Audio Books by Sonia Livingstone

In the decades it takes to bring up a child, parents face challenges that are both helped and hindered by the fact that they are living through a period of unprecedented digital innovation. In Parenting for a Digital Future, Sonia Livingstone and Alicia Blum-Ross draw on extensive and diverse qualitative and quantitative research with a range of parents in the UK to reveal how digital technologies characterize parenting in late modernity, as parents determine how to forge new territory with little precedent or support. They chart how parents often enact authority and values through digital technologies since "screen time," games, and social media have become both ways of being together and of setting boundaries. Parenting for a Digital Future moves beyond the panicky headlines to offer a deeply researched exploration of what it means to parent in a period of significant social and technological change.

An intimate look at how children network, identify, learn and grow in a connected world. Read Online at connectedyouth.nyupress.org Do today’s youth have more opportunities than their parents? As they build their own social and digital networks, does that offer new routes to learning and friendship? How do they navigate the meaning of education in a digitally connected but fiercely competitive, highly individualized world? Based upon fieldwork at an ordinary London school, The Class examines young people's experiences of growing up and learning in a digital world. In this original and engaging study, Livingstone and Sefton-Green explore youth values, teenagers’ perspectives on their futures, and their tactics for facing the opportunities and challenges that lie ahead. The authors follow the students as they move across their different social worlds—in school, at home, and with their friends, engaging in a range of activities from video games to drama clubs and music lessons. By portraying the texture of the students’ everyday lives, The Class seeks to understand how the structures of social class and cultural capital shape the development of personal interests, relationships and autonomy. Providing insights into how young people’s social, digital, and learning networks enable or disempower them, Livingstone and Sefton-Green reveal that the experience of disconnections and blocked pathways is often more common than that of connections and new opportunities.

Is the internet really transforming children and young people’s lives? Is the so-called ‘digital generation’ genuinely benefiting from exciting new opportunities? And, worryingly, facing new risks? This major new book by a leading researcher addresses these pressing questions. It deliberately avoids a techno-celebratory approach and, instead, interprets children’s everyday practices of internet use in relation to the complex and changing historical and cultural conditions of childhood in late modernity. Uniquely, Children and the Internet reveals the complex dynamic between online opportunities and online risks, exploring this in relation to much debated issues such as: Digital in/exclusion Learning and literacy Peer networking and privacy Civic participation Risk and harm Drawing on current theories of identity, development, education and participation, this book includes a refreshingly critical account of the challenging realities undermining the great expectations held out for the internet - from governments, teachers, parents and children themselves. It concludes with a forward-looking framework for policy and regulation designed to advance children’s rights to expression, connection and play online as well as offline.

Taking the soap opera as a case study, this book explores the 'parasocial interaction' people engage in with television programmes. It looks at the nature of the 'active viewer' and the role of the text in social psychology. It also investigates the existing theoretical models offered by social psychology and other discourses.This second edition takes into account recent research work and theoretical developments in fields such as narrative psychology, social representation theory and ethnographic work on audiences, and look forward to the developing role of audience research. It will be an essential study for students and lecturers in social psychology and media studies.

"An exemplary study of how media regulation works (and, by implication, how it could work better) set within a wider discussion of democratic theory and political values. It will be of interest not only to students and scholars but to people around the world grappling with the same problem: the need to regulate markets, and the difficulty of doing this well." - James Curran, Goldsmiths, University of London In Media Regulation, two leading scholars of the media examine the challenges of regulation in the global mediated sphere. This book explores the way that regulation affects the relations between government, the media and communications market, civil society, citizens and consumers. Drawing on theories of governance and the public sphere, the book critically analyzes issues at the heart of today's media, from the saturation of advertising to burdens on individuals to control their own media literacy. Peter Lunt and Sonia Livingstone incisively lay bare shifts in governance and the new role of the public sphere which implicate self-regulation, the public interest, the role of civil society and the changing risks and opportunities for citizens and consumers. It is essential reading to understand the forces that are reshaping the media landscape.

In today’s thoroughly mass-mediated world, audiences and publics are, of course, composed of the same people. Yet social science traditionally treats them quite differently. Indeed, it is commonplace to define audiences in opposition to the public: in both popular and elite discourses, audiences are denigrated as trivial, passive, individualised, while publics are valued as active, critically engaged and politically significant.

Not only is everyday conversation increasingly dependent on television, but more and more people are appearing on television to discuss social and personal issues. Is any public good served by these programmes or are they simply trashy entertainment which fills the schedules cheaply? Talk on Television examines the value and significance of televised public debate. Analysing a wide range of programmes including Kilroy, Donohue and The Oprah Winfrey Show, the authors draw on interviews with both the studio participants and with those watching at home. They ask how the media manage discussion programmes and whether the programmes really are providing new 'spaces' for public participators. They find out how audiences interpret the programmes when they appear on the screen themselves, and they unravel the conventions - debate, romance, therapy - which make up the genre. They also consider TV's function as a medium of education and information, finally discussing the dangers and opportunities the genre holds for audience participation and public debate in the future.

Combining a comprehensive literature review with original empirical research on young people's use of new media, this book provides a fresh and in-depth discussion of the increasingly complex relationship between the media and childhood, the family and the home.

Contemporary democracies are based on the belief that media can deliver the attention of the voting populations. But in an age of multiplying media, political disillusionment, and time-scarcity, is this plausible any longer? This book addresses this major question head on, drawing on the voices of people from the UK who were asked to write diaries about their experiences (or not) of 'public connection', as well as survey data and comparative research in the USA and elsewhere.

"The easy interface of touchscreen technologies like tablets and smartphones have enabled children to access the digital world from a very young age. But while some commentators are enthusiastic about how this can open up a new world for play, learning, and developing digital skills, others see the dangers of yet more screens, inauthentic play, and time spent isolated with electronic babysitters that detract from interaction with parents and the learning of social skills. Including a glossary of key terms, this book draws on a three-year research project examining the realities of 0-5 years olds' experiences of these technologies in the UK and Australia. The authors draw heavily on Vygotsky and engage with other thinkers including Bronfenbrenner and Bruner. It explores how parents of young children evaluate these opportunities and concerns, and how they try to work out ways to parent in relation to technologies they did not experience in their own childhood. The book examines how digital technologies fit in with other elements of children's daily lives including their preferences, pleasures and sociability. The book also explores the extent to which grandparents, parents and educators engage with children's experience of digital technologies."--

Children’s lives are increasingly mediated by digital technologies. Yet, when it comes to understanding the long-term effects of internet use and online experiences on their well-being, mental health or resilience, the best we can do is make an educated guess. Our need for this knowledge has become even more acute as internet use rises during COVID-19. This report explores what has been learned from the latest research about children’s experiences and outcomes relating to the internet and digital technologies. It aims to inform policy-makers, educators, child-protection specialists, industry and parents on the best evidence, and it proposes a future research agenda.

The internet is becoming a natural part of children’s lives across the globe, but we still lack quality and nationally representative data on how children use the internet and with what consequences. This report underscores that it is possible to collect quality data if the right strategies and investments are in place. Over the past 4 years, the Global Kids Online network has worked with UNICEF and partners around the world to improve the global evidence base on the risks and opportunities for children on the internet. This report provides a summary of the evidence generated from Global Kids Online national surveys in 11 countries. Importantly, most of the evidence comes from children themselves, because it is only by talking to children that we can understand how the internet affects them. By bringing children’s own voices and experiences to the centre of policy development, legislative reform, advocacy, and programme and service delivery, we hope the decisions made in these spheres will serve children’s best interests.