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Affectively charged social media exchanges pertaining to remote schooling in Hungary during the early stages of the pandemic provided unique insights into dispositions towards technologically mediated learning. In this article, we explore how parents and teachers responded to the increased porosity, mobility, and visibility of classroom interactions during pandemic-related school closures. We wanted to know what emotive responses to the intensification of digital media use in the home revealed about boundaries of learning in Hungary. Data were gathered with SentiOne™'s AI-based social listening tool and analysed by coupling an attunement to affect with a multimodal analytic. We found a lack of shared understanding of what technologically mediated learning from home entails placed boundaries of learning under threat. To enable shared understandings and strengthen trust between students, teachers, and parents, we propose protected spaces that escape public scrutiny for joint digital practices to evolve.

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses articles in the issue on topics including "children's relationship with digital media"; "A collaborative storied analysis of young climate advocates' digital activisms", and "Young artivists, social change and media literacy".

Our paper fills the gap in research on online public representations of politically active youth by focusing on the discursive representations of Fridays for Future, a youth-led climate movement, in user generated content in Czechia and Hungary. By employing the childism approach, we aim to contribute to a better understanding of the exclusion of youth from the public sphere. Our qualitative analysis identified two exclusionary strategies: 1) normative roles attributed to youth; 2) labeling youth for allegedly holding aberrant values. We stress both similarities and differences in the two countries of Central and Eastern Europe, reflecting this region's historicopolitical features. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For youth activists, digital media are a central tool for awareness raising and mobilisation. At the same time, the pressure to be constantly connected and the negative responses one can encounter through social media, can be significant stressors on youths’ well-being. Drawing upon a year-long critical comparative ethnographic research project with Fridays For Future youth climate justice activists in Czechia and Hungary, this paper analyses the multifaceted role of digital media in youth activists’ wellbeing. On one hand, youth activists encountered varied psychological, social, and physical challenges connected to digital media use, which caused stress and contributed to burnout. On the other hand, they individually and collectively developed diverse coping strategies and mechanisms, as well as digital literacy, which were supported by the movement’s community of activists. This in turn strengthened their resilience and positively contributed to their wellbeing. Ultimately, the youth activists’ wellbeing appeared to rely on their own ability to constantly balance between the many challenges encountered related to digital media use for activism, and the resources required to deal with these challenges. Our findings carry important implications for supporting youth activists’ wellbeing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This editorial introduces the thematic issue titled Inclusive Media Literacy Education for Diverse Societies. We start by introducing our aims for developing a more open and inviting approach to media education. We argue for a media education that acknowledges a variety of voices, and that provides skills and recognition for everyone, irrespective of their social class, status, gender identification, sexuality, race, ability, and other variables. The articles in this issue address the role of media literacy education in relation to questions of in- and exclusion, social justice, voice, and listening. The issue covers a variety of critical, non-Western perspectives needed to challenge dominant regimes of representation. The editorial is enriched by the artist Neetje's illustrations of the workshop that preceded the publication of this thematic issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For unaccompanied refugee youth, technology occupies a central role in their lives. It helps them when crossing countries, finding a shelter, and accessing education, or even in negotiating family relations online (e.g., Çelikaksoy & Wadensjö, 2017; Marlowe & Bruns, 2020; Morrice et al., 2020). Research with young refugees shows that social media and smart devices have become essential means to resolve many challenges (Kutscher & Kreß, 2018). The aim of our article is to go beyond a utilitarian view of digital technologies and social media in the lives of migrant youth and show how digital actions can be extensions of bodily communications in relation to, for instance, locating the self within new cities, food, music, and religion. We introduce the concept of the migrant platformed body as a site of struggle for unity that brings past and present into continuous discussion in and through the uses of social media technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This editorial serves as an introduction to the Special Issue titled 'Childhoods in Transition – Mediating "In-Between Spaces"'. The thematic issue was conceived in an effort to conceptualize and explore the topic of 'in-between spaces' from the point of view of media and communication studies. The contributions presented in this Special Issue offer a complex view of what it means today to live a childhood in transition and how digital and social media can have a deep impact on the 'in-between spaces' the young people inhabit. From children in migration to queer youth and from Snapchat to minority language media, this Special Issue offers an international and interdisciplinary perspective on the inextricably linked issues of media use, identity and becoming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Migration for unaccompanied refugee youth is an emotionally complex process involving mediated experiences and expressions of emotions and affect. This article draws upon social media ethnography conducted with young refugees from African and Middle Eastern countries living in Europe. The participants' emotional practices were explored through the multimodal analysis of content they shared on Facebook. The findings highlight how the young refugees performed multifaceted yet interconnected emotional practices. These emotional practices potentially assisted their negotiation of emotional losses and gains resulting from migration. The online mediated emotionality, however, cannot be fully comprehended through the reductionist lenses of binary oppositions such as losses and gains, presence and absence, or positive and negative emotions. This article shows that unaccompanied refugee youth's experience and expression of emotions online are influenced by more than their migration experience, and that their interconnected nature and complexity need to be considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the emergence of the new sociology of childhood in the late 1980s, there has been an increasing expectation to engage children actively and to take their views seriously throughout the research process. This is even more important when it comes to unaccompanied refugee children, whose voice is seldom heard. In this article the author builds upon her project of exploring unaccompanied refugee children's lived media experiences and argues that--in order to have meaningful results and to create safe spaces for those who need it most--we need to search beyond traditional research tools. Specifically, she proposes to bring into research the concept of "play". The article presents the use of bespoke, artisanal board games in cross-national interview settings with unaccompanied refugee children. It is argued that these creative tools can help in collecting diverse and rich data that can successfully complement traditional research methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]