nordic journal of digital literacy

Transcription

Nordic Journal of Digital Literacy
Nordic Journal of
Digital Literacy
1
2010 | 5. rg
retur
Universitetsforlaget
Boks 508 Sentrum
No-0105 Oslo
2010 | 5. rg
issn 1891-943x
1
Nordic Journal of Digital Literacy
01-2010, VOL. 5
Editorial
PATRIK HERNWALL, VEBJØRG TINGSTAD and PÅL AARSAND
Introduction
Page 2-6
Articles
ULRIKA SJÖBERG
Understanding Childrens and Young Adolescents Media Practices: Reflections on Methodology
Page 7-22
VEBJØRG TINGSTAD
From Chat in Public to Networked Publics
Page 22-37
PÅL AARSAND
Young Boys Playing Digital Games
Page 38-55
OLA ERSTAD
Educating the Digital Generation
Page 56-71
ELZA DUNKELS
A Critical Perspective on Online Safety Measures
Page 72-85
EDITORIAL
Introduction
Patrik Hernwall, Vebjørg Tingstad & Pål Aarsand
This special issue on child-centred perspectives of digital practices is the result of discussions that
started in 2007 at the Nordic Child Cultural Research Network conference in Iceland. The idea
was to initiate publications based on Nordic research on children and digital media. We were
interested in empirical and methodological, as well as theoretical, work on the topic. This issue of
the Nordic Journal of Digital Literacy consists of five articles that focus on children’s digital practices
in Norway and Sweden.
Digital media - including the Internet, computers in general and game consoles - have to an
increasing degree become part of children’s everyday lives in recent years, particularly in the Western
world. In Norway and Sweden, for instance, nearly everyone has access to some kind of digital media.
Furthermore, statistics show that families with children and adolescents have access to more digital
media than those without (Medierådet, 2008; Medietilsynet, 2010; Vaage, 2009). To be young in
modern and wealthy societies means to have access - often in the bedroom - to a range of digital
media with quite different possibilities to those available just 10 or 15 years ago.
Children’s use of digital media is ubiquitous and multifaceted whereas, by contrast, debates about
how digital media influence children and childhood are more polarised, both in the press and among
researchers (Cuban, 1986; Drotner, 1999; Säljö, 2000). An emphasis on children as being naturally
competent and the vanguards of new technologies constitutes one half of a dichotomy, while the
other presents children as essentially innocent: vulnerable to the different kinds of media influences
and in need of protection (Buckingham, 2000; Postman, 1983; Tapscott, 1998). Interestingly, these
kinds of dichotomies rarely feature in other debates - about adults as digital media users, for example
- and both positions adopt an essentialist view of children and childhood as well as a determinist
perspective on the relationship between technology and the human mind. To regard children purely
as either passive victims of the digital media or as active consumers, argues Buckingham, is effectively
to view them in isolation from broader processes of cultural and social change: “Both perspectives
reflect essentialist views, both of childhood and of communications media; and they are based on a
deterministic analysis of the relationships between them. To call for a return to traditional notions
of childhood, or alternatively to place all of our faith in the power of technology, is ultimately to
ignore the complexity of the changes that are taking place” (2000, p.191).
Digital media and education
Educational institutions, such as school, have the potential to play a vital role in children’s digital
practices: to develop and support children’s ability to use different kinds of digital media, to
understand the technologies children are provided with and to protect children when necessary. The
polarisation in approaches to children’s digital practices is particularly evident within the educational
_______________________________________________________________________________________
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© UNIVERSITETSFORLAGET, NORDIC JOURNAL OF DIGITAL LITERACY, VOL 5, 2010, NR 01, 2-6
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EDITORIAL | INTRODUCTION
context in which a traditional view of learning, which does not include digital media, often has a
hegemonic position, in contrast to an alternative perspective that sees digital practices as having
potential for learning (Erstad et al 2005; Kryger, 2001).
The proliferation of Internet use in the last ten years has contributed to a change both in the level
of exposure to and the way children are dealing with new phenomena such as digital advertising and
marketing. Based on the Norwegian context, a recent study shows how curricula, text books and
teachers’ approaches to such phenomena generally fail to acknowledge the new marketing strategies
that are now targeting children on the Internet (Skaar et al., forthcoming). Skaar et al. argue that
digital media have redefined the boundaries between children’s consumption and production, and
also between their social lives in and out of school. It is further argued that the emergence of this
new media landscape outside the classroom prompts us to consider how much it is actually reasonable
to expect in terms of teachers’ and students’ critical assessment of advertising and marketing. This
is the educational imperative in the Norwegian primary school curriculum, which in essence makes
reference to a media situation which is now outdated.
Children’s perspective
The increasing integration of digital media into children’s everyday lives has led to the argument
that we are on the edge of what has been called a “participatory culture” (Jenkins, 2006). The idea
of participatory culture presents children as active producers of cultural expression and practices,
while at the same time acknowledging their status as objects in relation to both commercial interests
and criminal activities. Seeing children as both vulnerable and competent - and with a right to have
a say in matters that affect them (James, Jenks & Prout, 1998) - avoids “placing children in
dichotomous constructions of subjectivity as either dependent or independent, either mature or
immature, either vulnerable or competent, either equal or unequal to adults” (Clark, Kjørholt &
Moss, 2005: 176). In order to understand digital practices in children’s lives, children should be
seen as neither entirely immature nor totally competent. Rather, knowledge of children’s actions
and interactions may broaden our theoretical understanding of children’s agency in relation to media
practices.
In this special issue the various authors adopt a participatory perspective of children’s digital media
practices, not solely by making children’s voices heard, but also through the critical study of
children’s use of different technologies and the contexts in which these practices appear. This means
that by investigating children’s digital practices from their point of view, researchers may understand
how children experience possibilities as well as restrictions in digital media practices (Halldén, 2007).
Children’s digital practices do not take place in a social and cultural vacuum. Thereby, to understand
children’s digital practices, we argue in this special issue that one has to investigate children across
digital practices and institutional settings. And, it is considered important to examine not only
particularities and discontinuities in children’s digital practices, but also connectedness and
relationships in practices as well as in the research field (Sparrman & Aarsand, 2009).
Based on these reflections, this special issue argues for a child-centred perspective, incorporating a
critical approach that goes beyond the dichotomies described above. Positioning children as both
beings and becomings makes it possible to view children’s digital media use and their competences
in a more nuanced way. Such a perspective is essential in order to understand and explore the
dynamic nature of children’s digital practices.
© UNIVERSITETSFORLAGET, NORDIC JOURNAL OF DIGITAL LITERACY, VOL 5, 2010, NR 01
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Contributions
In her article, Understanding children’s and young adolescents’ media practices: reflections on
methodology, Ulrika Sjöberg discusses tricks of the trade in applying children’s perspectives in
research. She shows how different methods, such as drawing, diary writing and taking photos, are
valuable techniques when combined with interviews. Sjöberg also shows that these kinds of data
may work as a resource when accomplishing interviews with children. Sjöberg also points to the
important subject of transcription of data, which should be seen not as a neutral and transparent
activity, but rather as reflecting the analyst’s interests and theoretical perspective.
Elza Dunkels presents two studies in her article Online safety for children: a study based on interviews
with more than one hundred 12-year-old Swedes in 2004 and 2005, and also a study of European
safe-use guides conducted in 2008. Dunkels problematizes the concepts of risk and safety, arguing
that these have both been used rather “freely and without actual definitions”. A main argument in
this article is that all kinds of regulations are underpinned by a set of implicit norms and values
which need to be examined.
Ola Erstad contributes with an important discussion on the concept of the digital generation and
media literacy. Moving from a critical investigation of “generational studies” and a discussion of
some contemporary trends within “new literacy studies”, Erstad then reflects upon the various
possibilities that exist for studying 21st century competencies and their different aspects. Erstad uses
his own research and that of colleagues to further the discussion, ending with the important issues
of inclusion and exclusion.
Vebjørg Tingstad takes us back to the period about 10 years ago, using not only empirical data from
the late 1990s, but also theoretical assumptions from that time. By contrasting arguments from the
early days of children’s online communication with contemporary theories and discussions, Tingstad
helps us see the pace of change. Central to her concluding remarks is the argument that children
communicating online are - now as well as then - co-producers of networked publics: that their
online communication is a way of constructing themselves.
In his article on young boys playing digital games, Pål Aarsand discusses the use of digital games in
everyday life situations, such as during after-school activities and in the home environment. Based
on video-recordings, Aarsand’s research puts special emphasis on how the boys that he studied
engaged in, organized and used digital games in their face-to-face interactions. Here it becomes
obvious that digital games are an important influence on the boys’ play and that their meaning is a
matter for negotiation
References
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settings. In R. Krumsvik (Ed.), Learning in the Network Society and the Digitized School, pp. 269-289,
New York: Nova Science Publishers, Inc.
Arriaga, P., Esteves, F., Carneiro, P., & Monteiro, M. B. (2006). Violent computer games and their
effects on state hostility and physiological arousal. Aggressive Behavior, 32(3), 146-158.
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Arnseth, H. C., Hatlevik, O., Kløvstad, V., Kristiansen, T., & Ottestad, G. (2007). ITU Monitor:
Skolens digitale tilstand. Oslo: Forsknings- og kompetanse nettverket for IT i Utdanning.
Buckingham, D. 2000. After the death of childhood. Growing up in the age of electronic media.
Cambridge: Polity Press.
Clark, A., A.T. Kjørholt & P. Moss (Eds.). (2005) Beyond Listening. Children’s perspectives on early
childhood. Bristol: The Policy Press.
Cuban, L. (1986). Teachers and machines: the classroom use of technology since 1920. New York:
Teacher’s College Press.
De los Reyes, P., & Mulinari, D. (2005). Intersektionalitet: Kritiska reflektioner över (o)jämlikhetens
landskap (1. uppl. ed.). Malmö: Liber.
Drotner, K. (1999). Unge, medier og modernitet: pejlinger i et foranderligt landskab. Valby: Borgens
Forlag.
Erstad, O., Kløvstad, V., Kristiansen, T., & Søby, M. (2005). ITU Monitor 2005: På vei mot digital
kompetanse i grunnopplæringen. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget.
Gee, J. P. (2003). What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy. New York: Palgrave
Macmillan.
Halldén, G. (2007). Den moderna barndomen: och barns vardagsliv. Stockholm: Carlsson.
Holloway, S. L., & Valentine, G. (2003). Cyberkids: children in the information age. London:
Routledge.
James, A., Jenks, C., & Prout, A. (1998). Theorizing childhood. New York: Teachers College Press.
Jenkins,H (2006). Convergence Culture. New York and London: New York University Press.
Kafai, Y. B., Heeter, C., Denner, J., & Sun, J. Y. (2008). Beyond Barbie and Mortal Kombat: New
perspectives on gender and gaming. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Kryger, N. (2001). Børns mediebruk, hverdagslivet og pædagogikken. Barn, 3(4), 79-96.
Lee, N. (2001). Childhood and society. Growing up in an age of uncertainty. Buckingham and
Philadelphia: Open University Press.
Medierådet (2008). Ungar och Medier 2008. Stockholm: Medierådet.
Medietilsynet (2010). Barn og digitale medier 2010. Oslo: Medietilsynet.
Postman, N. (1983). The Disappearance of Childhood. London: W.H. Alen.
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Power, M. R. (2009). Video games and a culture of conflicts. Journal of Children & Media, 3(1),
90-94.
Prensky, M. (2001). Digital game-based learning. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Prout, A. (2005). The future of childhood: Towards the interdisciplinary study of children. London:
RoutledgeFalmer.
Skaar, H., Buckingham, D., & Tingstad, V. (forthcoming). Marketing on the Internet: A new
educational challenge. Journal article.
Sparrman, A., & Aarsand, P. (2009). Towards a critical approach on children and media.
Children and Media, 3(3), 303-307.
Säljö, R. (2000). Lärande i praktiken: ett sociokulturellt perspektiv. Stockholm: Prisma.
Säljö, R. (2005). Lärande och kulturella redskap: om lärprocesser och det kollektiva minnet.
Stockholm: Norstedts akademiska förlag.
Tapscott, D. (1998). Growing up digital: the rise of the net generation. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Vaage, O. F. (2009). Norsk mediebarometer. Statistisk Sentralbyrå (Statistics Norway).
6
ARTICLES
Understanding Childrens and Young
Adolescents Media Practices:
Reflections on Methodology
Ulrika Sjöberg
____________
PEER REVIEWED ARTICLE
Ulrika Sjöberg
Ulrika Sjöberg is Senior Lecturer at Media and Communication Studies, Halmstad University, Sweden. Her main
research interests involve young people’s media use, media and ethnicity and media literacy among pupils and teachers.
She is currently working with the projects ‘Facing media with a critical eye’ and ‘Organized producers of young net
cultures: Actors, practices, ambitions’. Sjöberg has worked with several methodological approaches in her research such
as surveys, interviews, drawings, diaries, observations and photo-taking. Her most recent publications include for
example ’Everyday mediated practices of citizenship: To struggle with a new language and culture through media’ in
Media in motion: cultural complexity and migration in the Nordic region (2010, Ashgate), ‘Everyday life and internet
in diaspora families. Girls tell their stories’ in Young People, ICT's and democracy (2010, Nordicom).
[email protected]
English abstract
The article ‘Understanding children’s and young adolescents’ media practices: reflections on methodology’ is intended
to contribute to current discussions on the perception and construction of child/childhood and the surrounding digital
media landscape. In the article, the researcher describes and reflects upon her own experiences with various methods
(interviews, diaries, drawings and photos) used when examining children’s and young adolescents’ (in the age range
8-16 years) media practices, focusing on the Internet and computer games. Throughout the text, the claim of having
young people’s perspectives as the main point of departure in research is looked at with a critical eye. This key issue is
elaborated upon, through examples from research, by discussing three main interrelated aspects - the conditions for
young people to have a say in research, ethical aspects and the type of data acquired when the researcher claims to have
a children’s or youth perspective.
Keywords: Methodological reflection, children and youth, media studies, participation perspective, digital media.
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Ulrika Sjöberg | UNDERSTANDING CHILDRENS AND YOUNG ADOLESCENTS MEDIA PRACTICES: REFLECTIONS ON METHODOLOGY
Children’s perspectives in a digital media landscape
This article is intended to contribute to current discussions on the perception and construction of
child/childhood and the surrounding digital media landscape. In media research, as in many other
academic disciplines, the need to conduct research from a children’s perspective, in which children
and young people are to be perceived as competent co-actors, is being stressed increasingly. At the
same time, young people’s media culture is facing several changes, such as media convergence,
intertextuality and merchandising (Tingstad, 2006), which in turn have consequences for audience
research – what questions to examine and how to study them. In media (audience) studies today,
the thought of the participating and competent child is reflected in its more child-centred,
constructivist approach (Livingstone, 1998: 441). This approach stresses the need to examine the
media, and the meanings attached to them, on the basis of the young user’s experiences and how a
specific media use must always be put in a specific context, i.e. the daily life of the child. This childcentred approach to media research can be correlated with more general discourses on child and
childhood that have taken place in Western society and with what has come to be called “sociology
of childhood”, where the perception of children as “human beings” rather than “human becomings”
is brought to the fore (e.g. James, Jenks & Prout, 1998). Recently, however, this sociological shift
in childhood studies has been questioned increasingly, owing to its dichotomous way of thinking;
it fails to look at children and adults in non-dualistic ways, to see them as “beings” as well as
“becomings” depending on the situation at hand. In today’s late-modern society, for example, an
adult’s life may follow continuously changing paths with regard to family, work, and education (see
further Prout, 2005:66). Buckingham (2000) also makes us aware of the risks of exclusively treating
the young person as competent in mediated and commercial contexts, thus reminding us not to
perceive children and young people as a homogenous group and that various competences are learned
gradually. Relating to the above-mentioned issues, we may ask what is actually meant by a children’s
perspective and what methods media researchers have at their disposal to grasp the complexity of
today’s media landscape? I find these two questions highly important and will therefore describe
and reflect upon my own experiences with various methods (i.e., interviews, diaries, drawings and
photos) when examining children’s and young adolescents’ (in the age range 8-16) media practices,
here focusing on the Internet and computer games. While conducting research, I have always tried
to use young people’s perspectives as my main point of departure, but over the years I have asked
myself increasingly what is actually meant by this claim. This key issue will be looked into further
by discussing, through examples from my research, three main interrelated aspects – the conditions
for young people to have a say in research, ethical aspects and the type of data acquired when the
researcher claims to have a children’s perspective.
Thus, a crucial question to ask is whether it is at all possible to achieve an “insider” perspective and
grasp children’s worlds through their own eyes. Isn’t every research situation always embedded in,
for instance, various power relations, where it is the researcher who defines the conditions of the
research and formulates the research questions? And isn’t the power issue even more evident when
dealing with children (Eder & Fingerson, 2002)? If we admit that various relations and contexts
guide research, what then does a children’s perspective mean? Hake (1999) discusses these issues
and the challenges that face researchers working with younger children. According to Hake, a
children’s perspective concerns acquiring knowledge about how we think children perceive the
world, which in turn has implications for the type of research questions we ask and the methods we
choose. This means that we, as researchers, should study issues and raise questions that are of
importance to children. Furthermore, in the section heading, “perspectives” is used rather than the
singular ”perspective”, as the latter tends to make us think of children as a homogenous group, which
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entails the risk of essentializing and generalizing. This standpoint has also implications for what
methods will be used in a study. A given method may not be valuable and fruitful for all children
involved in the research as a way to express their opinions and experiences. Looking at younger
children, Clark and Moss (2001) talk about the Mosaic approach, where visual and verbal methods
are used to give participants the option of expressing themselves in various symbolic ways. One
crucial issue that may arise, which applies to all studies presented in the article, is when data from
different methods vary or when data collected using the same method is contradictory. What does
this mean? Are certain data then given priority? The answer given depends on the ontological view
of the researcher. Is the collected data to be seen as a pure reflection of reality? If so, then the issue
raised above is indeed problematic. But by perceiving data as constructed, as in the presented studies,
through various forms of interactions and contexts, the researcher turns his or her attention to these
forms in order to explain the collected material.
Thus, a multi-method approach can be discerned in my own research with children and youth,
where my aim has been to gain an understanding of their media use in daily life, which is discussed
in more detail below. But before doing that, the following section takes a brief look at the general
theoretical point of departure of my research – an everyday life perspective, featured by an abductive
approach, which, as will be seen, has had implications for the specific research questions raised and
how I have chosen to work with children and young adolescents.
Everyday life as a point of departure: an abductive approach
An “everyday life” perspective is a central point of departure in the presented research. The media
are seen as social and cultural products of importance to people’s daily life, for example in the
formation of culture and identity. From previously being interested in a specific medium and its
effects, media studies today emphasize the need to take into account various contexts and the notion
that the individual creates meanings based on his or her own personal and cultural references.
Cultural studies (with its many different sub-genres) has become a label for researchers who advocate
an interdisciplinary theoretical approach, and media use is seen as the product of the specific sociocultural context in which it is given a particular meaning (for a more detailed description of cultural
studies, see Bjurström, Fornäs & Ganetz, 2000: 119-141). The context of media use, both
theoretically and methodologically, is of great relevance within cultural studies, making us aware
that different patterns of media use may evolve in different contexts. Thus, media use and the
encounter with a text do not take place in a vacuum, but are rather the result of a process of
negotiation between mediated and real elements of young people’s everyday life. The examples in
the article at hand illustrate how this process can be studied among children and youth in today’s
digital media landscape.
In my work, I apply an abductive approach, meaning that I constantly alternate between theoretical
perspectives and concepts, on one hand, and empirical data, on the other. The abduction approach
is defined by Alvesson and Sköldberg (2000:17) as “A general look through the broad outlines of
the theoretical and empirical research field, followed as quickly as possible by a leap into one’s own
empirical material”. So-called sensitizing concepts have been used in the preparation of the
fieldwork. Patton (1990: 216) defines these concepts as a way to “[…] provide a basic framework
highlighting the importance of certain kinds of events, activities, and behaviors”. As a researcher, I
have had certain research questions, theoretical perspectives and previous empirical experiences in
mind before entering the field, but at the same time I have tried to approach the field with “openness”
to new ways of looking at things with the help of my young informants. The researcher never
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approaches reality as a tabula rasa; he or she always has preconceptions and theoretical assumptions
about things, people, etc., which in turn affect the relation between the researcher’s “text” and reality.
Let us now look more closely at some examples from my research. The following text is organized
in relation to the three following themes (taken from three different studies): drawing and talking
about the game of one’s dreams, writing and talking about a diary, taking photos of and talking
about one’s homeland. Within each theme, the above-mentioned interrelated issues of how to
establish conditions that allow young people to have a say in research, ethical aspects and the type
of data acquired when researchers claim to have a children’s perspective are brought to the fore.
Drawing and talking about the game of one’s dreams
It is my experience that children enjoy talking about media, they know the topic well, and when an
adult is interested in their, for example, use of computer games, they are even more inclined to
participate in research. In one of my studies, 42 children (ages 8/9 and 12/13) were interviewed
about their use of computer games and asked to draw the game of their dreams (see further Sjöberg,
2002).
When presenting a study to young participants, several ethical issues are raised (Alderson & Morrow,
2004; Sjöberg, 2007b). Informed consent means that all participants (including children’s parents),
irrespective of age, must be informed about and understand the purpose of the study, what their
role in the project is and how the collected data will be used and presented. But how do we actually
explain to a child (or an adult for that matter) what it actually means to take part in a study, to be
interviewed, to make a drawing, etc.? In my work, I try to make the study at hand as concrete as
possible by drawing parallels to children’s own projects in school, letting them ask me questions
about what a researcher does and asking them about their images of scientists.
As for my specific study on computer games, I had certain questions in mind before conducting the
interviews, but I tried to keep an open mind and let the children discuss issues related to computer
games they found interesting and enjoyed talking about. Group interviews were chosen for the
present study, as I wanted to gain various perspectives on computer games, but also to see how the
informants talked about games among themselves. According to Eder and Fingerson (2002), the
researcher’s power can be reduced if children are interviewed in groups. But what one forgets in this
discussion is the various power relations existing in, for example, a peer group or within a family.
In relation to the discussion on power, Hake (1999) asserts that when an adult interviews a child
(whether in a group or individually), the child often feels he or she is dealing with an authority
figure. In my study on computer games, the focus was on only one medium, and because playing
computer games is usually a peer activity and a topic of conversation among peers, the group
interview method seemed appropriate. The group interviews and the drawing sessions were
conducted in the school, and because previous studies have shown gender differences in the use of
computer games, girls and boys were interviewed separately. Conducting interviews in schools may
give informants the impression that the researcher is looking for correct answers, and the interviewer
may be viewed as a teacher (Eder & Fingerson, 2002). While this might be the case, one can also
argue that children are familiar with discussions and being asked questions in a school context, which
may facilitate the interview. The fact that all the participating children in the study played computer
games and had a great interest in this activity encouraged a dynamic atmosphere, where the children’s
discussions were largely with each other rather than with the interviewer. While group interviews
may be criticized for involving group pressure, where certain persons adjust their answers to what
10
they think the group norm is or are afraid of reprisals (Merton et al., 1990), the present interviews
on computer games revealed several examples of children sharing secrets with each other and talking
about things they might not mention to people outside the interview situation. We should also
consider whether group pressure always has a negative impact; it may, for instance, reveal underlying
norms and values that are of importance to understanding a given issue.
Looking specifically at the study on computer games, following the group interview, each participant
was given a blank piece of paper and asked to draw the game of one’s dreams. By having a concrete
drawing in front of them that they had created, the children could (individually) tell in more detail
what type of content a good game should contain; it became a visual means through which the child
explained symbols, figures, etc., their meanings and importance, providing me with valuable
knowledge about children’s relations to computer games. When using any visual method in research,
it is important to let the “producer” talk about his or her drawing or, for example, photo (see later
heading on taking photos), as the verbal story attached to the drawing is part of the meaning making
process. The content, and its meaning, is constructed and re-constructed through story-telling
(Änggård, 2006). To illustrate this claim, a drawing is presented below, which was made by 8-yearold Agnes. Looking at the drawing, which Agnes called “Josefin in trouble” (“Josefin blir i bråk”)
(see figure 1), one would never imagine this was a war game, and it is impossible for a spectator to
understand how the different components of the drawing are related. In Agnes’ talk about her game,
it is also obvious that there are things in the game that have not been drawn, but for Agnes these
things are evident and play a crucial role in the game.
Children often write their name on a drawing; it is a sign of ownership and of being proud of the
drawing’s content. Whether or not the researcher should publish the signature is an ethical issue,
and even if a child has given her or his consent to do so, the researcher must make the final decision,
especially if sensitive issues such as abuse and bullying are involved.
11
Figure 1. A war game (Agnes, 8 years old).
After just having seen Agnes’ drawing, it might be interesting to hear her story about this specific
game and drawing:
- It’s a fun game.
What’s in the game, what do you do?
- You’re supposed to try to capture these fake guys that are small, like that one.
How do you capture them?
- Well you go into a store so you can buy these guns like bows so when you shoot them you get
their lives and then if you’re there and a car comes along then well maybe two have got away then
you die. And then maybe there’s a waterfall and that’s good because then you can ride a little, then
you bathe and swim and you can get lives there, and money and all.
But what’s this, a high jump?
- That’s him, she’s supposed to, to try to make him jump on the wrong path.
And these two with skateboards?
- She’s a witch who makes people feel good and stuff, a special witch.
While an adult may interpret the drawing and the story attached to it as confusing – having
difficulties seeing how the verbal and visual expressions of the games are related – the idea behind
the game is clear to Agnes. Within poststructuralist theory, the issue of whether structure has a
singular centre or is open and dynamic in nature is highly debated (Fornäs, 1995), and this question
comes to the fore in Agnes’ drawing of her computer game. The game is circular in the sense that
even if the player is told to start at “click here” (“klik här” in the drawing), the paths the game takes
are unpredictable. By only reading Agnes’ explanation of her game, one gets the impression that it
is the hunting and shooting of fake guys (falska gubbar) that predominate, though not a single bow
is seen in the drawing. Instead the drawing contains a broken heart, a witch, etc. After shooting fake
guys, being hunted by a car, Agnes talked about a waterfall and then suddenly the player swims.
12
This variation of mixed elements was a common feature among the girls in the study, but was not
found in the boys’ drawings, which were more realistic in nature. In her drawing, Agnes has also
written Donald Duck (Kalle Anka). Even if she did not mention why she had written Donald
Duck when describing the story of the game, it is an example of how children’s games sometimes
refer to other media figures or are influenced by already existing games and how they relate their
drawing to the wider popular culture.
The transcription process
Before looking more closely at the use of diaries in the next section, the issue of transcribing interview
material requires our attention, and this applies to all three of the presented studies in which
interviews have been used. Although I have not conducted any conversation analyses, in my research
I have always transcribed the interview material verbatim. It is a crucial phase in the analysis process
– a means of becoming familiar with the collected material, and of discovering interesting themes
and paths for subsequent analyses. How the researcher chooses to transcribe and present the voice
of the child is of course related to the specific meaning associated with a children’s perspective
(Halldén, 2003). Looking specifically at research with children, Ochs (1999) raises crucial questions
in relation to the transcription process e.g. the difficulties in integrating verbal and nonverbal
behaviour in a transcript where the latter, especially among younger children, is of great importance
in order to grasp a child’s intentions. Furthermore, a transcript usually has top-to-bottom bias as it
relies on a linear way of thinking where an utterance being made after other utterances is interpreted
by the reader as occurring later in time. A way of transcribing, that according to Ochs (1999: 170)
“[…] is thus far more appropriate to adult western speech than to the speech of language-acquiring
children”. And thereby limits the possibility of having a child’s perspective in the transcription
process. Furthermore, translating interview excerpts from one language to another (like in this article
from Swedish to English) gives the material an additional level of meanings (Ehn & Löfgren, 1996).
Thus, a transcribed material is never a pure reflection of the conducted interview. We will always
have the problem of converting spoken statements to writing (which in turn involves other codes
of interpretation compared to speech) and of taking a certain text out of its interview context. Abovementioned aspects all stress the necessity for the researcher to reflect upon one’s chosen methodology
of transcription. In my work, the original form of the excerpts is presented, thus no changes in the
children’s or young adolescents’ ways of expressing themselves (i.e. as expressed in writing) have
been made. But to understand the specific meanings attached to an utterance the reader (and of
course the researcher) might need knowledge about children’s cognitive, linguistic and social skills
(cf. Ochs, 1999). In addition, it is still the researcher who makes the choice of presenting one excerpt
and not another even if it is presented in its original form. What parts of the interview are shown
and why? The issue of selection must be discussed in any study and concerns all types of data, not
only interviews. As a reader, one might also ask in what (theoretical) context a certain excerpt is
placed and why. What analytical claim is being presented through a specific excerpt? Questioning
the selection of excerpts or examples does not mean that they should not be used but the choices
made must be reflected upon by the researcher. Thus, how the presented data as well as the transcript
are constructed can make the claim of having a children’s perspective problematic.
Writing and talking about a diary
The second study I like to present has a broader perspective compared to the above study on
computer games. The aim of the study at hand was to examine how media practices are intertwined
in everyday life. Searching for a methodological approach that could grasp these issues, the diary
13
method turned out to be useful (Sjöberg, 2000, 2002a). In the following section, I will describe how
a diary can provide insights into how children (12/13 years old) structure their lives in terms of time,
place, activities and media use. In my research, the diary method has never been used on its own,
but rather in combination with interviews and observations of a specific kind of media usage.
The outline of the diary was rather simple, with only the time of day presented. Diary entries were
made for a week, and I met with the children the first time in a group (in total 12), where they were
introduced to the study and the use of diaries. I also told them that the diary should be seen as a
task-based activity to be carried out before I would meet them individually at home. The diary had
a few guidelines, asking the youngsters to be attentive to the type of media used, its content, with
whom they used media, but also to their daily activities. There is, of course, a wide range of diaries
to choose from, and the diary I selected is just one example. In previous work (Sjöberg, 2000; 2002a),
I have discussed problems that might arise when using diaries in research with children. Keeping a
diary is demanding, and asking people to do so for a longer period of time may make them less
inclined to take part in the research. Even if it is difficult for the researcher to make sure that diary
entries are made on a regular basis, preferably each evening, this regularity is rather important if the
diary is to cover the main daily activities. If entries are not made on a daily basis, many things may
be forgotten. Furthermore, keeping a diary requires that the participant be able express him- or
herself in words, which may not always be easy for everyone. Looking back at the study, I would
have done things differently – letting the young participants themselves choose their own means of
expression. Had I done so, it would have been the young people who chose the type of diary method
rather than the researcher, and they would have had only the common guidelines of the task in
mind. If we were to ask young people to use their own methodological skills, perhaps we would see
the emergence of new approaches better suited to children and youth and reflecting their perspectives
on a specific matter. The development of mobile phones and digital technology offers new
possibilities for conducting research. For instance, participants who wished could have taken photos
of their activities instead of writing them down or, if the study was conducted today, one might
consider current generation of digital media like Facebook, Youtube and personal blogs as possible
forums for expressing a week of a young person’s life.
Figure 2 presents a week in the life of Daniel based on his diary entries. The figure summarizes his
main activities, including media use, which took place both inside and outside the home. Thus, any
activities in school were excluded. This way of presenting a diary may allow the participant to avoid
giving too much information, as details in a diary may disclose his or her identity and private
thoughts. However, the type of presentation and its specific content were predetermined by the
researcher. It was, for example, me who decided the type of activities to be labelled in the presentation
based on the diary without stating anything about the meanings attached to that event by Daniel
himself. And once again, in hindsight, I wish I would have experimented more and let the young
participants themselves have a say in their presentations. Would the results have been different from
those displayed in figure 2?
14
Figure 2. Daniel’s week.
But even if individualized presentations would have been different, the one above gives the reader
a good overview of what a week of media use could look like and in relation to day-to-day activities.
Moreover, by employing the same type of presentation across participants, it is easier to compare
diaries and discern categories that reflect, for instance, differences in media use and daily activities.
In my research, I have always discussed with the informant the content of his or her diary, what is
actually stated and why. This also gives me, the researcher, an opportunity to ask the participant
how he or she experienced the task of keeping a diary, when the diary entries were made, etc. This
is an ethical aspect that I think is usually forgotten in research.
Looking specifically at the Internet, Daniel talked about how he used it for chatting, sending email
messages and playing games. His great interest in athletics was reflected in his Internet use; he
searched for information about certain clubs and wanted to keep up-to-date on certain athletic
events. While discussing his Internet usage based on what he had written in his diary, we sat in front
of his computer where Daniel showed me his favourite sites. This allowed me not only to talk to
him about his use of the Net, but also to observe the actual media content and get a better
understanding of it. Observing media usage with the young is becoming increasingly important in
today’s digital media landscape, where it is impossible for researchers to keep track of everything
taking place on the Internet.
The last two projects to be described here look at how photos, in particular, can be a helpful tool
in research with children and young adolescents. In these two projects, I have worked with
observations, individual interviews and disposable cameras to learn more about young people’s
thoughts on identity, culture and the role of media as a link between the homeland and the new
country.
Taking photos of and talking about one’s homeland
The material in this section is based on two media ethnographic projects: Media practices in the new
country (e.g. Rydin & Sjöberg, 2008) and Mediated childhoods in multicultural families in Greece
(Sjöberg, 2007a, 2009). Both studies aimed at illuminating the media situation in families (with
15
children ages 12-16 years) with an immigrant background. While the first-mentioned project had
immigrants living in Sweden as it point of departure, Mediated childhoods took the opposite
perspective and explored what it is like to be Swedish and live in Greece.
Visual means are being used increasingly in research with children and youth. One reason for this
is that it may be difficult to grasp children’s experiences using verbal means alone (Clark & Moss,
2001). Visual methods, like photographs, are often used in empirical research as a way to encourage
young people to become co-actors, thereby gaining access to an insider perspective. However, the
notion that visual methods automatically imply a children’s perspective has been called into question
(Mitchell & Reid-Walsh, 2002; Sparrman, 2003). In both of the above-mentioned projects, the
young informants were given a disposable camera before the visit at home, the aim being to gain a
wider understanding of their media worlds as well as of their daily life in general. What places, things
and people are important to them? The photos served as an icebreaker for the latter interview, as a
way of establishing rapport with the younger informants (cf. Pink, 2001) and of setting the agenda
for the interview – the informants decided what we would talk about. The approach has been called
the “auto-driven interview” (Dell Clark, 1999) and “photoeliciting” (Banks, 2001), where the young
photo-takers’ talk about the photos is brought to the fore rather than conducting a textual analysis.
The young informants were interviewed in their bedrooms, which provided me with observational
information about media access, interests, etc. In the interviews, the children were asked to show
me their favourite books, comics or magazines, etc. If they enjoyed playing computer games or used
the Internet, we sat in front of the screen together and they showed me their favourite sites or games.
This was similar to the diary approach mentioned above.
Comparing this method to those employed in my previous research, using photos made the children
more involved in the process, because they largely decided what to talk about. In the projects, the
young participants stated that the task of taking photos of things, places and people that were
important to them had caused them to reflect on these matters. The asymmetry of power in research
with children is often discussed, and based on my experience of using a wide range of methods I feel
that using single-use cameras encouraged a more shared research activity, in which the children
could guide the research in certain directions. But again I, the researcher, still decided what issues
or thoughts to look at more closely during the interview, among other things. This is an important
aspect, as it points out that participation (in this case taking photos) does not have to imply that all
power is in the hands of the photo-taker. It is also worth noting that all research takes place in a
certain context, and in this respect photos may be used as a way to present oneself to the “other”
(in this case the researcher). There were occasions when the youngsters stated that they had taken a
photo of, for example, their school because they thought I might be interested in seeing it. If younger
children had participated the method may have worked differently as they would probably have
more limited space to take photographs compared to young adolescents, who can more easily move
between various places without the control of the parents or the researcher for that matter. By
examining three age groups (7, 11 and 15 year-olds) Sharples et al (2003) found that the younger
children gladly took photos of family members while the older ones changed its focus to peers and
peer culture. Other studies (e.g. Kondo, 2008) have shown that even if younger children (aged 5-8)
may put more interest in the camera and how to operate it, the photos taken could, for example,
contain other toys than what the parents actually thought their child enjoyed playing with.
One ethical issue facing the researcher is how to present the photos. Although the children and
parents consented to publishing the visual material, I have chosen not to publish photos portraying
people, as this might compromise confidentiality. The use of visual data in particular raises concerns
16
about how much of the private sphere can be placed in the public domain. To what extent should
the participants be “protected” in order not to be identified? One common means to achieve
confidentiality is to alter the names and characteristics of the participants (e.g., their occupation)
who took part in a specific study. But sometimes this may not be enough, and the researcher must
reflect on these matters and the consequences of his or her final decision in each specific case. Besides
the matter of whether or not to include photos with figures, the researcher must also consider how
place is portrayed and how this could affect the promise of anonymity and confidentiality. But the
backlash of this is that features crucial to understanding a phenomenon, such as facial expressions,
may be concealed, thereby preventing the researcher from supporting a certain claim or from
presenting the young informant’s perspective.
In the two projects, the photos turned out to be valuable for better understanding complex issues
such as culture, ethnicity and identity. Asking direct questions about such matters may be rather
difficult and run the risk of positioning the informant in predetermined categories in terms of e.g.
ethnicity. Through the photos the participants touched upon them in a natural way by, for example,
taking a photo of a flag and talking about the intentions behind that specific image. Furthermore,
the photos taken by the children and young adolescents also served as “visual field notes” for me
when analysing the material after having returned from the field, as the photos provided information
about the interview situation, the informant and his or her daily life, etc. As the focus of this article
is on young people’s media practices, especially related to computer games and the Internet, our
attention will now turn to a photo taken by 16-year-old Eric in Athens, a photo showing his laptop
(see figure 3). When looking at this photo again after conducting the study, I clearly remember his
room, the home, his parents, etc., but also how he at that moment was busy working on a school
project. Even the glass on the desk reminds me of how warm that particular day was.
Figure 3. “You can do almost everything on the computer” (photo by a 16-year-old boy).
Just this specific photo made us discuss a wide range of issues that Eric had been thinking of and
what the laptop meant to him. He used the computer mainly for music, chatting and searching for
17
information, but also talking about how the Net has become an additional communicative arena
for talking with classmates about matters that he does not want to discuss face-to-face. When
discussing MSN, we also started talking about Eric’s contact with relatives in the US and Sweden
and whether he felt the need to keep up-to-date on what was happening in his parents’ homelands.
This led to a discussion on which languages he preferred speaking, which in turn affected the type
of media content he used. While many of these questions may have been asked in an ordinary
interview, the fact that Eric himself had taken a photo of his computer and written about what it
meant to him made him more prepared to talk about his computer use, and this was done on his
initiative rather than on mine.
Concluding remarks
Researchers are facing new challenges with today’s media convergence, where previously separate
mediated expressions and information are now combined and integrated, which in turn creates new
patterns of media use. This becomes even more evident when studying children and youth, as they
are often eager and curious to try out these new media. It is now time to conclude and sum up some
of the critical reflections I have made based on my experiences with conducting media research with
children and young adolescents. This article can be seen as a result of the claimed need to develop
a more self-critical attitude to one’s research; a self-reflexivity that urges us to ask ourselves why a
certain story is told, in what way and by whom. But also to whom we want to address our stories
(Ang, 1989; Ehn & Klein, 1994).
The overall aim of my research has been to understand young people’s media use and the meanings
they attach to it in daily life. Here, ”understanding” is to be seen as a social co-construct – the result
of a constant interplay between the researcher and the informant. In the presented studies, the
children and young adolescents have been approached in an abductive way; I have been involved in
a continual dialogue between theoretical perspectives and concepts, on the one hand, and my
empirical fieldwork, on the other. While there may be critics who claim that theoretical perspectives
are only an obstacle to understanding things from children’s perspectives, in my opinion theory and
empirical data should not be seen as polar opposites. Instead, they can benefit from each other and
help us better understand a given phenomenon. This does not mean, of course, that we should
impose adult academic categories on children’s statements, which may affect their original meanings
and mislead the reader.
The necessity to find various ‘ways’ to understand young people’s usage of computer games and the
Internet has been stressed throughout the article. A contextual perspective is advocated, where a
medium must always be understood and studied in relation to other media and the daily life of the
young user. This has become a necessity in today’s media landscape with its features of convergence
and intertextuality. Furthermore, in any kind of research, it is crucial not to conceive of and treat
young people as a homogenous group; differences as well as similarities will always be found as a
function of gender, age, religion, ethnicity, socioeconomic background, taste, style, etc. This not
only has implications for the presentation of empirical material, but also for the sample and the
methods used. Researchers need to be attentive to young people’s different competences and their
preferred means of communicating with unfamiliar adults (Clark & Moss 2001; Punch, 2002).
Another crucial aspect that I would like to draw the reader’s attention to is the great value of getting
to know the children’s environment (through, e.g., a diary or photos) as a means of getting
acquainted and thereby establishing trust between the child and the researcher.
18
Naturally, the claim that one is conducting research from children’s perspectives can always be called
into question, as we can never look at the world through the eyes of another person; what he or she
is actually seeing, the thoughts and emotions evoked by a gaze in a certain moment. We as researchers
have only indirect methods to grasp this. But what a researcher can do is to clearly state the specific
meanings attached to a children’s perspective and its implications for the conducted study in relation
to its purpose (e.g., why this particular study, which questions are not raised), the sample, the
methods chosen, and the interpretation and presentation of the empirical material. All of these
central aspects of the research process are in turn imbued with various power relations, which the
researcher must take into consideration, looking at how such relations may affect the study. And as
Halldén (2003) reminds us, it is crucial to ask who is making the claim about a children’s perspective
and for what purpose, as the term has ideological undertones and may be used for certain economical
and political aims or as a way to conceal the researcher’s true purpose.
When talking about children’s perspectives, children’s rights and participation during the research
process should be stressed. This is not only a matter of protecting young participants by promising
them, for example, anonymity, but also a matter of reciprocity – giving something back to the
informants (Eder & Fingerson, 2002). Much of the discussion has concerned the former, and
looking at my own research, very little feedback has been given to the participants after the field
work. Perhaps I have sent a working paper presenting the main results to, for example, involved
families, but such papers are written in adult academic language and make little sense to young
participants (perhaps not even to their parents). Thus, in addition to elaborating on the methods
used in research with children, we should also reflect much more on how we discuss and present
our results in a comprehensible way for participants in a project. Furthermore, researchers should
not only look at their own position during the fieldwork or at how to present results, but they should
also get feedback from participants, throughout the research process, on their experiences of being
involved in a study (cf. Punch, 2002).
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ARTICLES
From Chat in Public to Networked
Publics
Childrens Online Communication and Changing Technologies
Vebjørg Tingstad
____________
Vebjørg Tingstad
[email protected]
English abstract
This article is an overview of my study of children’s online chat with a discussion of later research.The study draws on
observation of Norwegian chat rooms and interviews with children and adolescents from 1999 to 2000. A decade ago,
the Internet represented a new phenomenon and web chat was typically a many-to-many form of communication.
Fundamentally, children who communicated in online communities ten years ago were, as today, co-producers of
mediated communities within the framework of contemporary technology – and the surrounding social context. The
article questions whether the networked publics today display a broader range of their identities and as such receive
responses that are individualised in more detail than ten years ago.
_______________________________________________________________________________________
22
Vebjørg Tingstad | FROM CHAT IN PUBLIC TO NETWORKED PUBLICS
Much has been written about the Internet as a dangerous medium where children expose themselves
to so-called stranger danger and other risks in a public space. Other accounts describe the
potentialities of children to develop new skills, and to establish and maintain social relationships
through online social networking (Tingstad, 2003, 2006; Willett, 2008, 2009; Boyd, 2008). Online
communication happens in a virtual space that has in recent years, since the Internet was first
introduced, shifted from being an often crowded and rather unpredictable space, with lots of
comings and goings in public, towards technologies that enable users to limit the number of people
they communicate with, at the same time as allowing them to reveal themselves publicly in new and
more sophisticated ways; such as with pictures, profiles, relationship updates, comments and so on.
Whereas early-adopters in 1999 used fictitious names and profiles, and talked about new and
wonderful technologies such as MSN, IRC and ICQ that were yet to be widely adopted, technology
today offers a broader range of social network sites that enable users to choose from various ways to
create individual profiles and limit the number of chat partners.
This article is an overview of my study of children’s online chat (Tingstad, 2003) with a discussion
of later research. It presents features characteristic of the early phase of online communication among
children and adolescents in Norway a decade ago, and discusses some of these features with reference
to research on online social networking carried out more recently. In public discourse, web chat,
which was a common term in the literature at that time, was the subject of much concern, often
linked to cases where young girls had been abused by men after meeting them in chat rooms.
Educationalists and linguists discussed whether online chat would destroy proper written language
since chat language was more similar to speech (Cameron, 2001). These discourses were, of course,
part of established anxieties concerning changing childhoods and the claim that media blurred the
boundaries between children and adults (Postman, 1982). In those early days of the Internet, some
saw the emergent rise in virtual communities as a kind of compensatory activity, as access to informal
public spaces in the physical environments where people lived became more restricted (Rheingold,
1991). One of the questions asked in my study was whether children, through the use of new
communication technologies, were recapturing a public space of their own, as playing areas they
might have used formerly had been replaced by buildings, cars and roads, and their time, to a large
extent, had been organised and controlled by institutional structures such as schools and formal
leisure activities such as music classes and sports lessons.
Seeing children as active participants in - not just passive receivers of - culture, upbringing and
teaching (James et al., 1998; Buckingham, 2000; Giddens, 1984), my study approached children,
not only as audiences in these new media environments, but also as co-producers of what happened
there. This approach is later conceptualised as networked publics, seeing young people to be “writing
themselves into being” through their online interactions (Boyd, 2008, p. 129) and emphasising the
variety of ways people engage in shared culture and knowledge.
Methodology
My study draws on 14 hours of observation of two Norwegian chat rooms, as well as observations,
interviews and e-mail communication with eight children between the ages of 11 and 14, and their
parents, in their homes from 1999 to 2000. The manager of one of the web sites was also interviewed.
It is important to note that when this empirical study started less than half of homes with children
aged between 9 and 15 had access to the Internet, whereas today nearly all do (Vaage, 2000, 2009).
In the early days of mass Internet use, communication in chat rooms was an activity for the few
adopters of the new technology. In 2000, chat was one of the categories in the statistics on Internet
23
use, whereas today Internet statistics are more differentiated and net society is the common phrase
used (Vaage, 2001, 2009). Whereas 14% of 9 to 15 year-olds reported having used chat the previous
week in 2000, 66% of the same age group said they used net society sites regularly in 2008 (Vaage,
2009). A decade ago, the Internet represented a new phenomenon and web chat was typically a
many-to-many form of communication (Holm Sørensen, 2001) for the few. Today, more young
children (from 5 years old) are on the net, not least because television channels encourage them to
be (The Norwegian Media Authority, 2010).
The chat rooms studied were POPIT and SOL. At the very beginning of the study, these were the
sites that were most frequently used by the children I interviewed. Both of them were parts of
commercial web sites and they still exist, with a more extensive commercial wrapping than a decade
ago. POPIT was exclusively designed for children and became operative for the first time in Norway
in January 2000. The site was soon made available in Danish, Swedish and Finnish and was
established as an alternative to existing web sites, which the editors deemed “not suitable for
children”. SOL offered, in addition to other services, a special site for children and young people.
Since web chat was a new phenomenon, I approached it by simply asking: What is going on in an
online chat room? How and why do children and adolescents use web chat and what enjoyment do
they gain from it? After having tried different methods, I logged on with a nickname in order to
carry out the online observations, lurking around as a hidden observer, remaining silent, such as
other users often did themselves1. I had tried to introduce myself as a researcher and realised that
communication stopped if I did so. I also tried to participate, but when I entered the room and
behaved as an ordinary participant, other people, not surprisingly, talked to me and expected me to
reply.
The position as a hidden observer might, from an ethical perspective, be questioned, although it is
recommended in the methodological literature (Patton, 1990). Paccagnella (1997) recommends
hidden observation to prevent the observer influencing the situation. Indeed, my main argument
for choosing this approach was simply that this was the only possible way to study the phenomenon
without disturbing it. Another argument was that this kind of communication actually happened
in a public space where I was one of the crowd. Communication like this was open and accessible
to anyone; everybody had a nickname, and pretending was a part of the convention. Thus it was
likely that many of the participants were aware of the room as a public space2.
I use the term children and adolescents about the users, even if their offline identities are a matter of
uncertainty. Both the interviews and the observations confirmed the impression that children
formed the overwhelming majority of participants in the two chat rooms I observed. The data
indicates that girls participated actively more frequently than boys. However, this conclusion is a
matter for discussion, since boys often chose girlish nicknames and this could therefore bias the
perception of the participants’ sex.
Changing childhoods?
With increasing access to a global and convergent media culture, where different media, e.g.
television, Internet, telephone and printed media are ’melting’ together, children have become
participants in a social arena that provides new possibilities for individual exposure, identity
formation and community-shaping. Online communication, made possible by modern technology,
24
enables children to engage in social practices and cultural discourses in ways that appear to have
both similarities and differences to more conventional forms of communication where people talk
or play face-to-face, write letters or talk on the phone, for example. Talking is here to be understood
as an activity where social knowledge is reproduced and created (James, 1995). One of the arguments
in this study is that online chat rooms are spaces for social practices, demonstrating children’s
participation in reflexive processes.
Giddens (1990, 1991) describes some of the changes in modernity using the concepts of
disembedding; the processes where social relationships are detached from local and binding contexts
and reflexivity; the way in which social practices are constantly examined and transformed in the
light of new information about these practices. A key issue in social science is to explore how different
and changing social and cultural contexts influence people’s potential for social action, participation
and citizenship. In some sociological theory, social and cultural processes are seen as taking place,
not as a linear development, or as a kind of social evolutionism, but rather as a series of discontinuous
breaks, implying that society is changed and re-organised according to new principles (Giddens,
1990).
Children’s online communication does not occur in a social and cultural vacuum, but happens in
a world that is socially and culturally formed, “never simply between you and me as individuals”
(Kress, 1993, p. 5). Certain characteristics of web chat - such as anonymity (you ‘dress up’ with a
nickname and a chosen personal profile), spontaneity, the high numbers of participants and
immediate responses - led me to expect this kind of communication to generate different kinds of
social relations between the chatterers than those that arise in situations where people are together
face-to-face. Characteristic of social network sites is a type of networked public with four properties
that are not typically present in face-to-face public life (Boyd 2008). These are persistence,
searchability, replicability and invisible audiences. Since this kind of communication can be recorded
for posterity, you can easily find somebody’s ‘digital body’ online. This can be copied, and there is
no way to distinguish the original from the copy. Lastly, “it is virtually impossible to ascertain all
those who might run across our expressions in networked publics” (Boyd, 2008, p. 126).
I wanted to explore how web chat might encourage children to explore social identity, seeing this
concept as a dualism between to be alike and to be different from (Gullestad, 1989); the encounter
between the culture and the self, where culture is manifested in characteristic forms of actions,
attitudes and habits, and where people individually create meaning and identity. In this respect I
expected web chat to show evidence of children’s participation in modern reflexive processes, in
which this dualism was in action. What happens when children meet in chat rooms where those
who talk do not necessarily know each other, do not see each other, and are inherently dependent
on each other’s presence to have somebody to talk with?
Web chat: a virtual fitness-centre for quick-thinkers?
Children and young people are - particularly in Western societies - confronted with the cultural
ideals and practices of being oneself and creating oneself (Gullestad, 1996). These bring expectations
of constructing identities as girls and boys according to cultural standards that encourage autonomy,
individualisation and independence (Lee, 2001; Kjørholt, 2004). In the type of chat room I observed
in my study, users had to define a personal profile with respect to age, sex, hair colour, clothes, mood
and personal interests. There were rules for good net behaviour, warnings against breaking the rules
and moderators who were authorised to expel participants who behaved badly, for instance by
25
flooding: the keying of rows of meaningless characters that occupied space for other participants.
In short, chat was a kind of community with its laws and regulations. A participant could not,
however, expect these to be consistent as they were continuously negotiated, adapted or rejected,
and thus objects of children’s individual and collective inputs and co-production.
What did the children and adolescents enjoy about web chat, according to the data from 1999 2001? “To meet people and talk about everything” was the most common answer when I asked
children why they used a chat room. But chat could be boring and there were many challenges to
master, to ignore or to oppose. Chat was spontaneous, chaotic, fast, transient, anonymous,
humorous, hostile and friendly; in short, as in life elsewhere. At first sight, some chat rooms could
look like the walls of a public toilet, with sexualised nicknames and harassing comments and
invitations. These were addressed especially to homosexuals, kids, childish or old people, girls, boys
or people from an ethnic minority group: i.e. individuals or groups of people that, for one reason
or another, at that moment, or in a particular context, were given certain characteristics, often with
negative connotations. I interpreted this communication as the construction of cultural boundaries,
but also as a way to explore cultural norms and values.
A newcomer could experience this flow of talk as completely incomprehensible or depressing. This
impression was strengthened both by the pace and the particular kind of language that chatters often
used. Abbreviations, arrows, rows of numbers and apparently meaningless combinations of letters
and exclamation marks created a chaotic impression for a newcomer. However, a closer look showed
that there were things going on in a chat room that were not obvious or directly available for a
newcomer. Behind the chaos and hostile comments, it was possible to discover multi-layered,
friendly and supportive communication with a complex mix of various activities, topics, codes, rules
and conventions. Users also appropriated identities - of age and gender in particular - that were
different from their offline selves. However, the communication took place as a continuous tension
between maintenance and breakdown. Some people seemed to try hard to maintain the room as a
nice place, while others did all they could to disturb, shout and bully until the censor program or
moderators evicted them. For some, to challenge the moral code in the room was the main or even
the only goal. As one of the boys (aged 12) said: “What happens if I press the key for half an hour?”
A chatterer who had filled the room with rows of sexual expressions and invitations withdrew all he
or she had said after being criticised by other participants in the room.
SyBeRsPaCe>prøver bare å provosere litt, ser at det
ikke funker, alt jeg har sagt er bare kødd
SyBeRsPaCe>just trying to provoke a bit, realise that
it doesn’t work, just been kidding with everything I
have said
The message above can be read as an attempt to be excused and accepted in the room after having
broken the rules. The social sanctions in the room probably caused a change of nickname, according
to one of my informants (a girl, aged 11). SyBeRsPaCe did not return any more with this nickname,
but he or she probably appeared after a while with a new one; a good strategy to escape from a bad
reputation. However, as another of my informants (a boy, aged 12) said in response to this incident,
“It’s very hard to change nickname all the time – you’ll get a bad reputation, you know”.
An online conversation that took the form of a huge quarrel had much potential for informal
learning, from which children could calibrate themselves and prevent the room from total collapse.
To succeed in a chat room (this usually meant to get a reply), children had to cope with many
challenges, such as language codes and cultural codes, rules and conventions, which were not
26
necessarily obvious to a newcomer. In this historical stage of online social networking, a Danish
study (Holm Sørensen, 2001) showed two main forms of chat. Firstly, reality-oriented chat was
anonymous talk in a virtual room where you talked about yourself, about school and school work,
parents and so on, and related to others as if they had the same intentions. Fiction-oriented chat
was, on the other hand, talk in which you pretended to be someone else. This was a rather demanding
task, as you had to live up to the identities you had chosen. The excerpt below from my interview
with Erik (a boy, aged 13) describes the stress:
Vebjørg: Yes, I wonder, if you are talking for a longer period, you must be revealed.
Erik: Yes, you will reveal yourself after a while, I think.
Vebjørg: Yes
Erik: It depends….
Vebjørg: Yes, have you been stressed because you have tried not to be revealed?
Erik: Yes, but I…it depends on what I am doing. If I say I am another person, it is actually a bit
stressful sometimes (laughs).
Vebjørg: Yes, to be that person for a while.
Erik: Yes, if somebody ….if you know…if you are a person you know, talking with another …who
knows this person
Vebjørg: Yes?
Erik: And then, in a way…oh, what was I…
Vebjørg: Yes
Erik: Then you have to think it over…
Vebjørg: To avoid being revealed?
Erik: Yes
Vebjørg: Too many things to take care of?
Erik: Yes
Turkle (1995) uses the concept of a social laboratory when characterising how people employ the
Internet to experiment with constructions of the self. She sees this as a prominent feature in postmodern life. To emphasise the subjective position of children, I rather preferred to conceptualise
the chat room as a social fitness-centre where there were equipment, tools, people and regulations;
i.e. structures, in Giddens’ terms (1984), which constituted some prerequisites of possible practices.
The results of the social exercise undertaken were, however, to a large extent, dependent on the
individual abilities and willingness to contribute. “I’m not so often on chat, really – I can’t always
understand what’s going on there,” one of the boys (aged 11) said. To some extent, chat
communication seemed to favour the quick-thinkers: those with the cultural capital (Bourdieu,
1995), who could cope with the rapidly changing codes, conventions and style – and the sudden
events - in the room. A user was confronted with and explored social and cultural norms and demands
which were prominent both in wider society and in the specific context of the chat room, such as
those connected to presenting oneself successfully, engaging in appropriate (and inappropriate)
behaviour and interests, showing competence to handle sudden challenges, presenting a youth
cultural style, including sexual norms (and harassments), and protecting oneself from being
exploited. In short, becoming advanced participants in a chat room seemed to be dependent on the
27
ability to handle cultural codes that were influential, not only within the particular site, but also in
the given social and cultural context in which they lived their lives.
Creating privacy in public
During face-to-face interaction with peers, the fear of being teased, bullied or punished may prevent
some adolescents from revealing their inner thoughts or opposing a majority discourse; for instance,
to say that they are in love with someone, or to say no to a cigarette when their closest friend offers
them one. In this respect the chat room represented a place to be protected from social sanctions
and embarrassment offline. Yet the anonymity could also be viewed as a disadvantage with regard
to the ability to develop close relationships. In particular, the insiders, who for some reasons were
considered to be part of an online community (Sveningsson, 2001), tended to perceive the common
room as being insufficient to satisfy their expectations of a good chat room. The most advanced
children tried to explore how to chat privately; i.e. with a technological device that could limit the
participants. Although they had little experience, they realised that it was only a matter of time
before they might reach the level of technological competence that enabled them to “go private”.
Thus, private and public meant something different in the context of online communication among
these children during this period, when most of it happened in public. In some senses, Boyd (2008)
argues, ‘public’ is quite similar to what in media research is often called ‘audience’ as both terms
refer to a group bounded by a shared text. The social network sites themselves “distinguish between
public and private, where public means that a profile is visible to anyone and private means that it
is Friends-only” (op.cit: 125).
The public discourses about children and the Internet have emphasised the potential dangers
associated with paedophiles, who try to gain access to children via the net. When talk about sexual
issues appeared in my study, one or more chatterers usually expressed an intensely negative attitude,
often by asking people to leave the room or asking moderators to evict them. Such messages were
particularly frequent when those who were in the chat rooms used particular words or invited other
people to participate in net sex, for instance. With reference to face-to-face interactions, Corsaro
(1997) emphasises that everyday activities in peer cultures enable preadolescents to negotiate and
explore a wide range of norms around issues such as friendship processes, personal appearance, selfpresentation, personal aspirations and relationships with adult authority figures. By participating in
organised and informal games, verbal play routines and collaborative storytelling, “preadolescents
explore developing norms and expectations about themselves and their place in peer and adult culture
without the risk of direct confrontation and embarrassment” (op.cit:168). This description of
children’s offline play may be significant and may also be as relevant online. However offline play
is not necessarily an activity “without risk of direct confrontation and embarrassment.” In fact, we
have seen the opposite; that offline interactions are perceived as more risky, suggesting that social
identity may sometimes be better explored online.
A standard opening question in the two chat rooms was: “Anybody who wants to chat?” For most
of the children in my study, chat had become a daily routine and an essential part of their social life.
The question, “Anybody who wants to chat privately?”, however, indicated a wish for a more
intimate relationship, something that normally caused both excitement and suspicion. Those who
wanted to chat privately; i.e chat with a particular user, were asked to key either some letters or
numbers. By keying these rows of letter or numbers, as for instance 6666, (”Six” in Norwegian is
pronounced ”seks” and therefore not a random chosen number), a user could at least be identifed
with a response. Sometimes the chatterers knew the ones that invited people to chat privately because
28
they recognised their nicknames. When this happened, they could for instance arrange a phone call.
If they did not know this person, some of the children could type their phone number anyway, even
when they had been warned against giving any personal details in a chat room. Sometimes the
temperature rose. As part of my study, three of the girls shared one computer when one of them
suddenly asked, ”Is it possible that he might turn up on my door step?” They wondered whether it
was technically possible for this person, who was presented as a 17 year-old male, to identify the
owner of the computer and come to her house. They watched what people said and based on this
knowledge, the type of nicknames and their previous knowledge about such nicknames, they
discussed whether to trust this person or not. With warnings from their parents and net rules from
Save the Children in front of them, they simply could not escape from the concerns displayed about
the online ’stranger danger’. However, my study contains no indication that any of the informants
had personal experience with people that had offended them on the Internet. Contrasting many of
the public anxieties about children and the Internet, online communication seems to be much more
banal than sometimes assumed (Willett, 2009).
The excerpt below shows how web chat was used as a place to meet up, in order to make closer
contact in pairs or small groups.
Cool-boy>Privat?000
Cool-boy>Private?000
sviffer>000
sviffer>000
nettbayb>vi møtes etter på jeg må chate med noen andre nettbayb>I ‘ll meet you later I have to chat with
somebody else
KB>snakke privat,tast 2000
KB>talk in private, key 2000
BigOne>någen som vil chatta?
BigOne>anybody who wants to chat?
nettbayb>000
nettbayb>000
hotgirl>Hei er det noen som vil chatte privat med meg
hotgirl>Hi anybody who wants to chat in private with
Alex>2000
me
Alex>2000
Sometimes such initiatives to talk privately dominated the messages completely. When this
happened, there were few visible participants and a vast audience, according to the participant list,
which showed who was entering and leaving the chat room. Often there were a few main characters
- sometimes just one - dominating the situation as well as the atmosphere. In addition to these
participants, who probably did not represent a stable and fixed group, there was therefore a large
group of silent listeners. All these people might possibly have been physically away from the computer
for a while before coming back. Interestingly, many of them would start talking when the dominant
characters and troublemakers disappeared. For various reasons, some people remained backstage
while others were highly visible frontstage (Goffman, 1959).
The character of the chat room as an open and large space was perceived both as a possibility and a
challenge by the children I interviewed. “The trick is to choose a good chat room,” said one of the
boys (aged 13). A good chat room was one where he found friends and where exciting things
happened. The 13 to 14 year- old children in the sample experimented with different chat rooms
more often than the younger ones, who seemed to have more than enough challenges in coping with
29
one chat room. What usually regulated the choice of a specific chat room in preference to others
was the probability of finding particular people, including friends they knew, supporting the
assumption that most of the online interactions among children and adolescents happen between
peers that know each other (Boyd, 2008).
The most experienced chatterer, an 11 year-old girl, was also the only child in the study sample to
use IRC, something she did regularly and very confidently. IRC had to be downloaded and required
some technical procedures in order to enter. Another chat facility was MSN, 3 which subsequently
became tremendously popular in the years that followed. In this system participants loaded people’s
names into a messenger service that revealed when they were online to other users. This was a much
more protected space, limited only to people known to the user. MSN was easy to download, but
had thus far not been tried by any of the children in the interview sample. My informant Erik
planned to try a new site that many of his friends talked about, ICQ (read: I seek you). 4 “Heard
about it today...many people are using it, you know.” He explained it as almost like an e-mail, “but
it may be a chat, too,” he added.
Erik: As if somebody is talking to you, although you are not there. Then it comes…it is saved so you
can go and have a look at what they have said to you. It is not such a huge program as those others.
It appears in windows on the side here.
Vebjørg: Mm
Erik: Such as…you see who has talked to you. And if you go in one day and just send messages to
another person, so…then you have a number …you get…as if you get an address, but it is just a
number.
Vebjørg: Exactly
Erik: And then you save lots of numbers, which…those are the ones you know…and then you write
them…a message…and then they’ll get it.
Vebjørg: Yes, it is a way to limit the large number of people?
Erik: Yes
Vebjørg: So you can choose some of them?
Erik: Yes, that’s possible. But as to…. I think you can manage meeting just a few people, by searching
for them.
Vebjørg: Mm
Erik: And you can save them and ask for their numbers.
The advantage of ICQ was, as Erik described it, the opportunity to talk with a limited and chosen
group of people. “It is also possible to identify other people with a number.” Thus, he could take a
look at earlier messages because he could save them. Maybe the best of all, he could decide whom
he wanted to speak to. In this way he could be sure that the receivers would see the things he had
written. “Those are the ones, you know,” he said. The way he talked about ICQ as both talking and
writing, confirmed the impression of a mix between e-mail and chat, some of the qualities of an
ordinary paper letter, and, as shown below, as a replacement of the phone.
E: If you give the number… there are very many on the net using ICQ, so you just can…if you want
to arrange things, you just send…instead of calling.
30
V: Yes
E: Because he’s maybe…
V: There, you know, you will find someone interested in the same things as yourself?
E: Yes, in a way, if you…if I am playing [playing games], I meet somebody who is...an ok guy, I just
…say the ICQ number.
V: Yes, but then you give an identity?
E: Yes, the ICQ number
V: Yes
E: But
V: You don’t have any scruples about doing this?
E: No
In this system the chat partners got a kind of personal identity to a larger extent than in the chat
rooms Erik had used before. Although he had no experience of using it, he knew quite a lot about
it and had great expectations. “ICQ is a sort of community of shared interests,” he explained. He
probably perceived this kind of communication as being more serious and interesting than what he
had experienced in chat rooms thus far.
ICQ gained increasing popularity during the latter part of the 1990s, Sveningsson (2001) argues.
It was software with several functions that enabled users to see which of their friends were currently
online, provided that they shared the same software and were listed on the user’s personal contact
list. The software also provided fast and easy ways of contacting users through e-mail-like messages,
web links or chat connections. ICQ was a faster way of contacting people than logging on to a chat
room via a web browser. If you wanted to talk with a person you knew, many chose ICQ rather
than regular web chat software. The technology developed in ways that responded to the users’
wants. A common feature in my data is, as we have seen, that after a period in the public chat rooms,
and as they grew older, children preferred smaller groups, particularly with people they knew or
shared some interests with.
Creating community – and boundaries
Community is, in everyday language, often thought of as a quality that emerges exclusively through
face-to-face relationships. Having read about virtual communities (Turkle, 1995; Rheingold, 2000),
I started my study with a kind of scepticism towards arguments that people could create community
online. My reservations were anchored in a conceptual understanding of community, particularly
when linked to children, as being more or less dependent on face-to-face encounters. However, the
web chat that I studied uncovered what Sveningsson (2001) also found in her study; a sense of
community and, interestingly, what I interpreted as an ethic of friendliness. Examples included the
ways children talked about chat rooms as a place to meet people and the greeting rituals used when
they introduced themselves and left. I looked in the material for signs of common interests,
characteristics and shared culture among the participants and approached the data with a more open
and analytical approach. This led me to see community as a social process involving the creation of
meaning between members of a group of people who have something in common that distinguishes
them from the members of other groups. Distinctions between groups are marked by the boundaries
that are actively created (Cohen, 2000) and certain kinds of boundaries seemed to be useful to
31
establish and maintain a community of insiders. Boundaries were explored and marked in different
ways: through language, topics, interests, status, friendliness, hostility, humour, instructions and
greeting rituals.
Brad_Pitt88>ER TILBAKE OM 20 MINUTTER
DAMER
snill_gutt14>si hade til meg a jenter
kozzy>ha det snill gutt
snill_gutt14>jeg kommer igjen i kveld
Brad_Pitt88>BACK IN 20 MINUTES LADIES
snill_gutt14>say goodbye to me girls
kozzy>bye kind boy
snill_gutt14>I’ll be back this evening
Two particular boundaries, which were continuously questioned, discussed and negotiated, were
age and gender. These would be addressed through the questions, “How old are you?” and “Are you
a girl or a boy?” A profile with information about age, appearance and interests, was, however, not
sufficient for the children to be welcomed. To be part of the group of insiders, the newbies
(Sveningsson, 2001) had to prove that they really were the ones they said they were, for instance by
being tested in various ways. One of my informants (boy, aged 11) never passed such tests because
he did not know the names of particular artists, football teams, etc. This means that community
was something that had to be created.
Parallell to excluding conversations, there were also including conversations in these chat rooms.
The extensive level of induction and guidance of the less skilled was an example of the inclusive style
that was manifested repeatedly by the chatters. Various studies show that peer-to-peer teaching about
digital media is more common than learning such skills within the framework of formal education
(Buckingham, 2007; Skaar et al., forthcoming). A European study shows how children and
adolescents’ convergent media learning is more advanced and differentiated in their leisure time
than at school (Drotner, 2002). With reference to the concepts of situated learning and communities
of practice (Lave and Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998), my data illustrate learning as participation in
the social world. The enjoyment gained from continuously ‘dressing up’ in a written masquerade
was accompanied by challenges about how to present and protect oneself, as well as how to establish
relationships and maintain recognition and anonymity, closeness and distance. Referring to a recent
study of British teenagers and their use of a particular social networking site, Bebo, dimensions of
the life stages of adolescence are a way of understanding the significance of this site in teenagers’
lives (Willett, 2009). Typical of the tensions involved in people’s positioning of themselves as
subjects, her study indicates that the site is serving particular purposes in relation to the informants’
identities as teenagers. In my study, the children used the chat rooms regularly, even when they said
they were fed up. As one of the girls said, “I’m getting so tired of it, but it’s great fun”.
Writing oneself into being
Chat rooms can be seen as tools for children in their identity formation. This concept refers to the
passive process of being formed, but also to the act of creating or taking form, i.e. both the structural
and the individual aspects of identity formation (Giddens, 1991). Historically, identity has been seen
to be connected to work, social class, family and nation, while identity today is described in terms
of structures, and social and cultural groups and spaces. The technological achievements of the last
century have produced a radical shift in the extent and nature of our exposure to each other. One
important argument is that the emerging technologies have saturated the human self with multiple
32
voices and disparate positions for being (Gergen, 1991). Consequences of this are fractional
relationships, i.e. relationships are built around a limited aspect of one’s being. The Internet, in
particular, is often conceptualised as a space with unlimited boundaries to freely create multiple
identities, independent of dimensions such as time, space, body, age and gender (Haraway, 1991;
Turkle, 1995).
The flexibility in the chat rooms that I studied offered children and adolescents the possibility to
pretend to be another person, with a fictional identity where they could make up biological sex, age
and physical characteristics, without being revealed. However, far from “freely creat[ing] multiple
identities”, questions about their own and others’ individuality - age, sex, style, music tastes,
popularity - constituted an ongoing theme in these chat rooms. Thus, the numerous attempts to
write oneself into being (Boyd, 2008), make oneself visible, create boundaries and calibrate oneself
vis-à-vis others were parts of ageing and gendering processes that were closely linked to social and
cultural frames, but also to their offline individual identities.
Boys seemed to underestimate the extent of their own chat activity, in that they claimed to be
observing rather than writing, a girlish activity according to some of them. In spite of this claim,
they showed a high level of knowledge about the sites, the technology and the content. Chat rooms
appeared to be a gender-mixed arena where children, as expected, crossed some boundaries related
to sex and age by displaying gender cross-dressing (Thorne, 1993): pretending to be a girl when they
were a boy, and vice versa. One of the girls would pretend to be older than she was, hoping to meet
older boys, “because boys of my age are so childish” (Frida, aged 13). One of the boys (aged 12)
actually used girlish nicknames sometimes because he then got more replies.
According to Corsaro (1997), the focus on age can be perceived as a Western phenomenon, because
grouping of children is much less age segregated in non-Western societies. He also argues that there
is a growing debate as to whether girls and boys have different peer cultures. A common assumption
has been that girls’ and boys’ socialisation belongs to two different cultures. However, Corsaro warns
against accepting this view of children’s gender relations too quickly. As with the question of age,
this assumption is based on studies of white, middle and upper class American children. Corsaro
argues that there is little evidence to support claims for universal patterns of values and social
relationships by gender. This argument is supported by Holloway and Valentine (2002) who argue
that the simple boy-girl distinctions in attitudes to, and use of, computers are inappropriate. One
should therefore be careful not to draw hasty conclusions about this issue.
Media are increasingly intertwined in social, political and economical processes which are taking a
global form. These changes require a rethinking of both how media culture should be researched
and how children and adolescents act reflexively in a socially and culturally formed world. Beck
(1992) argues that social changes, such as those tied to new kinds of settlements have great
consequences for people’s social interactions. Social relationships and social networks have to a
greater extent than earlier to be individually chosen; social ties are becoming reflexive, so that they
have to be established and maintained and constantly renewed by individuals. Beck emphasises that
the ability to choose and maintain one’s own social relationships is not an ability everyone has by
nature. This is a learned activity, dependent on issues like social and family background. The reflexive
conduct of life, the planning of one’s biography and social relations, give rise to a new inequality,
Beck argues, namely “the inequality of dealing with insecurity and reflexivity” (op.cit.:98). In this
respect we face, not just the question of a digital divide - a highly discussed concept in media research
- but also a reflexive divide between those who have the necessary communicative competence and
33
those who do not. Through a convergent media culture, children get to know otherness (Drotner,
2002). In addition, I argue that children and adolescents also get to know similarities, since media
(chat rooms included) raise questions and dilemmas they are familiar with and which therefore are
recognisable to them.
Concluding remarks
I emphasise communication as a dynamic process and have looked at some of the characteristics of
chat rooms, and the content and conventions they encompass. With reference to Kress (1993), I
argue that communication, in addition to sharing mutual construction of meaning, is a matter of
contestation and contradiction, involving issues such as power and authority. In the chat rooms I
studied, this could be seen as tensions between participants, who expressed different standards of
behaviour, deemed different topics as appropriate or moved between different levels of reality, for
instance by changing nicknames and dressing up with various identities. On the one hand, there
was the written masquerade and the chaos, which enabled children to hide in a secret room where
they could either have fun or even explore serious matters, based on whichever sudden thought that
came to mind, such as issues about school, music or television. On the other hand, the participants
could decide when and how to be visible. When talking disparagingly about homosexuals, an ethnic
minority group or childish people in the room, however, the chat took on a character that was
concretely and closely connected to social and cultural values and attitudes that had probably not
come from the children in the first place. When children dissociated (with exclamation marks) from
different kinds of human attributes and characteristics, I interpreted this as a way for them to ask
what counts as appropriate or acceptable in society. In this respect, talking dirty, for example, may
simply be for the purpose of trying out, to see what happens, to explore sexuality or as an invitation
to others to negotiate cultural values. When disparaging or extremely kind comments, such as
“Fucking bitch” or “I love you as a friend” appeared in the chat room, these messages usually
generated an immediate counter-reaction by some of the participants. In this respect, exaggeration
of emotions and expressions often initiated discussion, argument, negotiation or support. To
interpret the comments quoted above as disparaging or extremely kind is, however, value-loaded.
In some youth cultural settings, such comments are probably a part of a common vocabulary, and
illustrate the complex and dynamic character of online communication where an essential aim is to
make oneself visible, whether playing oneself or a ‘dressing up’ as someone different. Fundamentally,
the number of children who communicated in online communities ten years ago was less, but as of
today, they were co-producers of mediated communities and ‘constructed themselves’ within the
framework of contemporary technology – and the surrounding social context. In that sense, there
are many similarities between the ways in which children participated in networked publics by the
time of the new millennium. The huge difference between that period and today, however, is the
emerging conglomerate of potentials both for private and public display and networking in which
the ‘language’ is extended to include not only words and typed symbols, but also photos, moving
images and music. Further research may show how children’s online communication and social
networking, historically, has developed to a position where they are increasingly displaying a broader
range of their identities and as such receive responses that are individualised in more detail that ten
years ago.
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1
The terms user, participant and chatterer are employed as equivalents.
2
The methodology is further described in Tingstad 2007.
3
www.msn.no/computing/messenger/Default.asp
4
www.icq.com/icqchat
37
ARTICLES
Young Boys Playing Digital Games
From Console to the Playground
Pål Aarsand
____________
Pål Aarsand
Assistant Professor at the Department of Education, Uppsala University. He holds a Ph.D from the Department of
Child Studies, Linköping University. His research interests are in discourse analysis and children and young people’s
use of information and communication technology. Addresses for correspondence: Pål André Aarsand, Department of
Education, Uppsala University SE-750 02 Uppsala Sweden.
[email protected]
English abstract
This article studies how digital games are part of the everyday lives of Swedish 6 to 7-year-old boys. The data consist of
video recordings from two schools, two after-school centres and four homes. The focus is on how children engage in,
organize and use digital games in face-to-face interaction. It is argued that digital game competence matters not only
in front of the screen, but also in the playground. In addition, it is argued that what counts as game competence is
negotiated in the peer group.
Keywords: Game play, peers, digital competence, young boys, discourse analysis.
_______________________________________________________________________________________
38
Pål Aarsand | YOUNG BOYS PLAYING DIGITAL GAMES
New media and young people have been the object of discussion ever since antiquity (Säljö, 2000).
Parents apply rules to restrict and guide their children’s consumption of new media (e.g., Livingstone
& Helsper, 2007; Rideout, Roberts, & Foehr, 2005), and at school, students have to deal with rules
concerning what kind of media may be used, when, together with whom, and where (Childress,
2004; Holloway & Valentine, 2003). The idea that games matter has often been discussed with a
particular focus on the player (Erstad, Kløvstad, Kristiansen & Søby, 2005; Gee, 2003; Kafai, Heeter,
Denner & Sun, 2008a; Tapscott, 1998). Here, questions concerning gender, socioeconomic
background, ethnicity, age and educational level have been of particular interest. Part of this
discussion relates to an interest in the kind of competences, or literacy, that the gamer develops when
using these media. This debate has often been related to what have been called digital divides, which
points to competence differences in handling digital technology that may be related to structural
variables. A different approach has been taken in research focusing on how the construction of
gender, ethnicity, nationality and conflict solving is done within particular digital games (DeVane
& Squire, 2008; Kafai, Heeter, Denner & Sun, 2008; Leonard, 2006). This research criticizes how
power relations in Western societies are reflected in game designs, and it is expected to have an
impact on how we see, for instance, gender, ethnicity, social class and sexuality. Both approaches to
children’s use of digital games underline the fact that game play practices matter and are seen as
being important with regard to competence and power.
The present paper discusses how digital games matter in Swedish boys’ everyday lives from the child
perspective. The focus is on how boys use games in situ and how their game play competence matters
in peer group interaction.
Game play and boys’ peer relations
Researchers argue that children’s play and games are implicitly gendered (Lever, 1978; SuttonSmith, 1997). This view creates a dichotomy between girls’ and boys’ ways of playing games, in
which the former way is described in terms of intimacy, cooperation and compliance, while the
latter is described as being highly physical, competitive and governed by complex rules. Recently,
this traditional distinction between girls’ versus boys’ ways of playing games has been questioned
(see Evaldsson, 2004, 2005; M. H. Goodwin, 1990; Thorne, 1993).
Research on children and digital games in particular has shown that boys are more likely to play
digital games than girls are (Erstad et al., 2005; Lenhart, Arafeh, Smith & Macgill, 2008; Livingstone
& Bober, 2005; Medierådet, 2006). It has also been claimed that boys spend more time on gaming
and that they are likely to consume a larger number of game titles than girls are (Erstad et al. 2005).
But, when it comes to explaining gender differences, boys and girls are usually glossed along the
lines of the traditional dichotomy. Gender differences are used as an explanation for different
patterns concerning who consumes digital games. The main argument is that digital games do not
appeal to girls, because such games differ too much from their real-life interests in sharing secrets
and building friendships (Kafi et al. 2008). When explanations are given about why boys play more
games than girls do, this difference is often described as being due to the logic of the games available
on the market. For instance, it has been claimed that typical male games ‘revolve around warfare,
anti-terrorism, invading aliens, zombies, science fiction, combat with robots, etc. Aesthetically, their
settings tend to be highly rectilinear, typically man-made space’ (Fullerton, Morie & Pearce, 2008).
Descriptions of the male gamer, such as the one above, reoccur when differences between boys’ and
girls’ game play are described, but they do not explain how these themes may be of relevance to boys
but not to girls, or vice versa. In sum, the discussion concerning gender differences in game play
39
presumes a given distinction between girls and boys regarding what activities they participate in and
what interests they may have. Rather than presuming this distinction, I argue that we need to
investigate in detail how children, boys and girls, accomplish game play.
Digital games are part of boys’ peer relations in the sense that they play games together, they talk
about games (Aarsand, 2007b), and they are part of social structures online as well as offline where
games and gaming are discussed (Taylor, 2008). The notion of peers refers to ‘that cohort or group
of children who spend time together on an everyday basis’ (Corrsaro 1997, p. 95). The notion of
peers underlines that the children in focus are of a similar age and they that regularly socialize. Studies
of children’s peer relations have argued that children develop competence with regard to
expressiveness, closeness and communities (Frønes, 1995). Research on peer groups has focused on,
for instance, drawing (Änggård, 2005), popular culture (Sparrman, 2002), social organization in
terms of gender (Thorne, 1993), language learning (Blum-Kulka & Snow, 2004; Cekaite, 2006),
sharing and controlling (Corsaro, 1997) and conflicts (Evaldsson, 2005; M. H. Goodwin, 1990).
Power relations in peer groups are often described as objects of negotiation (e.g., Evaldsson 2004,
Goodwin 1990), in contrast to mixed generations or age practices, where the power relation is often
in favour of the adult or the older party (Blum-Kulka & Snow 2004, Corsaro 1997, Grieshaber
2004). Moreover, peer relations can be seen as important with regard to how children’s social and
cultural lives are produced and reproduced. In order to understand how digital games and game
play works in young boys’ peer relations, I have studied how these activities are accomplished in
situ.
Translation and power/knowledge relations
The present study of boys’ use of digital games in peer groups is anchored in two analytical concepts:
translation and power/knowledge relations. Translation is seen as ‘a relation that does not transport
causality, but induces two mediators into coexisting’ (Latour, 2005 p. 108). In contrast to the idea
that objects move between and are adjusted to different activities, the idea of translation highlights
the relation between mediators in order to understand the phenomenon. Two concepts are of
importance to understanding translation; first, a relation is seen as a reference between activities,
objects, and subjects. In the present text, it is the references between digital games, game play and
play among boys that are considered. Second, a mediator is seen as something that transforms and
modifies the meaning or the elements it is supposed to carry (Latour, 2005). Mediators always
involve ‘something being retained, something being added and something being taken away’ (Prout,
2005 p. 109). Objects, persons, activities may be seen as mediators. In the present work, the idea
of translation is used to understand how digital games are accomplished in different settings, and
how these practices are related to other activities in which boys are involved. Moreover, phenomena
like children’s use of digital games can be seen as an assemblage of mediators in time and space.
Mediation as well as social interaction implies the notion of power. Power is relational in the sense
that it is an aspect of the relations between actors, human as well as non-human. Power is performed,
and thereby productive (Foucault, 1980). This means that power could be seen as a verb, as
something that is exercised. Power is closely related to knowledge, or as Foucault (1980) writes: ‘It
is not possible for power to be exercised without knowledge, it is impossible for knowledge not to
engender power’ (p. 52), thereby power and knowledge are intertwined. Power needs knowledge
about the object it operates on and it defines what is considered as legitimate knowledge. ‘Power
means relations, a more or less organized, hierarchical, co-ordinated cluster of relations’ (Foucault
1980, p. 198). Power relations produce hierarchical organizations of positions as well as knowledge.
40
What digital games are considered good and cool is an object of negotiation. This requires knowledge
about digital games, where some games are dismissed as irrelevant to the category, while others are
made visible as good and cool. The notion power/knowledge highlights actions that modify other
actions, and it is used to understand how participants tune in and mutually orient to each other.
Power/knowledge is seen as an aspect of relations and mediators. In short, power/knowledge
relations mean that things as well as people are excluded and ‘sorted’ into different categories.
The Focauldian work on power has largely been concerned with the relation between social
structures, institutions and the individual (e.g., Ailwood, 2008; Fejes & Nicoll, 2008). In the present
text, however, power/knowledge and translation are used as analytical tools to understand how
children engage in, organize and use digital games in face-to-face interaction.
Method and setting
Inspired by multi-site ethnography (Hannerz, 2003; Marcus, 1995), the present study follows
children’s use of digital games on different sites. My data consist of one week of videotaped
observations of two first grade classrooms, two after-school centres and four homes. I have named
the two school areas East and West to differentiate between these schools, after-school centres and
homes. The video recordings have focused on four children, two boys and two girls aged 7-8, and
their encounters during one week. More precisely, we follow one boy and one girl in the same class
during the same week. The children have been videotaped in the school and at the leisure centre by
the researchers, while parents video-recorded them in the home. Informed consent was obtained
from the children in the school class and their parents as well as from the head teachers, class teachers
and the leisure-time pedagogues. All participants have been given pseudonyms. Examples from the
video recordings have been transcribed according a modified version of conversation analysis (see
Appendix 1) and translated into English.
A child perspective is considered by focusing on children’s activities and their understanding. The
analysis is based on two conversational analytical assumptions. The first assumption is that
interaction among participants is sequentially organized in a turn-taking system, which means that
one utterance is followed by another one. The second assumption is that the participants’
understanding of each other is related to how the other person responds to the former speaker’s
turn. How the participants orient to each others’ turns is not only an important resource for people
in understanding their fellow interlocutors, but this is also where researchers have to focus to
understand activities from the participants’ perspective. This has been referred to as the ‘proof
procedure’ (Sacks, Schegloff & Jefferson, 1974). The responses are seen as ‘proofs’ of how something
has been understood by the participants themselves. For instance, it could be argued that an utterance
can be interpreted as an invitation if the co-participants treat it as an invitation. Thereby, based on
the turn-taking system and the proof procedure, it could be claimed that the paper takes a child
perspective on what happens in social interaction.
In the present text, I will use examples from video recordings in area West. The leisure centre was
located next to the school, and the two shared a huge playground. Behind one of the school buildings,
there was a large area with a forest, wood stocks, sand, stones and hills where the children spent a
great deal of their time. During the fieldwork, the boys used digital games at home, at the leisure
centre, in the classroom as well as in the playground. In the excerpts, I will present Justus and his
friends from school West across two sites to see how game play matters and is accomplished. The
boys spent most of the time between lessons talking about and playing different digital games. The
41
single most discussed and played games were variations of Star Wars. The excerpts in the present
text have been chosen because they illustrate how children used a game series across practices in their
everyday lives. In the data, girls played with girls and boys played with boys. Several studies show
that there is a tendency towards sex segregation in peer relations during the early years at school
(Corsaro, 1997; Lever, 1978; Thorne, 1993). This tendency could also be seen in the present data,
but there were also several situations in which boys and girls played together.
Game play with friends at home
Game play demands game consoles as well as games. All of the boys in the school class had access
to game consoles, but the kind of games they had differed. When I talked to the children, it was
obvious that they were not yet into borrowing or downloading games. This means that the boys had
to rely on friends, elder siblings or parents for borrowing and obtaining new games (cf. DiSalvo,
Crowley & Norwood, 2008). This resulted in a situation where some of the children have shared
knowledge based on experience from playing the same game, while others knew the games vaguely
either through talk about games at school and the leisure centre, or from visiting friends. As such,
the games were translated and brought into existence on several different sites.
In the first excerpt, I focus on how Justus introduces and guides Tobias in ‘Lego Star Wars’. The
game is full of references to the ‘Star Wars’ movies seen in available avatars, possible customizing of
the avatars and the virtual environment, as well as the name of the game. From conversations with
the boys, I know that Tobias plays digital games regularly, but as we will see in the present excerpt,
he is a newbie when it comes to playing ‘Lego Star Wars’. Justus sits on the couch, while Tobias is
placed on the floor. The avatars are located in a place that has the form of a star with four different
corridors.
Excerpt 1: Game play at home
Participants: Justus (7), Tobias (7) and Playstation 2
Place: Lego Star Wars
42
1
Tobias
>Justus what am I going to do here?<
2
Justus
<First (.) come over here>
3
((Tobias places his avatar next to Tobias’s avatar. Then, Justus
4
walks across two areas that light up when they are passed))
5
Tobias
Are we not going to see when he st[rypes xxx
6
Justus
[Ye::s but (.) then we
7
have to play for real
8
(4) ((Money falls down from the ceiling. Justus and Tobias
9
collect it))
10
Justus
((Opens a door and pigeons fly out))
11
((Both avatars run through the pigeons and into the
12
corridor at the opposite side))
13
Tobias
But we=
14
Justus
=and then (.) nobody can be there
15
Tobias
>Yes but look<
16
Justus
((Shakes his head))
17
Tobias
You will see
18
19
(5) ((Tobias opens a door but nothing happens))
Tobias
20
21
But if we (.) are doing this? ((Steps on a field that
lights up))
Justus
No ((shaking his head))
22
Only money comes ((money falls down from the
23
ceiling and the boys pick it up))
24
Tobias
Exactly (.) if we say like this look at me
25
(2) ((Tobias’ avatar runs to the opposite corridor. Justus
26
opens the door at the end of the corridor. In addition money comes out of a
27
hole in the wall close to Justus))
28
Justus
THE MONEY TOBBE ((Tobias is on his way through the open door))
29
Tobias
Ye:s okay ((returns to Justus))
Tobias starts by asking what to do (line 1), and Justus runs across the screen with his avatar
simultaneously as he tells and shows Tobias where to meet him with his avatar (lines 2-4). Both
players are facing the screen. The virtual space can be seen as a semiotic field in which the activity
takes place. A semiotic field refers to the signs and the medium in which the action is embedded,
and that the player uses these to make sense of activities (C. Goodwin, 2000). In the excerpt, we see
how Justus, through references to the game, takes this interactional environment for granted. When
Justus tells Tobias to ‘come over here’ (line 2), he uses his avatar as the point of reference. Tobias
has no problem identifying what Justus means and he places his avatar next to Justus’s (lines 3-4)
and not, which could have been a possibility, by seating himself next to Justus on the couch. This
shows that the activity is framed as game play, and that talk and instructions are understood within
43
this frame (Goffman, 1974). It could be claimed that the activity is framed as a demonstration and
an instruction within the game (cf. Tannen & Wallat 1999 [1987]). Note that the game play is
mediated not only through the software and the hardware, but also through Justus’s way of
understanding and handling the game.
When Tobias asks what he is going to do (line 1) and how the game progresses (line 5), he also offers
Justus the position as the most knowledgeable player, who is given the power to decide what to do
next. Justus answers Tobias’s question (line 5) by saying that they ‘have to play for real’ (line 7).
Thereby, he creates a distinction between ‘playing-for-real’ and not-playing-for-real. Labelling the
activity as real versus not real displays the knowledgeable game player’s evaluation of the task, as a
demanding task, and that he, as the expert, knows how to accomplish it. At the same time as Justus
makes the distinction between playing-for-real and not-playing-for-real, he also says that the ongoing
activity is not-playing-for-real. In the ongoing demonstration, Justus tells Tobias where to stand
(line 2) and how to open the doors to get the money, that is, by illuminating areas on the floor (lines
3 and 4). In short, Justus takes the responsibility to teach Tobias to play for real, and in this way he
defines what constitutes valid game play knowledge. After the avatars have opened the doors and
collected the money, Tobias runs over to the opposite corridor (lines 12-13). Justus tells him that
he will not find anything behind that door (line 14). Tobias disagrees with Justus (lines 15, 17); he
opens the door at the end of the corridor, but nothing happens (line 18). Justus’s utterance ‘You
will see’ is a way to position himself as the most knowledgeable player, where he has the information
Tobias needs to succeed in the game. Tobias tries the trick he learnt in the previous corridor; he
walks on the field in a similar way as Justus did before. The field lights up (line 19) and shortly
thereafter, money falls from the ceiling (line 22). Justus and Tobias collect the money just as Tobias
confirms that he now understands how to get the money and that it differs from the previous place
where the pigeons appeared (line 24). Then the players move over to the fourth corridor. While
Tobias runs to the door at the end of it, Justus stops and opens a trapdoor on the right at the
beginning of the corridor. When he does this, money falls out of the door. Tobias runs through the
door at the end of the corridor, but Justus shouts that he has to collect the money first. During this
sequence, we see how Justus tells Tobias what to pay attention to and what to do. Tobias has not
yet seen the relevance of collecting money. The reason for this may be that the money is used to
buy things and does not have consequences for moving to the next scene at this stage of the game.
As a gamer with more experience of ‘Lego Star Wars’, Justus knows that money is of importance
later on in the game.
In the above excerpt, we see how power is used in establishing valid knowledge concerning how to
play the game, what to expect, what buttons to push and when. The power relation works in both
directions, Tobias asks for help to handle the ongoing operation, and Justus tells him where to stand,
move and what to do. Note that the game play encounter is tight in the sense that almost nothing
from the surroundings seems to enter into the activity (cf. Juul, 2005). This may be because both
boys are experienced players, which causes them to stay within the game play frame. They are both
focusing on the game, and the activity takes place in the virtual landscape without references to
anything outside the activity. In addition, inside the game play frame, demonstrations and cooperations are part of the game play encounter. Put differently, game play occurs on several layers
(cf. Goffman, 1961). A more general claim is that game play activities, such as the one above, include
cooperation, leading to common experiences and friendship.
44
Playing in the playground
While game play is characterized by the players as being present in front of a screen and often has
the character of being a ‘hands-on activity’, digital games in the playground can be seen as ‘handsoff’ game activities (Aarsand, 2007a). Such activities include talk about digital games, imitations of
activities that take place in games, or the creation of play environments and objects that can be
explicitly related to digital games. Hands-off game activities can be seen as examples of how digital
games are translated into other sites.
The second excerpt shows how displaying knowledge concerning popular culture such as digital
games is of importance to the social organization of peer-group activities in the playground. In
Excerpt 2, we will meet a peer group consisting of Justus, Samuel, Konrad and Robin. The boys
have already decided to play ‘Star Wars’, and they are now entering the part where they discuss and
choose characters.
Excerpt 2: Distribution of positions
Participants: Justus, Samuel, Konrad and Robin
Place: Playground
1
Samuel
What? Well then I am what is his name
2
Robin
Well actually he is Obi-Wan ((points at Samuel))
3
Konrad
Then Justus is xxx ((points at Justus))
4
Justus
No: ((shaking his head))
5
Robin
And who are you?
6
Samuel
L[u:ke (.)
7
Justus
[Luke
8
Robin
[Yes then ((looking at Konrad))
9
Samuel
[And then I am Obi-Wan from the first period in Star Wars 1
10
Robin
[Uh:: because he looks better then
11
Konrad
[Xxx ((to Justus))
12
Samuel
Ye:s
13
14
(2)
Robin
Bu bu but he is kind of good looking in the second one wh
15
wh when he has nice hair
16
((Justus and Konrad start to wrestle))
Samuel tries to remember the name of the character that he wants to play (line 1). Robin states that
Samuel is Obi-Wan, thereby displaying that this position is already taken (line 2). Then, Konrad
tries to position Justus, but he resists (lines 3-4). This causes Robin to ask what character Justus is.
Samuel and Justus answer simultaneously that he is Luke, which displays alignment between the
boys. Note that Obi-Wan and Luke are two of the main characters in several of the Star Wars movies.
45
Thereby, Samuel and Justus occupy two popular positions within the field of Star Wars. These
positions also work as symbols for who is central in the play. Put differently, the distribution of
positions within the play displays the participants’ social status (Goodwin 1990). In the present peer
group, Justus and Samuel usually take charge in play that makes reference to digital games or movies.
It has been claimed that social status in peer groups is a reoccurring object of negotiation (cf. Corsaro,
1997; Goodwin, 1990). Samuel even elaborates on his position when he underlines that he is ObiWan from the first period in Star Wars 1 (line 10). Robin states that Obi-Wan looks better in that
period than in the other ones; thereby he also confirms Samuel’s position as Obi-Wan. After a twosecond pause, Robin comes back to the topic and suggests that he even looked good in the second
movie. In this sequence, we see how Samuel and Robin establish a common understanding of ObiWan as an attractive position in the ongoing play. Note that what makes Obi-Wan from the first
period particularly attractive is not his abilities in Star Wars, but what he looks like. Seen in contrast
to research that categorizes children’s preferences for games and play along the dichotomy of girls’
versus boys’ games, it can be seen that the distribution of positions as well as arguments for why
certain positions are attractive are not related to warfare, being very competitive or being particularly
physical. Rather, we see that game play in-the-playground among boys consists of negotiations and
distributions of positions as well as a concern for what their characters looked like, while at the same
time the activity is well anchored within the field of Star Wars.
What is striking in the above excerpt is that the boys’ main resource in the construction of the play
is not the digital games, but the movies. Unlike the games, the main story in the films is structured
around different times and spaces. Thereby, utterances like ‘Obi-Wan from the first period in Star
Wars 1’ (line 10) most likely refer to the time structure that is recognizable in the movies. Further
on, the visual assessment of the main character rests on the idea that he changes during the films.
This change is not obvious in the same sense in the games. In these boys’ peer play, popular culture,
such as digital games and movies, works as a resource in socially organizing their life as friends and
peers. It could be argued that media phenomena like ‘Star Wars’ can be seen as an assemblage of
media activities, where the different activities and objects are seen as gates to a cultural field consisting
of certain characters and narratives that reappear (cf. Aarsand, 2007b). Moreover, different cultural
activities and objects become co-existing parts in a network that is actualized differently depending
on the activity.
Negotiating game competence
It has been argued that digital games are just one part in a broader media ecology that involves
comics, graphic novels, animation, toys, trading card games and character merchandise (Ito, 2008).
In a production chain, it is necessary to track the original cultural expression owing to copyrights.
For instance, the ‘Lord of the Rings’ first appeared as a printed book, and then has been turned into
movies, games, picture books and music. From the users’ point of view, whether or not the movie
is the ‘original’ source of the phenomenon may not even be a question.
The next excerpt shows how digital games work as a resource in the social organization of boys in
peer groups. We will meet three boys, Justus, Samuel and Robin, who have decided to play Star
Wars. Star Wars is an example of a media phenomenon that includes books, movies, toys and digital
games. It stretches across several continents and generations just as fairy tales do. Justus and Samuel
told me that they are best friends, and that they often see each other outside school. When we enter
46
the next excerpt, the three boys have just met Tobias, who is a classmate, and they start a discussion
about what to play.
Excerpt 3: Warcraft is Warcraft
Participants: Justus, Tobias, Samuel and Robin
Place: Playground
1
Tobias
Would you like to play something?
2
Samuel
We are playing Star Wars
3
Tobias
But I played that with them ((nodding)) earlier
4
Samuel
What would you like to play then?
5
Tobias
˚Warcraft˚ ((starts walking))
6
(3)
7
Robin
Yes but Justus does not wa wa want to
8
Tobias
Pirate Warcraft exists
9
Justus
That does not exist
10
Tobias
Oyea (.) I have seen it (nodding)
11
Samuel
No that does not [exist
12
Justus
[YOU’RE LYING!=
13
Tobias
=No ((shaking his head))
14
Samuel
There is no such [thing as Pirate Warcraft
15
Justus
[Uh! ((moves close to Samuel’s face))
16
Tobias
No but it exists pirates in Warcraft ((bends down to his
17
sandals))
18
Justus
No[::
19
Samuel
[SEE WARCRAFT IS WARCRAFT ((grasps Tobias head and pushes
20
it down))
21
Tobias
But I have seen it
22
Robin
But Samuel (.) Samuel (.) Samuel ((tries to grab Samuel))
23
Justus
And besides that (.) we don’t believe in anyth[ing=
24
Samuel
[No:: let’s go
25
26
((turns around and starts to walk))
Justus
=you say ((Justus and Robin follow Samuel))
Tobias asks if they want to play something, Samuel reacts by telling him that they are already playing
Star Wars (line 2). Tobias tells Samuel that he does not want to play Star Wars, using the argument
that he has already played it with some of the other children. In Tobias’s account, we see that playing
Star Wars is well known and likely to take place among several of the children at this school. Samuel
displays openness to negotiate about what to play when he asks Tobias what he wants to play. Tobias
47
suggests that they play a popular digital game called ‘Warcraft’ (line 4), but Robin tells him that
Justus, the third boy in the group, does not want to play that. Then, Tobias presents new information
about ‘Warcraft’ by saying that ‘Pirate Warcraft’ exists (line 8). Justus denies Tobias’s claims by
using the same words with a slight twist. According to Goodwin (1990), this way of changing the
format of the utterances, format tying, is one way to create opposition and thereby a conflict. This
is the turning point at which the activity changes character. It is no longer a negotiation about what
to play. It has become a question of knowledge and thereby also of the power to define what counts
as knowledge. In the dispute, Tobias claims that he has seen the game himself (line 10). The appeal
to what he has seen is an example of stake inoculation, that is, when Tobias downgrades his personal
interest by appealing to something outside his influence, and as a fact (cf. Potter, 1996). Samuel
recycles Justus’s words and thereby also aligns with Justus when he claims that the game does not
exist. Justus upgrades the confrontation by shouting that Tobias is lying (line 12), thereby
positioning him as morally unaccountable, as somebody who cannot be trusted. Samuel repeats that
‘Pirate Warcraft’ does not exist. In short, Justus and Samuel do not accept the categorization of the
game as a pirate game. Tobias retreats partly by letting go of the game’s title, but holds on to his
main argument; there are pirates in Warcraft (line 16). Justus keeps denying the existence of pirates
in Warcraft, thereby aligning with Samuel, who starts shouting while grabbing Tobias’s head and
pushing it down to the ground (lines 19-20). While Tobias gets on his feet and says that this is what
he saw, Samuel turns around. Robin tries to get Samuel’s attention by grabbing his arm (line 22).
Justus closes the episode by stating that they do not believe in anything Tobias says, before they
turn their backs on Tobias and walk away (lines 24-26). This later extreme case formulation is not
only expressed vocally, but also bodily when Samuel and Justus walk away.
Playing digital games in the playground was not an unusual activity among the boys. The above
episode started as a negotiation about what to play, and ended up in a dispute about the nature of
a particular game. If we see the interaction between the boys as a question of displaying game
competence, then it could be claimed that at the point when Justus and Samuel state that the game
does not exist (lines 9 and 11), they have also claimed that Tobias does not have valid knowledge.
These boys, Justus and Samuel, exercise power when they show how a specific game is to be described
and categorized. They define what counts as knowledge. In the above excerpt, we see how Tobias
does not accept the alternative suggestions concerning the game. The consequence is that he loses
his possibility to negotiate about what to play; even worse, he is excluded from the activity. The
question of exclusion is organized as a form of disciplining Tobias into viewing Warcraft as they do,
or at least accepting their version as the official one. Because of the central role given to digital games
among these children, there is reason to believe that having and knowing digital games is of
importance when it comes to participation and status in the playground (cf. Aarsand, 2007a). Being
revealed as not possessing the presumed knowledge means that one is in danger of losing credibility
in the peer group.
Digital games in children’s peer culture
Boys play games on the computer as well as in the playground. In the games Star Wars and Warcraft,
the narratives are built up around violence; they are goal oriented and the content is usually quite
remote from the lives of 7-year-old children. Yet Star Wars and Warcraft are two of the games that
often reoccurred among the boys in my study. According to interactional research on game and
play, there is no reason to believe that how boys use digital games differs radically from how girls
use them (cf. Goodwin, 2006; 1990; Evaldsson, 2004; 2009). In the present study, playing in the
playground with references to digital games is studied among boys.
48
In this paper, I argue that media phenomena such as Star Wars are situated activities that are used
and translated in game play as well as in play activities in the playground. Obviously, Star Wars
located in Lego Star Wars differs from Star Wars in the playground. In Lego Star Wars, the game
structure and the boys participating in the game mediate the activities. Thereby, game play requires
competences in handling game equipment as well as virtual demands. The activity is accomplished
differently depending on how players position themselves and co-players. When players consider
each other as equal with regard to power and knowledge, this has consequences for how game play
is accomplished (Aarsand & Aronsson, 2009 ). This can be seen, for instance, in the distribution of
positions, interaction patterns and what is considered valid game play competence. In Excerpt 1, the
expert player directed the less knowledgeable player’s attention to aspects of the game, and he
demonstrated how to solve certain tasks. Another way to demonstrate what is valid knowledge is to
disapprove claims and suggestions in public, or simply to claim that they are not valid, like in Excerpt
3. To influence the construction of knowledge, one has to position oneself as more powerful and
knowledgeable than the other party. It could be argued that relevant and valid knowledge in game
play or in the playground is made visible and sanctioned in the power/knowledge relation between
the players. In the excerpts, we see how game play competence is developed among peers, and where
the boys are active constructers of what counts as knowledge. In addition, other aspects are central
to the children’s participation in peer groups, like having common experiences, forming friendships
and struggling for central positions in social hierarchies.
Digital games are not closed systems that exist in their own right, rather the opposite: games need
players to come into existence (cf. Aarseth, 1997). Thereby, games are always already translated in
game play. As can be seen in the children’s use of digital games, the games are actualized and brought
into existence in the playground. But playing Star Wars in the playground has few similarities with
playing Star Wars as a digital game. What makes us identify activities in the playground as related
to Star Wars is the participants’ use of the Star Wars concept. This notion actualizes a semiotic field
where positions and characters are known and negotiated, where an activity such as fighting with
sticks is identified as fighting with laser swords, and where walking around is similar to going on a
mission. The semiotic field used by the boys consists of digital games, movies, music, websites,
comics and books. This media mix appeared as shared knowledge, used to create activities in the
playground and make them meaningful to the participants. When we look in detail at children’s
peer play, activities and objects are not necessarily what they seem to be. References to Star Wars
may be to digital games, but they may also be to movies, books, TV series or even cartoons. This
means that playing Star Wars in the playground brings other Star Wars activities into coexistence,
and it actualizes a popular cultural network. If the activity is framed as playing Star Wars, knowing
the semiotic field and the network is a resource in accessing play activities, participating in
negotiations about the distribution of positions and characters, and influencing the development of
the play. In short, the media mix and the common experience work as a semiotic field in which
different activities are locally structured, understood and acted upon. In the playground, as well as
in ‘Lego Star Wars’, power/knowledge relations are of importance to positioning as well as to what
is categorized as knowledge. Playing digital games in the playground includes relations and mediators
other than the games played on a game console. But rather than seeing ‘Lego Star Wars’ and ‘Star
Wars in-the-playground’ as completely different practices, they could be seen as parts of a literacy
network in which popular culture, in terms of games and movies, circulates and is made relevant in
the everyday lives of these boys.
In sum, when children’s practices are studied across activities in situ, it can be seen how game and
game play competence are central even in peer-group activities in the playground. In the playground,
49
these competences were used as resources in social interaction and organization of self-initiated
activities. In order to learn something, it has been argued that the student needs to see the
authenticity and relevance of what is taught (e.g. Larsson 1996). Then, children’s everyday practices
are huge resources in planning and creating teaching, whether it concerns geography, languages or
social competences. Several of the knowledge domains that are known from the school curriculum
are part of children’s everyday lives, but these are used and framed differently in game play activities.
The fact that game play is one of the most common activities among children in Western countries
(Erstad et al., 2005; Livingstone & Bober, 2005; Medierådet 2006) makes it an argument as to why
digital games and game play are of particular importance to teachers working with children. If
educators and policymakers include ‘hands-off’ game activities in the discussion on how digital
games may be used in education, then this would increase the pedagogical potential of game
activities.
Appendix 1: Transcript convention
Symbol
Meaning
?
Inquiring intonation
=
Contiguous utterances
:
Prolongation of preceding vowel
[…]
Lines left out
(2)
Pause 2 seconds
(.)
Pause shorter than 0.2 seconds
xxx
Something was said but the transcriber could not discern its content
Wo[rd
The bracket indicates the onset of over lapping speech
Word
Underlined means stressed word (or part of it)
˚Word˚
Quiet speech
WORD
Loud speech
((laughing))
Comments made by the researcher
>Word<
Embeds faster speech than surrounding speech
Hehe
Laughter
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54
ARTICLES
Educating the Digital Generation
Exploring Media Literacy for the 21st Century
Ola Erstad
____________
Ola Erstad
Ola Erstad is Professor at the Institute for Educational Research, University of Oslo, Norway. He has been working
both within the fields of media and educational research. He has published on issues of technology and education,
especially on ‘media literacy’ and ‘digital competence’. Recently his research interests are directed towards the everyday
practices of using different media and the interrelationship between formal and informal ways of learning. He is leader
of a research group at the Faculty of Education, University of Oslo, called ‘TransAction-learning, knowing and identity
in the information society’.
[email protected]
English abstract
The concept of a digital generation has been dominating the public discourse on the role of digital media in young
people’s lives. Issues concerning a digital generation is closely linked to questions about how we develop an education
system that is able to face the challenges of the 21st Century. A growing field of research, inclined to raise awareness of
present and future challenges for our education system, is ‘media/digital literacy’. This article examines research within
‘generation studies’ and public constructions of young people and digital media. Further the article presents some
developments within ‘new literacy studies’ and different aspects of ‘competencies for the 21st Century’. Next, the article
reflects different approaches to studying these competencies, based on different empirical data, both from my own
research and that of colleagues. Towards the end the important question of inclusion and exclusion is raised. The
objective is to explore some issues of importance for future development of media literacy, the educational use of digital
tools and critical considerations of a digital generation. A key part of the article is the elaboration of five dimensions
representing different focus areas of research on school-based studies of media literacy.
Keywords: Media/digital literacy, generation, school, inclusion, exclusion.
_______________________________________________________________________________________
56
Ola Erstad | EDUCATING THE DIGITAL GENERATION
To what extent can we describe young people growing up today as a digital generation? The concept
of a digital generation has been dominating the public discourse on the role of digital media in young
people’s lives (Herring 2006; Buckingham & Willett 2006). This is both seen in worries about the
risks different media represent towards children and youth (Byron 2007), and in celebrations of the
media culture among the young (Tapscott 2008). These overgeneralizations can easily be misleading
and give the impression that all young people today are super-users and highly competent in their
use of different media. A more critical stance is needed where we specify the characteristics of such
a generation, and how this is articulated in different segments of young people.
Issues concerning a digital generation are closely linked to questions about how we develop an
education system that is able to face the challenges of the 21st century. According to former US
Secretary of Education Richard Riley, the projected top ten in demand jobs in 2010 did not exist
in 2004, indicating that not only is our labour market in transition, but also the competencies
needed. Such a future-oriented perspective on education is in contrast to the dominating trend in
most countries where the emphasis is on a traditional transmission model of knowledge acquisition.
(See for example www.21stcenturyskills.org/.) A growing field of research, inclined to raise awareness
of present and future challenges for our education system, is ‘media/digital literacy’ (Buckingham
2003). Primarily because this term emphasizes that ‘reading’ (information access) and ‘writing’
(producing and expressing content) change over time (Baron 2009).
After a critical investigation into the field of ‘generation studies’, the first part of this article will
present some developments within ‘new literacy studies’ and different aspects of ‘competencies for
the 21st century’. The other part of this article will reflect different approaches to studying these
competencies, based on different empirical data, both from my own research and that of colleagues.
The main objective of the article is the elaboration of five dimensions representing different focus
areas of research on school-based studies of media literacy.
Conceptual positioning
There are different terms used in this field of research, such as media literacy, ICT literacy, digital
literacy, information literacy and digital competence. The key term, and the one highlighted in this
article, is media literacy. In a Scandinavian context the term competence is often used instead of
literacy since the latter term does not translate to the languages in these countries. There are several
problems with many of the terms linking technology and literacy, and I therefore prefer media
literacy. The main three problems are:
First, a lack of insight into the conceptual history in this field, where media literacy has been
used since the beginning of the 1980s. Media literacy, as developed within media education
(Buckingham 2003), includes all technologies and media forms, both analogue and digital. This
work on what young people need to know across different kinds of media and curricula, that
have been developed since the 1980s, is not often referred to in our present day research literature,
with a few exceptions (Tyner 1998).
• Second, that there is a danger of becoming too oriented towards present day technologies, such
as IT literacy, ICT literacy or computer literacy. Who knows what kinds of technologies we
might have available in ten years from now? Media literacy points to some broader aspects of
how we relate to different media and incorporates technological change. In curricula
•
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developments on media literacy, for example in the UK, some key concepts have been defined,
such as production, representation and audience.
• Third, media literacy relates to broader aspects of living in a media saturated society, and not
only skills in operating applications or information handling, which is the main focus of many
international frameworks.
In this article I will refer to different conceptions of the interrelationship between media/technology
literacy in the literature and as part of different frameworks.
Beyond ‘natives’ and ‘immigrants’
‘Generation studies’ as a field of research can be traced back to the German scholar Mannheim, who
argues that a person’s location in the socio-historical structure defines their experience. Such a
generational location, that a person belongs to, points to certain definite modes of behaviour, feeling
and thought, where youth is considered as the formative years (Mannheim 1952). Thus, each
generation, has a distinctive ‘generational consciousness’, which is dependent on the pace of social
change. In times of accelerated social and cultural change basic belief systems need to change more
quickly than the continuous and gradual transition between generations allows (Lesko 1996; France
2007).
Individuals are further internally stratified by their geographical and cultural location and by their
actual as opposed to potential participation in the social and intellectual currents of their time and
place. As a result, different, or even opposing, generational strata may be developed. The notion of
generational strata allows us to investigate differences, as well as similarities, that may exist within
and between social groups living in similar cultures and societies.
Increasingly, media have become the defining factor dividing generations. Children born since the
mid-1990s belong to the first generation growing up with digital media embedded in the media
culture, not seen as something ‘new’. A public discourse has been created around young people and
new media conceiving them as hyper competent in using such technologies and the creators of 21st
century skills.
One such influential conception was made by M. Prensky during the mid-1990s. He published
several texts popularising and provoking debates on the implications of digital media, especially the
penetration of the computer and the Internet. The conception was that of ‘media natives’ versus
‘media immigrants’ (Prensky 2001). The first conceives young people as media experts through their
use of digital media in their everyday lives, as the ‘innovators’ of new practices of great importance
for society at large. The second term is then directed towards the adult generation, born before the
introduction of digital media. Adults are immigrants in the land of the young, said to have problems
in coping with the challenges of the digital society.
The implications of such generational divides are further popularized in D. Tapscott’s book
‘Growing up digital. The rise of the Net generation’ (1998), and with a recent follow up called
‘Grown up digital’ (2008), and a similar book by J. Palfrey and U. Gasser termed ‘Born digital’
(2008). These books are based on empirical data consisting of interviews with a large number of
young people from around the world, even though the data itself is not presented in any detail, and
therefore difficult to evaluate from a methodological perspective. However, these books are highly
58
problematic in the way they over-generalize how children and young people are competent media
users in a broad set of areas. This creates a public image of youth and media that needs to be modified.
From other research we know that there are huge differences both within and between different
cultures and countries in how young people relate to and use digital media (Coiro, Knobel,
Lankshear & Leu 2008:3).
From the point of view of media literacy, it is important to be critical of such constructions, because
they blur just as much as they enlighten us about media use and its implications. One critical voice
of such public constructions as mentioned above is David Buckingham. In several of his writings
he has argued for a more nuanced understanding of how young people relate to different media,
creating a middle ground between media pessimists and optimists based on different sets of empirical
data (Buckingham 2003, 2007).
Still, studies show that many young people are engaged with digital media. In the Nordic countries
access to computers, the Internet and mobile phones with Internet access among young people
between 16 and 22 is more that 90% and in some areas up to 100%. So access is not an issue for
most youth in these countries. In Norway, for example, the use of digital media by youth is also
high, where 73% of all 8 to 18 year-olds use the Internet daily (Norwegian Media Authority 2008)
1.
At the same time the age-specific use of digital media is changing. On certain social networking sites
people in their 20s and 30s are even higher consumers than youth. However, there are certain aspects
in the contextual embedding that such media have for youth rather than for adults that seem different
(Buckingham & Willett 2006; Drotner & Livingstone 2008). This can be seen in the ‘Digital Youth’
project undertaken by M. Ito and colleagues in the US (Ito et al. 2010). By drawing on different
case studies from specific communities this research manages “to map the contours of the varied
social, technical, and cultural contexts that structure youth media engagement” (Ito et al. 2010:31).
In their findings they draw out certain genres of participation, in what they describe as ‘friendship
driven’ and ‘interest driven’. Further they have identified different levels of commitment and
intensity in new media practices, in what they describe as ‘hanging out’, ‘messing around’ and
‘geeking out’. These genres of participation are then interpreted as “intertwined with young people’s
practices, learning, and identity formation within these varied and dynamic media ecologies” (Ito
et al. 2010:31). These studies show that there are some fundamental changes going on in the ways
young people are communicating, producing texts and distributing content.
So, more correctly than as a specific digital generation, these developments can best be described as
a transitional phase where digital media are still in transition and where young people today are
experiencing a dual culture, between the old and the new, what S. Herring (2008) calls ‘a transitional
generation’. Young people are of course of special interest because some of them are among the first
to explore these new technological territories.
Such a discussion about what we mean by a digital generation is therefore important, not only to
move beyond simple statements of ‘natives’ and ‘immigrants’ towards a more nuanced
understanding of what characterizes such a generation, but also what impact such technologies have
on specific social practices that young people are involved in.
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Learning and literacy with digital media
The key issues in trying to understand the implications of new digital technologies for children and
young people are learning and literacy, or literacies in plural. This is because learning and literacy
is all about the ways we make meaning of information from resources in our environment, and how
we communicate by using different means, not only understood as ‘reading’ and ‘writing’ written
text. In this way literacy is something that changes over time due to changes in the cultural tools we
have available (Wertsch 2008).
This conception of literacy is building on the research tradition defining literacy as embedded in
specific social practices (Scribner & Cole 1981; Heath 1984; Street 1984; Barton 1994). A definition
of literacy made by Lankshear and Knobel (2006), encompasses these social practices that change
over time. They define literacy as: “Socially recognized ways of generating, communicating and
negotiating meaningful content through the medium of encoded texts within contexts of participation in
Discourses (or, as members of Discourses).” This definition is not bound by certain technologies. It
proposes to study literacies in practice (what people do with technologies and digital texts), and not
as something predescribed, indicating that we need to understand what people are already practicing
concerning media literacies in plural and what the role of education should be in employing such
literacies for knowledge development. The important message is that media literacy among young
people today is of direct relevance to discussions about learning in schools, and it seriously confronts
earlier conceptions of literacy and learning.
An important cultural development in recent years has been the processes of convergence (Jenkins
2006). This relates to how technologies merge, how the production of content changes, how new
text formats are developed and how the users relate to information as part of communication
networks in different ways. Parallel to such convergence processes some literacy theorists have sought
to hold together the many new literacies under some umbrella concepts stressing the plurality of
literacies, such as ‘multiliteracies’ (Cope & Kalantzis 2000, Snyder 2002) and ‘metamedia literacy’
(Lemke 1998). According to Kellner (2002: 163), “The term ‘multiple literacies’ points to the many
different kinds of literacies needed to access, interpret, criticise, and participate in the emergent new
forms of culture and society.” Kress (2003) however argues against the multiplicity of literacies,
suggesting that it leads to serious conceptual confusion. He believes that instead of taking this path,
it is necessary to develop a new theoretical framework for literacy which can use a single set of
concepts to address the various aspects of literacy.
This implies that we constantly have to ask the more general question of what it means to ‘read’ and
‘write’ in a culture, and thereby how we learn (Pahl & Rowsell 2005). In the ‘Handbook of Literacy
and Technology’, with the subtitle ‘Transformations in a Post-Typographic World’, D. Reinking et al.
(1998) present several perspectives on how the development of digital technologies changes
conceptions of text, of readers and writers and ultimately of literacy itself. This implies that media
literacy relates to changes in traditional cultural techniques like reading and writing, and yet
meanwhile opening up new dimensions to what it means to be a competent reader and writer in
our culture.
Four areas where we see digital media having an impact on media use and literacy practices by young
people are;
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A participatory culture: This term from H. Jenkins (2006) relates to ways of participating and
sharing with others. In later years this has become more apparent through social networking sites
as an interconnection between online and offline participation patterns.
• Information access: Since the introduction of the World Wide Web, one of the most obvious
advantages of digital media is access to information. The possibilities are endless and mark a
significant difference from the book age is the easy access to information provided by the Internet.
In addition it has created possibilities for everyone to provide and share information online. One
example is Wikipedia as a net-based lexicon where everybody can contribute. This, of course,
demands more of the user to evaluate the information provided and responsibility in creating
content.
• Communication possibilities: The development of e-mail, chat, sms and online communities has
created new conditions for communication and communicative competence as a skill for the 21
century.
• Content production: An important change in literacy practices is that everybody potentially can
be producers of content that can be shared with large numbers of other users on sites like MySpace
and YouTube. Text-production has increased a lot in our culture, and software tools make it
easy to edit films, music and so forth, something that has been termed as remixing (Erstad 2008).
•
The key questions then become; what are the key literacies and competencies for the 21st century,
and how can we develop an education system that is adjusted to face these challenges of literacy
development in the future? And what do young people really know about media, and what
implications does this have for learning in educational settings? Technology serves both as a driver
and a lever for these transformations.
Media literacy for the 21st century
Some of the definitions and frameworks on media literacy that have been developed are conceiving
this in a narrow sense as skills that can be broken down to certain operations. One example is the
book ‘Media literacy’ (2001) by W.J. Potter, where specific skills and cognitive abilities in analysing
content in the media are highlighted. However, other definitions and frameworks are conceiving
media literacy more broadly. This is expressed in books by D. Buckingham (2003, 2007), where
media literacy is building on a cultural studies tradition of how young people are engaged in using
media in different ways and as a critique of the marketing of educational technology as a salvation
for school learning. With reference to the Swedish literature theorist J. Thavenius (1995) we might
also see this broader conception of media literacy as being related to the German term ‘bildung’,
which is similar to ‘to be literate’ in English.
During the last decade several initiatives have been taken for developing typologies and frameworks
for what has been called digital literacies (Lankshear & Knobel 2008). The different definitions and
conceptions of digital literacy have often been related to certain frameworks and the development
of standards for educational practices. In January 2001, the Educational Testing Service (ETS), in
the U.S., assembled a panel to develop a workable framework for what they called ICT Literacy.
The outcome was the report Digital Transformation. A Framework for ICT Literacy (ETS 2002).
From my own research on the educational use of digital technologies I have suggested a few
categories, elaborated from the ETS framework, to specify some aspects of media literacy in school
practices using digital tools (Erstad 2005). This is thought of as different aspects of how we
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understand young people’s use of digital technologies in learning activities at school, and as a tool
for assessing what they can and cannot do with digital media. These are:
Table 1: Different aspects and categories of media literacy.
Basic skills
Be able to open software, sort out and save information on the computer, and other
simple skills in using the computer and software.
Download
Be able to download different information types from the Internet.
Search
Know about and how to get access to information.
Navigate
Be able to orient oneself in digital networks, learning strategies in using the Internet.
Classify
Be able to organize information according to a certain classification scheme or genre.
Integrate
Be able to compare and put together different types of information related to multimodal
texts.
Evaluate
Be able to check and evaluate the information one seeks to get from searching the
Internet. Be able to judge the quality, relevance, objectivity and usefulness of the
information one has found. Critical evaluation of sources.
Communicate
Be able to communicate information and express oneself through different mediational
means.
Cooperate
Be able to take part in net-based interactions of learning, and take advantage of digital
technology to cooperate and take part in networks.
Create
Be able to produce and create different forms of information as multimodal texts, make
web pages, and so forth. Be able to develop something new by using specific tools and
software. Remixing different existing texts into something new.
This list is one step in the direction towards an operational definition of what we mean by media
literacy in school practices. The categories consist of general competencies that are not connected
to specific subjects in school or specific technologies. They can be taught and are not only related
to what is learned in school settings, but also to situations outside the school.
Other frameworks have used ‘digital competence’ as an overall term. One example is the working
group on “key competences” of the European Commission and their report ‘Key Competences for
Lifelong Learning: a European Reference Framework’. This framework identifies digital
competence as one of the eight domains of key competences, defining it as “the confident and critical
use of Information Society Technologies for work, leisure and communication. These competences are
related to logical and critical thinking, to high-level information management skills and to well-developed
communication skills. At the most basic level, ICT skills comprise the use of multi-media technology to
retrieve, assess, store, produce, present and exchange information, and to communicate and participate in
networks via the Internet.” (European Commission 2006: 14). Digital competence in this framework
encompasses knowledge, skills and attitudes related to such technologies.
Of special importance in an educational conception of media literacy are the possibilities the
development of digital media, such as the Internet (Web 2.0) and editing software, have provided
for user-generated content creation. Content can be downloaded from the Internet, remixed (Lessig
2008) and put together in new ways, and then uploaded on the Internet for others to use further in
a potentially endless production process. This way of working with content fundamentally changes
the traditional way of creating content, known through the book. This ‘production mode’ and the
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new competencies of remixing (Erstad 2008) have also raised issues about students’ active roles in
knowledge practices.
The critical point now is to bring the policy-agenda and the more normative research arguing for
the necessity of media literacy more in touch with studying knowledge practices, and how digital
media create conditions for change and transition within such practices. As shown in this section,
there are different frameworks to relate to in our understanding of media literacy. However, the key
challenge is to go deeper into the implications of the increased use of new technologies in educational
practices.
Media literacies in practice
In this section, different aspects of media literacies using digital tools as part of school practices will
be highlighted. In addition we need to be informed about the media practices of young people
outside schools. The objective here is not to elaborate on all the different details of media literacy
mentioned above, but rather to show different approaches to studying media literacies in school
practices. In the last part of this section I will propose a way of understanding different dimensions
of media literacies in educational settings.
Testing media literacy
Some countries, like Australia, the USA, Norway and Hong Kong, have developed specific tests to
measure students’ media literacy focusing on certain aspects of digital media. The first attempt was
made by the ISTE in the USA (see www.iste.org/, NETS standards), where students, teachers and
administrators can click on different online assignments and get a profile of their digital literacy
skills.
In Norway, testing of digital competence was introduced in the ITU Monitor 2009 study (Hatlevik,
Ottestad, Skaug, Kløvstad & Berge 2009). The results show a strong relationship between students’
digital competence and their general school performance and the educational background of the
parents. The strength of this study is how it studies digital competence as interconnected with issues
of access, school leadership, teacher competence and school development.
A more elaborate test, in the sense that it is using more simulation tools and not so related to specific
school subjects, has been developed in Australia. This test is also more based on performance
assessment in solving problems than just skills in operating the technology. In their report from the
first phase Ainley, Fraillon and Freeman (2007) present the results from a study conducted in 2005
involving approximately 7400 students from Years 6 and 10 in around 520 schools across Australia.
By having two year-groups it also traces progressions in what they call ICT Literacy.
The items distributed across the ICT literacy scale were used to develop a progress map that could
be interpreted in terms of the skills and understanding demonstrated by students in their responses
to the items. In this case six proficiency levels were defined and descriptions were developed to
characterize typical student performance at each level. The levels and the percentage on each level
are used to summarize the performance of students overall, and to compare performances across
subgroups of students.
Table 2: ICT Literacy Profiles for Year 6 and Year 10, Ainley et al. 2007:x
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Year 6
Year 10
0%
Level 6 Students working at level 6 create information products that show
evidence of technical proficiency, and careful planning and review. They use
software features to organize information and to synthesise and represent data
as integrated complete information products. They design information
products consistent with the conventions of specific communication modes
and audiences and use available software features to enhance the
communicative effect of their work.
0.4%
0.1%
Level 5 Students working at level 5 evaluate the credibility of information from
electronic sources and select the most relevant information to use for a specific
communicative purpose. They create information products that show evidence
of planning and technical competence. They use software features to reshape
and present information graphically consistent with presentation conventions.
They design information products that combine different elements and
accurately represent their source data. They use available software features to
enhance the appearance of their information products.
11.9%
7.7%
Level 4 Students working at level 4 generate well targeted searches for electronic
information sources and select relevant information from within sources to
meet a specific purpose. They create information products with simple linear
structures and use software commands to edit and reformat information
products in ways that demonstrate some consideration of audience and
communicative purpose. They recognise situations in which ICT misuse may
occur and explain how specific protocols can prevent this.
48.9%
40.8%
Level 3 Students working at level 3 generate simple general search questions
and select the best information source to meet a specific purpose. They retrieve
information from given electronic sources to answer specific, concrete
questions. They assemble information in a provided simple linear order to
create information products. They use conventionally recognised software
commands to edit and reformat information products. They recognise
common examples in which ICT misuse may occur and suggest ways of
avoiding them.
32.0%
38.8%
Level 2 Students working at level 2 locate simple, explicit information from
within a given electronic source. They add content to and make simple changes
to existing information products when instructed. They edit information
products to create products that show limited consistency of design and
information management. They recognise and identify basic ICT electronic
security and health and safety usage issues and practices.
6.4%
12.6%
Level 1 Students working at level 1 perform basic tasks using computers and
software. They implement the most commonly used file management and
software commands when instructed. They recognise the most commonly used
ICT terminology and functions.
0.4%
Only eight per cent of Year 6 students performed at level 4 or above compared to 61 per cent of
Year 10 students. In contrast 51 per cent of Year 6 students performed at level 2 or below compared
to 7 per cent of Year 10 students.
ICT literacy was strongly associated with socioeconomic background. Approximately two thirds
(68%) of Year 6 students whose parents were “senior managers and professionals” attained the
proficient standard compared to approximately one third (32%) of students whose parents were in
“unskilled manual, office and sales” occupations. Three quarters (75%) of Year 10 students whose
parents were “senior managers and professionals” attained the proficient standard compared to just
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less than half (49%) of students whose parents were in “unskilled manual, office and sales”
occupations.
There were no statistically significant gender differences in the percentage attaining the proficient
standard at either Year 6 or Year 10. There was no difference in ICT literacy associated with language
background. They conclude that:
One should not assume that students are uniformly becoming adept because they use ICT so widely
in their daily lives. The results of the assessment survey suggest that students use ICT in a relatively
limited way and this is reflected in the overall level of ICT literacy. Communication with peers and
using the Internet to look up information are frequent applications but there is much less frequent
use of applications that involve creating, analyzing or transforming information. There are
substantial differences between Year 6 and Year 10 suggesting that considerable growth in ICT
proficiency takes place over these four years. Within each Year level there are differences associated
with socioeconomic background, indigenous status and remote geographic locations (compared to
metropolitan locations). (Ainley et al. 2007:xiv).
This assessment approach to media literacy is still in an initial phase, and several initiatives in
different countries are now also being taken with the new IEA study called ‘International Computer
and Information Literacy Study’ (ICILS). The important message from the Australian study is that
this should not only be seen as a summative score of certain skills, but to a larger extent as an
orientation towards formative assessment where students, both individually and collaboratively,
perform certain tasks of problem solving.
Project-based activities in schools
My own research has shown that digital media are used most extensively and also in the most
integrated educational ways as part of project work in schools (Erstad 2005; Erstad et al. 2005).
Below is a description from one project.
This project took place between two lower secondary schools, one in the Eastern part of Oslo and
one in the Western suburbs. At each school a group of students (about 20 in the East, 13-14 year
olds, and about 40 in the West, 14-15 year olds) took part in the project during a two-week period.
The school in the Western suburbs had students from families with a high socio-economic status
with only one student who was non-white. At the school in the Eastern inner city part of Oslo the
students came from many different cultural backgrounds with about 65% of the students with
minority speaking families and with low socio-economic status. The teachers decided that the
collaborative project between the students at the two schools should be on prejudices about living
in the East and the West of Oslo, and that they should use digital technology as a central part of
the collaborative work.
In the project the students used different digital tools to collaborate and create an online newspaper,
one for each school, which consisted of reports about the students at the other school and their
community, as well as their own. The project was triggered by several news reports in a national
paper at the same time, showing that the average life expectancy between the two neighbourhoods
differed by eight years, lower in the East than in the West of Oslo. This shocked the students and
motivated them to find out more about this.
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In each group they divided themselves into an editorial board with responsibilities for different
sections of the paper; on culture, religion and ethics, sport, statistics about their communities and
interviews with inhabitants. They created and sent questions to each other, using a collaborative
online platform and msn. Halfway through the project a group of students from each school
travelled, without the teachers, to visit the students at the other school using public transportation.
None of the students had ever been in the area of the other school. To document this visit each
group made a video film to use in their own production.
Throughout the project the students worked with different modalities and information sources in
the making of the online newspapers. They shifted on working individually on different computers
looking for images, statistical data, graphs, illustrations, written texts, or editing audio interviews
with players from the local soccer team, editing the video films to put on the web, and then got
together to negotiate how to integrate and remix the different content sources into something new
in their online newspaper. The two online papers turned out very different: the one from the school
in the West possessed different visual effects, with a high quantity of images on the front page and
with links to other sections of the paper consisting of more text and images. The online paper from
the Eastern school was simpler in the aesthetics on the front page, with more video material, for
example, video interviews with students at their own school and interviews with students from the
other school recorded during their visit.
Their media literacy is expressed as part of their searches for information and sending content
between the two schools. The students combined the different content they found on the Internet
with their own work, either collaboratively written texts or audio and video tapes. The editorial
group at each school had the last word concerning how things should be presented in their online
newspaper. Video observations of the two groups showed a very intense and creative process among
the students working with different materials and sending them between the two schools. As shown
above, the students involved in this project were engaged on a personal level, drawing on experiences
from outside the school, yet reworking such experiences within a school context. In negotiating
meaning making about differences and similarities between the two communities in Oslo the
students started reflecting on their own lives, which was shown in the chapters they wrote in the
online newspapers.
Of special importance in this project was the question of whether the students could trust the
information they gained access to, which was stressed by the teachers throughout the project. For
example, in one incident during the school visit by students from the West to the school in the East,
the visiting students were given a lot of false information by the students in the East, about growing
up in the East, about drugs, violence and other things, that the students from the West published
in their online paper when they returned. When the teachers discovered this it created a lot of
discussion about information sources and responsibilities when publishing something on the
Internet for others to read.
Discussion
So what can we draw from the different sections above, that in different ways raise issues about
educating the digital generation. These sections show different approaches and aspects of the
educational implications of young peoples’ use of digital media, especially linked to digital literacy.
The first section is more specific about elements of media literacy, which can be measured through
tests, and as an expression of how we can find out more about what students do and do not know
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about the way they use digital media. In the second section one example of how this might be
expressed as part of project work is mentioned. Project work provides some other possibilities apart
from ordinary classroom teaching in the way students are engaged in problem solving, which is a
key competency for the 21st century (see www.atc21s.org). Digital media are here both a resource
for these students’ learning, but also something they reflect on; concerning information sources,
how they collaborate, both within and between schools, and about content creation.
Based on these two sections five dimensions can be elaborated, which highlight different aspects of
how we understand media literacies as part of school-based learning.
Dimension 1: Basic skills
This has traditionally been expressed as certification of skills for teachers and students. It is a profile
of how good you are at performing certain tasks in operating the computer, the Internet or software.
The problem with this approach is that the technology changes all the time, and it is difficult to
develop standardizations that will last over time. And, as expressed by the young people in the
sections above, handling the technology is something you explore and learn when needed. Still, not
all students have the same skills in operating the technology, and teachers should track the levels of
their students and use this as a starting point for how technology is used in learning activities.
Dimension 2: Media as an object of analysis
One aspect of media literacy in schools is the importance media and technology have as a knowledge
domain in itself. During the last 40 years, media culture has become more and more evident in all
levels of society. In this sense it has become a knowledge domain of importance for students to know
about. This has traditionally been part of media education in school, but since the impact of digital
media it has become an important part of many subjects in school. Based on what has been discussed
above, the technology itself is something young people relate to, but do not have any understating
of. In this sense issues like media history, media genres and media and power become important
parts of media literacy.
Dimension 3: Knowledge building in subject domains
This relates to how new technologies change fundamental issues within established school subjects.
We have seen this before when the calculator was introduced in mathematics, and the disputes this
created about how mathematics as a subject changed because of this. The same can be said about
different digital media and software packages that are introduced in different subjects. How does it
change the knowledge structures within the subject itself, what are considered core knowledge
elements, and how do students build knowledge and approach these knowledge structures?
Knowledge is thereby seen as interconnected with the cultural tools we have available, and that this
changes over time.
Dimension 4: Learning strategies
This dimension extends across different subject areas, and is more about the ways students approach
information and knowledge. This has been important before in the way students might have
problems in developing good strategies for how they learn, and their self-regulated learning. Related
to digital media, this dimension has become even more important. The development of information
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sources on the Internet has created greater challenges in respect of student competency when
searching for information, evaluating such sources and using information to build knowledge. In
addition, students need to develop good strategies for how they can use information to learn more;
that is to learn how to learn.
Dimension 5: Digital Bildung/Cultural competence
This last dimension points towards broader issues about learning in our culture. Issues relating to
what is called ‘digital bildung’, or cultural competence, are more concerned with the overall
challenges of being part of a digital culture. It is about functioning optimally in a media culture and
a knowledge society, and to be able to be informed to make decisions of importance for oneself as
a citizen and for society as a whole, for example when elections become digitalized and political
debates takes place online. It is also about how learning is connected to identity and what I have
described above as students’ learning lives across different contexts and our communicative
competence in using the different cultural tools available to us. This approach to learning and literacy
is more holistic and integrated about educating the digital generation.
Inclusion or exclusion?
The argument in this article has been to develop a more cohesive approach to our conceptualizations
of a new digital generation. It is rather, still, a generation that uses many different media, both
analogue and digital, in the everyday lives of those concerned. At the same time it is clear that young
people growing up today are experiencing important aspects of the implications of digital media on
our culture. New conceptions of literacy exemplify many of the challenges of educating the digital
generation.
However, there is one question that is of key importance for the educational prospects for a digital
generation, and that is; to what extent will we see new divisions in our societies, locally, nationally
and globally, about who will become included or excluded (Warschauer 2004)? The digital divide
has mainly been discussed as an issue related to access and gender differences. It is more important
today to see this as an issue of competence and literacy, or more generally as Bildung for a digital
age. This would imply knowing how to navigate in the information jungle on the Internet, to create,
to communicate and so forth. This is where issues of media literacy and empowerment come in.
In her book ‘Literacy for sustainable development in the age of information’ (1999) Naz Rassool argues
that research perspectives on technology and literacy need to re-conceptualise power structures
within the information society, with an emphasis on ‘communicative competence’ in relation to
democratic citizenship. Digital technologies create new possibilities for how people relate to each
other, how knowledge is defined in negotiations between those involved and how it changes our
conception of learning environments in which the participants make meaning. Empowerment is
related to the active use of different tools, which must be based on the prerequisite that those involved
have the competence and critical perspective for how to use them for learning. Literacy, seen in this
way, implies processes of inclusion and exclusion. Some have the skills and know-how to use them
for personal development, others do not. Schooling is meant to counteract such cultural processes
of exclusion.
There is great variation in how digitally competent and technologically interested young people are.
Sonia Livingstone’s (2009) studies of the bedroom cultures of young people using digital media in
68
the UK is an example of studies that raise critical questions about what we mean by ‘digital youth’
and the role of media in young people’s everyday lives. Such studies show that not all young people
are as technology savvy as the public image might imply.
The importance of educating the digital generation is not so much about being able to use digital
media in and out of school, than it is about creating a space for reflection and the building of
knowledge that will help all students participate as citizens in a digital culture. In this sense we have
to re-evaluate our socio-cultural constructions of the school-aged learner, to prevent new
marginalizing mechanisms from developing.
What will life be like for citizens in societies that are becoming increasingly more dependent on
digital media in every part of their social lives? How should we, in our research efforts, try to grasp
those aspects of skills, competencies and literacies that are important for being a citizen with the
necessary knowledge base to take part in our society? This of course also raises some basic questions
about the role of schools in our societies. Schools would then still be important social institutions
as a learning space for all young people growing up, but just one of several learning spaces that
children and youth relate to in their daily lives. In the next few years it will be critical to debate and
research these issues and to move towards a better understanding of what 21st century competencies
really are.
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1
See also book by Nordicom, www.nordicom.gu.se/clearinghouse.php?portal=publ&main=info_publ2.php&ex=288&me=3,
Young People in the European Digital Media Landscape. A Statistical Overview with an Introduction by Sonia Livingstone and
Leslie Haddon.
72
ARTICLES
A Critical Perspective on Online Safety
Measures
Elza Dunkels
____________
Elza Dunkels
[email protected]
English abstract
The Nordic countries have enjoyed mass use of the Internet at home and in schools since the mid-1990’s. Children
have been noted to have rapidly taken the Internet into possession and to have made use of the affordances (Greeno,
1994) of Internet communication. However, media coverage of how children take on, and learn what the Internet has
to offer has often been of a negative kind. Blazing headlines portray a generation in bottomless danger where children
are defined both as possible victims and perpetrators. Another common attribute of this media coverage is the exoticising
of young people’s net cultures – describing the young and their cultures as profoundly different from earlier generations
and elevating the “colourful and the bizarre” (Coffey et al., 1999, p. 169) to a level where it appears normal for this
particular generation. In this setting safe use guides – tips for parents and children on how to keep safe on the Internet
– began to appear. They were often composed by teachers, concerned parents, non-governmental organisations and in
some cases governments. The safe use guides were disseminated online in different forums aimed at concerned adults.
In this article I will give a brief description of current online safety issues and examine them critically. My earlier research
– 104 interviews with 12-year old Swedes conducted in 2004-2005 (Dunkels, 2007) and a study of European safe use
guides conducted in 2008 (Lüders et al., 2009) left me with a number of questions. I could see that safe use guides were
strikingly similar, despite their origin, and I could see that they rested upon norms and values that were actually neither
accounted for nor even declared. This article is a literature review of the area with the aim of critically discussing some
of these questions.
Keywords: Online safety and risks, children, internet, literature review, cyberbulling and grooming.
_______________________________________________________________________________________
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Elza Dunkels | A CRITICAL PERSPECTIVE ON ONLINE SAFETY MEASURES
Transforming Internet Use
The use of the Internet as an arena for communication has changed dramatically since the
mid-1990s. In this section I will mention some of these changes that have had an impact on young
people’s use in relation to safe use guides. In the early days of Internet massification one of the most
common applications was the open chat room, where you typically met strangers and talked to them
(Sjöberg, 2002). Today these meeting places are mostly disregarded by young Internet users
(Dunkels, 2007). Instead, we have seen the emergence of communications’ tools that fill most of
young people’s interaction needs: the two most important ones being instant messaging tools and
net communities. Both these types of interaction tools usually require members to log into their
account before viewing other member’s profiles and interacting with others, and this restricts the
contacts to pre-defined friends or other, easily identifiable, members. The fact that young people
today interact with those they already know from real life can be viewed as a general development
of online interaction (Findahl, 2010). In the early days of Internet communication, much of the
thrill involved merely being online, but today the communication tools have changed considerably.
Furthermore, Internet use has developed along two main paths; towards convergence and
participatory content respectively (Jenkins, 2003). Convergence refers to the fact that many
applications attempt to combine different tools so that the user needs to log in to fewer accounts.
For example, a net community may provide multiple services such as chat, instant messaging, a blog,
a notice board, e-mail and news feed. Moreover, some completely new tools have emerged, tools
whose only function is to combine the user’s different interaction applications. This means that the
user can log into one single account to reach all her accounts. The appearance of participatory content
refers to the increased possibilities for creating and disseminating material over the Internet. The
Internet has made it easier and cheaper to publish information, but it is only in the 2000’s that
publishing has become accessible to practically any Internet user. The emergence of web interface
publishing, where blogs feature heavily, combined with steadily decreasing prices for personal
computers, has paved the way for a mass movement in publishing one’s own material. This can be
understood as one of the affordances of contemporary media that young people to a great extent
have identified and made use of; young people are creating texts, music, films and more (Veen &
Vrakking, 2006; Ito et al, 2008). The Internet has developed from being an extension of traditional
media, where transmitters and receivers were clearly identifiable parties, towards a more complex
structure where amateurs also can be producers (van Dijck, 2009).
Children and the Internet
Children’s living conditions can be described using the intersection of parameters such as age,
gender, social class and ethnicity. This applies to any age, but age as a systemic parameter becomes
especially interesting when we discuss risks on the Internet because of the persistent notion of a
generational gap. The construction of childhood (James & Prout, 1997) as a separate and
distinguishable part of life underpins the concept of generational differences. Prensky (2001)
introduced the expressions digital natives and digital immigrants to portray the different generations’
different attitudes towards the Internet. This difference can also be detected in the many other
attempts to label the young in relation to technology. The young have been given epithets such as
the Electronic Generation (Buckingham, 2002), the Net Generation (Tapscott, 1998) and Homo
Zappiens (Veen & Vrakking, 2006). Prensky’s dichotomy of natives and immigrants has been
criticised by, among others, Bayne & Ross (2007) for simplifying the matter and for stressing the
differences too much. My interpretation of Prensky’s idea is that the metaphor serves as a pedagogical
73
aid to help us understand; by applying knowledge we already have, concerning a well-known area,
we can more easily understand this new area. Prensky argues that the digital immigrants should take
on the perspective of the natives and make use of their knowledge in order to improve the educational
system. Other researchers, such as Tingstad (2003), Veen & Vrakking (2006), Dunkels (2007) and
Moinian (2007) have also stressed the importance of trying to view contemporary phenomena from
the vantage points of the young users. Herring (2008) even calls for a paradigm shift in this kind of
research, stressing the need for both a change in methodology and for contextualised interpretations
(see also Sjöberg in this volume).
Using the generational angle is enticing when you analyse the different conditions under which the
generations have been brought up. Digital natives and digital immigrants can be useful images to
describe differences but they hide the dividing factors within the generations; skills and access to
computers and the Internet can differ very much. Bennett et al. (2008) argue that there is no real
support for the claim that knowledge of contemporary technology is universal and comparable
among the younger generation. They refer to research that implies that there are in fact potential
differences in skills that can be ascribed class, gender and ethnicity. Furthermore, from von Feilitzen’s
research overview from 2009 it is clear that the Internet is not one medium, in the sense of old mass
media, but rather a diverse, almost limitless, medium which is hard to describe using existing terms.
von Feilitzen’s (2009) overview also emphasises the fact that Internet users can take on different
roles; producer, consumer, participant. Such a diversified area as IT thus calls for an extreme variety
of skills; it is not possible to master IT as a whole. There can be skills in the technology itself, artistic
expression, learning, teaching, communication, to mention a few diverse areas. These skills may
differ between and among generations, along with different views of contemporary phenomena.
Larsen (2008) gives an example of how a young girl publishes her portrait on a website aimed at her
closest friends. Adults view this as a potential risk since they identify the infinite audience for her
portrait. Larsen explains this using Scollon’s geographies of discourses to label the girl’s actions as local;
aimed at her friends and the adults’ actions as global; they worry that the entire world might see the
image. This discrepancy between the actor’s intentions and the surrounding world’s understanding
of it is also described by Nigård (2009). Nigård interviewed young people about their publishing
of self portraits with sexual connotations and in many cases the young person and her audience had
very different views and expectations in relation to the same incident.
Understanding how the different views of adults and children may lead to questions of power –
power to speak and power over resources. Children are often represented and spoken for (Oswell,
1999), but we very seldom create arenas to give voice to them. In this context the Internet may be
interpreted as an arena for expression and as such an arena of unusually widespread access. Hernwall
(2003) also points out that the Internet can become an arena for transgressing physical boundaries,
such as age. Furthermore, Internet access is a question of economic and infrastructural resources
and as Jones (2008) points out, children are dependent on family resources, but they have no control
over these resources. An emerging academic interest is that of childism (Alderson, 2005), a
perspective that recognizes power structures concerning age similar to those we acknowledge
regarding gender and ethnicity (Dunkels, 2007). When age and power are intersected in this way,
new questions and academic challenges appear. The power dimension can thus be seen as a backdrop for the concepts of online safety, discussed in the following section.
Online safety?
History shows that mass use of a new medium is followed by an emotional reaction. These emotional
reactions, called media panics (Drotner, 1999), technopanics (Marwick, 2008) and moral panics
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(Springhall, 1998) typically express anxiety over young people’s use of some new technology. A vital
part of these reactions is to list the possible risks of said medium and consequently list appropriate
safety measures or strategies. The same development can be seen regarding young people’s Internet
use. In this article risk is defined as possible negative outcomes and safety measures or strategies as
actions undertaken to avoid or counteract risk.
Preventing risks on the Internet has been a task assumed by governments, educational institutions
and non-governmental organisations such as The Red Cross and Save the Children. It is possible
to divide safety strategies into three, partly overlapping, main levels: legal, infrastructural and
personal. At the legal level several steps have been taken to update legislation in accordance with
technological developments such as finding solutions to file sharing issues, finding ways to prevent
adult predators from pursuing victims and regulating how personal data may be handled. At the
infrastructural level, legal and self-regulation measures have been taken to stop illegal and unethical
use of the Internet; two examples are child pornography filters and surveillance of data traffic. At
the personal level the safety strategies have targeted possible victims and perpetrators with regulations
and information campaigns. For this article the third, personal, level is the most relevant, which is
why the focus will be on safety strategies directly aimed at children and parents. There has in fact
been clear family focus on how the questions of personal online safety are addressed, defining parents
as the natural level of responsibility. Therefore many of the safe use guides that have been published
since the mid-1990’s target parents and children as actors.
Any safety strategy is based on calculations of risk; how grave is the danger, how much freedom can
be sacrificed in relation to how much is to be gained. To underpin these assumptions we must
therefore ascertain under what circumstances Internet use becomes unsafe. As an example, the
Eurobarometer (European Commission, 2008), lists five possible strategies for parents supervising
their children’s Internet use: staying nearby whenever the child is online, checking their child’s email or instant messaging account, specifying rules for their child’s Internet usage, installing filtering
software and installing monitoring software. A number of implicit ideas underpin this listing and I
will give two examples. First, the fact that supervising is mentioned as a strategy in the first place
suggests a family construction in which parents and children have a supervisor-supervised
relationship. Secondly, the idea of parents’ legal and ethical rights to access a child’s e-mail and
instant messaging account is a prerequisite for the listing. Thus, the way we talk about and practice
online safety reveals how we view children and childhood.
A growing area of research is interested in whether a safety strategy actually makes sense in the
context of young Internet users. As an example the Swedish Data Inspection Board (2009) national
survey of 14-18-year olds reveals that only 25% of them use the abuse function on social networking
sites. The abuse function is a tool that content providers have agreed on placing on every page of
young people’s online meeting places. According to the Swedish Data Inspection Board these low
figures speak against other results confirming that the abuse function is in fact an efficient tool since
only 15% reported “it didn’t work sufficiently or that nothing happened after it was used” (Swedish
Data Inspection Board, 2009: 9). However, there is another possible explanation for the figures not
corresponding to each other – the abuse function may be seen as meaningless because there are other
safety strategies that work better. We cannot therefore conclude, from the evidence presented in the
report, that young people “engage in unsafe behaviours” (Ibid.: 3). Instead, it could prove useful to
attentively study young people’s net cultures with the ambition to understand it from the views of
the young and carefully avoid considering the adults’ views as the norm (see also Sjöberg in this
volume).
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As will be discussed below, the different meanings of the word safety can be responsible for some of
the confusion we see today. For example, the Swedish Data Inspection Board (2009: 9) claims that
the majority of young people “do not adapt their behaviour according to the risks.” As non-risky
behaviour the report mentions encrypting e-mail addresses and e-mails. This claim is made although
there is no evidence that the listed behaviours actually constitute a risk. In fact, we know very little
of what constitutes personal risk online. It seems that some postulations from the early Internet
massification days were nothing more than assumptions, based on hypotheses concerning online
interaction that still remain to be proved. One of these hypotheses concerns sharing personal
information; it was said to be hazardous to share personal information such as “messenger id, e-mail
address, mobile number and any pictures of you, your family or friends” (Think U Know, 2009).
Online anonymity is in fact still one of the most widespread requests in safe use guides (Lüders et
al., 2009). However, there seem to be problems with safe use guides as they are formulated today.
One problem is that there is no proof of any correlation between divulging personal information
and online risk. Another is that some of this advice might in fact be counterproductive. Staksrud et
al. (submitted) and Brandtzæg (2009) claim that anonymity can make some children reveal more
information than they normally would have, thus creating a potentially more dangerous situation
than if the interaction had been open. Because of inherent characteristics of computer mediated
interaction, which Suler (2005) calls the online disinhibition effect, children may act in a less inhibited
fashion when the online setting decrees anonymity. This disinhibition can in turn lead to risky
behaviour, children possibly divulging to potential perpetrators that they are unhappy, attentionseeking, etc. Along the same lines Shifman & Varsano (2007) analysed what they call “clean joke”
websites – websites that have been filtered for certain content in order to make them appropriate
for children and young people. Their conclusion is that letting children use clean joke websites may
be even more dangerous than letting them use non-filtered sites, since the idea of clean jokes
“encourages parents to let down their guard and be less critical about the values to which they expose
their children” (Shifman & Varsano, 2007, p. 8). These researchers imply that some safety strategies
undertaken by adults cannot only be ineffective, but even counterproductive and thus work against
their goals. Some informants in my study of 12-year olds (Dunkels, 2007) claimed that they would
not tell their parents if anything unpleasant happened, because they then would risk that their
parents, out of concern, would shut them off the Internet. This incites the question of whether the
safe use guides can in fact become counterproductive. These are important results that urge us to
carefully consider safety measures and make sure that they are meaningful for young Internet users.
Risk and Safety: definitions
In order to understand online risk and safety we need to problematize these two concepts, both of
which have been used quite freely, without actual definitions.
Risk can be seen as a social construction and at the same time as an objective reality and thus
something that changes over time and between cultures. The notion of risk is highly connected to
the values and perceived norms of the individuals and groups that discuss it. For example, the
perception of how much and what information you share with others may very well vary among
cultures, countries and groups of people. On the other hand it might be possible to find risks that
are recognised as risks by practically anyone such as sexual assault, theft and corporal and mental
abuse. Therefore when discussing risks we must make certain that we agree on what constitutes a
risk and, moreover, that we understand that risk is not a cross-cultural and fixed concept. This is
not to say that the conception of risk is in constant flux or to play down the grave dangers facing
children online on a daily basis. Rather, it is to emphasise the importance of continuously discussing
76
the notion of risk so that we are not tempted to think that we can reach consensus effortlessly. Yet
another problem with the concept of risk is taken up by Sharples et al (2009) who point out that
there can be a difference between likely risk and worst-case risk. This distinction is however seldom
seen in media reports on children and the Internet.
Safety is another issue that has confusing semantics attached to it. Safety has been used to label very
different concepts such as technical safety and personal safety. Technical safety is an area that deals
with data viruses and firewalls, where the problems are of a technical nature, while personal safety
refers to privacy issues and how to avoid being harmed or deceived online. The recommendations
for young people’s Internet safety will thus differ depending on whether we define safety as technical
or personal. Oswell (1999) argues that the apparent straightforwardness of the question of how to
protect our children online, in fact conceals the question of who really has the right to be concerned
about these questions when the problems and their solutions are defined.
Children at risk
Children’s Internet behaviour has been a subject of adult interest since the early Internet
massification in the mid-1990s. To some extent the reactions to young people’s Internet use have
been emotional, portraying a dystopic future and all children as potential victims. These emotional
responses have been labelled media panics by Drotner (1999) who, among others, claims that this
is a recurring phenomenon that unavoidably follows the introduction of new media. Drotner also
argues that as a group we suffer from historical amnesia – we fail to learn from what earlier technology
shifts might teach us – and so history repeats itself with every introduction of a new medium.
The European Union funded project EU Kids Online deals with safety and risks concerning young
people and new media (Hasebrink et al., 2008). Some of the risks listed are illegal content,
paedophiles and grooming, harmful or offensive content, cyber-bullying, stalking, harassment,
gambling, financial scams, invasions or abuse of privacy. The European Commission (2008) further
divides the risks into illegal material and harmful material, to stress that these are not necessarily the
same. However, Oswell (1999) claims that the European Union overlooks the fact that problematic
content can be divided into a number of sub-groups. The most obvious is content that harms
children when they consume it, but Oswell also identifies four other kinds of problematic content.
First there is content that incites the consumer to harm children and second content that harms
children in the process of production. Both of these can, for example, contain child pornography;
in the way that this content can provoke adults to abuse children and that the production process
itself typically constitutes sexual abuse towards a child. In the third group we have, for example,
discrimination, content which is harmful because of its very nature, no matter what, or even if it
has an effect. The fourth group is content which is “harmful to the child neither in the context of
production nor consumption, but which constitutes a violation of the image of the child (e.g.,
morphing images of children in sexually explicit situations)” (Oswell, 1999, p. 45). In the following
I will illustrate online risk by using two of the risks mentioned in Hasebrink et al. (2008): cyber
bullying and grooming.
Cyber Bullying
Cyber bullying has been in the headlines as a threat since the late 1990’s. Shariff (2008) lists some
important and distinguishing characteristics of cyber bullying:
77
Anonymity; the Internet allows for the targeting of victims without being easily detected. The
bully’s true identity can be hidden by screen names.
• An infinite audience; the possibility for hundreds of bullies and bystanders to get involved in the
abuse.
• Permanence of expression; abusive materials are difficult to remove once published online.
•
However, these traits of cyber bullying might not be as distinguishing as they may first seem. For
instance, there may be a difference between actual anonymity and perceptible anonymity (Dunkels,
2007). Looking at the Internet use patterns of young people, many online contacts are the same as
real life contacts; the parties are known to each other also in the traditional sense. It is in fact quite
uncommon to have mostly strictly online contacts even though there are some who for different
reasons mostly connect with formerly unknown people. This is in agreement with the altered
communication patterns, from the more random connections of the 1990s to the more deliberate
links of today. So the anonymity issue might not be as strong today as it was ten years ago.
Furthermore, the notion of an infinite audience needs problematisation, because we do not know
for a fact that an infinite audience is actually larger than a fixed audience. To clarify, we do not
know from empirical evidence that someone who is not connected in any way to the victim is as
interested in watching the documented bullying incident as someone who actually knows the victim.
Therefore, we cannot conclude that the audience is bigger only from the fact that the possible
audience is bigger. There are, no doubt, documented incidences where the audience of a bullying
incident has become gigantic, with severe consequences for the victim. One example of this is the
story of the Star Wars Kid (Wikipedia, 2009), a 14-year-old boy whose homemade film of himself
acting out a scene from the movie Star Wars became one of the most popular films on the Internet
that year. The boy was harassed by his school mates and unknown people from all over the world
and his parents eventually filed a lawsuit against some of the children at school (Globe & Mail,
2007). However, these stories constitute a few exceptional cases and it is too early to say that the
Internet has actually changed the conditions for bullying on more than a superficial level. The fact
remains that whenever a child is bullied, regardless of the geographical or technological context, it
is a personal tragedy for the victim and a situation that society generally does not accept. The case
mentioned above also illustrates the fact that not only does the bullying incident or the abusive
material have a potentially larger audience, but also that the information that someone is bullied
can be disseminated to a potentially larger group. The permanence of expression can be seen as
continuous abuse as every time someone sees the abusive material this can be regarded as further
abuse. There is also another side to the permanence of expression; this condition can be exploited
in order to document incidences or proof of incidences for legal or other processes. This circumstance
can be interpreted as yet another affordance of contemporary media, and some schools have in fact
identified and made use of this to follow up on bullying and harassment among their pupils.
Grooming
Grooming refers to the risk of adult predators seeking contact with possible victims online. Today
we know from the research of Shannon (2007) and Ybarra et al. (2007) that many of the victims of
sexual assault following an online contact already had a troubled real life situation. Many of the
victims lacked parental or other adult support or had a history of being bullied at school. In fact,
recent research has shown that the most probable scenario is one where the perpetrator takes
advantage of the fact that the child needs adult support and attention. Typically, the predator
contacts children who reveal their vulnerability online and then offers to become the adult they seek,
78
slowly building up a manipulative relationship with the child (Shannon, 2007). The first few contact
attempts usually concern everyday topics that anyone could talk about. When this process of
preparing for a crime – grooming – is completed, the potential victim often readily travels to meet
the predator with whom they think they have a parent-child or friendly relationship or even romantic
involvement. In practice, this means that often the deception is on the level of the perpetrator’s
agenda, not on his identity. The predator can be honest regarding his age and name, but sometimes
deceives the child when it comes to his intentions with the relationship. Ybarra & Mitchell (2008)
claim that close to four out of five cases reveal that the perpetrators are truthful regarding their
intentions to have sex with the young person concerned. This knowledge of the grooming process
is in stark contrast to the early assumptions of what could constitute an online threat. In fact, many
of the warnings still presuppose courses of action that are very rare such as a child being deceived
regarding the age and sex of the offender or an offender seeking out a child in real life that he has
found pictures of online. Naturally, there will always be cases that are not typical. However, this
knowledge of how abuse in general occurs can be useful for underpinning safety strategies, which
are discussed in the next section.
Safety Strategies
It is possible to distinguish between two different levels of safety strategies; where children are objects
and subjects respectively. The first is aimed at young people, but formulated by adults; the second
level is young people’s own safety strategies. In the first category one of the most widely spread safety
measures is content filters for personal and public computers. Filters can be built on different
algorithms that filter words, images, meta-data or a combination of these. Another safety strategy
involves compiling white lists of approved websites or other media content. Blacklisting is yet
another method, where the list comprises content that should be avoided. In all these cases the
strategy is to help parents, teachers and other adults to act in a responsible way and to be able to
guide children in their Internet use. Whatever the method of filtering or attempting to compile
white or black lists, some basic issues will remain according to Price & Verhulst (2005). First of all
the user will have to select filtering criteria and the lists to choose from will need to be very long if
they are to fit all kinds of family structures, cultures, ideologies, etc. Secondly, whatever content is
to be filtered out is subject to ideological biases, recognised or not by the users. This is a consequence
of the fact that the software needs to be fed with parameters to be of any use. These parameters will
have to be set by humans at some point, humans who have to decide whether different types of
content are appropriate for children or not. These decisions and their consequences are not likely
to be displayed for the user and so the software user has to trust the ideology of the producer. Thirdly,
because the filters will provoke content providers to circumvent them using all possible means, there
is a risk that small, non-commercial content providers may have trouble coming through the filters
or white lists and thereby become “silenced” (Price & Verhulst, 2005, p. 128). This silencing
becomes even graver since the Internet may be the only channel of public expression accessible for
the small, non-commercial content providers.
Self-regulation – the industry taking on responsibility – is a wide-spread method of preventing risk.
As an example, the European Union countries have the Pan European Game Information system –
PEGI – that aims to “help European parents make informed decisions on buying computer games”
(PEGI, 2009). The PEGI system classifies computer games into eight so-called descriptors: violence,
bad language, fear, drugs, sexual content, discriminating content, gambling and whether the game
can be played online with other people. Any classification will rest upon a set of values, or as Oswell
(1999) puts it “classifications are derived from particular normative (and normalizing) discourses of
79
the child and family” (Oswell, 1999: 51). According to Shifman & Varsano (2007) this is a general
problem with this kind of voluntary gate keeping because the criteria for selection are very rarely
transparent and the users are thus left to rely blindly on the gate keepers. Another more general
problem is that content in many cases is perceived in different ways by different individuals, making
gate keeping hard if not impossible.
When it comes to children’s own safety strategies there are very few studies. My study (Dunkels,
2007) describes the well-functioning safety strategies that most children have. It is noteworthy that
these strategies were developed by the children alone at the computer or together with peers. Teachers
and parents were conspicuous by their absence in this study, which is one of the few that have actually
focused on children’s views on online risks. Furthermore, it was clear that the risks expounded in
the media were not present in the children’s everyday lives. They knew of them by reputation only
and were never really exposed to the grave dangers such as cyber bullying and grooming. The study
paints a positive picture of competent young citizens who have learned how to avoid what they
themselves define as negative on the Internet. However, we do not know for a fact that these counter
strategies actually work should something serious occur. Since the strategies were developed
practically without adult input it is possible that the children did not actually make informed
decisions when they encountered what might have represented a risk. This lack of research regarding
children’s own safety measures is also pointed out by Livingstone & Haddon (2009). Basically the
same stance is taken by Ybarra & Mitchell (2008: 352) when they say that
Thoughtful approaches to prevention that focus on children’s behaviors online (e.g., harassing others)
and their general psychosocial profile (e.g., aggression problems or depressive symptomatology) instead
of particular technologies (which will continue to evolve into new and more interactive applications)
are needed.
There is some emerging research on what actually constitutes online risk, such as Staksrud (2009)
claiming that the children who have the least practice and competence concerning the Internet are
the most exposed to unwanted experiences online. This calls for more research and more critical
questions since it in many ways contradicts general beliefs about children and online safety.
Conclusions
Above I describe how the discourse surrounding online risk has developed since the early days of
Internet massification. From the first general assumptions, based on adult interpretations of this
new medium, via the first studies, to an emerging insight that contextualisation is needed. The
contextualisation – taking in the young user’s own view when analysing contemporary media –
implies that the question of how to counteract online risk for children is more complex than some
of the solutions suggest.
One might describe the present knowledge of online risk as immature, still in its early formative
phase. So, in order to understand this area we need to problematise the concepts of risk and safety
which up until now have been used quite freely, without actual definitions. We need to contextualise
these concepts in relation to how children are constructed in society. This might lead to discovering
that legal and ethical expressions rest upon different constructions of childhood. We need to discuss
what these expressions actually say about the child, childhood and the family; is the child seen as a
competent citizen, is the family constructed hierarchically, is childhood regarded as a state of
becoming rather than being? This kind of analysis of the basis for different safety measures can be
80
one way of addressing the important questions of children’s online safety. Our choices of safety
measures are underpinned by our views of children, childhood and family and this fact needs to be
addressed.
We also need to acknowledge that any gate keeping, self regulation, filtering or classification is
underpinned by a set of values. Not only is this important to discuss in our increasingly global and
diverse society, but just as much in communities that appear homogenous. In countries or cultures
that appear uniform there will still be different views and values. In an apparently diverse society
the different vantage points are more obvious, but they are just as important to discuss when the
de-construction of implicit norms and values is not as transparent.
The notions of risk, safety, childhood and even family as social constructions, possible to deconstruct and question, contradict the concept of compiling lists to fit all. Hence, the extensive
listing that continues on a government level, among non-governmental organisations and down to
educational institutions may be questioned. Safe use guides, white lists, black lists, computer game
classifications are all crude instruments. Furthermore, there is a risk that these crude instruments
could become counterproductive and provoke children to hide their online behaviour from adults.
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