Researching Everyday Childhoods: Time, Technology and Documentation in a Digital Age

Description

This book is open access and available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. It is funded by the University of Sussex, UK. How can we know about children's everyday lives in a digitally saturated world? What is it like to grow up in and through new media? What happens between the ages of 7 and 15 and does it make sense to think of maturation as mediated? These questions are explored in this innovative book, which synthesizes empirical documentation of children's everyday lives with discussions of key theoretical and methodological concepts to provide a unique guide to researching childhood and youth. Researching Everyday Childhoods begins by asking what recent 'post-empirical' and 'post-digital' frameworks can offer researchers of children and young people's lives, particularly in researching and theorising how the digital remakes childhood and youth. The key ideas of time, technology and documentation are then introduced and are woven throughout the book's chapters. Research-led, the book is informed by two state of the art empirical studies - 'Face 2 Face' and 'Curating Childhoods' - and links to a dynamic multimedia archive generated by the studies.

Rachel Thomson is Professor of Childhood and Youth Studies at the University of Sussex, UK. Liam Berriman is Lecturer in Digital Humanities/Social Science at the University of Sussex, UK. Sara Bragg is a Senior Research Fellow in the Education Research Centre, University of Brighton, UK.

From its opening pages, the leading authors guide us through a nuanced engagement with key theoretical ideas about contemporary technological change and the lives of young people subtly synthesised with rich and detailed empirical case studies. This book, set apart from the rest, is tender and responsive to both the participants and the data. It is insightful in quite profound ways. This is a book from which to learn and to change one's practice as a researcher and a social thinker. * David Oswell, Professor of Sociology, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK * From the very first page this compelling polyvocal book bursts with an abundance of detailed conceptual-methodological practices for understanding everyday childhoods and contemporary research. While demonstrating new commitments to the ethical labour required for care in research, it also provides an accessible guide to how we might all enact this in practice. Holding the research archive in mind from the beginning, this book is an instantiation of a transformed research practice, and I cannot wait to see the future archive of research that this text will inspire. * Niamh Moore, Chancellor's Fellow and Deputy Director of Research (Ethics), University of Edinburgh, UK * A fascinating and well-researched look at how kids and teens actually use, understand, and feel about digital media that provides an important counterpoint to moralizing and panic. By listening and working with young people, the authors provide a sorely-needed empirical perspective on a topic often characterized by sensationalism. * Alice Marwick, Assistant Professor, Media & Technology Studies, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, US * Set to become the go-to text in how to do qualitative longitudinal research with children and young people. Impeccably written by some of the most prolific scholars in childhood and youth studies, the book offers inspiring, passionate as well as instructive and informative insights into contemporary childhood. * Sian Lincoln, Reader in Communication, Media and Youth Culture, Liverpool John Moores University, UK *