BlogDigitisation
Generative digital worlds of children and young people
20 Dec.
2023
https://doi.org/10.34834/2019.0026
Key Words:
digital geographies
social media
young people
care
On October 17th, Jessica McLean from the Macquaire University in Sydney gave us an insightful talk on “Generative digital worlds of children and young people” in the context of the Transient Spaces Lecture Series. Dr Jess McLean does research on how humans, more-than-humans, environments and technologies interact to produce geographies of change. Her research focuses on digital technologies, water politics, climate action and activism. As an Associate Professor in the School of Social Sciences at Macquarie University, she teaches smart urbanism, Anthropocene politics, and environmental justice.
In her talk she drew on a case study of how children and young people use social media for multiple purposes. She shared with us in how far social media interactions and thus digital geographies can be understood as forms of care and repair. Frequently, children and young people are framed as requiring care in the digital but they are also agents of care, as they use social media to increase their understanding of the world, continue self-care, and care for others. These care-full practices often happen despite limitations of the digital, where creating and supporting care infrastructures is not always a priority of platforms. However, from speaking with children and young people about using TikTok and building communities of solidarity to prompt climate change action (in the context of School Strike 4 Climate), it is clear that social media users do identify opportunities to generate reparative moments. The extent to which forms of repair are possible within sometimes care-less digital spaces may speak to how care is navigated in other potentially fraught contexts. The talk not only gave insight into a very contemporary research topic, but further was inspiring from a methodological aspect on doing research with young people.
Listen to the online lecture
The research talk took place at the Department of Geography of the University of Innsbruck on 17th of October 2023 and was hosted by the Research Group Transient Spaces & Societies.
Recommended reading:
McLean, J., Southerton, C., & Lupton, D. (2023). Young people and TikTok use in Australia: Digital geographies of care in popular culture. Social & Cultural Geography, 1-19. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/14649365.2023.2230943
https://doi.org/10.34834/2019.0026
Dr Jess McLean does research on how humans, more-than-humans, environments and technologies interact to produce geographies of change. Her research focuses on digital technologies, water politics, climate action and activism. As an Associate Professor in the School of Social Sciences at Macquarie University, she teaches smart urbanism, Anthropocene politics, and environmental justice. In 2020, her book Changing Digital Geographies: Technologies, Environments and People was published that has contributed to shaping the emerging subdiscipline of digital geographies. Jess was founding co-Editor-in-Chief of the open access Digital Geography and Society journal and is currently an Associate Editor of Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers. Within the Discipline of Geography and Planning at Macquarie, Jess is HDR Convenor and co-convenes the School of Social Sciences’ Environments and Societies Research Strength.
Upcoming Transient Spaces Lecture
If you enjoyed this talk, you might also be interested in our third and final GeoDiskurse – Transient Spaces Lecture this winter by Christoph Fink, University of Helsinki, that will take place on 23rd January 2024. For more information, please see here.
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