Call for Papers
Children and youths in the center
media representations, discursive tensions and pedagogical dimensions in graphic, audiovisual
and digital supports
Coordinators
Maria Agustina SABICH, Buenos Aires University (Argentina)
Gabriel DVOSKIN, Buenos Aires University (Argentina)
Call for Papers
The title of this call is connected with the conceptual and creative principle named “Children in the center”, a philosophical initiative created by Jan-Willem Bult, who served as director of the Dutch channel KRO until 2013.
“Children in the center” means, among other issues, that children and youths have spaces where they can express themselves and also where they are enabled to tell their own stories, which differs from those instances in which they are used to tell the adults´s stories. At the same time, the principle is based on the notion of “quality”, which refers to the presence of an aesthetic configuration that constructs other children and youths representations in the mass media; an aesthetic that should necessarily move away from gender roles and hegemonic stereotypes that, frequently, mass media reproduce, many times, influenced by advertising (Götz, Reich & Speck-Hamdan, 2009).
On the other hand, the study of children and youths´s representations in the mass media is an activity in constant movement and presents challenges for the academic field. According to Carli (2006), the acceleration of scientific-technological change, the emergence of the "authority" crisis, the visibility of diverse families, the emergence of "new" screens, the weakening of modern institutions, the economic and technological globalization and the culture globalization are some of the contemporary social influences about children and youthsin the western world.
In fact, the most recent papers examine the different dimensions that have children and youths as addressees –just to mention a few of them, we refer to the legal, the educational, the psychological, the sociological and the anthropological studies and those who contemplate gender perspectives–; indeed, the trend indicates the need for interdisciplinary research about these subjects.
Undoubtedly, the current global socio-health situation caused by Covid-19 and the ways in which the pandemic permeates social practices, invites us to reflect on the new scenario where children and youth´s formal education is also developed in the mass media (Götz, Mendel & Lemish, 2020).
So, in an audiovisual and digitized environment that configures an heterogeneous and specialized audience, in this dossier we call for the articles that explore the graphic, audiovisual and digital media characteristics that have as addressees the children and youth´s figure; this includes the analysis of the possible relationships among literature, pedagogical discourse, preventive discourse, multimodal discourse, mass media, reception studies, and new literacy means.
As we mentioned at the begining, and just to provide an additional idea, there is a consensus among some theorists in understanding that the notion of "literacy" requires some distance from the "restricted" conceptions –in which only reading and writing have prominence–, in order to assign priority to the “broad” conceptions –where mass media, “new” screens, technological devices, and literate artifacts are central in children a youth´s experiences–(Sabich, 2021; Scolari, 2016; Buckingham, 2012; Duek; 2012; Cassany, 2008; Gee, 2008; Livingstone, 2007).
By the way, the Latin American researchers as Duhalde (2017), Fuenzalida (2016), Salviolo (2013) and Carmona (2006) are associated to a view in which mass media have to recognize children and youths as “subjects of law” and as symbolic and material producers of the societies where they live. From this perspective, children are not certain people who will be potentially "something" in the future, but rather they are historical and social actors with their own concerns, questions and conflicts, at the present time. In this sense, the meaning of “childhood” and “youth” does not indicate, necessarily, the figure of a “less adult” but rather constitutes an experiencie of living over the years (Kohan, 2007 and 2009). This is because, as we said before, within the scope of children audiovisual production, there is an important criterion named “quality”: for Salviolo (2013), quality is not reduced to the presence of children and youth on the screens, but also, to the connections that mass media propose with their experiences, which implies the awareness about all those bonds that they have with home life, neighborhood, community, friendships, games, school and political practices.
The dossier calls for papers which explore the following axes (non-exhaustive list):
Axis 1: Relations between graphic media and children & youths
We are interested in articles that explore children and youth representations in literature, in the graphic press, on advertising posters, in textbooks and also in editorial collections.
Axis 2: Relations between audiovisual media and children & youths
We are interested in articles that explore the children and youth representations in movies, audiovisual series and in short films. Texts about adverfilms, public televisión, commercial television and advertisement are relevant to this call.
Axis 3: Relations between digital media and children & youths
We are interested in articles that explore the children and youth representations on the Internet: from video games to virtual platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, TikTok or YouTube. Texts about youtubers, instagramers and influencers are more than welcome for this call.
Important deadline
Send submissions in electronic form to agustina.sabich@gmail.com, gabidvoskin@gmail.comand frenchjournalformediaresearch@gmail.comThe contributions will be evaluated by a double-blind committee.
o Full-text submission: September 1st, 2021
o Notification: October 30th, 2021
o Revised text submission: November 15th, 2021
- Publication: December 2021
General guidelines
The main body of the paper should be a maximum of 11 000 words in length. Full guidelines can be found here: http://frenchjournalformediaresearch.com/lodel-1.0/main/index.php?id=222
Bibliography
Buckingham, D. (2012). Más allá de la Tecnología. Aprendizaje infantil en la era de la cultura digital. Buenos Aires, Argentina: Manantial.
Carli, S. (comp.) (2006).La cuestión de la infancia. Entre la escuela, la calle y el shopping. Buenos Aires, Argentina: Paidós.
Cassany, D. (2008). Prácticas letradas contemporáneas. Claves para su desarrollo. Barcelona, España: Ministerio de Educación.
Duhalde, A. (2017). Children´s Television Worldwide II: Gender Representation in Argentina. Múnich: International Central Institute for Youth and Educational Television (IZI). Recuperado dehttp://childrens-tv-worldwide.com/pdfs/Argentina.pdf
Duek, C. (2012). El juego infantil contemporáneo. Medios de comunicación, nuevas prácticas y clasificaciones. Revista Brasileira de Ciências do Esporte, 34(3), pp. 649-664. Recuperado dehttp://www.scielo.br/pdf/rbce/v34n3/v34n3a09.pdf
Dvoskin, G. (2016). La educación formal de la sexualidad: la autoridad del discurso pedagógico. Discurso & Sociedad, v. 10 (1), pp. 1-21. Recuperado de http://www.dissoc.org/ediciones/v10n01/DS10(1)Dvoskin.pdf
Fuenzalida, V. (2016). La nueva televisión infantil. Santiago de Chile, Chile: FCE.
Gee, J. P. (2008). La ideología en los discursos. Madrid, España: Morata.
Götz, M., Mendel, C. & Lemish, D. (2020). Children, covid-19 and the media a study on the challenges children are facing in the 2020 coronavirus crisis. Televizion, N° 33, pp. 4-9.
Kohan, W. (2009). Infancia y filosofía. Pregunto, dialogo, aprendo. México D.F, México: Progreso.
Kohan, W. (2007). Infancia, política y pensamiento. Ensayos de filosofía y educación. Buenos Aires, Argentina: Del Estante Editorial.
Livingstone, S. (2007). Do the media harm children? Reflections on new approaches to an old problem. Journal of Children and Media, 1(1), pp. 5-14. doi:https://doi.org/10.1080/17482790601005009
Sabich, M. A. (2021). An interdisciplinary analysis of the fictional television story on the argentine signal Pakapaka. French Journal for Media Research, N° 15. Recuperado de http://frenchjournalformediaresearch.com/lodel-1.0/main/index.php?id=2098
Salviolo, C. (2013). Pakapaka: la construcción de un nuevo relato sobre la infancia. En A. Guerín; A. Miranda; R. Olivieri y G. Santagata (Comp.) Pensar la televisión pública ¿Qué modelos para América Latina? (pp. 409-420). Argentina, Buenos Aires: La Crujía.
Salviolo, C. (noviembre de 2012). La experiencia de Pakapaka. En: Crecer juntos para la primera infancia. Congreso llevado a cabo en el Encuentro Regional de Políticas Integrales, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Scolari, C. (2016). Alfabetismo transmedia. Estrategias de aprendizaje informal y competencias mediáticas en la nueva ecología de la comunicación. TELOS, pp. 1-9. Recuperado dehttps://telos.fundaciontelefonica.com/url-direct/pdf-generator?tipoContenido=articuloTelos&idContenido=2016030812060001&idioma=es
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