Author Identifier (ORCID)
Giselle Woodley’s ORCID record 
Elisabeth Staksrud’s ORCID record
Abstract
This paper interrogates the ethical complexities of talking with 12 to 17-year-olds about sexual content online. Authors were granted ethics approval by the Edith Cowan University Human Research Ethics Committee (2019-00583-GREEN) with three other participant countries translating Australian ethical protocols into their national contexts: Greece, Ireland and Norway. This paper addresses the four national contexts and examines the ethical issues arising for different countries’ ethics procedures when researchers conduct sensitive research with adolescents. Given widespread concern around the risk that children will be ‘sexualised’ by encountering sexual content online the ethical procedures adopted in each national context, and the way in which young people are framed, can be positioned as reflecting ‘discourses of anxiety’. While young people should be protected, protections may be over-emphasised, potentially distorting children’s and young people’s rights. This paper explores the ethical complexities of talking with young people to inform a balancing of young people’s rights with their need for protection within four national contexts: Australia, Greece, Ireland and Norway.
Keywords
child participants, ethics regimes, protection, sexual citizenship, sexual content
Document Type
Journal Article
Date of Publication
1-1-2026
E-ISSN
30497752
ISSN
17420105
Volume
23
Issue
1
Publication Title
Ethical Space: International Journal of Communication Ethics
Publisher
Abramis Academic Publishing
School
School of Arts and Humanities
Funding received from the Australian Research Council (ARC)
DP190102435, CE200100022
Administering Institution
Edith Cowan University
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Green, L., Woodley, G., Jacques, C., Staksrud, E., Tsaliki, L., O’Neill, B., Dudek, D., Chronaki, D., Dinh, T., & Jaunzems, K. (2026). Ethical positionings of risk and harm for adolescents encountering sexual content online. Ethical Space: International Journal of Communication Ethics, 23(1). https://doi.org/10.21428/0af3f4c0.b80e4ce3