Digital Literacies and Video-Sharing Platforms in Early Childhood: A Scoping Review

Digital Literacies and Video-Sharing Platforms in Early Childhood: A Scoping Review

Written by: Simon P. Hammond, Laura Jennings-Tallant, Ellice Parkinson, Phoebe Hill, Elizabeth Scholefield, Rebecca Lloyd & Harry T. Dyer

Abstract: An increasing number of young children are accessing the Internet daily, with this practice often debated and uncomfortable for parents/carers and early years practitioners. Often absent from such debates is how the digital literacies of young children may be supported in the face of the increasing ubiquity of Video-Sharing Platforms such as YouTube and TikTok. To provide an overview of evidence concerning the digital literacies of children below 6 years old as experienced through interactions with Video-Sharing Platforms a scoping review was undertaken. Searches identified 234 potentially relevant publications, with four meeting inclusion criteria. Current understandings of the digital literacies of children below 6 years old in the context of Video-Sharing Platforms were analysed, as were how these digital literacies were experienced by supporting adults. This review contributes to the ongoing discourse on early childhood education and technology. By offering insights into the evolving landscape of digital literacies for young children, it highlights knowledge gaps and sets an important research agenda.

Keywords: Digital Literacies, Early Years Education, Scoping Review, Young Children, YouTube Kids; Video-Sharing Platforms

The Rising Threat Of Cyberstalking: Awareness And Coping Mechanisms Among Higher Education Students

The Rising Threat Of Cyberstalking: Awareness And Coping Mechanisms Among Higher Education Students

Written by: Jose M. Lukose & Abayomi O. Agbeyangi

Abstract: The study explores the awareness, psychological impact, and coping mechanisms related to cyberstalking among university students. Cyberstalking involves using digital platforms to harass, threaten, or monitor individuals, posing growing risks in academic environments. A survey of 60 students from Walter Sisulu University’s Chiselhurst campus employed a mixed-method approach, combining quantitative analysis with a thematic review of open-ended responses. Findings revealed high awareness (80%) of cyberstalking and strong recognition of its mental health effects, with anger (48.8%), sleep disorders (30.2%), and headaches (23.3%) reported as the most common symptoms. While 47% of students blocked the stalker and changed passwords, only a small number reported incidents to authorities, highlighting a gap between awareness and action. Coping strategies such as reducing internet usage (33.3%) were common but potentially harmful to students’ academic engagement. The study also found that prior exposure and higher internet usage correlated with more proactive responses. Students suggested alternative measures like informing employers or using another device to report spyware-related threats. The findings call for institutional interventions, including cyber safety education, reporting support, and mental health counselling.

Keywords: Cyberstalking, higher education, digital harassment, online safety, student awareness, cybersecurity, internet behaviour

Collective Narratives and Neo-Liberal Ethics in Two Online Learning Communities and Storytelling Projects of the Early 2000s

Collective Narratives and Neo-Liberal Ethics in Two Online Learning Communities and Storytelling Projects of the Early 2000s

Written by: Osvaldo Cleger

Abstract: This article examines a genre of digital storytelling that briefly flourished in the early 2000s, which I here define—borrowing from Bekhta (2020)—as online we-narratives. These were stories not just told to an audience, but told with them, collectively shaped in real time through blog comments, forum replies, and other online interactions. I focus on two of the most emblematic cases from that moment: the Japanese forum-based story Train Man and the Argentine blog-novel Weblog de una mujer gorda. Both unfolded during periods of intense neoliberal restructuring—in Koizumi’s Japan and post-crisis Argentina—and both gave rise to large, participatory communities of “wreaders” who did more than just consume content: they helped co-author it. What interests me here is not only how these stories were built, but also how they unraveled. In both cases, the collaborative spirit that made these narratives so compelling eventually gave way to more traditional, monetizable forms—books, plays, movies—that sidelined or erased the communities that had sustained them. By comparing these two cases, I outline the key features of this short-lived genre and reflect on the kinds of learning communities it enabled: spaces where storytelling, social bonding, and peer-to-peer exchange briefly offered an alternative to the isolating ethos of neoliberal individualism in early 2000s internet culture.

Teachers and Digital Artefacts

Teachers and Digital Artefacts

Written by: Fred Rune Bjordal

Abstract: This article explores how and in what ways digital artefacts become active participants in teachers’ reflections concerning their professional practice. Digitalisation is an important part of teachers’ professional environments, requiring them to relate to digital artefacts in various ways as part of their professional practice. Through semi-structured interviews with 15 lower-secondary school teachers, teachers’ reflections on being professionals in an increasingly digitalised teaching environment are analysed using a conceptual framework of what-, why-, how-, and where-to-artefacts. The article argues that affordances are constructed in the relationship between artefacts and humans, and that these characterise the regulating qualities of both parts of the relationship. The article shows that when teachers interact with digital artefacts, different spaces for negotiating affordances between teachers and such artefacts are created. The article argues that although teachers dominate the teacher–artefact relationship, they activate the digital artefacts as dominant due to an impression of such artefacts as un-transformable. The article contributes with valuable insights to teachers’ notions of their relationship with digital artefacts in a time where digital technology is becoming increasingly complex and therefore complexifying the teachers’ ways of being professionals.

Keywords: digital artefacts,  digitalisation,  lower-secondary education, teaching

Unsettling the Meanings of Everyday Platformized Violence: Dialogues about Online Harms to Learn about Peace

Unsettling the Meanings of Everyday Platformized Violence: Dialogues about Online Harms to Learn about Peace

Written by: Esteban Morales

Abstract: The increasing ubiquity of digital platforms mediates existing and emergent ecologies of violence. In countries with a history of armed conflicts and cultures of violence, such as Colombia, this platformization of violence profoundly transforms the lived experiences of citizens, as illustrated by the normalization of harmful behavior. In this context, scholars have noted the critical need to produce strategies of estrangement to destabilize the meaning-making processes of violence and enable the creation and sustainment of cultures of peace. In this study, I explore how the estrangement of platformized violence can support transformative learning that changes how we experience and make sense of cultures of violence. Findings show that participants underwent three disorienting experiences: de-normalization, de-trivialization, and de-individualization. Overall, this study has implications for learning about peace and digital culture by foregrounding the possibilities that underlie integrating social media into peace education efforts. 

 Keywords: Peace education, Transformative Learning, Social media, Violence, Platformized violence, Estrangement, Colombia