Online Opportunities for Children

Contributor(s): Professor Shakuntala Banaji, Dr Koen Leurs, Dr Giovanna Mascheroni, Professor Jochen Peter, Dr Mariya Stoilova | Online opportunities bring diverse benefits for children, including positive outcomes on learning, participation, creativity, and identity. An important “ladder of opportunities” for children in Europe, digital technologies can activate the potential for social inclusion, equality and children’s rights. Even so, relatively little is understood about how online opportunities generate benefits for children. Opportunities for children have long been theorised, but how should they be rethought in a digital world? In this webinar we will debate the theories and concepts that underpin such questions, drawing on different disciplinary approaches.

Meet our speakers and chair

Shakuntala Banaji is Professor of Media, Culture and Social Change and Programme Director for the Msc in Media, Communication and Development in the Department of Media and Communications at LSE. Her forthcoming book Social Media Hate with Ram Bhat (scheduled spring, 2022) theorises the landscape of disinformation and trolling in the U.K., India, Brazil and Myanmar with particular attention to the connections between contemporary and historical violence.

Koen Leurs (@koenleurs) is an Assistant Professor in Gender and Postcolonial Studies at the Department of Media and Culture, Utrecht University. He works on digital migration and recently directed the projects Connected migrants: comparing digital practices of refuge and expatriate youth and Media literacy through making media: a key to participation of migrant youth?. Currently Koen is a fellow at the Netherlands Institute of Advanced Studies, writing a book on digital migration.

Giovanna Mascheroni (@giovannamas) is Associate Professor at the Department of Communication and Performing Arts, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore. She is part of the management team of EU Kids Online, and WP leader in the H2020 project, ySKILLS. She is also leading DataChildFutures, a national project investigating the data practices of Italian families with children aged 0- to 8-year-olds. Her work focuses on the social shaping and the social consequences of digital media, internet of things and datafication for children and young people. Her forthcoming book, Datafied childhoods: Data practices and imaginaries in children’s lives, co-authored with Andra Siibak, will be published in the Digital Formations series.

Jochen Peter is a Full Professor at the Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR), University of Amsterdam. His work explores how young people’s use of new technologies affects their psycho-social development, including the antecedents and consequences of children’s interaction with social robots, the impact of online communication on teenagers’ sociality, and the relationship between sexually explicit material online and adolescents’ sexual attitudes and behaviour. Peter Jochen has published more than 100 journal articles and book chapters.

Mariya Stoilova (@Mariya_Stoilova) is a post-doctoral researcher in the Department of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). Her area of expertise is at the intersection of child rights and digital technology with a particular focus on the opportunities and risks of digital media use in the everyday lives of children and young people, data and privacy online, digital skills, and pathways to harm and well-being.

Sonia Livingstone (@Livingstone_S) is 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 is part of the CO:RE - Children Online: Research and Evidence webinar series on theory for the EU H2020 project.

Twitter Hashtag for this event: #LSEChildren

Featured image (used in source code with watermark added): Photo by Robo Wunderkind on Unsplash.