Unboxing Childhood

Risk and Responsibility in the Age of YouTube

Bibliographic Data

ID22124147
AuthorsJulie C Garlen (0000-0002-2224-5688, Carleton University), Sarah L Hembruff (Carleton University)
Year2021
Pages78-90
Publication date2021-07-07
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Childhood Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2371-4107 • E-ISSN: 2371-4115
PublisherUniversity of Victoria Libraries (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.18357/jcs462202119934
OpenAlexW3180394592
LanguageEN
Citations received5
References cited24

In this article, we look to viewer responses to James Bridle’s TED Talk on children’s YouTube to learn about the discursive landscape of childhood in the digital age. We first situate concerns about children’s use of YouTube within a history of moral panic and then conduct a thematic analysis of online comments to discover what viewers identify as the central concerns. We “unbox” three emergent themes of responsibility—corporate, parental, and societal—to understand how these themes might help us think about contemporary discourses of childhood “at risk,” critical media literacy, and children’s agency as social actors on the Internet

Criminology · Media studies · Moral panic · Political science · Qualitative research · Social media · Social science · Sociology · The Internet · Thematic analysis · Child Development and Digital Technology · Digital Storytelling and Education · Law · Literacy, Media, and Education · Psychology · Social Psychology

Tools

Open DOIOpen Access