Representations

Representation matters: children are represented on television (or streaming media); they are represented on social media via what parents share about them, and the more commercial version of this with child influencers; and they are more abstractly represented in collated and visualised forms on apps and platforms, often via activity ‘dashboards’.

With that context in mind, this project focuses on three forms of representation: (a) how children are ‘represented’ (or translated/transformed) into visualized data to tell particular stories about children’s activities, via the case study of digital dashboards (in apps, platforms and devices); b) how children’s relationships with technology are represented and portrayed in popular children’s streaming media using Bluey as the case study; and (c ) how actual children are represented and framed within influencer economies, especially child influencers and the physical, digital and cultural infrastructure around them.