Introducing the CO:RE theories vlog series: an interview series with experts in the field of children and media

Today we are launching a video series on theoretical perspectives, based on interviews with key experts whose work can help us understand children’s online lives. We asked a series of prominent scholars in the field to reflect on their disciplinary origins and perspectives and to talk us through key debates, core concepts, and their favourite theories. In this way, we hope to create a dialogue among different disciplinary perspectives and to identify the agreed or contested issues that merit academic and public attention. We also hope to refresh established lines of inquiry and challenge familiar assumptions, aiding innovation and advancement in the understanding of children online. Since we asked each interviewee the same questions, each interview has merit in its own right and the comparisons among them add further insights.

In this introductory video, Prof Sonia Livingstone (London School of Economics and Political Science) talks about why it is important to discuss our concepts and theoretical approaches and what to expect from the theory vlog series.

Excited to kick off the theories vlog series with an interview with the Theories WP5 leader, I begin my conversation with Sonia Livingstone whom I know very well as a Professor of Social Psychology in the Department of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) where I work.

Sonia greets me with her usual smile, and we gently take off on a journey. ‘I began as a social psychologist’, she says, ‘thinking about media audiences and since 1995 or thereabouts I’ve been really doing research on children and what we used to call their new media use when new media meant do they have a VCR or a TV in the bedroom’. Jotting some notes while Sonia talks about the influence of sociology, psychology, and cultural studies, I can feel that I’m in for a treat. She doesn’t need any prompts from me, so I slowly abandon my notetaking and quietly listen how theory of late modernity and the tradition of audience and interpretation theorising come together.

We move on to talk about the concepts that Sonia disagrees with and how she makes links between theory and her empirical research.  ‘I would really like us to stop talking in any kind of simple way about the idea of technological impacts’, she says, ‘to me, impact is a kind of a red flag that implies an overly causal, overly linear, probably too simple analysis of the way in which children relate to and engage with the digital environment’. I listen attentively, moved by her passion about the topic and her ability to see the full picture in its complexity, yet conveying it concisely and with ease. We wrap up our discussion by talking about the ways in which we can move the debate further and Sonia reminds me of the importance of thinking about children and the digital world not as a niche topic but as a point of intersection – ‘where different disciplines, different debates, and different tensions are very much focused’.

Further reading

More about Sonia Livingstone’s work.

Livingstone, S. and Blum-Ross, A. (2020) Parenting for a digital future: how hopes and fears about technology shape children’s lives. New York: Oxford University Press.

Livingstone, S. and Sefton-Green, J. (2016) The class: living and learning in the digital age. NYU Press, New York. ISBN 9781479824243. See launch and blog.

Davies, C., Coleman, J. and Livingstone, S. eds. (2014) Digital technologies in the lives of young people. London: Routledge.