The Media Worlds of New Zealand Children

Geoff Leland from the University of Waikato is the next speaker in this session at ATOM2006. His research is into the media worlds of young teenagers in New Zealand - how do they perceive their own worlds? This work has taken place through the 1999-2005 period with some 2000 children in Hamilton and Christchurch, and Geoff argues that because of the fast pace of technological research such research needs to be continuous - findings even from only a few years ago are already outdated. Another reason for tracking changes is also that the New Zealand population profile is changing markedly through immigration and its accepting of humanitarian refugees (in stark contrast to Australia's inhumane asylum policy practices which ignore and breach international humanitarian conventions) - one school Geoff has worked with has some 18% Somali refugee children, for example.

This research is not necessarily conducted through new media - indeed, drawing is an important aspect of this study, too. For example, the children were asked to draw their real and their dream bedrooms - showing amongst other things what media they did have access to, and the full range of media such as TVs, computers, sounds systems, and other media tools they would like to have access to. The study found a number of key areas:

• dreams of conspicuous consumption (showing specific brands, phones, and media centres);
• dreams of privacy, power, and mastery (showing security and surveillance systems, and portals); and
• sculpting of interactive personalised spaces (showing zones of interactivity and socialisation).

More recently, there is also a growing emphasis on mobile technologies and computers - but at the same time, older media (such as books) and non-media elements (such as toys, stuffed and live animals) also remain very much in the picture. Further, quite frequently everything has its place in the bedroom - there's a great sense of what is the appropriate place for all devices.

Some of the themes emerging from all of this information centre around the convergence of technologies (underlining the shifting definition of 'media' in the 21st century) and the dichotomy between parents as digital immigrants and kids as a more experienced generation of digital natives (also indicating the attendant frustrations of the younger with the older generations). There is also good evidence of kids' awareness of the potential dangers of new media, and of their ability to self-filter the content that is available to them in order to protect themselves from such dangers.

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