Reflecting on our Children’s Media Club for Researchers

You can’t go into a playground or classroom without seeing and hearing children talk about their favourite media experiences. For many children, what they watch, play or listen to is deeply important. Children act  out scenes from their favourite TV shows, or discuss the characters they are most interested in. They may explain to each other the complex ways to search for and navigate the best locations in a game, or even make and build their own games. These media worlds, whether adults acknowledge them or not, form the basis for friendships and collaborations, and children often feel a very real connection to their lived media experiences and the characters, personalities and producers involved in the creation of such media. 

As researchers who are interested in the digital lives of children and young people, we see children’s media experiences as an essential area of investigation. Our work within the Digital Child had already highlighted some of the ways children were viewing and creating digital media productions. We were keen to explore this together in a way that firstly valued children’s experiences and, secondly, provided us as researchers with a way to approach children’s media experiences with curiosity. The Children’s Media Club for Researchers was established as a result of this interest. As a group we decided to meet once a month, with researchers across the Digital Child taking turns to lead the exploration of children’s media. While there is a tension between us as researchers making selections about children’s media without being children ourselves, our selection of what to examine in detail is born from our research and everyday experiences where we hear anecdotes about what children love to engage with. 

We were interested in exploring a range of children’s digital media experiences. As a group we decided to take a wide view about what constitutes children’s media use and we have each explored this in different ways. Some have presented their research, others have created activities for us to engage with to extend our current understanding of particular media content. Below are several examples of what we have examined:

Bluey

Bluey is everywhere – at our hardware stores, on our food, but especially on our screens! We explored two Bluey episodes that specifically dealt with representations of technology.

We had fun creating our own Bluey episodes that reflected technology use in families in different ways and used the Faceytime episode as inspiration to consider how our lives as researchers are often mediated by a range of different screens. Through our collaborations with each other we aimed to critically engage with both Bluey as a TV show enjoyed by children (and adults) and how TV shows depicted technology use by families.

Taylor Swift

Taylor Swift’s music is enjoyed by many children and young people, who look to her not only as a singer, but as a storyteller and a star. Many children relate to Swift as a role model. Their experiences with her music are often premised around connectedness: with Swift herself in a parasocial sense, or in terms of listening with loved ones.

There is opportunity for adults to embrace a ‘child’s-eye view’ where Swift is concerned and really endeavour to understand what children appreciate about her creative presence. There is fascinating complexity in Swift’s expansive catalogue of works, and through that, there are opportunities to reflect on how she approaches storytelling through songwriting and how children might draw from this to tell their own stories. 

Digital Citizenship learning experiences

Children, unlike adults, are growing and learning with digital media experiences from birth. One can assume therefore that children have an understanding of what it means to be a digital citizen, however this concept may not come naturally to young people despite being surrounded and immersed in a digital world. Access to quality resources, both online and offline, can assist classroom teachers who play an important role in supporting digital citizenship learning experiences for children in school. 

Future Directions

Coming together as a group shows we place value on children’s media experiences. Unsurprisingly we have our own preferences that sometimes align with children’s experiences (as much as adults can!), although at other times differ as we might grapple with why children love particular types of media.

Importantly, our collaborations through the Children’s Media Club for Researchers reminds us of how central entertainment and children’s playful media consumption is to digital childhoods. It is through the lens of considering how children use media content and experiences that we can gain deeper insights into why children use digital technologies and what we need to consider for ensuring positive digital futures.