Call for Papers (CFP) – Products, creation and media consumption for children and young people in digital culture

Submission deadline: April 26, 2023

Publication estimate: July/August 2023

Guest editors: Ariane Holzbach (PPGCOM/UFF, Brazil), Gabriela Borges (Universidade do Algarve - Portugal) and Yamile Sandoval (Alfamed Network; Talentum Line Unidad de Innovación Educativa-Colombia)

We live in an evident sociocultural phenomenon, but still little understood: Children and young people have never consumed as many media products directed (or not) at them as they do today. The growing interest in video games, series, books, cartoons, films and all sorts of media products has increasingly attracted the attention of the global market, which in many ways has dedicated itself to productions carefully thought out for this audience.

On the one hand, children and young people today consume with a high degree of autonomy in relation to the traditional filters that orbit their practices, such as parents, schools, church and the State, motivating profound reconfigurations in the communicative circuit of the products that interest them. More than consumers, children and young people establish new relationships with media products, including the possibility that they themselves hold the knowledge and modes of production of part of the products they consume, which reflects on social, cultural, political, economic relations and teaching and learning, which now take into account their practices and needs. On the other hand, media culture has developed a huge number of strategies to capture the interest of children and young people in a much more extreme way than seen in previous centuries. This can be seen in movie theaters (with films featuring superheroes, princesses and anthropomorphic animals that speak directly to this audience), in restaurants (full of "kids areas" and "children specials"), in classrooms (which have never been so full of audiovisual resources), in libraries (increasingly designed to attract young readers), on the internet (videos, games, series) and in many other spaces where new articulations between children, young people, media products and society slip through. However, little investment is seen in terms of training that encourages a critical and reflective attitude towards this vast offer that is permanently available for consumption.

The dossier aims to think about the articulations between these and other phenomena that transit in the relationship between babies, children, teenagers and young people and media products, both with regard to what is produced specifically for this audience and in the tangential consumption of products made for the adult universe, but which, for various reasons, are present in their eventual and daily practice. The dossier encourages articles from different theoretical and methodological approaches that cover social, cultural, historical, political, economic and geopolitical issues, among others, in a comprehensive and complex dialogue around media products and the way they relate to the public socially seen as children and youth. Among the topics to be covered, we highlight, among others:

 

- serial fiction for children and teenagers (novels, series, miniseries, etc.)

- cartoons

- movies for children and young people

- children's and youth literature

- games

- board games

- artistic universe for children and young people

- music albums

- live shows

- streaming platforms in conjunction with the universe of children and young people

- child and adult digital influencers who produce content for children

- media and digital literacy of children and young people

 

Ariane Holzbach – Professor of Media Studies and the Graduate Program in Communication at Universidade Federal Fluminense

Gabriela Borges – Professor at the School of Education and Communication, Universidade do Algarve

Yamile Sandoval – Director of the Alfamed Colombia Network and Director of Talentum Line Unidad de Innovación Educativa in Colombia.