Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Mediatized Childhoods: Discourses, Dilemmas and Directions

  • Chapter
Studies in Modern Childhood

Abstract

The discursive articulation of contemporary childhood takes many forms, and most of these have some connection to media and ICTs (information and communication technologies): children are variously called a zapper generation, a net generation (Tapscott, 1998, p. 3), a digital generation (Papert, 1996), cyberkids (Holloway and Valentine, 2003) and the thumb tribes (Rheingold, 2002). Both popular and more academic claims are often remarkably polarized into overly optimistic or pessimistic notions about the future of childhood: children are seen as harbingers of innovative competences and social interactions or they are regarded as potential victims of psychological and cultural demise. What these discourses indicate is that contemporary childhood is a mediatized childhood both in an empirical and a discursive sense.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 84.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  • Ang, I. (1985) Watching Dallas: Soap Opera and the Melodramatic Imagination, London: Methuen.

    Google Scholar 

  • Beck, U. (1997) Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity, London: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bentley, T. (1998) Learning beyond the Classroom, London: Routledge.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Buckingham, D. (1998) ‘Introduction: Fantasies of Empowerment? Radical Pedagogy and Popular Culture’, in D. Buckingham, Teaching Popular Culture: beyond Radical Pedagogy, London: UCL Press, pp. 1–17.

    Google Scholar 

  • Castells, M. (1996) The Rise of the Network Society. Vol. 1: The Information Age: Economy Society and Culture, Oxford: Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Corsaro, W.A. (1997) The Sociology of Childhood, Thousands Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Critcher, Ch. (2003) Moral Panics and the Media, Buckingham: Open University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dahlgren, P. (1995) Television and the Public Sphere: Citizenship, Democracy and the Media, London: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Drotner, K. (1988) English Children and their Magazines, 1751–1945, rev. edn, New Haven: Yale University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Drotner, K. (1999) ‘Dangerous Media? Panic Discourses and Dilemmas of Modernity’, Paedagogica Historica, 35 (3): 593–619.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Drotner, K. (2000) ‘Difference and Diversity: Trends in Young Danes’ Media Cultures’, Media, Culture and Society, 22 (2): 149–66.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Drotner, K. (2001a) Medier for fremtiden: børn, unge og det nye medielandskab [Media For the Future: Children, Young People and the Changing Media Environment], Copenhagen: Høst og Søn.

    Google Scholar 

  • Drotner, K. (2001b) ‘Global Media through Youthful Eyes’, in S. Livingstone and M. Bovill (eds), Children and their Changing Media Environment: a European Comparative Study, Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, pp. 283–305.

    Google Scholar 

  • Drotner, K. (2003) Disney i Danmark: at vokse op med en global mediegigant [Disney in Denmark: Growing Up with a Global Media Giant], Copenhagen: Høst og Søn.

    Google Scholar 

  • Drotner, K. (in press) ‘Media on the Move: Personalised Media and the Transformation of Publicness’, in S. Livingstone (ed.), Audiences and Publics: When Cultural Engagement Matters for the Public Sphere, Bristol: Intellect Books. European Journal of Communication (1998). Special issue on ‘Children, Young People and the Changing Media Environment’, edited by S. Livingstone and M. Bovill, 13 (4).

    Google Scholar 

  • Fornäs, J. (1995) Cultural Theory and Late Modernity, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Garrison, D.R. and T. Anderson (2003) E-Learning in the 21st Century: a Framework for Research and Practice, London: RoutledgeFalmer.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Giddens, A. (1990) The Consequences of Modernity, Cambridge: Polity Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gillespie, M. (1995) Television, Ethnicity, and Cultural Change, London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gillis, J.R. (1974) Youth and History: Tradition and Change in European Age Relations, 1700-Present, New York: Academic Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Heywood, C. (2001) A History of Childhood: Children and Childhood in the West from Medieval to Modern Times, Cambridge: Polity Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hjarvard, S. (2003) Det selskabelige samfund: essays om medier mellem mennesker [The Sociable Society: Essays on Media among People], Copenhagen: Samfundslitteratur.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hobbs, R. (1998) ‘The Seven Great Debates in the Media Literacy Movement’, Journal of Communication, 48 (1): 6–32.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Holloway, S.L. and G. Valentine (2003) Cyberkids: Children in the Information Age, London: RoutledgeFalmer.

    Google Scholar 

  • Husén, T. (1986) The Learning Society Revisited, Oxford: Pergamon Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • James, A., C. Jenks and A. Prout (1998) Theorizing Childhood, Cambridge: Polity Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jensen, J. (1990) Redeeming Modernity: Contradictions in Media Criticism, Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jensen, R. (2001) The Dream Society: How the Coming Shift from Information to Imagination Will Transform Your Business, New York: McGraw-Hill Education.

    Google Scholar 

  • Johnsson-Smaragdi, U. (2001) ‘Media Use Styles among the Young’, in S. Livingstone and M. Bovill (eds), Children and their Changing Media Environment: a European Comparative Study, Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, pp. 113–39.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kroes, R. (1996) If You’ve Seen One, You’ve Seen the Mall: Europeans and American Mass Culture, Urbana/Chicago: University of Illinois Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ling, R. (2004) The Mobile Connection: the Cell Phone’s Impact on Society, San Francisco: Morgan Kaufmann.

    Google Scholar 

  • Livingstone, S. and M. Bovill (eds) (2001) Children and their Changing Media Environment: a European Comparative Study, Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

    Google Scholar 

  • Livingstone, S. and M. Bober (2004) UK Children Go Online: Surveying the Experiences of Young People and their Parents, www.children-go-online.net (consulted August 2004).

    Google Scholar 

  • Luke, Carmen (1989) Pedagogy, Printing, and Protestantism: the Discourse on Childhood, New York: State University of New York Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Masuda, Y. (1980) The Information Society, Tokyo: Institute for the Information Society.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ofcom (2004) Ofcom’s Strategy and Priorities for the Promotion of Media Literacy: Consultation Document, www.ofcom.org.uk/consultations/past/strategymedialit/strategymedialit/annex4/?a=87101 (consulted August 2004).

    Google Scholar 

  • Papert, S. (1996) The Connected Family: Bridging the Digital Generation Gap, Atlanta, GA: Longstreet Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Postman, N. (1982) The Disappearance of Childhood, New York: Delacorte Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Postman, N. (1985) Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, New York: Viking.

    Google Scholar 

  • Qvortrup, J. (2000) ‘Macroanalysis of Childhood’, in P.H. Christensen and A. James (eds), Research with Children: Perspectives and Practices, London: Falmer Press, pp. 77–97.

    Google Scholar 

  • Qvortrup, L. (2003) The Hypercomplex Society, New York: Peter Lang.

    Google Scholar 

  • Reseaux (1999) ‘Les jeunes et l’ecran’, D. Pasquier and J. Jouët (eds), 17: 92–3.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rheingold, H. (2002) Smart Mobs: the New Social Revolution, Cambridge, MA: Perseus Publishing.

    Google Scholar 

  • Richards, J. (1984) The Age of the Dream Palace: Cinema and Society in Britain, 1930–1939, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

    Google Scholar 

  • Roberts, D.F. et al. (1999) Kids & Media the New Millennium: a Comprehensive National Analysis of Children’s Media Use, Menlo Park, CA: The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, www.kff.org/entmedia/1535-index.cfm (consulted July 2004).

    Google Scholar 

  • Robertson, R. (1992) Globalization: Social Theory and Global Culture, London: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schrøder, Kim et al. (2003) Researching Audiences, London: Arnold.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stehr, N. (1994) Knowledge Societies, London: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tapscott, D. (1998) Growing Up Digital: the Rise of the Net Generation, New York: McGraw-Hill.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sefton-Green, J. (ed.) (1999) Young People, Creativity and New Technologies: the Challenge of Digital Arts, London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tomlinson, J. (1999) Globalization and Culture, Cambridge: Polity Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tyner, K. (1998) Literacy in a Digital World, Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wartella, E., B. O’Keefe and R. Scantlin (2000) Children and Interactive Media: a Compendium of Current Research and Directions for the Future, New York, NY: Markle Foundation, search.markle.org/cgi-bin/ts.pl (consulted August 2004).

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Authors
  1. Kirsten Drotner
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway

    Jens Qvortrup (Professor of Sociology) (Professor of Sociology)

Copyright information

© 2005 Kirsten Drotner

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Drotner, K. (2005). Mediatized Childhoods: Discourses, Dilemmas and Directions. In: Qvortrup, J. (eds) Studies in Modern Childhood. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230504929_3

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation