The workshop will take place at Tampere University, Finland. It consists of sessions of individual papers and a keynote talk delivered by Dr. Stephanie Olsen. An informal networking event and a dinner will take place on the first evening (24 April).
The workshop is organised in collaboration with the Academy of Finland Centre of Excellence in the History of Experiences (HEX) in Tampere University and the Turku Institute for Advanced Studies (TIAS).
The workshop conceives of media and communication broadly, including ‘old’ and ‘new’ media technologies and formal or informal media formats; across geographical and chronological contexts; and spanning cultural, political and social importance. We are interested in approaches which explore the forms through which children have expressed themselves to their immediate environment, ranging from drawing or writing fictive stories to mass media pages consisting of child-produced content. As well as a central interest in child-produced media, we look to trace the processes through which children and young people have adopted and appropriated existing and new media landscapes and technologies, such as letter-writing and mobile phones, as part of their lived experience; political, economic and affective cultures; and communication worlds. We also welcome discussions of how adult-produced content, including children’s literature or broadcasting content aimed at children, have framed the experiences of children in different historical contexts.
We welcome papers from early-career and established scholars. Themes for papers could include, but are not limited to, the following:
Children’s access (and limits to) media technologies
Children’s rights and the media
Children’s practices of making media
Child-specific ways of communicating experience
Media and children and young people’s political cultures, activism and citizenship
Children as producers and consumers of media
Children’s embodied use of media technologies
Media-production and use and children’s relationships with peers
Adult-produced media and children’s experiences
Adult concerns of children’s use of media
Those interested in presenting a paper at the workshop are invited to submit a title, abstract of 200 words and contact details to Dr. Eve Colpus (E.C.Colpus@soton.ac.uk), Dr. Antti Malinen (antti.malinen@tuni.fi) and Dr. Heidi Kurvinen (heidi.kurvinen@utu.fi) by 23 January 2023. Accepted contributors will be notified by 1 February 2023.