Workshop: Children, media and communication: new histories of experience

Image source: helsinkikuvia.fi, N191818. CC BY 4.0. Photograph: Foto Lehto

24-25 April 2023, Tampere University/Online (Zoom)
The workshop is organised in collaboration with the Academy of Finland Centre of Excellence in the History of Experiences (HEX) in Tampere University and the Turku Institute for Advanced Studies (TIAS).

This workshop looks to bring together discussions that centre children and young people’s encounters with media and communication practices as a route to developing conceptual and methodological approaches to doing the history of children and youth’s experience. Building on recent scholarship on child-produced media that explores the agency of children as cultural producers and facilitators of social networks, we seek to extend conversations about what children’s creation and inhabitation of media sites meant to them and to society in different historical contexts.

The workshop will take place at Tampere University, Finland, and it will be streamed online. It consists of sessions of individual papers and a keynote talk delivered by Dr. Stephanie Olsen.

The sessions are held on Monday April 24 (in room A32) and on Tuesday 25 (in room D13) between 10:00-17:00, time zone in Finland is UTC + 3. Link for online participation will be emailed to registered participants through Lyyti system. Registration can be completed via this link by 16 April 2023: https://www.lyyti.fi/reg/children_media_and_communication_2023

Registration for the workshop has been closed but you may contact Heidi Kurvinen if you are still interested in participating in the event online or in person in Tampere.

Contact person: Heidi Kurvinen, heidi.kurvinen@utu.fi

PROGRAMME

Monday 24 April, 2023 (A32)

9.45–10.00  Registration on A32

10.00–10.15  Opening the workshop

10.15–11.45  Session 1: Children on the margins and their mediated experiences (chair: Jenni Räikkönen)

Beth Marsden (University of Melbourne, Australia): ‘Aboriginal Children in Town’: The experiences of Aboriginal children participating in holiday programs in 1950s and 1960s Australia

Zhenlan Lin (National University of Singapore, Singapore): Emplacement and Displacement: Online SMART Communities and Rural-urban Division in We Were SMART (2019)

Ulla Sivunen (University of Jyväskylä, Finland): Deaf young people’s digital agency and multilingual media landscape as learning environment

11.45–13.00  Lunch at own cost at restaurant Aleksis (Kalevantie 2)

13.00–14.30  Session 2: Children, media, education and play (chair: Mervi Kaarninen)

Ekta Singla (Tata Institute of Social Sciences, India): School and its Shaping of Children’s Multimodal Experiences with New Media in India

Katriina Heljakka (University of Turku, Finland): M3gan, Ron, and the(ir) Playing Children: Exploring the Frankenstein Paradox through Speculative Toy Fiction

Lauri Palsa (National Audiovisual Institute, Finland): Is there a room for children’s experiences in the national media literacy development?

14.30–15.00  Tea/coffee

15.00–15.15  Presentation on Childhood and Youth Studies Network

15.15–16.45 Session 3: Reading against the grain for children’s experience (chair: Antti Malinen)

Heidi Hakkarainen (University of Turku, Finland): Children’s books in Early Nineteenth-Century Finland

Amalie Olga Lyngsted (University of Copenhagen, Denmark): Alone in the world – An examination of the emotional significance of relationships for children and youth placed in care from 1897–1922

Eve Colpus (University of Southampton, UK): Thinking with imagery: tracing children’s experience via encounters with the telephone kiosk

18.00             Workshop dinner at own cost at restaurant Telakka (Tullikamarin aukio 3)

Tuesday 25 April, 2023 (D13)

10.15–11.45 Session 4: Keynote talk (chair: Eve Colpus)

Stephanie Olsen (Tampere University, Finland): Experiencing Media/Mediated Experiences: Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Children in Britain and Empire

11.45–13.00 Lunch at own cost at restaurant Aleksis (Kalevantie 2)

13.00–14.30 Session 5: Children using and experimenting with media and technologies (chair: Saara Kallio)

Annebella Pollen (University of Brighton, UK): Cast-Off Cameras, Failed Photographs and the Freedom to Make Mistakes: Childhood Media Memories in Mass Observation

Essi Jouhki (University of Jyväskylä, Finland): To be seen and heard. Finnish student magazines in the 1960s

Bhawna Singh & Vishal Sharma (CCS University, Meerut & CSJMU Kanpur, India): Attention for Future: Like, Share and Comment Culture and Its Influence on Children

14.30–15.00 Tea/coffee

15.00–16.30 Session 6: Methodological perspectives on children’s engagement with print media (chair: Heidi Kurvinen)

Catherine Sloan (University of Oxford, UK): Reclaiming Copying: Children and media in an age of mechanical reproduction

Samira Saramo (Migration Institute of Finland, Finland): “Networks of Migrant Socialist Connection & the Children’s Section of Toveritar”

Heidi Kurvinen (University of Turku, Finland): Finnish children’s political citizenship in Koululainen magazine, 1959–1989

16.30–16.45 Closing the workshop

The workshop is organised by the Academy of Finland Centre of Excellence in the History of Experiences (HEX) in Tampere University and the Turku Institute for Advanced Studies. Alongside them, the workshop is sponsored by the Society for the History of Children and Youth (SHCY).