“It was actually something I came up with myself and I haven´t seen anyone else do it”.(Irene)

Irene is 11 year old and Youtuber. She is not professional nor famous – to produce, share and communicate on YouTube is one of the ways she – as many other children and young people – interacts socially and creative with their surrounding world in everyday life. As we interview and follows Irene and other prod-users at her age we get a unique insight to their digital culture; a culture where they at the same time are both innovative, imitative and reproducing.

This presentation is based on preliminary analysis concerning children as prod-users (Bruns 2008)on digital social media platforms (e.g. YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat ect.). Our theoretical framework is based on a new understanding of participatory and informal learning culture (Bruns 2008; Gee 2013) and which value children’s own online participation and role have in relation to being an active part of their surrounding world – in everyday life, in school, in their own freetime and as global citizens (Thestrup 2015). Other theoretical concepts include children’s online activity and contribution of content as a part of their own education, bildung and identity formation (Nyboe 2009; Klastrup 2016).

This research offers knowledge on children’s everyday online culture as well as their understanding of the global online community they are part of. Getting more insight into children’s own perspectives on global citizenship, online participation and identity in a digital contemporary culture, will be a pointer to what is significant for working more purposeful, goal-directed and concrete with digital literacy, learning and bildung. Studying children’s perspectives on these digital technologies will lead to greater firsthand knowledge regarding why and how children act, create and participate online. Such knowledge will lead to deeper understandings of possibilities and challenges in learning contexts, both formal and informal approaches, and in the pedagogical and educational work with the increasing mediated digital culture among children.

Our contribution to ECER 2017 will be an analysis of the way children create value in the global network and community through their productions, their sharing and communication with other users. And how creative, social and producing approaches to the social media as cultural phenomena among children can be used in a more formal pedagogical and educational setting and in the partaking of professionals.

Bruns 2008 Gee 2013 Thestrup 2015 Nyboe 2009 Klastrup 2016