Negotiating Family Media Practices: Parents, Children and Digital Devices

This thesis examines how parents and their (pre)teen children negotiate the use of digital and social media. Designed as a qualitative and ethnographic study of fifteen Melbourne-based families, this research takes a socio-constructivist approach, allocating equal agency to parents, children, digital devices, and households as data collection sites. Findings presented in this thesis aim to inform parenting practices steering them towards involvement and a collaborative, trust-based relationship with the child. More broadly these findings pave the way to shifting focus of relevant policies from risk-management to empowering and supporting young people to become prudent and responsible digital citizens.