

The three action areas of BROAD are:

1. surveying target groups and feeding back the results to professional and common knowledge;
2. establishing an internet forum in the intersection of IT and privacy;
3. and producing and  disseminating professional and amateur creative products, such as videoclips and "positive clichés"

The first action area of BROAD is focusing on exploring the opinion, values and attitudes of those target groups which exert a decisive impact on the possibilities and limitations of people's privacy in today's "information society" (multipliers), and feeding back the results to the target groups' professional forums and formation, and to common knowledge. To achieve this objective, in both countries face-to-face interviews and a dedicated online survey will be conducted in two specific target groups, namely, IT professionals and their principals (bureaucrats/decision makers, business managers).

In the second action area a tri-lingual (English, Dutch, Hungarian) internet portal will be created with blog and forum functions. It will serve as a forum for discussing, publishing and sharing ideas and works the subject of which are the impact of new technologies on information privacy, privacy-invasive technologies, and privacy enhancing technologies (PETs).

The third action area attracts creative artists which produce high artistic and technical quality videoclips, and amateurs for whom a contest will be announced for submitting, among others, recordings made by mobile telephones, digital montages, cartoons etc. All visual products created in this activity will be made available for sharing and distribution under a Creative Commons license, and also be disseminated through YouTube, Flickr and other file sharing sites. A similar contest will be announced for privacy-friendly "positive clichés".

The BROAD project incorporates lasting elements, notably the findings of the survey, the Internet forums and online content, which will be available as a model for adaptation in other Member States. Videos and other creative works are expected to be widely distributed and to remain topical beyond the period of the BROAD project.

The BROAD project is funded jointly by the Fundamental Rights and Citizenship Programme of the European Commission and the consortium member institutions.

At CEU Kristina Irion (Assistant Professor at the Department of Public Policy and Research Director at the Center for Media and Communications Studies) is the coordinator of the BROAD project and Eva Bognar a junior researcher and administrator.