Introduction Children and Digital Media

• Published in: The Routledge Companion to Digital Media and Children pp. 1 - 16
• Main Authors: Green, Lelia, Holloway, Donell, Stevenson, Kylie, Leaver, Tama, Haddon, Leslie
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: United Kingdom Routledge 2021; Taylor & Francis Group
• Edition: 1
• Subjects: Lelia Green; Child Sexual Abuse Materials; Young Man; Children's Digital Media; Review Consumer Products; Multi-method Data; Vice Versa; Touchscreen Technologies; Moving Image Media; Children's Digital; UK Project; Parental Mediation Practices; Pre-sleep Arousal; Digital Media; Children's Rights; EU Kid Online; Unsolicited Assistance; Haptic Interfaces; UN; EU Kid Online Project; Intimate Surveillance; Legacy Media Contexts; Digital Citizenship; Sexual Risk Assessment
• ISBN: 9780367559069; 1138544345; 9781138544345; 0367559064
• DOI: 10.4324/9781351004107-101a

Children continuously reinvent digital technologies in ways that serve their purposes and passions. Natalie Coulter starts the collection by considering a range of ways in which social and cultural discourse constructs the notion of the child, children, and childhood. Children's informal learning around digital media often takes place within the home. Eschewing one-dimensional and one-way research, where the power is almost entirely in the hands of the researcher, the chapter demonstrates that not only is it possible to build reciprocal inclusive research partnerships with children and their families, but it leads to better research and more reliable outcomes. Willett and Richards's chapter explores the value of combining reflective observation and interviews with children on the one hand and working with children as participant researchers on the other. Discussions of marketing, commodification, and privacy inevitably raise the issue of children's rights, and particularly their rights in the context of digital environments.