Digital competence and its different dimensions – among them responsible online communication – are competencies that children need to develop for their present and future lives. This article analyzes how teachers promote responsible online communication in Swedish leisure-time centers (LTCs). Based on 20 in-depth interviews, the results show how teachers promote responsible communication mainly in spontaneous situations using mediation strategies such as active mediation, co-use, and participatory learning. The study also identifies educational simulation as mediation strategy. The participants focused primarily on teaching children how not to hurt other people online, as well as issues concerning online safety and privacy. One conclusion is that children’s self-selected media use in the LTC provided extended opportunities for promoting responsible online communication.

In this paper I focus on the leisure-time center as an arena for promoting critical digital literacy. The main research question addressed in the paper is: How do Swedish leisure-time teachers work to promote critical digital literacy in the leisure-time center? In addition to this, the paper poses the more specific question: How do Swedish leisure-time teachers approach internet advertising in the leisure-time center, and do their approaches to advertising encourage a critical understanding? 

The paper draws on an interview study conducted in 2018 with 21 leisure-time teachers working in the south of Sweden, and David Buckingham’s (2006) conceptual framework for critical digital literacy is used to analyze and discuss the interview data. 

The results reveal a broad range of approaches and practices among Swedish leisure-time teachers; from not promoting critical digital literacy, to planned learning activities and spontaneous discussions that encouraged critical reflections about digital media. The participants concentrated on source criticism, photo manipulation, and discussions with children about their digital media usage, which are central aspects of critical digital literacy (Buckingham, 2006). There were also different approaches to internet advertising; from not addressing this issue at all, to critical reflections regarding the role of advertising. There were also uncritical ways of approaching internet advertising, such as discussing advertising as a source of information for consumption purposes. The paper discusses the implications of these results for policy, practice, and future research.

This article focuses on the leisure-time center (LTC) as an arena for developing critical digital literacy. The main research question concerns how Swedish leisure-time teachers (LT teachers) work to promote critical digital literacy. In addition to this, the article directs attention to one specific aspect of critical digital literacy, namely, critical understanding of Internet advertising. The second research question thus concerns how LT teachers approach Internet advertising in the LTC, and whether their approaches to advertising encourage a critical understanding. The study is based on 20 in-depth interviews with Swedish LT teachers, and Buckingham’s (2015) conceptual framework for critical digital literacy is used to analyze and discuss the data. The results reveal a broad range of approaches and practices, from not promoting critical digital literacy at all, to planned learning activities and spontaneous discussions that encouraged critical reflections about digital media. The participants concentrated on source criticism, photo manipulation, and discussions with children about their digital media usage. There were also different approaches to Internet advertising, from not addressing this issue to critical reflections regarding the role of advertising. The participants also described uncritical ways of relating to Internet advertising, such as approaching advertising as a form of entertainment. The article discusses the implications of these results for policy, teacher education, and future research.

Since access to and use of digital devices and applications often become more challenging with age, it is important to study how media appropriation processes unfold later in life. The present article contributes to existing research by applying the concept of transaction – developed within relational sociology – to study digital media appropriation. Using thisconcept, I focus on how older adults’ relations with various actors (known others, distantothers, and non-human transactors) fuel the appropriation of digital devices and apps.Drawing on interviews with 22 older adults (70–94 years of age), I identify four types ofappropriation processes. This shows the diversity of ways in which digital devices and appsenter the lives of older adults and the diversity of agentic roles in media appropriation. Theresults also reveal how a sense of coercion in media appropriation was present among theolder adults, especially in relation to their children.

Digital and mobile games are an important part of many children’s daily media usage, and are used by children for, among other things, entertainment and relaxation purposes. Mobile games are commonly ‘free-to-play’ and have revenue models based on in-app purchases and advertising. These revenue models affect the content and structure of mobile games, and, consequently, also the gaming experiences. Drawing on group interviews with nine- and 12-year-old children, this article analyses how children view and engage with advertising in mobile games, and what consequences in-game advertising have for children’s game experiences. The results show that children’s engagement with in-game advertising takes the form of a struggle, and that children both resist and resign themselves to the advertising strategies. Advertising brings about negative experiences of deception, enforcement and confrontation, and interrupts moments of enjoyment, achievement and immersion during game play. These results suggest that playing advertising-based free-to-play mobile games is a demanding environment for children.

Research on mediation of children’s media use has primarily focused on parents, while the role of other social agents, such as grandparents, has gained little attention. This article furthers our understanding of grandparental mediation by exploring what mediation strategies are used by grandparents and great-grandparents to mediate children’s digital media use. Furthermore, it contributes to our understanding of how mediation is shaped by the generational order, in this case how parents play an important role in influencing grandparents’ mediation practices. The article draws on qualitative interviews with 18 older adults in Sweden who had grandchildren and great-grandchildren whom they were with regularly or occasionally. The results reveal that (great-)grandparents employed the strategies of restrictive mediation, active mediation, co-use, participatory learning, and deference. The use of these strategies was clearly shaped by the generational order, where restrictive and active mediation were especially delicate to manage within the dynamics of intergenerational relations.

Even though research on digital citizenship has expanded considerably during the last decade (Öztürk, 2021), there is still a limited body of research on teacher education and digital citizenship, especially when it comes to pre-service teachers’ ideas of how to teach digital citizenship in primary school (Lauricella et al., 2020; Richardson et al., 2021; Öztürk, 2021). This paper therefore aims to contribute with research on teacher education and digital citizenship through exploring how pre-service teachers reflect upon and make didactic choices when designing digital citizenship education for primary school pupils, in the context of a university course centered on critical, safe, responsible, and creative use of digital media (Hobbs, 2011; Öztürk, 2021).

The paper uses philosophical, pedagogical, and didactical perspectives (Bergson 1907/2007; Sjöström & Tyson, 2022) to 1) define some challenges and opportunities in designing digital citizenship education in teacher education, and 2) perform a qualitative text-analysis of 50 student papers in which pre-service teachers designed and motivated project-based teaching promoting digital literacy within Swedish leisure-time centers (children aged 6-12 years).

Preliminary results point towards both challenges and opportunities specifically concerning taking into account children’s own meaning-making processes in the design of digital citizenship education. Results also show how a majority of the pre-service teachers included safe and responsible use of digital media in their project proposals and motivated their didactic choices based on children’s use of social media and their mediatized everyday lives. They constructed original learning activities in which, for instance, teachers and pupils jointly create TikTok videos and discuss what constitutes responsible online communication.

This paper is relevant to Nordic educational research as it advances both philosophical and didactical understanding of digital citizenship education in teacher education. The paper thereby contributes with knowledge on both practical and theoretical challenges and opportunities of digitalization and technologies in education.

In domestication research, the concepts of agency and social relations are fundamental (Haddon, 2016). Studies over three decades have unraveled the complexity of how users integrate media into everyday life in both domestic and non-domestic settings, and how the social context in different ways shape domestication (Martínez & Olsson, 2020). However, the analysis of agency and social relations in domestication processes can be further developed and systematized. This paper uses the concept of transaction - central within relational sociology (Dépelteau, 2015) - to understand how agents influence each other in multifold ways during the first phase of the domestication process, namely the phase of appropriation. Drawing on interviews with 22 elderly Swedes (70 to 94 years) the paper develops a typology of appropriation processes, which is based on the various ways in which the appropriator (the one who acquires a digital device or application) and agents in his/her social context transact during appropriation. The paper identifies a continuum from self-conducted inspired appropriation over to other-conducted enforced appropriation. In the first case, the appropriator is influenced by media use in his/her social context and conducts the consumption and installation process. In the last case, actors in the social context have identified perceived needs and force the appropriator to adopt digital media by managing the consumption process, the installation and the initial learning process. Between these extremes, there are other forms of appropriation processes which are explored in the paper. The paper, hence, contributes to our understanding of how agency is played out in different ways in domestication of digital media, with a specific focus on how appropriation is driven by social transactions. The paper discusses how these social transactions can be understood as power relations, and how they also can be seen as vehicles for digitalization and digital inclusion.

From the very outset, the domestication approach was inspired by an ambition to inform policy debates. This was obvious in early delineations of the approach in the 1980s. However, later research inspired by the notion of domestication has often come to overlook this ambition. This chapter presents three examples of analyses that engage with the notion of domestication in everyday contexts, while also explicitly addressing policy. The first case is based on data collected two decades ago when home computers with Internet connections had started to become commonplace in Swedish households. The second case focuses on how Swedish teachers deal with children’s mobile phones in leisure-time centres. The third case draws on interviews with older adults covering their reflections on and use of ICTs. This chapter argues for and illustrates the policy relevance of domestication research, and points towards the future. As media technology develops, it becomes of continuous importance to offer insights from domestication research. Studies can contrast, challenge, and hopefully feed into the formation of insights into what is going on in and around media technology. To do so, policy relevance needs to be explicitly formulated and communicated to relevant stakeholders as an integral part of research practice.

When children use the Internet, they commonly choose to watch their favorite YouTubers. In this article, we aim to deepen the understanding of how children make sense of YouTubers as a phenomenon, and the role of microcelebrities in children’s everyday life. The study is based on group interviews with 9- and 12-year-old Swedish children, and pays specific attention to how they make sense of the video “♥Pin up tutorial (JFR.SE)♥,” produced by the YouTuber Misslisibell. In the analysis, we explore how the children construct and negotiate Misslisibell as celebrity, celebrity endorser, and young girl. Particularly salient were children’s negotiations around the YouTuber’s celebrity status, children’s normative discussions around Misslisibell’s YouTube practices related to her young age, and children’s various interpretations of the video as advertising, “tips,” and as a space for learning. These multifaceted and sometimes contradictive ways of making sense show the multiplicity of meanings YouTubers have for children.

The concept of children’s interests is central within leisure-time pedagogy. For instance, the Swedish curriculum states that education in the leisure-time center should take as its point of departure “students’ needs, interests and experiences, but also make sure that students’ are challenged continuously by inspiring them to make new discoveries” (Swedish national agency for education, 2019: 22). In this paper, we aim to show how this formulation actually makes possible any approach towards children’s interests in leisure-time teacher’s work.

To show this, we focus on how leisure-time teachers approach one specific part of children’s interests, namely children’s digital media interests. That is, the media children select spontaneously when they are free to choose, such as social media platforms and digital games. We analyze the ways in which leisure-time teachers integrate children’s digital media interests in the centers (or not) and how they argue for their various approaches.

The study is based on in-depth interviews with 21 leisure-time teachers working in the South of Sweden. As theoretical framework we use domestication theory (Haddon 2016), which focuses on how people integrate media technology as part of specific social contexts, and how values and norms contribute to shaping media use.

The results show how teachers approach children’s digital media interests in four main ways: by rejecting, restricting, instrumentalizing or incorporating them. This variation shows how the formulation in the curriculum mentioned above actually makes possible any approach towards children’s interests. It is possible to argue for a complete rejection of children’s digital media interests with the argument that they should provide other experiences than students get in their homes, but also for an incorporation of children’s digital media interests, based on for instance the argument that children should be able to decide on their “free time”.

This paper is relevant to Nordic educational research as it discusses core concepts within leisure-time pedagogy and problematizes teachers’ work.

References

Haddon L (2016) The domestication of complex media repertoires. In: Sandvik K, Thorhauge AM and Valtysson B (eds) The Media and the Mundane. Göteborg: Nordicom, 17-30. Swedish national agency for education (2019). Available at: https://www.skolverket.se/download/18.35e3960816b708a596c3965/1567674229968/pdf4206.pdf

The concept warm experts originally referred to people who helped their friends and family to come to terms with home-based computers and Internet connections. As digital technologies have continuously come to permeate our everyday lives, the tasks for warm experts have grown in kinds and character. The present study contributes to our understanding of warm experts by exploring the learning process involving the warm expert and the less knowledgeable other(s). Drawing on interviews with older adults (70 to 94 years of age), the study specifically explores older users’ experiences of learning about digital media with children and grandchildren. The results reveal how interaction with warm experts constituted important learning opportunities for the older adults, in which they developed their skills in using digital media. However, establishing potential learning situations and learning from warm experts was not a straightforward matter, but surrounded by a multitude of barriers structuring the possibilities for learning. This shows how the role of the warm expert is fluid and materializes in different ways in different situations. The warm expert can take the position (or be positioned) as one who solves technical issues. The warm expert can be one who fails in teaching, or one who adopts the position as a warm teacher and contributes to learning among the less knowledgeable user. In order to also be a warm teacher, the warm expert needs to understand the specific learning needs and styles of the less knowledgeable other and adapt to these needs.

This article explores the usability of domestication theory in an educational setting integrating a wide variety of information and communication technologies (ICTs). More specifically, the article analyses domestication of digital media in the Swedish leisure-time centre (LTC), an institution in which children receive education and care before and after compulsory school. The study draws on qualitative in-depth interviews with 21 teachers as well as observations of LTCs. The article reveals what it means to have limited agency as an educator when ICTs are appropriated, and further illustrates the contradictory fact that mobile phones are objectified as stationary technologies. It also shows how both devices and content are incorporated in ways that are perceived suitable to the LTCs’ educational moral economy. An especially interesting finding is the extent to which domestication theory sheds light on power relations when applied outside of the domestic sphere.

YouTube has become the number-one outlet for children’s programming and video entertainment (Ahn, 2022). In Sweden, children spend several hours a day on the platform (Statens medieråd, 2021:58). 60 % of children aged 9–12, and 80% of Swedish teenagers follow a YouTuber or influencer (ibid:83). This form of micro-celebrity constitutes an important part of children’s media culture and everyday life, contributing to commodification and commercialisation of childhood. YouTubers are not only singers, gamers or entertainers, they are “promotional intermediaries” (Jaakkola, 2020:239). Youtubers make a living from advertising products through sponsoring agreements (influencer marketing), or from advertising their own products and brands, in the form of merchandise (“merch”).

Even though the YouTuber is a widely popular phenomenon, we still know surprisingly little of it from a child perspective. There is a lack of in-depth knowledge on how the child audience perceives and engages with Youtubers as commercial actors (Jaakkola, 2020). In light of this, the aim of the present paper is to further our understanding of how children appropriate sponsored content and merch within the context of the para-social relation between child and Youtuber.

To study children’s appropriation of sponsored content and merch among Youtubers, we draw from an interview study with 19 Swedish children aged 10-13. The results reveal how children’s meaning-making mainly centered around the relevance or irrelevance of this media content within the context of their everyday lives, and their moral economy (Silverstone, 1994) was an integrated part of their discussions. Children also expressed how they engaged in financial and moral support in order to enable Youtubers’ content creation, for instance by purchasing merch or sponsored products, hence positioning themselves as active agents within the commercial media logic.

References

Ahn, R. J. (2022). Exploration of parental advertising literacy and parental mediation: Influencer marketing of media character toy and merchandise. Journal of Advertising, 51(1), 107-115.

Jaakkola, M. (2020). From vernacularized commercialism to kidbait: Toy review videos on YouTube and the problematics of the mash-up genre. Journal of Children and Media, 14(2), 237-254.

Silverstone, R. (1994). Television and everyday life. London: Routledge.

Statens medieråd (2021). Ungar & medier 2021 En statistisk undersökning av ungas medievanor och attityder till medieanvändning. [Young people & media 2021 A statistical survey of young people's media habits and attitudes towards media use.]  Availible at https://www.statensmedierad.se/rapporter-och-analyser/material-rapporter-ochanalyser/ungar--medier-2021