Self expressive media production in real and virtual space by migrant children

• This paper will present different aspects of a European funded research project, CHICAM, Children in Communication about Migration. The project set up six media clubs across Europe in which refugee and migrant children made videos about aspects of their lives and exchanged them on the internet. The aim was to explore ways in which particular groups of children could use new media technologies to represent their experiences and influence policy. The project has raised several important questions about intercultural communication via the internet, about media production as a vehicle for personal expression and identity formation, about using new media technologies with excluded youth (in this case refugee and migrant children), about how children conceptualise and become an audience for peer productions and about using media production as a research tool with children. We will be showing and discussing videos made by the children in the project. The project has primarily applied ethnographic methods such as field observations and ethnographic interviewing. We have also displayed discourse analysis on the productions children have made. In this particular paper we focus on children’s production practices, by contextualizing these practices with respect to the migratory situation of the children involved, as could be observed in e.g. how they were able to conceptualize and represent their own memories and past. Also we will point to relevant intercultural communication discourses involved. We also highlight, by applying discourse analysis , the representational conventions that the children choose to work with, the visual language they used to communicate and also possible intercultural aspects of media production work. The CHICAM project has made clear the different possibilities of different formats in terms of self representation and visual communication. Examples of various productions from the project will be analyzed and discussed. The paper finally offers some conclusions and implications for further media work with children, for example useful concepts and formats.

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Medie- och kommunikationsvetenskap (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Media and Communications (hsv//eng)

HUMANIORA  -- Konst (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Arts (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

media

migration

diaspora

young people

SOCIAL SCIENCES

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP

Publikations- och innehållstyp

ref (ämneskategori)

kon (ämneskategori)