Publications

This special issue is resulting from the work of the Working Group 4 on “Audience transformations and social integration” of the COST Action IS0906 “Transforming Audiences, Transforming Societies”. COST is an intergovernmental framework for European Cooperation in Science and Technology, allowing the coordination of nationally-funded research at the European level.

The connection between children’s cultures and media cultures can be considered a privileged area of innovation, in which many different actors and stakeholders (children, parents, educators, producers, marketing agents, regulators, policy makers and, last but not least, scholars) constantly negotiate the meaning of childhood in our globalised societies.

In the ever changing landscape of (old and new) media and their audiences, convergence between children’s cultures and media cultures is an increasingly topical field of study. To name but some of the challenges this reality presents, one could note how children and adolescents are continually exposed to the expansion of global digital TV channels addressed to them; how  the growing investment in marketing activities is often associated with new forms of publicity and participation in new platforms like SNS sites or mobile communication; how new social practices born of changing family structures and the fast paced rhythm of everyday life make children’s lives not only far more institutionalised, but also increasingly individualistic. In fact, today children’s lives are influenced by a culture that is dominated by personal and mobile media far more than it ever was in past generations.

In this special issue, some of the aforementioned topics are studied in greater depth and debated on different levels, starting with children’s experience of everyday life and arriving at the concepts put forward by public policies and institutions.

Contents:

Introduction: Children’s Cultures and Media Cultures

Cristina Ponte, Piermarco Aroldi

The Complex Process of Children’s Identity in New Landscapes of Media and Culture

Ebba Sundin

Youth Media Participation: Global Perspectives

Sirkku Kotilainen, Annikka Suoninen

TOPmodels and Top Designers: Forms of Social Interaction and Creativity in the TOPmodel Online Forums

Mari Mäkiranta

Dress up and What Else? Girls’ Online Gaming, Media Cultures and Consumer Culture

Giovanna Mascheroni, Francesca Pasquali

Media, Children and Play: New Practices in a New (and Complex) Ecosystem

Carolina Duek

Meet me at the Coconut Gate at 8.30: ‘Mikmak’ as a Site of Socialisation

David Levin, Sharon Ramer Biel

The Efficiency of Regulation and Self-regulation: Croatian Media’s Protection of Children’s Rights (2008 – 2012)

Lana Ciboci, Igor Kanižaj, Danijel Labaš

More Technology, Better Childhoods? The Case of the Portuguese ‘One Laptop per Child’ Programme

Sara Pereira

2nd Annual Report 1991.

This book is a result of COST Action C19 “Proactive Crisis Management of Urban Infrastructure”. The main objective of the Action is to define current knowledge gaps and identify possible measures to improve the multidisciplinary research on urban infrastructure vulnerability and the handling of crisis situations.

What shapes the role of information and communication technologies in our everyday life? Despite the speed with which information and communication technologies such as the PC, mobile telephone and internet have found their way into society, there remains a good deal of debate surrounding their adoption and use. Through empirical studies covering a broad range of everyday life and work settings, this volume provides grounded insights into the social dynamics influencing how ICTs are both shaped and experienced.