Children and Their Changing Media Environment

A European Comparative Study

Sonia Livingstone, Moira Bovill

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780805834994
• eBook ISBN: 9781135661304
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Communication Studies
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Focusing on the meanings, uses, and impacts of new media in childhood, family life, peer culture, and the relation between home and school, this volume sets out to address many of the questions, fears, and hopes regarding the changing place of media in the lives of today's children and young people.

The scholars contributing to this work argue that such questions--intellectual, empirical, and policy-related--can be productively addressed through cross-national research. Hence, this volume brings together researchers from 12 countries--Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland--to present original and comprehensive findings regarding the diffusion and significance of new media and information technologies among children. Inspired by parallels and difference between the arrival of television in the family home during the 1950s and the present day arrival of new media, the research is based on in-depth interviews and a detailed comparative survey of 6- to 16-year-olds across Europe and in Israel. The result is a comprehensive, detailed, and fascinating account of how these technologies are rapidly becoming central to the daily lives of young people.

As a resource for researchers and students in media and communication studies, leisure and cultural studies, social psychology, and related areas, this volume provides crucial insights into the role of media in the lives of children. The findings included herein will also be of interest to policymakers in broadcasting, technology, and education throughout the world.

PART I
RESEARCHING YOUNG PEOPLE AND THE CHANGING MEDIA ENVIRONMENT

CHAPTER 1
Childhood in Europe: Contexts for Comparison

Sonia Livingstone

Leen d’Haenens

Uwe Hasebrink

LOCATING THE MEDIA IN CHILDREN AND YOUNG PEOPLE’S LIVES

By 4 p.m. on a dreary English afternoon, 8-year-old Sophie has been picked up from school by her mother, driven home, and is now watching Children’s BBC while having her tea in the living room. Her 4-year old sister, who will start school next year, is annoying her by chatting throughout the program; her older brother is off in his bedroom, watching television there while doing his homework. Her counterpart in Spain, Maria, finished school several hours ago and is spending the afternoon and early evening at an afterschool club before returning to her family for the evening. In Finland, Pertti—also 8—walked home from school with friends a little while ago, and, delighted to find the house empty, is enjoying a quiet chance at the family computer before everyone else gets back. Danish Gitte went off to the library after school to complete her homework on the Internet there, as well as to change her books: Although she only recently started school, she is already adept at combining new and old media.

In sketching these scenarios, have we just drawn on familiar, even unfortunate, national stereotypes? Or do the commonly noted differences in daily life across Europe, including school hours, maternal working patterns, trends in urbanization, cost of living, and even the weather, make a real difference to the quality of children’s daily lives and, of central interest here, to the role of media in their lives? Stereotypes tend to overstate differences, and it may be more important to recognize that young people across Europe share a common pattern in their daily lives, balancing time at school, with family, with friends, and, accompanying much of this, with media. Yet commonalities also are easily presumed, and few of us are good at identifying what, if anything, is nationally specific about our everyday lives. Ask Maria or her parents what is typically Spanish about her life, and she’ll be hard put to tell you, but compare her daily routine with that of Pertti or Sophie and differences may become apparent.

Researchers also find it difficult to articulate which aspects of everyday life are specific to their country. Academic research literatures build up through national or regional publications, with “international” publications often restricted to the English language. Without deliberate strategies for comparison, it is difficult to recognize how taken-for-granted aspects of everyday life may be distinctive whereas features considered nationally significant may in fact be shared with other countries (Chisholm, 1995). Comparative research aims to enhance understanding by improving an understanding of one’s own country, gaining knowledge of other countries and, perhaps most valuable, examining how common, or transnational, processes operate under specific conditions in different national contexts (Øyen, 1990; Teune, 1990).

For this volume, we compared 12 countries in order to observe both similarities and differences, attempting to interpret these within an appropriate national and/or European context. The comparative research project on which this volume is based was guided by five key aims:

1. To chart current access and use for new media at home (and, in less detail, at school).

2. To provide a comprehensive account of domestic leisure and media activities.

3. To understand the meaning of the changing media environment for children (and, in less detail, parents).

4. To map access to and uses of media in relation to social inequalities and social exclusion.

5. To provide a baseline of media use against which to measure future changes.

To address these research questions, the meanings boys and girls of diverse ages and social backgrounds attach to media and media use have been related to a unique data set in which media ownership and practices were measured and the use of space and time documented. This integration of qualitative and quantitative methods, together with the challenges of conducting such a project cross-nationally, are discussed in chapter 2. Here we begin with some theoretical considerations.

DEVELOPING A RESEARCH FRAMEWORK

In many respects, the 8-year-old children with whom we began once lived in distinct universes, speaking different languages, being taught within different educational systems, watching different television programs, listening to different music. Some of these differences are still present—language, for example—whereas others have been transformed in recent years, most obviously television and music. As some changes take place, these have unintended consequences, so that, for example, although national language remains central to national culture, English is gaining ground as a second language throughout Europe. It may appear that cross-national differences are diminishing and, moreover, that the media contribute to this process, but the media are by no means the sole or even most important influence here. In Europe, the historical and cultural trajectories that shape national cultures heavily overlap and intersect. Many macrosocial structures within Europe—economy, politics, civic society, religion, family—share a common history and are shaped by common factors. Although acknowledging this broader perspective, our focus in this volume is on how the media fit into this bigger picture: How do the media play their distinctive role in shaping, as well as being shaped by, children’s and young people’s identity and culture, and their relations with family, peers, school, and community?

Today, not only do political and policy developments attempt to define these children and young people as European citizens, but commercial and cultural trends attempt to reorient them all—to a greater or lesser extent—toward American or globalized culture (Schlesinger, 1997). The media play a key role here; popular music is ever more global, television shows them how people live in other parts of the world, and the Internet allows e-pals and chat groups among young people around the world. As Western society becomes increasingly information-based, we suggest that two trends make an academic volume on children’s and young people’s media environments valuable at the present time. First, the media are playing an ever greater role in children’s leisure, whether measured in terms of family income, use of time and space, or importance within the conduct of social relations. Second, the media are extending their influence throughout children’s lives so that children’s leisure can no longer be clearly separated from their education, their employment prospects, their participation in public activities, or their participation within the private realm of the family. To put the point concretely, buying children personal computers may not only affect how much television they watch, but may also have consequences for their job prospects, family conversation, use of parks and shopping malls, confidence at school, and so on, as, too, may being unable to afford to buy a personal computer, or the decision to buy a games machine instead.

Child-centered Versus Media-centered Approaches

Although researching “new media” means studying a moving target, our focus is on the domestic screen, including the video recorder, multiple television channels, the personal computer, electronic games, e-mail, and the Internet. Our priority is to understand the meanings, uses, and impacts of the screen in the lives of children and young people, first by placing it in its everyday context (including nonscreen media and other leisure activities) and second, by viewing the screen where possible from a child-centered perspective (rather than that of the household, family, or school). These two priorities are linked, for although contexts both shape and are shaped by the actors within them, rather than passively containing them, one distinctive feature of children’s lives is that they have relatively little control over the parameters of their “lifeworld.” Thus, children may diverge from adults in their perceptions of everyday practices precisely because their actions represent tactics to resist or reinvent the adult-created contexts in which they live (Graue & Walsh, 1998).

Two starting points are readily available in framing an understanding of children’s and young people’s media environment (Drotner, 1993). We can begin with c...

Table of contents

• LEA’s COMMUNICATION SERIES
• Contents
• Preface
• Foreword
• PART I RESEARCHING YOUNG PEOPLE AND THE CHANGING MEDIA ENVIRONMENT
• PART II A TIME AND PLACE FOR NEW MEDIA
• PART III CONTEXTS OF YOUTH AND CHILDHOOD
• PART IV EMERGING THEMES
• APPENDIX A: Country Abbreviations
• APPENDIX B: Participating Institutions and Research Teams
• APPENDIX C: Measurement of Time Use
• Author Index
• Subject Index