Project description
Examining the internet’s influence on childhood
Online connectivity has become a part of childhood over the last thirty years, yet the historical relationship between childhood and the World Wide Web remains largely unexplored. The ERC-funded WEB CHILD project will investigate how the Web's rise as an interactive space with little adult oversight influenced childhoods between 1995 and 2005. Focusing on Denmark, South Korea and the US, the project will examine conceptual, social and material aspects of this transformation. By analysing archived web pages, news articles, interviews and surveys, WEB CHILD will highlight the importance of digital sources in contemporary historical research, offering fresh insights into how childhood was shaped in the early internet era.
Objective
Online connectivity permeates the lives of contemporary children. Nonetheless, the history of childhood and the World Wide Web (the Web) has not been studied—a lacuna which mirrors the wider absence of the Web in contemporary history despite its invention more than 30 years ago. WEB CHILD combines the history of childhood and the Web to investigate how the emergence of the Web as a new interactive and connected medium with little adult oversight impacted childhood at the turn of the millennium (c. 1995-2005). To study the Web’s wide-ranging influence, three countries have been selected for comparison: the United States, Denmark, and South Korea. These were all digital pioneers, but had very different cultures of childhood.
WEB CHILD has four work packages (WPs). The first three cut across all three countries and investigate the Web’s relation to childhood on three analytical levels: conceptually, socially, and materially. WP1 asks how the Web’s relationship to childhood was conceptualised in the public sphere. WP2 asks how children used the Web. WP3 asks what kinds of Web content were built for children. Using the findings from the first three work packages, WP4 explores similarities and differences in the influences of the Web on childhood across the three countries.
The analysis uses sources ranging from the Internet Archive’s archived webpages to news items, interviews, surveys, contemporary research, and internet guidebooks. It combines computational analyses of archived webpages, e.g. text-mining, link analysis, and analysis of encoded interactive features, with methods and sources more traditionally used in history. Using archived web material, the project ventures into what has until now been uncharted territory in historical research, even if such sources and related digital methods are indispensable when historicising the recent past.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- natural sciences computer and information sciences internet
- humanities history and archaeology history
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Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
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Topic(s)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants
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Call for proposal
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Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2024-COG
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
8000 Aarhus C
Denmark
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