Pål Aarsand

Computer and Video Games in Family Life: The Digital Divide as a Resource in Intergenerational Interactions.

In this ethnographic study of family life, intergenerational video and computer game activities were videotaped and analysed. Both children and adults invoked the notion of a digital divide, i.e. a generation gap between those who master and do not master digital technology. It is argued that the digital divide was exploited by the children to control the game activities. Conversely, parents and grandparents positioned themselves as less knowledgeable, drawing on a displayed divide as a rhetorical resource for gaining access to playtime with the children. In these intergenerational encounters, the digital divide was thus an interactional resource rather than a problem.

Gaming and Territorial Negotiations in Family Life.

This article examines territorial negotiations concerning gaming, drawing on video recordings of gaming practices in middle-class families. It explores how private vs public gaming space was co-construed by children and parents in front of the screen as well as through conversations about games. Game equipment was generally located in public places in the homes, which can be understood in terms of parents’ surveillance of their children, on the one hand, and actual parental involvement, on the other. Gaming space emerged in the interplay between game location, technology and practices, which blurred any fixed boundaries between public and private, place and space, as well as traditional age hierarchies.

‘How to be good’: media representations of parenting

Abstract Expectations of parenting are highly prescribed and the media is an important channel for adults learning what this role entails. The pedagogical role of the media involves making judgements on what counts as valid and desirable parenting practices and suggest goals to be(come) the ‘good parent’—a construct which appears to take no account of social inequalities, cultural diversity and complex social contexts. Our study focuses on idealised parenting in media settings and highlights the preferences and subject positions parents are expected to take. This identity work involves parents understanding their practices as the problem and learning new practices as the potential solution, which they need to initiate. The role of parenting experts is to position parents as responsible adults with the ability to make desired changes happen. Parents who refuse to develop the preferred skills, risk appearing to be uninformed and ignorant. Located in this discourse parenting is a question of adult learning.

Parenting and digital games : On children’s game play in US families

This article focuses on parenting and childrens game play. The study is based on an ethnographic study of 32 American middle-class families and takes a discourse analytic approach. Earlier research has argued that parenting styles are dependent on social class, ethnicity, and gender. The present data reveal considerable diversity in how middle-class parents deal with game play, which is currently one of the most common child and youth leisure activities. This diversity is seen across stances taken within the same interview and across interviews. It is argued that differences in middle-class families parenting styles are related to their view of the child and their stance on game technology. In addition, talk about parenting reveals parents construction of good and bad parenting, where they see themselves as belonging to the former category.

Towards a critical approach on children and media

Throughout the 1990s, we have seen an increasing amount of research that approaches children as competent agents in society. Children have simultaneously been constructed as such by the commercial market, consumer research, and media research and even at the policy level in the UN Convention on the Rights of Children and in school curricula (Buckingham, 2007; Cook, 2005; Gee, 2003; Sparrman, 2008). Despite the fact that the competent child has become a common way of viewing children, it can be seen how this stance is concurrent with approaches in which children are viewed as naı̈ve, innocent and in need of protection (Buckingham, 2000). Approaching children as either competent or as innocent and in need of protection generates, for instance, generational dilemmas. This can be seen in regard to children’s actual consumption of new media, one argument being that children are the first to know and the last to understand (Miller, 2006), i.e. children need protection from computer games (cf. Arriaga, Esteves, Carneiro, & Monteiro, 2006; Ellneby, 2005; Kautiainen, Koivusilta, Lintonen, Virtanen, & Rimpelä, 2005), and the other being that they are more competent than adults in handling digital games (cf. Gee, 2003; Tapscott, 1998). As concerns media policy regulations, self-regulations and legislations relative to children, it is mainly the naı̈ve and innocent child in need of protection who is in focus. However, there is reason to questionwhat exactly it is wewish to protect children from? Toanswer suchaquestion,weargue thatwehave tomovebeyond thedichotomies createdby conceptions such as the competent versus the innocent child. Constructions of children as presumed innocents and as victims of media and consumption have been calledmoral panics (Cohen, 1972/1987; Critcher, 2003). On the one hand, moral panics stress young people’s incompetence and have a tendency to view children as a homogenous entity, lacking age, gender, ethnicity or class. Additionally, aspects such as time, place or situation seem to be of minor concern. On the other hand, moral panics also highlight some of the inconsistencies in viewing children as active and competent media users, because the whats, whens and hows of the competent child are often unreflected (Buckingham, 2000). This could be explained by the fact that the distinction between the innocent and competent child often makes relevant other contradictive dichotomies such as leisure and education, evil and good, low and high culture, dichotomies that simultaneously create distinctions between childhood and adulthood (cf. Aarsand, 2007b; Prout, 2005; Sparrman, 2002). By approaching media from the interdisciplinary research field of what we call Critical Child Studies, rather than through a specific medium such as television, intersections between policies, everyday practices, and notions of media, children and childhood are brought into focus. By Critical Child Studies we mean research that

The Ordinary Player : Teenagers talk about digital games

The present discourse analysis is based on eight focus-group interviews with 32 teenagers where use of and preferences for digital games were discussed. The focus is on how teenagers take stances on digital games and present themselves as players. The main findings are that teenagers position themselves as ‘ordinary’ teenage players who have extensive experience and knowledge of playing various types of games, who play for fun, and who are in control of their playing. The construction of the ordinary teenage player is made in contrast to the hardcore player. The analysis also shows that teenagers display cultural knowledge of what is considered acceptable, as well as problematic stances on digital games and playing.

Situated collaboration and problem solving in young children’s digital gameplay

Collaboration is an important aspect of social activity associated with young children’sxa0digital gameplay. Children organise their participation as they communicate with andxa0support one another, th ...

Children’s media practices: challenges and dilemmas for the qualitative researcher

Abstract The commentary discusses some of the challenges and dilemmas social researchers face when they investigate children’s media practices in present and future Western societies. The paper draws on ethnography’s and ethnomethodology’s experience of using video recordings as primary data and their commitment to prioritising the participants’ perspective(s). First, it is argued that one of the main challenges for social researchers is to obtain data that make it possible to broaden our understanding of media practices that are both trans-local and multimodal. Second, it is argued that new media interfaces make it particularly important to understand visual data and describe children’s media practices. Third, this means that researchers will face new challenges and dilemmas with respect to choosing images, and deciding when and how to use them and what one wants to illustrate. Even more important, this will most likely increase the importance of research ethics when the quality of research as a professional practice is discussed.