Children’s narratives about game play in the peer group

Abstract

Online gaming constitutes a central part of children’s everyday lives today. As many as 80% of all Swedish girls and boys aged 9-12 years play, even if boys still play both for longer periods of time and to a higher extent than girls (Mediarådet, 2021). During fieldwork in an elementary school, that was conducted in 2016 as part of a research project concerned with children’s use of mobile and digital technologies and the literacy competencies that they develop as they move through different places and everyday contexts, talk about games, in particular in certain groups of boys, was recurrent. In the article, focus is on how and what the boys tell each other in the peer group about one of the games that they recurrently play – Minecraft. The study, that builds on ethnography and video recordings of everyday interactions, is theoretically framed by ethnomethodology and conversation analysis. Consequently, narratives are seen as co-constructed and so called ‘small stories’, that is, everyday tellings about past, present, future as well as hypothetical events and shared experiences, are highlighted as significant for human social life (De Fina & Georgakopoulou, 2008, 2012; Georgakopoulou, 2007). By analyzing the social and embodied practices in and through which the narratives emerge (e.g. Goodwin, 2000, 2007a), the study focuses on the narratives’ verbal form as well as on how the boys use different multimodal resources, such as sound effects and body movements, in their tellings.

Children’s narratives are seen as expressions of meaning-making and as part of how children’s social lives are established and sustained (Maybin, 2006), where narratives fulfill an important interpersonal function that involves keeping each other informed about everyday undertakings such as game play (cf. Heritage, 2012). The study connects to literacy research that emphasizes literacy as participation in a digital world, where literacy encompasses technical, cultural, and social skills, as well as knowledge and competencies in ways that include lived, aesthetic, and emotional aspects (e.g. Aarsand & Melander Bowden, 2019; Buckingham & Burn, 2007; Dezuanni, 2018; Wernholm, 2021). Through their narratives, the boys relate to fictive worlds that simultaneously constitute their real worlds, something that makes relevant the border between the physical and the virtual (Dezuanni, 2019).

Previous research argues the relevance of games in and for children’s social lives as an intrinsic part of their digital literacy practices (Aarsand, 2010; Dezuanni, 2018, 2019; Dezuanni, O’Mara & Beavis, 2015). In the study, narratives about game play are shown to constitute a recurrent feature of the boys’ peer group cultures where they share and sometimes contest knowledge and experiences, as well as describe events and constructions and engage in joint imaginations. The focus on ‘small stories’ and the sequential and emergent structure of narratives (Georgakopoulou, 2007), simultaneously makes visible how peer group relations are dynamic and at times asymmetric, where identities are linked to epistemic positions as well as rights to tell and narrative authority (De Fina & Georgakopoulou, 2012).

The results of the study show how the boys’ narratives emerge through a complex and dynamic interplay where the children act as tellers, co-tellers and audience. Language is a significant resource when the children’s narratives take shape through quick chains of association as they ask questions, add to each other’s tellings, put the interaction on a different track, tell a fun story, and collaboratively imagine possibilities in the game. The analyses simultaneously show the significance of different multimodal resources, embodied as well as material, for how the narratives emerge. The analyses thereby contribute with knowledge about children’s narratives in peer groups, what is treated as relevant knowledge and information, and the different multimodal resources that the children use in their tellings. This is an addition to previous research that has mainly taken an interest in the role of narratives in peer groups for children’s management of social relations (e.g., Evaldsson & Svahn, 2012; M.H. Goodwin, 1990, 2006). The study contributes more broadly to research on the significance and role of multimodal resources for the emergent structure of narratives (cf. Goodwin, 1984, 9816, 1007b; Heller, 2019).

The narrative approach represents a powerful way of elucidating children’s digital cultures as well as the skills and competences that are required to participate in them, and shows examples of how knowledge is negotiated and spread in peer groups (e.g. Dezuanni et al. 2015; Wernholm, 2018). Grounded in the children’s experiences, the study thus demonstrates what counts as valuable knowledge for children as part of their social worlds and digital literacy practices. Children’s talk about games is an essential expression of children’s and youths’ popular culture today, and thereby constitutes important knowledge for teachers and schools (cf., Buckingham, 2015; Melander Bowden, 2019; Wernholm, 2018, 2019). However, as argued by Willett (2016) among others, children’s digital literacy practices and social worlds also deserve attention in their own right.