Parenting for a Digital Future – one year on

It’s been an eventful year in many ways, and a tough one for most people. Children’s lives became digital by default. Education went remote. Screen time hit the roof. Researchers had to do their research via Zoom. And parents? There’s never one answer to that question: parents are as diverse as society, and their experiences of the pandemic have surely varied hugely. For www.parenting.digital, Prof Sonia Livingstone talks about how digital parenting has changed during the past year

Technical report and user guide: the 2010 EU kids online survey

This technical report describes the design and implementation of the EU Kids Online survey of 9-16 year old internet using children and their parents in 25 countries European countries

The Complex Process of Cultural Globalization in a Rapidly Changing Society: Television Drama Reception Among the Malays

The purpose of this study is to understand how the rapid process of cultural globalization affects the Malaysian television industry and the Malays culturally. The privatization of television and the increasing tendency to import foreign dramas as well as its impact on the audience has renewed the interest of researchers in the communication industry at the international level. This study focuses on Malaysia which represents most of the characteristics of the situation in many rapidly changing societies. In light of this, the study will attempt to provide evidence to the cultural globalization debate through the five processes of the “circuit of culture”: production, consumption, identity, representation and regulation (du Gay et al., 1997). These processes were examined for the ways they manifested in the television industry in Malaysia, how cultural globalization is influencing the process, and at the same time how cultural globalization is being produced through the processes. To collect data, two methods used for this study are content analysis and, in-depth interviews. The first, look at the values and life-styles portrayed in local as well as foreign dramas shown on prime-time Malaysian television. The second approach will explore the Malay viewers' consumption of foreign as well as local dramas portrayed on Malaysian television detailing the changing uses of television in different types of families from different social positions. Results of the study showed that with rapid process of cultural globalization, Malaysian prime-time television dramas portrayed more Western values and lifestyles. Amongst the Malays, especially the youngsters, there were also evidences of the adoption of other Western values like individualism and consumerism. Through the circuit of culture, it was also shown that the deregulation and the convergence of telecommunications together with the privatization drive by the government brought about drastic changes to the Malaysian broadcasting scene. Together, this has brought about accusations of cultural globalization through Western television dramas that have also been increasingly accused of having negative influence on the morals of society. However, as shown by the findings of the study, television consumption and the audience perception is indeed a diverse and complex process. Research results showed that there are ambivalences whereby different families studied had surprisingly differing perceptions of the same television content. The study concluded that, any investigation into cultural globalization and the consumption of television within the family could only be understood in the overall context of family life and the circuit of culture

EU Kids Online III: a thematic network to stimulate and coordinate investigation into the use of new media by children (final annual report)

This report is Deliverable D1.5C (Third Annual Progress Report, to cover the period from 01/11/13 to 31/12/14). - This report is based on the work of the whole EU Kids Online network of 33 countries as well as the International Advisory Panel (see Annex 1 for a list of all members). - This third and final annual report is organised in two ways. First, we report on activities by date, noting key activities and events in accordance with the project timeline. - Second, we summarise activities by WP, noting progress and any issues arising for each. - The annexes provide additional information (meeting agendas and participants, lists of contacts and dissemination activities, etc.) as appropriate

Community through digital connectivity? Communication infrastructure in multicultural London: final report

This project, supported by an LSE Seed grant, examines the role that communication plays in promoting and hindering community among London’s diverse populations. While symbolic and structural resources such as education, local institutions and property have been systematically studied as community-building resources, communication infrastructures are little studied and their potential as a community asset largely unrecognised. Yet with over half of the world population now inhabiting cities (UN 2010), how people communicate across or withdraw from difference in urban societies matters greatly. For London, the most culturally diverse city in the world and one of the most connected (Massey 2005), these questions are pressing. How does London’s rich communication infrastructure enable Londoners to communicate with each other? Does this in turn contribute to social capital and building community? Or does it segregate people across cultural and generational lines? By focusing on a highly culturally diverse part of London – Harringay, North London – this study examines the role of communication infrastructure in bridging, bonding and separating the different groups occupying the same locale. It focuses on communication assets – the resources that enhance urban dwellers’ social capital, sense of belonging and mutual understanding. Its main research question is: In what ways does communication infrastructure mobilise Haringey’s diverse population in building social capital and community? Conceptually, we juxtapose the original theory of communication infrastructure developed by Ball-Rokeach and her research team under the Metamorphosis project with Bourdieu’s social capital. The communication infrastructure theory takes an ecological approach to understanding the role of communication of all kinds in promoting or undermining belonging, civic engagement and collective efficacy (Ball-Rokeach, Kim and Matei, 2001; Kim and Ball-Rokeach, 2006). We explore this theory alongside and vis-à-vis Bourdieu’s (1985, 1992) conception of social capital as the sum of resources that accrue to the possession of durable networks of sustained (institutionalised) relations and recognition. These approaches provide interesting parallels in how practices of communication and sociability support groups’ efforts to gain access to resources that will advance their symbolic and material power. Our particular focus is on how different local groups mobilise knowledge and information resources for work, education, health and leisure. The project adopts a multi-method approach, which includes creative and participatory tools for data collection, locale mapping and community sharing alongside established methods in social sciences

Small acts of audience engagement interrupting content flows

Chapter in Report; This report has been produced by the CEDAR network which was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, to run between 2015-2018