AUDIOVISUAL CONTENT FOR CHILDREN AND ADOLESCENTS IN THE NORDICS: PRODUCTION, DISTRIBUTION, AND RECEPTION IN A MULTI-PLATFORM ERA
Call for anthology chapters
Deadline for abstracts: 15 June 2021
Editors
- Pia Majbritt Jensen, associate professor, Aarhus University, Denmark
- Eva Novrup Redvall, associate Professor, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
- Christa Lykke Christensen, associate Professor, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
The Nordic countries have a long and proud tradition of taking children and adolescents seriously as an audience with their own specific needs, in wider cultural policy frameworks focusing on children’s culture [børnekultur] as well as in specific film and media contexts (Bakøy, 1999; Christensen, 2002, 2006; Drotner, 1997; Jensen, 2017; Mouritsen, 1996; Rydin, 2000). However, the media use and viewing habits of children and adolescents have changed dramatically in the past decade – also in the Nordic region. Audiovisual content in the shape of film, series, and various “media snacks” on, for example, Netflix, Disney+, YouTube, Twitch, Snapchat, and TikTok are now a major part of their media diet, while their encounters with national film, series, and online content are declining.
This anthology invites contributions that further theories about industry notions of conducive production and distribution practices related to content for children and adolescents, and about children and adolescents’ receptionor “produsage” – or both – of audiovisual content and their own notions of relevance and quality in a digital and thoroughly globalised media landscape. Contributions can deal with questions concerning all genres and all aspects of audiovisual content made for or consumed by Nordic children and adolescents – from policy and production perspectives to textual analysisand reception studies. For example:
- How do screenwriters, producers and commissioners conceive of and make content aimed at and consumed by Nordic children and adolescents?
- How do emerging producers – or “produsers”, that is, YouTubers, vloggers, TikTokkers, and so on – conceive of and produce content aimed at and consumed by Nordic children and adolescents?
- What constitutes audiovisual texts and cross-media story worlds aimed at Nordic children and adolescents? How are these texts constructed, and what are the characteristics of their various genres, from traditional films and series to videos on Twitch or TikTok?
- What kinds of content are Nordic children and adolescents actually watching and why? What notions of quality and relevance do they have when it comes to the audiovisual content they choose to watch?
- How does the thoroughly globalised – or some would say, Anglified – media diet of children and adolescents affect the choices of and preferences for media content among Nordic children and adolescents? In what ways do they make sense of or use domestic content? What role do the origin and language of the content play?
- What role do public service media and other national institutions play in the media diet of Nordic children and adolescents? What role do non-domestic or even global players such as Disney+ and YouTube have?
- What are the different policies and funding schemes behind audiovisual content for children and adolescentsin the Nordic countries? And how are they affecting the production, distribution, and reception of domestic content?
- What are important historical trajectories of audiovisual content made for and consumed by Nordic children and adolescents? How has production, texts, and reception changed? How has the view of young media users changed in the industry?
- Finally, how may research undertaken in other countries within the fields above aid our understanding of what goes on in the Nordics in a more comparative perspective? Are there important trends or other lessons to be learned from developments in territories outside of the Nordics?
Interested contributors are invited to submit a 500-word abstract and a short biography to Pia Majbritt Jensen (piamj@cc.au.dk) by 15 June 2021. Please note that all submissions will be peer-reviewed. Abstracts must clearly state the aim and objectives of the study, and the theoretical and methodological approaches contemplated in the study.
Notification of abstract selection will be given in August 2021 with full article submissions by January 2022. We expect the anthology to be published early 2023.
Publisher: NORDICOM
