In this recently published article available here, we argue that online, informal learning communities bring youth opportunities for learning that schools cannot offer. Yet, there are concerns about the impact of social media platforms’ control over online learning. We argue for a re-evaluation of what an ‘online informal learning community’ is by looking at such active communities on three platforms: YouTube, Twitch and TikTok. We do this by reconsidering Gee’s ‘affinity spaces’ and by asking: how can we understand online informal learning communities in the current sociotechnical context? We observed and analysed interactions of six learning communities on YouTube, Twitch and TikTok. Our results show that in today’s platformised online context, Gee’s concept of ‘affinity spaces’ should be reconsidered in three ways. First, platforms call for discussion about affinity spaces’ boundaries through the visibility regimes that play a part in access. Second, platforms challenge the affinity spaces’ grammar; to maintain a focus on their interest, platforms need to engage with interests provided by platform cultures. Third, a more fixated hierarchisation, informed by platforms’ focus on creators, impacts affinity spaces’ social structures. We introduce the concept of ‘platformised affinity space’ as a first step to specific dynamics that platforms introduce to online informal learning communities. We conclude that we only understand these communities when acknowledging how these dynamics are appropriated as well as resisted to achieve community goals.

This was the title of the most recent Digital Child seminar held at ACMI. The full program, list of speakers and description of the event can be found here.

At this his current time when there is so much negativity around the use of digital media for and by children and young people it was inspiring to hear accounts of the ways that experiences of digital media permeate every aspect of growing up today. Finding ways to better understand this, advocate for its meaning and pleasures especially in terms of finding a language to explain being with digital media remains a key purpose for all of us.

I will talk virtually at a conference held in Seoul, South Korea advertised as an international conference on media literacy. The conference is held by the community media foundation in South Korea.My  presentation reflects on a recent publication called  Manifesto for a better children’s Internet. This is a conceptual provocation is designed to help us think about what we might want from the Internet for our young people and what would be the key principles involved in designing a better space for young people and children to engage online. A video of my talk can be found here.

I was recently on a panel presenting at the Social Media Summit held jointly by the premieres of New South Wales and South Australia. In a context of extreme concern about the so-called impact and effects of social media on children and young people and in a country such as Australia where there is considerable political impetus to impose forms of control and bands on young peoples use of an access to forms of digital media, I argued: We all -children and youth included-live in a totally digitally dominated wold. Young people’s informal learning ecologies show their abilities to leverage education, civic engagement, and digital citizenship. A good childhood in Australia would enable schools toto help students develop meaningful interactions in the world.

I have also helped with this paper. While children’s relationship with media technologies has long been an area of significant news interest news coverage in this area is often perceived as focusing on negative elements, perhaps even constituting a ‘media panic’. The ARC Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child is and always has been, sensitive to the perceived or assumed orientation of media to the value and impact of digital media during childhood. Many researchers perhaps feel as though Australian news media is more often than not negative about children’s use of digital technologies, yet it is difficult to point to evidence of such trends.

This paper thus attempts to assess prominent Australian news media’s portrayal of children and digital technologies. It does so by specifically by assessing articles from mainstream print newspapers

This working paper asks: what is the tone and subject of Australian media coverage of issues relating to children and digital technologies? To address this question, we first provide an explanation of the concept of ‘news values’ and its role in our analysis. We then outline our methods, which involved collecting and analysing articles published in 14 Australian newspapers between 2000 and 2022. This is followed by our findings which indicate an overall tendency toward negative reporting, with an increase in negativity over recent years.

A scoping review and call for forward momentum

I was very pleased to be able to contribute towards this new article published open access and which can be found here

The article argues : Digital technologies are a common part of everyday life for families with young children (aged 0–8). Despite public anxiety around this reality, much of the current guidance for families and practitioners is conflicting and lacks sufficient evidence. This article maps recent research to gauge the extent to which it is providing nuanced understandings of digital technology use that can positively contribute to this context. Through a large-scale, multi-disciplinary scoping review, this article provides a high- level view of dominant topics, research designs, and conceptual approaches. It finds that the field is largely rooted in methodological and conceptual approaches to childhood, family, difference, and technology that are insufficient for capturing the breadth and complexity of experiences in this area. Rather than arguing for a specific approach, we call for forward momentum in the form of greater ambition to look beyond current methods, concepts, and questions – especially those that are no longer fit for purpose. The review identifies several issues and gaps around which research agendas could be reframed. These include the need for more precise articulations of technologies, greater emphasis on dimensions of use other than time, abandoning dosage models of media effects, and greater attention to diverse digital childhoods.

I recently had the opportunity to chair a discussion around what might make a good childhood in the digital age with guest speakers Professor Sonia Livingstone (London School of Economics and Political Science) and Dr John Davis (Deakin University) in a public seminar hosted by the Digital Child in partnership with the Telstra Foundation.

The guest speakers spoke in response to a new short documentary-style film produced by the Deakin node of the Digital Child centre.

The video featured interviews with children, parents, grandparents, social workers, and representatives from organisations like the Raising Children Network, Alannah & Madeline Foundation, TalkiPlay, Life Without Barriers, and more, and the end result is a broad range of perspectives into what a good childhood means to different people.

In the seminar for which there is also a recording here, we explored what it might mean to talk about a good childhood

We deliberately framed it as the broader good – rather than just focus on our remit in the digital age – because it’s now impossible to separate childhood from the digital. Enquiring into what it means to talk about a good childhood goes to the heart of our passion, our interest and our commitment in the work of the Digital Child centre

I am very pleased to have contributed, even if only by way of a forward, to this new book, available here. Edited by Rebekah Willett and Xinyu Zhao, the book examines changes in families’ rules and routines connected with media during the pandemic and shifts in parents’ understanding of children’s media use.

Drawing on interviews with 130 parents at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the book explores specific cultural contexts across seven countries: Australia, Canada, China, Colombia, South Korea, United Kingdom, and United States. Readers will gain an understanding of family media practices during the pandemic and how they were influenced by contextual factors such as the pandemic restrictions, family relationships and situations, socioeconomic statuses, cultural norms and values, and sociotechnical visions, among others. Further, encounter with theoretical framings will provide innovative ways to understand what it means for children, parents, and families to live in the digital age.

As part of my work at the Centre for the Digital Child I have been working with colleagues on the political economy of Edtech. Here is one preliminary article exploring some of these themes.

Ubiquitous datafication of children and families in educational and everyday settings is both a result of and catalyst for power asymmetries between digital platforms and their users. These platforms seek to know their users by extracting and analysing various streams of personal information, often discreetly. However, the users are rarely equipped to do the same to the platforms as information about these platforms is often obscured, convoluted, or simply unavailable. This article explores the possibilities of reversing such power imbalance via the design intervention of an Australia-focused educational technology (EdTech) database developed by the authors of this article. Employing a design intervention method, the database is a collection of publicly available information about EdTech companies and products that target young children and their parents or educators in Australia. This alternate commentary article presents and discusses the ongoing processes of developing the database to reflect on what it says about the power relations between EdTech providers and their users. It demonstrates how the database works as a pedagogical space where people learn how to critically unpack and think about contemporary EdTech platforms. The database is positioned as a point of convergence for different actors involved in children’s digital learning to collectively understand what needs to be done to enact and protect children’s digital rights in education.

I gave this talk recently at a seminar held at the University of Utrecht called Platforms and Pedagogies: Digital technologies and new perspectives for Youth & Education which concluded the Learning in digital Worlds project held jointly between Deakin and Utrecht. A PDF of my slides can be found here. I tried to offer way of not being subsumed by a “platform gaze” arguing that we need to think of platforms as a larger process owned jointly by a range of actors and institutions which constitute the under-the-surface work of a platform, and that future research needs explore the work of these various sectors and organisations as part of any agenda examining platforms in education.

I also visited colleagues at the University of Groningen offering a PhD masterclass on platform pedagogies and a talk reprising The Class asking whether it still asks the right questions in a post Covid platformed vision of society.