Children and the Digital Environment

Contributor(s): Dr Taina Bucher, Professor Christine Hine, Dr Jean-Christophe Plantin, Dr Bieke Zaman | Technologies are spreading into all aspects of our lives via smart devices, internet of things, augmented reality, and data profiling. Children’s lives have become digital by default and technology is the taken-for-granted means of playing, seeing family, doing schoolwork, hanging out with friends in a post-COVID world. The distinction between the offline and online no longer offers a meaningful way of conceptualising the infrastructure of life but what can we replace it with? Where does the digital begin and end, what does it incorporate? What are the implications for children? In this webinar we will debate the theories and concepts that underpin such questions, drawing on different disciplinary approaches.

Meet our speakers and chair

Taina Bucher (@tainab) is an Associate Professor in Screen Cultures at the Department of Media and Communication, University of Oslo. She studies the relationships and entanglements between algorithms, social and political concerns – examining how users experience and make sense of algorithmic power and politics. Her first book, IF…THEN: Algorithmic power and politics details the ontological politics at stake in the algorithmic media landscape.

Christine Hine (@DigiSocSurrey) is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Surrey. Her work offers a sociology perspective on science and technology with a particular focus on the role played by new technologies in the knowledge construction process. She is interested in the development of ethnography in technical settings and in "virtual methods" (internet-based social research). She has developed mobile and connective approaches to ethnography that combine online and offline social contexts.

Jean-Christophe Plantin (@JCPlantin) is Associate Professor in the Department of Media and Communications at LSE. His research investigates the politics of digital platforms, the evolution of knowledge infrastructures, and the rise of digital sovereignty. His first book, Participatory Mapping: New Data, New Cartography details the use of web-based mapping platforms by non-experts to participate in socio-technical debates.

Bieke Zaman (@biekezaman) is an Associate Professor in Human-Computer Interaction and research group leader of the Meaningful Interactions Lab (Mintlab) at the Institute for Media Studies, KU Leuven, Belgium. Her work lies primarily at the intersection of human computer interaction research and communication sciences and focuses on children, digital media and design; media convergence in a digital society; progressive research and dissemination methods.

Sonia Livingstone (@Livingstone_S) is a Professor of Social Psychology at the Department of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She has published 20 books including “The Class: Living and Learning in the Digital Age.” Since founding the 33 country EU Kids Online network, Sonia has advised the UK government, European Commission, European Parliament, Council of Europe, OECD and UNICEF.

More about this event

The Department of Media and Communications (@MediaLSE) is a world-leading centre for education and research in communication and media studies at the heart of LSE’s academic community in central London. We are ranked #1 in the UK and #3 globally in our field (2021 QS World University Rankings).

This event forms part of LSE’s Shaping the Post-COVID World initiative, a series of debates about the direction the world could and should be taking after the crisis.

Twitter Hashtag for this event: #LSECOVID19