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Ms Claire Coulton

Thesis Working Title

Negotiating the technology minefield: Family responses to the discourses of youth and technology

Research Interests

The use of ICT (Information and Communication Technology) has become an essential in education in the UK since the New Labour Government came to power in 1997. It is seen as essential, not just as a discrete subject, but also as an essential teaching tool in most subjects and as an administrative tool to link up schools with each other and schools with their pupils' homes (e.g. BECTA Harnessing Technology report 2008). Further, the government has actively promoted the ownership and use of ICTs in the home in order to bridge the digital divide.

However, the rise in digital technology and ICT is not unproblematic and there are a number of public discourses concerning digital technologies and its effects on young people. For example, there are concerns about the addictive nature of video games, such as World of Warcraft, and also the grooming of children by paedophiles in on-line chat rooms.

The aim of the study is to understand how parents and their children negotiate these discourses in their everyday lives, and how this may affect their take up and use of digital technologies, ICTs and the internet. Using an ethnographic approach, I will be working with five case study families and drawing upon a range of research methods, including interviewing, participant observation, document collection and photographic evidence.

Would like to meet

• New Literacy Studies
• Discourse/Linguistics
• Families
• New Technologies

Other Interests and Hobbies

I am one of many people who come to Lancaster University as undergraduates and never leave. I graduated in 1996 (BA Hons. History) and also worked as PG Coordinator in the Department of Communication Systems for six years (1999-2005). I left in 2005 and trained as an Adult Literacy teacher at Bolton University but was joyfully reunited with Lancaster University in 2006 when I took the MA in Educational Research. I am now approaching the end of the first year of my PhD.

When I'm not working on my PhD I can generally be found "parenting" or gardening.

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