Managing Media. Listening to Young Girls as Producers of Texts and Media in the Nineteenth Century and Today: Ida Thiele’s Letters and Naja Münster’s YouTube Channel

Abstract

This article uses concepts from media studies and childhood studies to present a comparative analysis of the media products and practices of two young girls of a similar age, Naja Münster (b. 2009) and Ida Thiele (b. 1830). Naja Münster produces social media content on her YouTube channel, while Ida Thiele wrote letters to her father. The cases call for mixed methods, including content analysis and ethnographic methods. Analytical questions are: 1) What type of content do children prioritise, and what do they ignore? 2) From the girls’ perspectives, what are the purposes and affordances of their selected media? and 3) Do they accept and/or challenge the conventions and constraints of the media they use? We conclude by suggesting that presenting concepts and cases that traverse historical contexts and disciplines may make it possible to identify new aspects of children’s products, voices and relational agency.