Children’s digital content creation: Towards a processual understanding of media production among Danish children

This article explores how we may study children’s digital content creation as creative processes of production. Based on a case study of 6-16-year-olds’ filmmaking in an out-of-school context, the analysis identifies three interlaced categories marking the production processes: Social interaction, semiotic negotiation and practice-based learning. Results demonstrate that joint creation of new film narratives unleashes students’ playful exploration, trains multimodal skills, and catalyzes modes of reflexivity that are germane to complex problem-solving. In conclusion, it is argued that digital content creation needs added pedagogical attention as a means of advancing children’s democratic rights of expression as societal resources, not as individual requisites.

"Based on case studies of students’ dedicated filmmaking in an out-of- school context, the analysis demonstrates that the production is not a neat sequence of phases as assumed by design thinking. Students vacillate between phases which, taken together, can be grouped into three interlocking categories: Social interaction, semiotic negotiation and practice- based learning. Evidence indicates that, across these categories and depending on age, joint creation of film narratives unleashes students’ playful exploration, trains multimodal skills, and catalyzes modes of reflexivity that are germane to complex problem-solving." (p. 15-16) "educational environments need to make room for the playfulness of students’ content creation, not out of respect for children’s motivations and concerns, but because this playfulness is a basic driver of joint creative processes. The evidence also suggests that teachers must harness a dual definition of students’ content creation as a social and a semiotic process: student interaction unfolds from an shared interest in shaping a narrative together" (p. 16)