Childhood and Media: Listening to Children’s Voices

Abstract

The present article highlights elements of two empirical studies conducted with children between the ages 4 of 12 years old from the city of Campinas (São Paulo, Brazil), mapping their relations with the media and problematizing common representations on them, fundamentally based on the theoretical contribution on the so-called “pedagogy of childhood” and the possible approximations between the sociology of childhood and historical-cultural psychology. Both researches applied a qualitative perspective, and their main instruments of data production were conversations with children, with some adults (parents or teachers) and/or field observation (photographic records of the games and annotations in the field notebook). From listening to children, the main aspects analyzed reveal a complexity of elements for the construction of indicators. However, they also point out that digital artifacts and/or contact with the media are important marks for the constitution and plurality of childhoods – their desires, toys, creations and fantasies – sometimes similar to previous generations, or completely different, launching the researchers and educators in new investigative ways.