Connection Brokers: How educators work within and between social networks to cultivate community digital resilience to support children with disabilities using the Internet

Abstract

For children with disabilities, being online can have great benefits, and being part of a well-connected community pays dividends. Research has focused on the development of digital resilience at an individual level, but the ways in which surrounding networks of community support impact this is underexplored. Drawing on digital resilience as a socio-ecological concept and undertaking a thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews with educators, this article addresses this gap by exploring how educators work within and between community networks to support children with disabilities online. Findings suggest that educators are key connection brokers who activate and provide access to a variety of assets and manage pools of resources to build digital resilience at a community level as well as for the individual. We note, however, that addressing structural holes to allow information to flow beyond the community level is challenging and requires continued investment to cultivate greater capacity.

Children’s, parents’ and educators’ understandings and experiences of digital resilience: A systematic review and meta-ethnography

“…In the first quotation above from Nansen et al (2012), our analysis of this participant’s account illustrates how the pre-teen in question learnt how to recognise, manage and recover following perceived overuse. In the second quotation, we argue that opportunities can be removed before learning may take place in ways which are influenced and/or constrained by available discourses (Hammond and Cooper, 2015; Hammond et al, 2023a). In considering learning how to navigate the Internet as an increasingly important developmental task, the need of moving debates forward from binary notions of risk or resilience when considering ‘ using connective technologies’ (Hammond et al, 2024) is an important one.…”

Digital resilience in Chinese adolescents: a portrayal of the current condition, influencing factors, and improvement strategies

“…Reviewing the literature showed several areas for improvement in the research related to digital resilience. First of all, current research on digital resilience mainly focuses on children (13)(14)(15), elementary school students (14), college students (5,8,(16)(17)(18), minority youth (19), consumers (20), and professionals (21), to name a few. In contrast, relatively little research has been conducted on adolescents in the middle and high school cohorts as a high online risk group.…”