This essential volume brings together the work of internationally-renowned researchers, each experts in their field, in order to capture the diversity of children and young people's media cultures around the world. Why are the media such a crucial part of children's daily lives? Are they becoming more important, more influential, and in what ways? Or does a historical perspective reveal how past media have long framed children's cultural horizons or, perhaps, how families - however constituted - have long shaped the ways children relate to media? In addressing such questions, the contributors present detailed empirical cases to uncover how children weave together diverse forms and technologies to create a rich symbolic tapestry which, in turn, shapes their social relationships. At the same time, many concerns - even public panics - arise regarding children's engagement with media, leading the contributors also to inquire into the risky or problematic aspects of today's highly mediated world. Deliberately selected to represent as many parts of the globe as possible, and with a commitment to recognizing both the similarities and differences in children and young people's lives - from China to Denmark, from Canada to India, from Japan to Iceland, from - the authors offer a rich contextualization of children's engagement with their particular media and communication environment, while also pursuing cross-cutting themes in terms of comparative and global trends. Each chapter provides a clear orientation for new readers to the main debates and core issues addressed, combined with a depth of analysis and argumentation to stimulate the thinking of advanced students and established scholars. Since children and young people are a focus of study across different disciplines, the volume is thoroughly multi-disciplinary. Yet since children and young people are all too easily neglected by these same disciplines, this volume hopes to accord their interests and concerns they surely merit.
Kirsten Drotner is Professor of Media Studies at the Institute for the Study of Culture at the University of Southern Denmark. Her research examines media audiences' meaning-making in historical and contemporary perspective; media and digital literacies; digital co-creation and learning; qualitative methodologies inc. media ethnography; ICT studies and e-learning; digital museum studies; and child and youth culture studies. She is author or editor of six books in English, 24 books in Danish and numerous academic articles and chapters in edited volumes. She is an elected fellow of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters. Sonia Livingstone DPhil (Oxon), OBE, FBA, FBPS, FAcSS, FRSA, is a professor in the Department of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Taking a comparative, critical and contextualised approach, her research examines how changing conditions of mediation reshape everyday practices and possibilities for action. She has published 20 books on media audiences, children and young people's risks and opportunities, media literacy and rights in the digital environment, including "Parenting for a Digital Future: How hopes and fears about technology shape children's lives" (OUP 2020). Since founding the EC-funded 33 country "EU Kids Online" research network, and Global Kids Online (with UNICEF Office of Research-Innocenti), she has advised DCMS, UKCIS, Ofcom, European Commission, European Parliament, UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, OECD, ITU and UNICEF. She chaired LSE's Truth, Trust and Technology Commission and is currently leading the Digital Futures Commission with the 5Rights Foundation. See www.sonialivingstone.net
CONTINUITIES AND CHANGE Culture-Nature and the Construction of Childhood - Alan Prout The Child in the Picture - Patricia Holland Managing Monsters - Dan Fleming Videogames and the `Mediatization' of the Toy Harlequin Meets the SIMS - Jacqueline Reid-Walsh A History of Interactive Narrative Media for Children and Youth From Early Flap Books to Contemporary Multi Media PROBLEMATICS Making Waves - Chas Critcher Panic Discourses about the Media and Children or Young People, Past and Present Children and Media in the Context of the Home and Family - Stewart Hoover and Lynn Schofield Clark Reality and Fantasy in Media - Maire Messenger Davies Can Children Tell the Difference and How Do We Know? Mobile Emancipation - Rich Ling and Leslie Haddon Children, Youth and the Mobile Phone The Mediated Playground - Dafna Lemish Media in Early Childhood Dividing Delights - Jane Kenway and Elizabeth Bullen Children, Adults and the Search for Sales Horror Films and Youthful Film Cultures - Anne Jerslev Learning Theory, Videogames, and Popular Culture - James Gee CULTURES AND CONTEXTS Children and Media - David Buckingham A Cultural Studies Approach The African Reception of Global Media - Larry Strelitz and Priscilla Boshoff Relations Between Globalization and Localization - Jette Rygaard Young People's Media Culture in Greenland Games and Media - Maria Heller The Acquisition of Social Structure and Social Rules Uses of Media - Stephanie Donald Participant Researchers in Asian Contexts Media and Girls' Issues in China - Bu Wei Media as Strategy for Gender Equality Contextualizing Media Competencies Amongst Young People in Indian Culture - Usha Nayar and Amita Bhide Interface with Globalization Youth, Media and Culture in the Arab World - Marwan Kraidy and Joe Khalil Situated Media Appropriations in Brazil - Norbert Wildermuth Imagination, Empowerment and Exclusion Has Television Become a Connecting Culture? - Letizia Caronia and Andre H. Caron A Cross-Cultural Study PERSPECTIVES Trans-National Media Mixing - Mizuko Ito Cultural Production and Exchange in International Anime Cultures Japanese Young People, Media and Everyday Life - Toshie Takahashi Towards the De-Westernising of Media Studies New Visions of Literacy - Renee Hobbs The Great Debates Continue From Parental Control to Peer Pressure - Dominique Pasquier Cultural Transmission and Conformism The Commodification of Kids' Culture - Janet Wasko Media and Communications Regulation and Child Protection - David Oswell An Overview of the Field Facilitating Political Participation - Peter Dahlgren Young Citizens, Internet and Civic Cultures Children's Communication Rights - Cees Hamelink Beyond Intentions
This volume breaks new ground. Its ambitious goal is to deliver a holistic approach to children's culture... Sonia Livingstone and Kirsten Drotner are well equipped for the job of attempting such a radically inclusive approach. Both scholars have conducted transnational empirical audience research, and are therefore not naive when it comes to the difficulties of such an enterprise. They are appropriate public intellectuals to embark on a job of creating bridges between a range of geographically dispersed scholarly and political discourses... The volume provides a stimulating read for researchers in a range of disciplines. It also deserves to be recommended to media regulators, politicians and journalism students. -- International Journal of Media and Cultural Politics
