Media & Family Education

Existential Field 8: Media & Family Education

The report on Media & Family Education has been written by Sonia Livingstone & Ranjana Das at the Department of Media and Communications, London School of Economics and Political Science in the United Kingdom.

Keywords: media, technologies, digital, children, youth, internet.

Abstract: 'Media, communication and information technologies in the European Family' examines the Existential Field (EF) of Family, Media, Family Education and Participation, as part of the work programme of the ‘Family Platform’ project. The EF8 report is written at a time of substantial technological and social change, resulting in a simultaneously diverging and converging media environment, strongly shaped by processes of globalisation and the recent advent of widespread access to the internet and mobile technologies.

Structured around four central themes – the changing place of the media in the European home; digital interactive and mobile technologies; parenting, media, everyday and socialisation; and mediating relations between family and wider society, – the review also includes five special focus pieces on diasporic media consumptions, mobile media, new technologies and intimate relationships, digital exclusion and girl culture.

Six key trends emerge to be important from the findings of the review:

• New, interactive, individualised and personalised media technologies are rapidly contributing to a diverse media environment in Europe. Across Europe, young people are staying at home for longer periods of time – perhaps appropriately termed an extended adolescence, where bedrooms are heavily mediated.
• Children’s use of the internet continues to grow. Striking recent rises are evident among younger children (6-11 years) and in countries that have recently entered the EU.
• Education systems across Europe, from school through university are increasingly reliant on technology enhanced classrooms.
• Health, aging support and other care and support services are increasingly reliant on new technolgies, especially within the home.
• Media consumption continues to provide moments of togetherness, despite the individualisation exacerbated by new technologies. Television for instance, shapes a cultural space of commonality for diasporic families and cross-generational communication.
• There is an increasingly small difference in internet use between boys and girls in the younger age groups and gender gaps in access to the internet are mostly small and are closing in nearly all countries. Socio economic inequalities continue to matter.

The review recommends that research in this area needs to better converge family studies literature within sociology and media and communications literature, that more research is needed on a cross national comparative level, that little is known for all age groups in the population, especially the media consumption of the elderly. Also little research distinguishes or compares ‘youth’ or ‘children’ by age and other sociological variables. Findings across Europe on social class, ethnicity and cultural differences remain scarce in terms of media literacy, education and civic participation and there is little research that takes into account media environments as a whole.

Download and Comment

Please find available to download the summary, full working reports (to the left of this text). The Summary highlights key points and findings of the work, whilst the Full Report should be read by those wanting a more in-depth knowledge of the subject area. An Appendix produced by Myria Georgiou, Leslie Haddon, Ellen Helsper & Yinhan Wang focusses on five areas of particular interest.

Stakeholders are invited to comment on the report, making reference to their own findings and policies as appropriate; these critical comments will be analysed and processed as part of the Critical Review of the Existing Research on Families. Please note that only registered stakeholders are able to comment and download the full reports. To register, click here.