Enhancing sociality, self-presentation, and play: A case study of digital scenarios among schoolchildren in an epidemic context

ABSTRACT

This study explores what types of digital life scenarios children practiced while facing the challenges of epidemic isolation, in which distance learning and limited social contact depended largely on new digital platforms. The study of children's mediatised activities within epidemic isolation can be approached from the perspective of radical contextualism, which has been widely used since the ethnographic turn in audience research that began in the late 1980s. Following this conceptual framework, the aim of the study is to identify the predominant experiences of isolated everyday life in a case study of schoolchildren and uncover typical collective groupings among young people. Based on a follow the child perspective, an online survey was conducted at a selected primary school, targeting children from 6th to 9th grade, to capture children's perceptions of online education and distance learning, prevalent digital use and their personal digital positioning. In an analytical sense, the collected sample of 110 schoolchildren was categorised using a cluster analysis to identify the typical scenarios of digital culture and show the diversity of online practices that children experienced during the COVID-19 isolation, even in a relatively homogeneous group of schoolchildren. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)