BRANDS, MEDIA LITERACY AND PRE-TEENS' EXPRESSIONS OF IDENTITY

Costa, C. (2013). BRANDS, MEDIA LITERACY AND PRE-TEENS' EXPRESSIONS OF IDENTITY. COST Action conference Belgrade.

Conceicao-Costa-Full-paper.pdf

Abstract: In the westernized world, society and family recognize that children have their own culture, different from that of adults. Taking advantage of the social vision that child are competent agents of their own life, as well as the widespread access to the network, commercial companies are more and more involved in children's culture. The hybridization of marketing and entertainment in online and offline media environments gave rise to "commercial" spaces embedded in children everyday life. Moreover, the nature of the relationship between people and media is established in a manner identical to that of human communication and, in addition to the "other people", media objects play a role in the construction and expression of identities. Thus, the identity experience of children and their peer group tends to occur in mediated environments, which can be seen as sponsors of identities' construction. Although family and peers still are important reference groups for the construction of the child identities, she/he has more opportunities and autonomy via media to identify and be legitimized by their peer group. With the aim of studying how pre-teens appropriate brands in their expression of identities, this paper analyzes in depth three case studies conducted with children aged 9-10 years, students of the 4th year of elementary school. The three schools were located in Greater Lisbon area and of different social condition. Activity theory and the interactionist perspective on identities were used as the theoretical framework for the research, thus placing the child in interaction with various communities in a given socio-cultural context: the family, the peer group and the imaginary groups (of interest, fans, virtual communities of play and learning). By studying the children in the school system, we tried to observe their peer relationships, both face-to-face and via mediated environments; having always in mind the other interactions outside of school. Giving voice to children, an ethnographic approach was used, complemented by social network analysis (SNA) applied to interactions among children and between children and content in a Web platform. We realize the importance of the peer group and media in the experimentation and construction of pre-teens identities, as well as the role of social network analysis in monitoring behaviours and learning processes.