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

Abstract

The relationship between media and play has been the subject of my research during the last ten years. Along that period, the research has obtained a common conclusion: children are related to media as consumers, as audiences, as producers and as reproducers of what is shown on them. From the moment in which children are born a new ecosystem composed by different screens and devices becomes their home. I argue that play is a key dimension to analyze contemporary childhoods and their relationship to media culture. When children talk about their games, their favorite shows and computer interactions, they are presenting themselves to others. The objective of this paper is double. Firstly, I aim to present a characterization of the media addressed specifically to children in order to identify continuities, stereotypes, differences and basic characteristics. The key concept in this phase is the one of representation. Secondly, I work with the interviews that I made during 2012 to thirty children who were between six and ten, inhabitants of the City of Buenos Aires, Argentina. The objective was to listen to children and the meanings the built around their everyday lives. Play and games were approached not only as meaningful cultural practices but also as a way of analyzing the productions that children made from the available discourses in their everyday lives. Desires, preferences and games as children name them are going to be the organizers of the second part of the paper. The relationship between children, media and play is complex, but it is a very interesting way to build some knowledge about the contemporary culture and the ways through which children establish different relationships with it. Both objectives will allow us to build a complex approach to children, media and play in the communicative ecosystem in which they are growing.