For Kids’ Sake? For Data’s Sake! II

In an update to a post earlier this year, Symantec has released the ‘Kids’ Top 100 Searches of 2009‘ in which ’sex’ and ‘porn’ figured in the top ten. In a post earlier this year I suggested that I found some aspects of the data collection and analysis to be problematic. In the latest version of result we see a break down by age and gender which illustrates that there are vast disparities in search terms. However, I still believe that a greater degree of clarification in terms of collection and in the analysis of the results would allow others to read the data for themselves, rather than to have it read for them.

Abstract for ‘MeCCSA 2010′ Conference

Spatial and Temporal Proximities in the Design Process of Children’s Websites: An Assessment of the Potential application of ANT in Media Research

An abstract for the MeCCSA 2010 conference, London School of Economics (LSE) 06/01/10 – 08/01/10

The collaborative potential of web and media 2.0 (Gauntlett, 2007 ; Tapscott, 2008) and the rise of online user-generated content (Jenkins, 2008) have been heralded as blurring the distinction between media producer and consumer. This paper seeks to problematise the extent to which this distinction of roles has become blurred, and suggests that a focus on the processes of production are central to understanding how such roles of producer and consumer continue to be relationally defined and distributed. The paper begins by examining the potential contributions of Actor-Network Theory (ANT), in particular its assertion that the role’s of actors are relationally defined and transformed through how they connect with other actors, both human and non-human. While acknowledging the potential uses of ANT in media research, the paper also explores the limitations of the approach, drawing on its weaknesses in approaching the spatial and temporal dimensions of sociality. Thus moving beyond ANT, the paper will explore how media producers enact spatial and temporal proximities, between themselves and users in the design process, delineating the points at which production and contribution can occur. With reference to empirical research this paper will argue the importance of process over product.

For Kids’ Sake? For Data’s Sake!

This morning I became aware of two news articles, published by Mashable and the BBC news site, on children’s top search terms. These articles reported on data provided by Symantec, aggregated from search terms that were collated through their OnlineFamily.Norton service software. This software is designed to allow parents to monitor (view web histories etc.) and control (set time limits etc.) children’s online activities, but apparently also feeds such data back to Symantec.

I want to raise two issues with regards to this data; first, and very briefly, the way in which this data is being used to ‘speak’ for children Internet users and secondly, the theoretical and methodologically questionable use of this data by commercial and media sectors. These two topics are also significantly interlinked, and by focusing on the issues of the theory and methodology (un)informing this data I hope to offer a challenge to the grounds on which children are spoken for through the data.

The real issue at stake here is the use of data by commercial firms that lacks a reflexive appreciation of the theoretical and methodological issues attached to the data’s collection and interpretation. Yesterday evening I read the most recent response by Mike Savage and Roger Burrows in their ongoing involvement in the debate of ‘The Coming Crisis of Empirical Sociology’. One aspect of their argument is that commercial firms are producing vast amounts of data, beyond the scale and budget of many academic projects, but often lacking theoretical or methodological tools that academics ceaselessly develop. Their suggestion is that academics need to begin to engage with this data, rather than to dismiss data produced by commercial firms. They give a number of examples, including the Tesco Store Card, which uses associational data to understand its customers. For example, it might be the case that people who purchase fuel at Tescos are twice as likely as others customer to purchase boiled sweets. Savage and Burrows suggest that there is a great deal to be garnered from both sides, in terms of large scale data sets for academics, and theoretically informed interpretations and rigorous testing of methodological tools for commercial firms.

On these grounds, I want to offer a de-construction of the data provided by Symantec to suggest how it could be better informed. There are some gaping holes in the information provided around this data set, and the following bullet points will outline my main criticisms:

•    Age and Categories of Childhood – This data refers to children as a homogenous group of an unspecific age range and there is no break down of the different age categories. This can be extremely misleading and can produce false representations, as in the case of the BBC’s reporting of ‘Kids’ Top Search Includes Porn’. The internet habits of children vary vastly, and not just in terms of age but location, gender, socio-economic backgrounds, ICT abilities etc. I was particularly struck by the absence of the CBBC website, which in my own research I have come to understand is the most prominently used and trusted website for young children in the UK, thus the question is raised as to who is being represented by this data. Without a clear break down of age categories, or even a delineation of what age group the data refers to, there is very little meaningful information that can be garnered from the list of search terms.
•    Sample Size – The size of a sample is extremely important in methodological terms. First, to contextualise the data to its population. We have no clues as to how large the sample of children are using the Internet with the Norton software monitoring their search terms. (And as I will show in the remaining bullet points, we don’t actually know who the sample are.) Secondly, if we were to have a break down of age groups, we might be able to appreciate the weighting of the data. Thus whether one particular age group has greater representation above another, for example teenagers may be represented over and above young children.
•    Data Source and Data Collection¬ – We know that the data is from Symantec and that it is based on families who use their software. However this raises issues such as: how many families use the software? What sort of socio-economic background are these families from? Which family members is the software monitoring? We also need to be aware of the purpose of the data collection. Symantec are a company that produce software for parents concerned about their children’s Internet use. The prominence of terms such as ‘sex’ and ‘porn’ underline the issue that would lead parents to purchase such software.
•    Temporally Locating the Data – One of the few pieces of information provided with the data was the time scale in which the data was collected (February 2008 to July 2009). This is quite significant as the data then represents a temporally limited period. Michael Jackson’s appearance on the search list and ‘Fred’, a YouTube sensation, offer suggestions of a temporary popularity in that given time frame. How this time scale was determined remains unanswered (for example, why not 12 months or two years?)
•    Geographically Locating the Data – Finally, we have few clues as to where this data was collected from (American households? UK households? Globally?). The lack of presence of the CBBC would suggest it was either American or, potentially, global. Again, this is an extremely large loophole. Another missing site was Sulake’s Habbo. In 16th place was Webkiz, which Kzero research listed as having 6million unique users in Q2 2009, compared to Habbo’s 135million unique users in the same period (the largest for any virtual world). Yet Habbo, owned by Finnish Sulake, fails to appear in the top 100 websites. This would again suggest a predominantly American dataset.

Finally, it is worth noting that, if this data represents anything of children’s Internet activities, it is what children ‘look’ for, not necessarily what they visit. Thus to return to the original point of this blog post, the data informing the conclusions made by BBC news, Mashable, and, most importantly, Symantec, lacks rigorous debate. In particular, we should be wary of the conclusions we draw around children and their internet use from this data which lacks a considered, or unopen, methodology and theoretical background. Hopefully such debate will also create a forum in which academic and commercial bodies and persons can combine resources and skills to produce more rigorous understandings of the potentials of data and research.

Blue Peter Style!

This last week I was at the Goldsmiths PhD Sociology student’s annual trip to Cumberland Lodge in Windsor Park.

As part of an ice-breaker session we used a mish-mash of various materials to build representations of our research in order to introduce the other attendees to our projects. The picture accompanying this post was my effort to build a model using bits of foam, card and PLENTY of glue.

So what does it represent? Hopefully you might have been able to deduce that this the model is a loose representation of a children’s sandpit with a castle (made from sand), a bucket and a spade. Through these various constituent elements i’ve tried to provide an allegory for how, in my mind, my research topic is configured. The first important thing to note is that it is a sandpit and not the beach. The sandpit is an area delimited for children to play within, as represented by the red band around the edge. (This is not to say that children always stick within this boundary!) Adults set this boundary and within this boundary play can, supposedly, occur safely. This is also true of children’s websites where, within the website itself, children are monitored to ensure their safety. The sand is a substance which can be manipulated and provides children the opportunity to exercise their imagination. Websites, though to varying degrees, also offer children a space within which to manipulate and arrange aspects of the site through play. Children may also play socially in the sand; collaboratively building objects such as sand castles. Many websites also provide a social experience and the means for children to communicate and interact through the site. Sand castles themselves are a fairly standard use of sand, and in a sense children share a framework for understanding certain uses of sand (such as for digging and building certain structures), however each sand castle can be styled individually by a child. Many interpretations of websites by children are duplicated across the site and originality of use occurs in slight differences of expression. Finally, the bucket and the spade represent the tools which have been specifically designed and provided by adults for children to use within the sandpit. The bucket, though not very visible in the image, is decorated and both are colored in a way to be attractive to children. Designed specifically for certain forms of play and use. Many tools and functions of websites have been designed in a similar way, often in a way that allows children to interact with that specific brand.

What’s also important in this model are the missing elements, in particular the children and adults. Thus the limitation of this allegory is that children and adults act upon these sites and engage with them through computers from geographical variant locations. The sand pit has a virtual existance and is in a constant state of re-intepretation and re-configuration, never actualised.

Amsterdam Presentation

The slideshow that accompanied this paper can now be found in the publications section of the site.

Revised Abstract for ‘Ends of Television?’ Conference

As the conference in Amsterdam is fast approaching, i’ve posted (below) the revised abstract for the paper I will be presenting as part of a Goldsmiths led panel. As the abstract suggests, the main alteration has been the focus on the CBBC show Bamzooki. So it is with great thanks to the staff producing the show that I have been able to write this paper with an appropriate case study.

Re-aligning Media and Actors: The Impact of ‘Cross-Platform Broadcasting’ in the Children’s Media Industry

An Abstract for the ‘Ends of Television? Logics, Perspectives, Entanglements’ Conference, University of Amsterdam 29/06/09 – 01/07/09

This paper will examine the movement of traditional children’s television broadcasters into ‘cross-platform broadcasting’ and the implications of this shift on how we study media as singular and multiple platforms. Cross-platform broadcasting includes the growing children’s entertainment market in on-demand viewing and online forms of media. This paper considers how media producers situate themselves in relation to both the diversifying range of platforms and the audiences associated with individual and multiple media platforms. The shift towards cross-platform broadcasting raises a key issue with regard to how we, as academics, approach diversification and convergence within children’s media culture, in particular through our conceptual framework and research methodologies. This paper advocates the need for an approach that is able to take account of shifting media sites and how the roles of consumer and producer are situated and formed (and re-formed) in relation to changing perceptions of children’s media. Of fundamental importance to this paper is the configuration of the child in this network of associations and how a new child audience is conceived in relation to the shifting media platforms and role of broadcasters. The paper will explore how contributions from Actor-Network Theory (ANT) and Socio-Spatial Theory can help us to examine the shifting arrangement of associations through notions of ‘relationality’ and ‘proximity’. With specific reference to empirical research on one of BBC children’s programmes, Bamzooki, this paper will provide an investigative account of initial attempts to map this proposed theoretical framework to a show actively utilizing multiple platforms.

Abstract for ‘Ends of Television?’ Conference

Re-aligning Media and Actors: The Impact of ‘Cross-Platform Broadcasting’ in the Children’s Media Industry

An Abstract for the ‘Ends of Television? Logics, Perspectives, Entanglements’ Conference, University of Amsterdam 29/06/09 – 01/07/09

This paper will examine the movement of traditional children’s television broadcasters into ‘cross-platform broadcasting’[1] and the implications of this shift on how we study media as singular and multiple platforms. Cross-platform broadcasting includes the growing children’s entertainment market in on-demand viewing and online forms of media. This shift is characterised by a rhetoric of forward movement (with, the then CBBC controller, Richard Deverell characterising his department’s media shift as “at the vanguard” of such a movement[2]). Other broadcasters involved in this movement include; the Cartoon Network, Disney and Nickelodeon. This paper considers the implications of this rhetoric and its impact on how media producers situate themselves in relation to ‘new’ and ‘old’ media and the audiences associated with these media. This platform shift raises a key issue with regard to how we, as academics, approach diversification and convergence within children’s media culture, in particular through our conceptual framework and research methodologies. This paper will advocate the need for an approach that is able to take account of the shifting media platforms and how the roles of consumer and producer are situated and formed (and re-formed) in relation to changing relations and perceptions of children’s media. This paper also considers the point at which old and new media meet in order to take account of the interactivity between these platforms at a time of convergence as well as movement (of being ‘on the verge’).

In response to the issues raised, the paper will examine the contributions that actor-network theory (ANT) and socio-spatial theory can provide in relation to examining the shifting arrangement of associations between actors, technology and media. The paper will consider how the framing of their roles is contingent on the heterogeneous connections formed between the relevant actors (children’s broadcasters and child audiences/users), technology and media. Drawing on spatial theory, the paper will raise questions of how the distance between actors has been re-conceptualised during this media shift, around notions of one-way vs. two-way media and of passive and active audiences. Of fundamental importance to this paper is the configuration of the child in this network of associations and how a new child audience is conceived in relation to the shifting media platforms and role of broadcasters.

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[1] BBC News Website (23.01.07) ‘BBC plans online children’s world’ http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/6290585.stm

[2] The Observer Website (04.03.07) ‘Are you surfing comfortably?’ An interview with BBC Children’s Chief Richard Deverell. http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2007/mar/04/business.broadcasting1

Funding Award

Appropriately, this first blog is posted on the day that I receive confirmation of my research being accepted for one of the department’s ESRC quota awards. This news means that from October 2009 the research will be conducted full time and will be fully funded by the ESRC. There will thus be a lapse between this and the next blog post as I take time to relax after an extremely stressful funding process!