This article critically engages with the concept of screen time. We explore the screen time recommendations from the World Health Organization (WHO) and their application in a Swedish context. We also investigate the experiences and opinions of the recommendations and advice on screen time, as well as screen media use in early childhood among parents of young children (0–3 years of age) in Sweden. The study draws on qualitative semi-structured interviews during multiple home visits from a diverse sample of 16 families. Findings are discussed through the prism of the ‘moral economy’ of the household and the ‘social imaginaries’ underpinning this. We have identified two types of approaches to guidelines on screen time among parents. Based on our findings, we recommend organisations in Sweden and beyond to rethink and revise the current guidelines, including the WHO recommendations.

I rapporten sammanfattas resultat, iakttagelser och slutsatser från det fleråriga projektet Små barns digitala vardagsliv (finansierat av Vetenskapsrådet, dnr 2018-01261) som på engelska kommit att gå under benämningen DIGIKIDS Sweden. Skriften vänder sig till en bred publik av pedagoger, beslutsfattare, föräldrar, studenter och forskare intresserade av tidig barndom och föräldraskap med särskilt fokus på yngre barn (0-3 år) och deras användning av digital medieteknologi i det moderna familjelivet. 

Utifrån ett sociokulturellt perspektiv på lärande och teorier om medierande verktyg och utvecklingszoner (Säljö, 2000, 2005; Vygotsky, 1978), är syftet med artikeln att bidra med kunskap inom forskningsfältet ämnesintegrerat skrivande. Utgångspunkten är att studenters skrivande är socialt situerat (Lillis, 2001) och att undervisning om akademisk litteracitet måste ske i de sammanhang där ämneskunskapen kommuniceras (Wingate, 2015). Pedagogiska aktiviteter som diskuteras utgår huvudsakligen från projektet Hållbar pedagogisk grund för studenters läs- och skrivfärdigheter. Denna aktionsbaserade forskning, som genomfördes i kollaborativt samarbete mellan kritiska vänner och ämneslärare, resulterade i förändrade medierande verktyg i form av tre olika stöttningsformer, strukturella, praktiska och konceptuella. Studien visar på behovet av att utveckla medierande verktyg som inledningsvis synliggör studenternas befintliga syn på och grundläggande kunskaper om akademiskt skrivande för att därefter introducera stöttor med fokus på att utveckla det ämnesintegrerade skrivandet. Noga överväganden krävs angående vilka stöttningsformer som ska användas samt hur och när de ska appliceras under en kurs eller utifrån ett progressionsperspektiv i ett utbildningsprogram.

This colloquium shares experiences from doing ethnographic fieldwork with young children andthe challenges that followed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The project DIGIKIDS Swedenhas its focus on very young children (birth to three years) and their engagement with digitalmedia technologies in their homes. The pandemic put the project on hold, but in the familieswhere the fieldwork had already started, the authors decided to change the methods of datacollection. Digital screen visits were introduced and, at first, this seemed to be flexible, andthey adjusted to the new environment. At the same time, this flexibility also became an inflexibleexperience due to the use of technology.

In this article, the Swedish findings from a European comparative study on 0–3-year-old children and their digital lives are presented and discussed in relation to domestication theory, including the concept of moral economy. More specifically, attention is paid to toddler’s appropriation of digital technology and the parents’ moral struggles: the negotia-tions between the parents concerning the introduction of digital media practices in early childhood, the selection of content, and the monitoring of children. Parents of very young children have ambivalent feelings towards digital media technologies and struggle to make the right decision for their children. The study demonstrates that the domestication of digi-tal technology in early childhood is far more multifaceted and troublesome for parents to handle than previous research has found.

The article examines Swedish children's information-seeking tactics before and during a crisis. Using the 2014 Ebola outbreak as a case in point, special attention is drawn to how source credibility is assessed on the Internet. If the individual perspective is to be taken seriously within crisis management/crisis communication, empirical studies with various stakeholders, such as children, are needed. With the theoretical framework of framing, the importance of children's personal experiences is brought to the fore. Developing strategic means of listening to children rather than operating from a top-down perspective constitutes a main point of departure in the study. Framings are in the article suggested as a suitable strategic tool for proactive online crisis communication with a specific focus on public agencies.

This paper concerns the complex relationships between external facilitators and teachers in action research, as they work in a critical friendship to develop interaction in specific ways that open up rather than shut down communication and learning. The aim is to contribute with knowledge about interpersonal communication between academic facilitators and teachers in a development process where the teachers had a lack of influence in the initial phase of the project. The findings reveal that communication in a context of incompatible positions and professional distance did not lead to further communication, whereas communication in a context of confidence, mutual reliance, and challenge opened up possibilities for further dialogue. We identified three aspects affecting communication: absence of ownership of specific problems, trust without relationship, and courage before trust. Implication for the action research community is the importance of making strategies for critical friendship explicit. This assists for teachers to internalize the role.

In this article, we examine how media coverage of migration issues and portrayal of migrants are reflected upon and talked about among families with migrant backgrounds living in Sweden. To date, most Nordic media research on migration has focused on studying media texts, such as representations of migrant and minority issues, rather than on media uses and practices. However, the present study is based on a discursive and contextual approach to media reception, implying in-depth informant interviews, mainly in people’s homes, supported by observations and field notes. Attention is directed towards the informants’ readings of certain media texts, with particular emphasis on their views concerning the media’s role in the creation of otherness and exclusion. Key issues like “truth” and media objectivity, cultural imperialism, non-ethical Western journalism in terms of lifestyle, and norms and values exemplify how symbolic exclusion operates, which in the long run may have profound implications on people’s connections to a shared public world.

The political and cultural opportunities of children's TV are without any doubt an important topic to look further into within media studies but, as much as I welcome Valerio Fuenzalida's argumentation, I also find it to be a rather problematic one in our understanding of media usage and practices. In my response to the paper at hand I hope to make the relationship between media and the young audience a more complicated one, placing it in the context of everyday life and thus moving away from media-centrism. I will point out from my perspective--inspired by media anthropology and media ethnography--the missing links that, in my view, need to be added and reflected upon in any discussion on children, media, and social change.

In relation to any claims about “child-centred” research, the present article stresses the need to reflect on what is actually at stake in terms of participation and the meaning-making processes that evolve in a certain research setting. Our experiences with photo-taking methods are based on two separate studies involving children (age 5-8 years) and young adolescents (age 12-16 year). Taking a constructivist approach, the article draws special attention to issues related to the age of the children, the type of camera used, the researcher’s status in the fieldwork and the type of data acquired through these children’s photos. The article stresses the need to perceive the story behind the photo as an outcome of how the child chose to position him/herself within a certain research context, which in turn affects how the child sees, thinks and acts, but also what he/she sees.

With its transcultural perspective this paper looks at how families (i.e., parents and children) talk about children’s identity and the importance of mothers’ homeland media for the children, who are surrounded by a global popular media culture. Both studies used similar methods: interviews, participant observation, and photo-taking. The analysis shows the complexity of identity formation and the need to apply a contextual and relational perspective when wanting to understand the roles of media in the process of forming identity. The mothers’ homeland media is an important construction tool in the process and helps the children not only with languages but also catch up with information about peers in mothers’ homeland.