Subterfuge:a parental strategy for mediating young children’s digital media practices in Azerbaijan

The present study introduces the ways in which parents mediate young children’s digital media practices in Azerbaijan, a former Soviet country. This study reveals a new parental mediation strategy – subterfuge, which refers to parents’ indirect communication about digital media restrictions with their children. With this approach, parents blame digital devices or internet connectivity for limiting children’s access. Using the strategy, parents prefer indirect interference with their children’s digital practices to avoid upsetting or confronting them. The strategy is explained through parental ethnotheories – parents’ cultural beliefs and values about childrearing. The study calls for adding parental ethnotheories to research on parental mediation in digital environments. Findings presented here originated in a study involving five families with a five-year-old child through family visits and the living journals method developed specifically for this study

A living journals approach for the remote study of young children’s digital practices in Azerbaijan

This article proposes the living journals method for remotely studying participants, elevating participant agency in the data generation process and minimising or completely removing the need for a researcher to be physically present in the field. Employing this method, the paper describes how the method was used to explore 5-year-old children’s digital practices in five families in Azerbaijan. Mothers were assigned as ‘proxy’ researchers to generate the data following prompts sent through a smartphone application. Mothers’ answers were used to create journals, and subsequently, fathers separately, and mothers and children together were requested to interpret their own journals and those of other participant children. Allowing other families to comment on one another’s journals further revealed their attitudes towards using digital technologies and enriched the data, emphasising its multivocality and metatextuality. The article describes the living journals method in detail, highlighting its affordances for researchers to generate data from a distance in other contexts. The article also discusses the methodological and empirical contribution of the method to this study about young children’s engagements with digital media at home. By decentring the researcher in the data generation process, the method allows researchers to generate both visually and textually complex and rich data. The visual and personal nature of the method goes beyond text-based research accounts to bring the data to life, allowing the researcher to generate multimodal, multivocal, metatextual and multifunctional data

Participatory, observation & face to face research methods:Guidance for researchers at the University of Edinburgh

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, researchers around the world have had to shift to digital domains to generate data, redesign their studies, and rethink the ways in which they engage with participants. Substituting face-to-face with digital methods presents both opportunities and challenges for researchers at all phases of the research process. For example, research participants may gain more power and agency within the researcherresearched relationship framework, and participants may be drawn from a wider geographical and social field. There may also be greater flexibility in when and where research takes place: the use of multimodal software for engaging with participants has allowed researchers to receive information from their participants at the times and in the forms convenient for them. However, researchers have not always been able to reach or create and maintain engagement with participants due to, for example, inequalities in access to digital technologies or reliable internet connections. It can be harder to access vulnerable and marginalised groups, who don’t have access to or experience with devices and software, and ensuring participant confidentiality and privacy can be a more complex process. Additionally, participants with disabilities might face extra challenges using certain technologies. This document aims to provide guidance for doctoral and early career researchers at the University of Edinburgh on remote data generation in circumstances when conducting fieldwork involving qualitative participatory methods and physical engagement is not possible. It was developed via desk-based research, case studies of existing work at the University of Edinburgh, and a workshop

Returning to Azerbaijan as a researcher:The role of affective engagement

My fieldwork takes place in my home country, Azerbaijan. It draws on family visits, living journals and online meetings to explore five-year-old children’s interactions with digital technologies at home and their influences on family dynamics. The case study research method is adapted to explore a “phenomenon within its real-life context” (Yin, 2009, p. 18) and each of the five families represents a case. I am currently pursuing a PhD degree in a UK university and I returned home with a new identity – still an “insider”, but additionally a mother and a researcher, immersed in Western culture. Research has addressed dilemmas arising from exploring one’s own community as an insider (e.g. Zavella, 1996), but here I aim to reveal how data collection can be influenced and shaped during fieldwork through the relationships between researcher and researched in their shared culture. In common with Stodulka et. al (2018, p.2), I aim to work “with and through, not against our subjectivities and related affects, feelings and emotions in the endeavour to understand what matters to the people we study” [original emphasis].They go on to explain that researchers are always part of the social encounters that we wish to analyse and so it is “methodologically careless” not to pay more attention to our own affective engagements. They define affects as “sensorial phenomena that emerge from and influence encounters … with informants, spaces, environments, events, memories, images, and texts” (Ibid. p.3) and affective scholarship as a systematic exploration of researchers’ involvement with people, culture and processes. I reflect on my fieldwork using their concepts of epistemic affect and affective scholarship to consider the following questions: 1) How do the affects of the researcher and the researched influence their interactions and relationships in home-based fieldwork? 2) In what ways do the multiple identities of an “insider” researcher shape data collection?Vygotsky’s (1978) cultural-historical theory in relation with Cole’s (1996) notion of prolepsis will inform the theoretical framework of this study. While explaining the role of culture in children’s development, Cole (1996) highlights how parents, beginning from their children’s birth, start planning their children’s present, and future, based on their own cultural experiences and assumptions. This concept will help me reveal the influences of parents on their children’s use of digital technologies at home. MethodThe case study research method is adapted to explore a “phenomenon within its real-life context” (Yin, 2009, p. 18) and each of the five families represents a case. Purposive sampling method has been applied to identify cases to gain insights into families’ practices in a natural setting (Creswell, 2012). In line with Vygotsky (1962), children participate in the activities they observe at home or within larger communities, thus, I have conducted family visits that included observations, interviews and creating life and family trajectories with parents, and house tours with children. Also, I took my toddler son with me to a family visit due to unavailability of my family members. On these occasions family members were inclined to show him what they were doing, for example children would share their toys and teach him their games providing data for my research that were not easily available for me otherwise.Expected OutcomesIn the visits I was i) a guest – a fellow citizen visiting their home, ii) a researcher from abroad, iii) an expert – somebody they assumed, mistakenly, could offer advice on child psychology, iv) a mother with a toddler son, exposed to revered methods of child rearing within a Western culture and v) a foreigner and vi) a native Azerbaijani. These multiple identities were confusing for both sides: they wanted to share intimate details of their daily lives and discuss their children’s behavioural changes, but also they wanted me to return to the university with positive images of the family practices of Azerbaijanis. I fathomed the data are collected together/with/despite these affects and they should be acknowledged in research findings. I had planned to conduct intergenerational focus group discussions with mothers, mothers-in-law and children, because in Azerbaijan, extended families tend to live together. However, participant mothers dissuaded me from involving their mothers-in-law, saying that complications could arise from the involvement of elders, therefore I respected their affects, withdrawing from last family visits. I later realized that, rather than an inconvenience, thinking about these social encounters as affective engagements can provide valuable research insights. Expanding on the notions by Stodulka et. al (2018), I will highlight the importance of recognizing how an awareness of affective scholarship can be valuable in collecting and interpreting the data. Rather than the researcher as participant being a methodological problem to be dismissed or overlooked by some researchers, it can provide a rich, if challenging, resource

Living journals: young children and digital media practices in Azerbaijani families

The aim of this qualitative study was to explore young children’s digital media practices at home in Azerbaijan. Five families, each including a five-year-old child, participated in multiple case studies over a period of 15 months in 2018-2019. The study generated data through a total of 15 family visits in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, and the use of ‘living journals’, a method developed for this purpose. Given its focus on the everyday lives of children, the study is informed by ecocultural theory, but also draws on the concepts of prolepsis and parental ethnotheories. The research questions were: 1. How can we explore young children’s digital media practices within their family context? 2. How does the family influence the child’s digital media practices? 3. How do parents mediate their young children’s digital media practices? The study addressed the first research question through the development of the living journals method. This method facilitated a remote exploration of children’s daily lives: mothers were initiated as proxy researchers, thereby decentring the researcher in the data generation process. Families commented both on the completed journals relating to their own child, as well as those created by other participant children. The journals existed in both physical and digital formats, and were a source of visually rich multimodal, multivocal, metatextual, and multifunctional data. This approach constitutes a valuable methodological contribution to the range of options available to researchers who want to study everyday lives from afar. Research questions two and three have led to three main empirical contributions. First, the living journals method revealed fathers’ views on digital media and the extent of their involvement in their children’s digital media practices. The findings demonstrated fathers’ considerable influences on their children’s practices as they were authoritative figures at home. Parents assumed different roles in mediating children’s digital media practices, with fathers being active in setting rules but mothers more involved in the day-to-day management of these practices. Second, the case studies showed how family context influenced children’s digital media practices. This included parental preferences for the availability of certain types of devices and the language of digital media content to which children were exposed, as well as mothers’ attempts to balance being a ‘good’ parent with managing relations with each other, their children, and extended family members. Third, a new parental mediation strategy was identified and termed as ‘subterfuge’. Subterfuge relates to restricting young children’s uses of digital technologies indirectly by shifting the blame onto inanimate objects. This strategy was contextual and situated, and was typically established by fathers but executed by mothers

Understanding the Role of Digital Technology in the Transitions of Refugee Families with Young Children into A New Culture: A Case Study of Scotland.:A Case Study of Scotland

The worldwide refugee crisis is a major current challenge, affecting the health and education of millions of families with children due to displacement. Despite the various challenges and risks of migration practices, numerous refugee families have access to interactive technologies during these processes. The aim of this ongoing study is to explore the role of technologies in the transitions of refugee families in Scotland. Based on Tudge’s ecocultural theory, a qualitative case-study approach has been adopted. Semi-structured interviews have been conducted with volunteers who work with refugee families in a big city in Scotland, and proxy observations of young children were facilitated remotely by their refugee parents. A preliminary overview of the participants’ insights of the use and role of technology for transitioning into a new culture is provided here

Refugee families’ integration into a new culture through their children’s digital media practices during Covid-19

The present study explores the role of young refugee children’s everyday digital media practices in their families’ transition into a new culture during the Covid-19 pandemic in Scotland. The study seeks to understand children’s engagements in their families’ transition process through their digital media practices. The aim is achieved by using interviews and workshops with volunteers working with refugee families and the living journals method with refugee families. The findings reveal that young children perform the role of facilitators, assistants, and cultural brokers through their digital media practices during the transition process of their families into a new culture

How can interactions with digital media foster refugee families' transitions to a new culture

"A refugee is defined as an individual who has to flee from his or her home country to escape persecution for different reasons, including race, religion, nationality or political oppression" (UNHCR Handbook, 1992). Many families who migrate, go through various adaptation processes related to new languages, places and cultures, and face uncomfortable situations and stress (Tyrer & Fazel 2014). However, children can make a huge contribution to their families' transitions in the host country (Orellana, Reynolds, Dorner & Meza 2003) as they are the ones spending most of their time outside, engaged with the culture, learning the language, and adapting to new cultural norms naturally and more quickly. The aim of this study is to explore the role of technologies in the transitions of refugee families in Auckland and Edinburgh and to determine whether children’s interactions with technologies at home have any impact on families’ transitions into a new culture. Key informants and volunteers visiting refugee family homes on a regular basis and assisting them in their transition process are research participants of this study.The research seeks to answer the following questions:1) What types of digital media are refugee children using to support their families’ transitions into new culture?2) How do children’s use of digital technologies influence refugee families’ transitions and adjustment into a new culture?Our project aims to locate the role of digital media (TV, digital devices, such as computers, laptops, tablets, and smartphones) in this mediation process through analysing children’s interactions with technologies. The study is situated with the sociocultural theory of Vygotsky (1978). The research study is mixed-method and uses qualitative and quantitative methods such as surveys and semi-structured interviews with key informants and volunteers.We are conducting surveys with key informants and volunteers who are working with refugee families living in Edinburgh, Scotland and Auckland, New Zealand. We have disseminated surveys through volunteer charities working in Edinburgh and Auckland. Out of surveys we are in the process of interviewing 11 volunteers who participated in these surveys and agreed to be interviewed.Our initial findings reveal that despite the fact that refugee families use their native language at home, they need to learn local language in order to settle in the new country. For this purpose, they make use of digital technologies at home and beyond. Considering how many parents do not know the language when they first migrate, their children who attend school and high school become a medium in their adaptation process. In doing so, children also use digital technologies in their assistance to their parents and other older family members.Based on our findings we are planning to create leaflets for families translated in their language on how digital media in a home setting can help them with cultural assimilation and language learning. The leaflets designed in comic-book format will be one way of dissemination of our results. In addition, our results can be used in setting clear guidelines for key informants and volunteers that would help them to better assist refugee families in using digital media to support their transitions into new culture and country

Collaborated:Digicom 2019 – 3rd International Conference on Design and Digital Communication

CollaboratED is a research initiative exploring the opportunities andchallenges for collaborative work between online and campus students within the Digital Media Design MSc programme, where groupwork is an important aspect of the learning process. This paper discusses the outcomes from the longitudinal research, involving questionnaires, observations, and individual interviews with students andlecturers on the programme. CollaboratED asks students and academic staff about the benefits and challenges to group work, looking tofind ways to successfully bring campus and online learners into a creative and shared studio environment. The first round of gathered data have been analysed through familiarisation, coding, categorisation and in-depth thematic analysis. The initial research findings suggest that the challenges that online students face are mostly focused on balancing work and studies, but also working from different time zones and overcoming cultural differences within the team. Despitethese challenges, the online learners recognise the benefits of group discussion and sharing resources with their peers, mostly, however,they value the sense of being part of a community. Similar results are currently identified for the campus cohort, but it would appear that sharing resources and receiving instant feedback from their peers were the biggest motivators for being part of a group. Despite positive responses towards group discussion and collaboration, in both campus and online cohorts, the largest percentage of students prefer to work alone where course assignments are concerned. This presents achallenge for the tutors and course organisers of the MSc programme. In its final stages, CollaboratED is looking to suggest ways of overcoming this challenge through interactions that trigger learning mechanisms and ways of engaging the students by setting up conditions for an inclusive studio environment