About
Digital Play / Working Kids is a project that investigates the creative work of young people in the marketing and promotion of the intellectual properties of children's media. In addition to seeking to understand children's entanglements in the ecologies of marketing and promoting IPs, this project sought wider clarity on the commercial epistemologies that ideologically define childhood through the logics of marketplace, the immaterial labour of young people's fandom, and the fetishization of authenticity in the visibility economy.
This project was at the intersection of scholarship in the fields of critical media studies and children's studies, both which have neglected to consider the roles of young people in the promotion of intellectual properties and transmedia texts. These two fields provide the theoretical underpinnings of this project.
Project Aims
This project had five primary research objectives:
- Identify how the children's media and entertainment industry harness and exploit the creative labour of young people.
- Investigate the ways in which children's fandom is entangled with the promotional structures of intellectual properties and digital capitalism.
- Learn how young people experience, respond to, negotiate, or resist these entanglements.
- Assess the lived experiences of young people as they engage with intellectual properties as superfans.
- Use the research findings outlined above to develop media literacy and outreach materials for children, tachers, and parents, and to explore broader questions on children's digital labour.
Project Timeline
Stage 1: Establish the workings of the industry
Objective 1: Identify how the children's media and entertainment industry harness the creative labour of young people.
Stage 2: Explore the logics of the marketplace
Objective 2: Investigate the ways in which children's fandom is entangled within the promotional structures of intellectual properties and in digital capitalism.
Stage 3: Engage the perspectives of young people
Objective 3: Learn how young people respond to, negotiate, or resist these entanglements.
Objective 4: Assess the lived experiences of young people as they engage with intellectual properties as superfans.
Stage 4: Communication and Dissemination of Results
Objective 5: Use the research findings outlined above to develop media literacy and outreach materials for children, teachers, and parents, and to explore broader questions on children's digital labour.
Research Team
Principal Investigator
Natalie Coulter
I am an Associate Professor in Communication and Media Studies and former Director of the Institute for Digital Literacies (IRDL) at York University, Canada. I am co-author of Media and Communication in Canada (9th ed) and co-editor of Youth Mediations and Affective Relations (2019) and author of Tweening the Girl (2014). My work focuses on consumer culture, media culture, and digital media. I am interested in how young people engage in such spaces. Currently, I am working on a book project entitled Kids and Digital Capitalism. I have published on such topics as tween girls, Canadian media, masculinity and Playboy, research harassment, children’s digital cultures and family media practices.