Rethinking context: Digital technologies and children's everyday lives

Abstract

The paper considers different ways of conceptualising the settings in which research takes place into children's everyday uses of digital technologies at home. The terms 'ecology' and 'context' are widely used to describe such settings but may be less appropriate as the boundaries between 'home' and 'technology' become less distinct. The paper traces associations between 'ecology', 'culture' and 'context' and outlines some of the ways in which the increasing omnipresence and invisibility of technologies in the home prompt different ways of both thinking about the research setting and suitable methods for exploring children's everyday lives. Using the Internet of Things as an illustration, it contests default understandings of context and discusses the need to reconsider our use of terminology so that it takes account of the methodological implications and its theoretical provenance.Keywords: children; context; culture; digital technology; ecocultural; home 1. Introduction: children's everyday lives and digital media at home This paper starts from the premise that understanding more about young children's encounters with digital media necessitates an explicit consideration of the research setting. It draws attention to the ways in which two key terms, 'ecology' and 'context', are often used by default when discussing the cultures of children's everyday lives, especially in the home, by drawing on several research projects which have focused on young children, their families and digital media. It examines the theoretical positioning of these terms and how this shapes methodological choices, and goes on to suggest that we may need to rethink context now that the boundaries between 'home' and 'technology' are less distinct than they were just a few years ago.A consideration of different ways of conceptualising the settings in which research into the everyday lives of children takes place starts by looking at the widespread use of the term 'ecology' and its derivation from Bronfenbrenner's ecological model. This leads to a discussion of ecocultural theory, which draws on this model and is described by its proponents as contextualist in orientation. These theorisations were not designed to focus on uses of digital media and their value for conducting research into uses of technology in the home may be partly compromised by the ubiquity, mobility and invisibility of current and emerging domestic and leisure technologies. Common usage implies that context pre-exists as a factor available to take into account when investigating technological practices but I suggest that recent changes in the visibility and omnipresence of technology mean that we need to rethink ecology and context as concepts that are used to describe research settings. Moving beyond the 'flat' representation of ecology which

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