Playing in virtual spaces: using ethnography to explore a new area of research

Abstract

Based on a yearlong project, working with elementary school-aged children in Vancouver, Canada, this research indicates how children's own cultural practices create mutable boundaries surrounding their use of the Internet. In particular, I consider how mass-culture products can be creatively manipulated to present the child's sense of self to an unseen audience. Thus, the paper illustrates, through documenting two kinds of virtual play (video and online toys and games), that ethnographic research can be an important tool for investigating how new technologies are socially integrated into children's play worlds. This leads to important indications for future research looking to investigate children's relationships with new media and technology. First, this relationship can be creative and a positive part of children's self-development. Second, the research highlights the interaction between perceptions of risk and access to urban children in out-of-school contexts. These results, I conclude, point towards the importance of focusing further research on how young children use new media and technology to explore aspects of their self-presentation and therefore self-legitimation, from within their home.

Keywords:

• play
• home
• ethnography
• consumption
• childhood
• new media

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the parents, children and schools who agreed to participate in this study. I would also like to thank Inge Daniels and Debra Young for the comments in planning and writing up the research.

Notes

Exceptions to this include Seiter (2005), Buckingham (1993, 2000, 2007) and Sefton-Green and Buckingham's (1998) work, which have stood as setting-off points for this research.

In the sense that administering such long questionnaires requires adult help that certainly influences children's idea of what the ‘correct’ answer might be.

Ethnography, most often written from, and including, notes from participant observation is a core method of presentation of data in a number of social science disciplines, including anthropology. It is characterized by an integration of comparative material from other sources with observational material in a narrative-driven writing style (Gay y Blasco & Wardle, 2006).

Due to the comparative nature of writing ethnography, the question arises for an individual author as to what other perspectives (theoretical or data-driven) should be included or discarded from the ethnographic article. In area studies, such as childhood studies, much prior (and relevant) work has been driven from an external, quantitative, that is, etic, position. This stands in contrast to anthropology's classic, self-referential and qualitative, emic position. However, I would argue that while my data may be gathered from an emic position, as far as that is possible for any research conducted by an adult research with child participants, there is value in comparison to a wide variety of work in childhood, both qualitative and quantitative, emic and etic. This is particularly so where the area being researched is new or under-researched, such as in this pilot work on virtual spaces. As ‘play studies’ unites under the banner of interdisciplinarity it seems vital to look to unite our viewpoints as far as possible both to move forward as a body of scholarship and to solidify its status as a study area.

All children's names are pseudonyms.

The research design was approved by University of Oxford's Ethical Review Board and the Vancouver School Board's research ethics committee.

Cody (11) is a slightly older boy than Zach, who he knows from when he and his family lived on the small Gulf island of Galliano. On Galliano there is only one elementary school where all the children are educated in one classroom, so inter age-group friendships are the norm.

Please note that, as these images were gathered in the field they are only of snapshot quality.

These videos are not cited in line with ethical standards on the representation of children. However, they are indexed and searchable on YouTube.

Dannah Boyd chooses to spell her name in lowercase.

In the Media Awareness' Network (2005) Survey, ‘Young Canadians in a Wired World’ Addicting Games (29.6%) was the most popular website for boys aged four to seven, a similar site to Mini-clip, which was only 1% less popular (28.6%). Interestingly, YouTube does not feature in any list or in the report at all, despite this being the one website many children mentioned to me as a useful source of information and entertainment.

Zach and Brianna's Aunt is their primary caregiver. She has set no firm limits on what websites the children are allowed to access. Rather, she relies on their own internal censorship, what Zach and Brianna call ‘appropriateness’.

Zuleika is also allowed unsupervised ‘computer time’. However, she is only permitted to use the Internet in connection with her Webkinz. Her other computer time she spends include practicing typing, writing stories in the word processor and drawing pictures on the built-in Windows graphics software (MS Paint).