Children's representation of self in social media communities

Publication date: December 2019Source: Learning, Culture and Social Interaction, Volume 23Author(s): Marina Wernholm, Linda Reneland-ForsmanAbstractThis is a study of how children represent themselves when performing participatory identities in social media communities with relevance to constructing a learning self. Data was generated by filming eight children (6–11 years of age) talking about and showing their multimodal self-representations. On their out-of-school learning journeys, the children came into presences as ‘a someone’, in social media communities. The theoretical foundation informing the study is Wenger's theory on learning as social participation. Multimodal interactional analysis was applied to move the analysis beyond transcripts of texts to include actions children take with or through multimodal mediational means. The results display significant aspects of children's learning trajectories in self representation, presented as: Input from comments, understanding the other, preparing for a performing self and taking actions. Out of these acts of participation, three different participatory identities were constructed: the user, the producer and the designer. The main results show how children through participation, widen their learning repertoire and critically reflect on space and place. This research adds to the educational field by presenting children's experiences from navigating new worlds and enacting participatory identities, which is of relevan...
Source: Learning, Culture and Social Interaction - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research