Living Journals: Families Interpreting Young Children's Everyday Lives in Azerbaijan

• In Event: Marriott Roundtable Session 14
  In Roundtable Session: Digital, Visual, and Multimodal

Abstract

This paper describes how living journals were used to investigate children’s interactions with technologies in Azerbaijan. The approach was used with five families, each of which included a five-year-old child. The instant messaging application WhatsApp was used to send prompts three times a day for four days, asking mothers to send images of the target child, alongside answers to four brief questions about their activity at the time. Living journals were constructed from this data and these were used to stimulate discussion about the children’s everyday lives. Children’s activities were grouped into three themes, with the emphasis here on digital play and entertainment. The method provides a means for families to reflect on and interpret their own lives.

Authors

• Sabina Savadova, University of Edinburgh

• Lydia Plowman, University of Edinburgh