‘Knowledge enhancement’: the risks and opportunities of evidence-based policy

The EU Kids Online network was funded by the European Commission’s (EC) Safer Internet programme since 2006 as a ‘knowledge enhancement’ project ‘to make a better internet for children’. This chapter discusses how the network - a multinational and multidisciplinary group of researchers approached the task of enhancing knowledge so as to underpin European policy development in this important area. It is argued that research cannot be conducted in isolation if it is to inform stakeholders but, rather, depends on researchers engaging in expert and public debates, contributing to the deliberative process by which policy unfolds while, simultaneously retaining academic values of rigour, contextualisation and independence. In the case of EU Kids Online, the chapter discusses how this proved a learning process for both the research and stakeholder communities, all complicated by the media panics and public anxieties surrounding children’s online risk and safety matters.