CLRN Blog

We first met the class at the end of a sunny afternoon in July in the quiet of a London suburb. We found ourselves addressing a blur of teenage faces turned expectantly towards us. We explained that we wanted to find out how they lived their lives at school, at home and online, about their friendships and their learning. We quickly got a conversation going. Who, we asked, used Facebook, and who had a mobile phone? Most hands shot up, although one boy made a point of saying “no” to Facebook. Some faces w Read More...

Building on research supported by the MacArthur Foundation’s Digital Media and Learning initiative, a new series “Connected Youth and Digital Futures,” is debuting its first two books — By Any Media Necessary: The New Activism of American Youth and The Class: Living and Learning in the Digital Age. This series offers books that describe the ways that the day-to-day lives and futures of young people are being reconfigured at the intersection of civil and political reform, transformation in employment Read More...

Nine anthropologists from University College London simultaneously spent 15 months in Brazil, Italy, India, China, Trinidad, Turkey, England and Chile to study how people around the world use social media. Alicia Blum-Ross takes a closer look at the Why We Post project and finds that it demonstrates that what young people do online has meaning, and is consequential to themselves and to others. Alicia is a researcher at the LSE’s Department of Media and Communications. She is interested in youth med Read More...

Guest blogger Wendy M. Grossman finds that it’s hard for parents and teachers to guide children to avoid bullying (online and off) when so many adults behave so visibly so badly. She takes a closer looks at bad behaviour online, and how to avoid ‘feeding’ the trolls while maintaining ‘freedom of speech’. Wendy writes about the border wars between cyberspace and real life. She is the 2013 winner of the Enigma Award and she has released a number of books, articles, and music. Are the troll Read More...

Technology use is changing fast, which makes things difficult for parents trying to prepare their children for the future. Sonia Livingstone looks at the recent CHILDWISE report¹ and provides four key messages to help predict what’s coming. Sonia is Professor of Social Psychology at LSE’s Department of Media and Communications and has more than 25 years of experience in media research with a particular focus on children and young people. She is the lead investigator of the Parenting for a Digita Read More...

Guest blogger Wendy M. Grossman wonders whether it is right to be optimistic about our digital futures? She discusses Carrie James‘ new book Disconnected: youth, new media and the ethics gap in which the author suggests caution, emphasising time for reflection rather than disconnection. Wendy writes about the border wars between cyberspace and real life. She is the 2013 winner of the Enigma Award and she has released a number of books, articles, and music.  Probably every parent in every g Read More...

Alexandra Chernyavskaya takes a critical look at Ofcom’s latest Children and parents: Media use and attitudes report and outlines three current trends in children’s internet use, and why parents need to know what their children are doing online. Alexandra is a postgraduate student in the Department of Media and Communications at the LSE and she works as Project Support Assistant for the EU Kids Online project. When looking at the structure of the contemporary media ecosystem, it is hard to deny t Read More...