Emotions in the mediated civic context of the family: Understanding children's and parents' mutually constitutive mediation environment

Abstract

This article proposes that more attention should be paid to how mediated civic engagements are shaped in a family context. Through an interpretive literature review of research that studies the family's role in mediating civic engagement, we identify several problematic conceptual understandings that create rigid distinctions between the family sphere and its members' civic engagement, as well as between their analogue and digital engagements. The article introduces a conceptual framework that has implications for further research on mediated civic engagement by taking into consideration parents', children and youth's emotions and affective relations as relevant for engaging in the civic realm.

Taking a Dialogical Approach to Guiding Gaming Practices in a Non-Family Context

“…Active meditation-i.e., when parents use a dialogical approach to give youths the opportunity to make decisions concerning their media use-is seen as an idealized and normalized parenting practice in the Global North (Clark, 2013). This has highlighted a democratization of family life critical to youths' civic engagement (Clark & Brites, 2018;Seddighi et al, 2022). In line with this, this study sees active mediation centered around a dialogical approach to the regulation of gaming as the ideal guidance for good gaming practice among youths without close caregivers.…”

“…As a consequence of gaming practices in family contexts, much of the media literacy support available is geared toward helping parents instill good gaming practices in their children (i.e., Norwegian Media Authority, 2021). In the Global North, active mediation that includes youths in decision-making around gaming practices is both normalized as an ideal parenting practice (Azam, 2022;Clark, 2013) and argued to have a democratizing effect on family life (Clark & Brites, 2018;Seddighi et al, 2022). As such, research on the gaming practices of youths without families in Norway can contribute to our understanding of the role of welfare services in gaming mediation and thus expand the democratizing effects of a dialogical approach beyond the family context.…”