Contested spaces in early childhood research: advocating a dialogic approach

I am writing this Editorial from my study in central England which, as part of the UK, is in the process of making a momentous and life changing decision about leaving the European Union, a decision that will have a transformative impact on our country and its peoples for many decades to come. This process has generated some of the harshest, negative, poorly informed and adversarial dialogues I have ever participated in and witnessed, and as a citizen I long for something different. The experience has made me deeply aware that the quality of our civic life, and its ethical underpinning, is diminished by such public discourse and that we each have a responsibility to work to ensure we realise a more civilised and civic form of interaction in all domains of our personal and professional lives. So, in this Editorial I wish to examine the roles we, as early childhood researchers, play in generating respectful and egalitarian dialogues which reach across our diversities and differences, and to consider how we handle the contested nature of these dialogues. In particular, I want to think about how we in EECERA and in our Journal, contribute to the perpetuation and disruption of ‘contested spaces’ in the discourse about, and practice of, research into early childhood policy and practice. By ‘space’ I mean the opportunities we have as researchers to ensure our work feeds into the development and transformation of early childhood policy and practice in an ethical manner. ‘Space’ is a complex concept which describes the encounter between researchers and those whom they wish to influence (be that other researchers, funders, politicians, practitioners, parents and more) who hold a wide range of world views, cultures, ideologies, values, politics, histories, hopes and intentions. Promoting these paradigmatic spaces are important if we wish our work to make a difference but they are often contested and shaped by the nature of the discourses we promote in our research. These spaces have always been contested as the field of early childhood research constitutes a fascinating interface of various, and often conflicting, social, political and economic visions and realities. The Journal, like our Association, is a contested space that shapes, and is shaped by, our actions and interactions, which in turn, have a significant impact on the way our work is perceived and used by those within the sector and beyond

Media justice: Madeleine McCann, intermediatization and "trial by media" in the British press

Three-year-old Madeleine McCann disappeared on 3 May 2007 from a holiday apartment in Portugal. Over five years and multiple investigations that failed to solve this abducted child case, Madeleine and her parents were subject to a process of relentless ‘intermediatization’. Across 24–7 news coverage, websites, documentaries, films, YouTube videos, books, magazines, music and artworks, Madeleine was a mediagenic image of innocence and a lucrative story. In contrast to Madeleine’s media sacralization, the representation of her parents, Kate and Gerry McCann, fluctuated between periods of vociferous support and prolonged and libellous ‘trial by media’. This article analyses how the global intermediatization of the ‘Maddie Mystery’ fed into and fuelled the ‘trial by media’ of Kate and Gerry McCann in the UK press. Our theorization of ‘trial by media’ is developed and refined through considering its legal limitations in an era of ‘attack journalism’ and unprecedented official UK inquiries into press misconduct and criminality

Mulat-estetiek: ’n Analise van Adam Small se dramas

Opsomming In hierdie artikel word die dramakonvensies van Adam Small ondersoek met besondere aandag aan perspektiewe op die mulat as ’n sosiale gegewe. Hierdie element bied ’n gepaste invalshoek omdat dit enersyds ‘n verskynsel is wat Small in sy dramas en ander skryfwerk aansny en daar andersyds ’n uitgebreide literatuur bestaan waarin oor die dramatiese, lewensbeskoulike en literêr-teoretiese inkleding daarvan besin word. Die werk van onder andere Langston Hughes en Derek Walcott word ondersoek om ’n leesstrategie te ontwikkel waarmee die Small-teks geanaliseer kan word.Web of Scienc

Performing digital aesthetics: the framework for a theory of the formation of interactive narratives

Interactive narratives are inextricable from the way that we understand our encounters with digital technology. This is based upon the way that these encounters are processually formed into a narrative of episodic events, arranged and re-arranged by various levels of agency. After describing past research conducted at the iCinema Research Centre at the University of New South Wales, this paper sets out a framework within which to build a relational theory of interactive narrative formation, outlining future research in the area