Researching Social Media with Children: #Digitalethnography #Storytelling

Reflecting on the methodological issues involved in researching digital spaces with children, this book shares good practices and delves into the ethics of such research.

Social media has completely redefined how children and young people relate to each other, express themselves, and present their identities and sexualities. Yet researching social media can be a difficult and daunting task given the ephemerality of the content, its contextual hyperspecificity, the complex power relationships between users, celebrity culture, digital capitalism, and the ethical issues that arise from the reimagining of the public/private space. Using digital ethnography and creative digital storytelling workshops with children and young people aged 13-15 and 13-18 on TikTok, Instagram, and Twitch, this book studies their interactions, language, codes, the risks they take, and the victimizations they suffer.

Researching Social Media with Children will be of use to social scientists conducting online research, and to students and scholars of media studies, digital criminology, psychology, and sociology.

[The authors draw on experiences from studies carried out in Spain on children and social media by the Knowledge-Research Group on Social Problems at Universidad Europea de Madrid.]

Antonio Silva Esquinas holds a Bachelor’s in Criminology, extraordinary award (UOC), Master’s in Social and Cultural Anthropology (UNED) and Doctorate in Anthropology and Criminology (UNED). He is a lecturer of Criminology (UEM), main methodologist and ethnographer at GCIPS.

Jorge Ramiro Pérez Suárez holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Law from Universidad Complutense de Madrid, a Master’s in Criminology and Criminal Justice from the University of Edinburgh and a Doctorate in Criminology from the University of Huddersfield. He is a senior lecturer in Criminology Applied to Digital Spaces at Universidad Europea de Madrid and a researcher in GCIPS.

Raquel Rebeca Cordero Verdugo has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science and Sociology from the UNED, postgraduate degree in Politics and Government (UNED) and a Doctorate in Communication from the perspective of conflict (UEM). She is a Senior Lecturer in Applied Sociology and Principal Researcher in GCIPS.

Julio Díaz Galán has a Bachelor’s Degree in Philosophy from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid and a Doctorate in Philosophy (UNED). He is a Senior Lecturer in Philosophical Anthropology at Universidad Europea de Madrid and researcher at GCIPS.