Children, Media, and Pandemic Parenting

Rebekah Willett is a Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor in the Information School at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA. She conducts research on children’s media cultures, focusing on issues of play, literacy, identity, and learning. Her publications include work on makerspaces, playground games, amateur camcorder cultures, online gaming, and family media practices. Xinyu Zhao is a Research Fellow (Digital Childhoods) at the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child, Deakin University, Australia. As a sociologist, he is interested in researching the political economy of digital childhoods and cultural diversity in contemporary digital parenting.

Foreword: Learning from the pandemic

1 Introduction: Families, screen media, and daily life during the pandemic

2 Space, Time, and Families' Relational Media Practices: China and Canada

3 Temporalities and changing understandings of children’s use of media: Australia, China and the United States

4 Schooling with and through technologies during the pandemic: South Korea and the UK

5 ‘Just doing stupid things’: Affective affinities for imagining children’s digital creativity

6 Imaginaries of Parental Controls: The State, Market and Families

7 Conclusion: contributions, provocations, and calls to action