Open AccessUnboxing Childhood: Risk and Responsibility in the Age of YouTube
Author(s) -
Julie C. Garlen,
Sarah L. Hembruff
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
journal of childhood studies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2371-4115
pISSN - 2371-4107
DOI - 10.18357/jcs462202119934
Subject(s) - moral panic , agency (philosophy) , sociology , thematic analysis , the internet , social media , media studies , psychology , social psychology , social science , political science , criminology , law , qualitative research , world wide web , computer science
In this article, we look to viewer responses to James Bridle’s TED Talk on children’s YouTube to learn about the discursive landscape of childhood in the digital age. We first situate concerns about children’s use of YouTube within a history of moral panic and then conduct a thematic analysis of online comments to discover what viewers identify as the central concerns. We “unbox” three emergent themes of responsibility—corporate, parental, and societal—to understand how these themes might help us think about contemporary discourses of childhood “at risk,” critical media literacy, and children’s agency as social actors on the Internet.