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twenty - Understanding digital inequality: the interplay between parental socialisation and children's development
- Edited by Sonia Livingstone, London School of Economics and Political Science, Leslie Haddon, London School of Economics and Political Science, Anke Görzig, London School of Economics and Political Science
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- Book:
- Children, Risk and Safety on the Internet
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 07 September 2022
- Print publication:
- 18 July 2012, pp 257-272
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- Chapter
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Summary
Introduction
Across Europe, economic restructuring and immigration from disadvantaged countries show that relations related to inequality are dynamic and persistent. Given the diversity of European countries, in social, cultural and economic terms, the gaps between rich and poor take various forms and occur to differing degrees. However, in all countries social inequalities are a major concern in social politics. Political economists point to the dynamics of inclusion and exclusion that continue to affect the communicative rights and competencies of considerable numbers of citizens (Murdock and Golding, 2004). Hence, the increasing emergence of a society that is mediated, experienced and encountered more and more through the internet is raising continuous questions about whether and how vulnerable families are getting the best out of the social, informational, educational and cultural opportunities of online technologies (Livingstone, 2009).
The younger children are, the more parental education is required for them to use the internet safely and exploit its potentials. Since lower parental educational status often leads to less confidente parental mediation, we need to provide the resources for children to draw on to build competencies for using the internet and coping with online risks. As children get older, they achieve more unrestricted access to and use of the internet, and parents tend to refrain from intervening in their personal time and space (see, for example, Wang et al, 2005; Livingstone and Helsper, 2008; Bauwens et al, 2009). However, the degree of liberty children enjoy and how they deal with it is often the product of a particular family culture. Drawing on sociological and psychological theoretical perspectives, this chapter investigates two research questions:
How does parents’ formal education influence children's internet use?
How does children's development (by age) interact with their family background in terms of an autonomous and competent use of the internet?
The interrelation between these two processes, that is, parental socialisation and development by age, helps us understand the interplay between children's activities in dealing with the internet and how their parents mediate this.
Building on existing empirical work, first, we discuss the persistent importance of social inequality in information and communications technology (ICT) use in industrialised countries; second, we propose a theoretical framework that includes children and parents’ individual agency and how they are interlinked with respect to their societal status.
thirteen - Children and the internet in the news: agency, voices and agendas
- Edited by Sonia Livingstone, London School of Economics and Political Science, Leslie Haddon, London School of Economics and Political Science
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- Book:
- Kids Online
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 15 July 2022
- Print publication:
- 30 September 2009, pp 159-172
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- Chapter
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Summary
Introduction
From both historical and theoretical perspectives, many have argued that media representations provide significant symbolic resources for the construction of public and political agendas and that dominant media frames are powerful in defining social problems and shaping public discourses (Griswold, 1994; Critcher, 2003; Kitzinger, 2004). When it comes to young people's engagement with the internet and how society is dealing with this, the interconnection and congruence among the public, policy and research agendas are noticeable.
Based on a systematic content analysis of news coverage in European papers, this chapter examines how the press reports children's positive and risky or harmful contacts with online technologies. Drawing on agenda-setting theories and on contemporary theories on the construction of childhood, it discusses patterns of representation of internet-related risks and opportunities, considers which social actors are given voice and investigates which role and level of agency are attributed to young people in these news narratives.
Agenda setting and conflicting discourses on children
In 2008, a survey showed that, after their closest relatives, parents see the mass media as the second most influential source of information on safer internet use (EC, 2008). Policy makers and researchers also seem to be sensitive if not susceptible to the media's discourses on young people and the internet. The case of happy slapping – ‘discovered’ by the British press in 2005, and now perceived as a social problem in most European countries (see Chapter Twelve, this volume) – is paradigmatic here.
The tradition of agenda-setting studies provides a useful framework to understand the effects of the news media coverage on public, policy and research agendas. Focusing mostly on the role of the media in political and public agendas, research has shown that the news media promote public and political awareness of certain issues (McCombs, 2005). Contemporary agenda-setting studies consider the effects of media coverage at two levels. Whereas the ‘first level’ is focused on the relative salience of issues or subjects, the ‘second level’ examines the relative salience of attributes of issues (Weaver, 2007: 142). Hence, the news media are first of all powerful in selecting a set of issues that resonate in the public sphere and tend to become of public concern. But they are also influential in establishing how to depict and discuss these issues. They actively set the frames of reference on the issue, employ a particular perspective and voice certain values.