Conceição Costa

CICANT – Centre for Research in Applied Communications, Culture and New Technologies,
Universidade Lusófona de Humanidades e Tecnologias
Av. do Campo Grande, 376, 1749-024 Lisboa, Portugal
conceicao.costa@ulusofona.pt

Media objects and pre-teens’ expressions of identities

The nature of the relationship between people and media is established in a manner
identical to that of human communication and, in addition to the "other people", media
objects play a role in the construction and expression of identities. Although family and
peers are important reference groups for the construction of identities, children have more
opportunities and autonomy via media to identify and be legitimized by their peer group.
This paper analyzes three case studies conducted with 4th grades of elementary school (aged
9-10 years old) of different social condition, in three Lisbon schools and that took place in
2009/2010 and in 2012.
Activity theory and the interactionist perspective on identities were used as the theoretical
framework for the research, thus placing the child in interaction with various communities in
a given socio-cultural context: the family, the peer group and the imaginary groups (of
interest, fans, virtual communities of play and learning). Giving voice to children, an
ethnographic approach was used, complemented by social network analysis (SNA) applied to
interactions among children and between children and content in a Web platform. We
realized the importance of the peer group and media objects in the experimentation and
construction of pre-teens identities, as well as the role of social network analysis as a
complementary methodology to participant observation.
KEYWORDS: Pre-teens and media, identity, methodologies

Introduction

In the context of globalization of modern times, identities are negotiated in a complex

system of flows: capital, goods, services, technology, information and communication
(Castells, 2004, p. 304). Studying youth and their uses media, traditional and new, is studying
"a moving target" (Livingstone, 1999). On the other hand, contemporary societies are
defined as information, knowledge and network societies (Masuda, 1980; Stehr, 1994,
Castells, 1998), which draws our attention to the role that ICT plays in how we define and
thought about the world. Therefore, the culture of media is increasingly complex, so the
main challenge facing researchers is the framing of the complexity: of the research and the
theoretical and methodological frameworks (Drotner, 2008, p.173). Researchers must
therefore take into account the online and offline practices, the multiple media, the school
and domestic contexts and, finally, that young people are not only recipients but producers
of media (Drotner, 2008, pp.182-186).
The above practices conducted by young people, in combination with a globalised
networked economy indicate that researchers, teachers, parents and policy makers need to
understand the influence of these media environments on the changing dynamics of
classroom collaborative culture (Yardi, 2008).
In the field of sociology, symbolic interactionism, the school of thought founded by George
Herbert Mead and Charles Horton Cooley (1934), argues that the mind is the result of the
interaction of individuals in a social matrix, and semiotic mediation is very important for the
formation of identities. In Russia, Lev Vygotsky (1896-1934) approaches that view,
considering that the historical and cultural resources act as tools of empowerment or
restriction of the identity construction, being that one the result of individual activity that
occurs in a given context of social interaction (Holland & Lachicotte, 2007, p. 118).
The Social Network Theory states that a network evolves as the actors develop some kind of
links, either formal or informal, related to friendship or trust, influence, recognition, work,
knowledge or other forms of social relation (Hanneman & Riddle, 2005; Izquierdo &
Hanneman, 2006).
The social network paradigm incorporates a strong mathematical and statistical foundation
in a program of cumulative research on the properties of social networks (Fararo, 2000).
Writers often suggest that modern social network analysis began with the publication in
1934 of Jacob L. Moreno's pioneering book on sociometry -“Who Shall Survive?” - (Freeman,
1996). A second source was balance theory, a motivational theory of attitude change,
proposed by Fritz Heider (1958), which conceptualizes the consistency motive as a drive
toward psychological balance. A third source was the analysis of structures of kinship. The
development of network theory and formal models such as directed graphs provided
researchers with new ways to describe and compare family structures and systems of
kinship and marriage (Hage & Harary, 1996).
By the end of the 20th century, social network analysis had become a mode of structural
analysis with extensive formal techniques at its disposal (Wasserman & Faust, 1994). The
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close connection between formal representation, concept formation, and application makes
it a domain of social science that strongly exhibits what Freeman has described as "turning a
profit from mathematics" (Fararo, 2000).
Social Network Analysis (SNA) analyzes patterns of relationships between actors in a
network. This methodological approach has been used in several areas enhancing the ways
of examining intra-group formal and informal relationships and analyzing individual
attributes (Luque et all, 2010; Lusher, Robins & Kremer, 2011).
In a social group, there are relationships and ties to be considered between subjects, such as
social cohesion, social preferences, social pressure or social hierarchies. A social network
consists of a finite set or sets of actors and the relations defined on them (Wasserman &
Faust, 1994, p.20). In case of human social networks, actors refer to individual persons.
Depending on the source of data, relations in a social network could come from a verbal or
written communication and physical proximity or only virtual relations. In the later case
social links are formed through shared resources or context and this is called a latent social
network. Two persons who are directly linked in a latent social network do not necessarily
know each other. In contrast, in a salient social network, links are explicitly articulated in
existing social networks such as “friend of a friend” (Zhou, L., et al. 2010). In social network
theory terminology, the communities of children under study are a salient social network at
a school level and the network of all schools is a latent social network.
The current study took place under the scope of the working field of the author’s PhD thesis,
entitled “Brands, Media Literacy and Pre-Teenagers’ Identity Expressions” seeking to answer
the following research question:

- What is the role of media objects (Web sites, social networks, brands, among others)
in the construction of pre-teens identities?

Design Research and Methods

The symbolic interactionism, the cultural-historical perspective of Lev Vygotsky and the
social network theory are the main theoretical frameworks for this research. According to
these theories, the development of children is not an individual act; it also results from their
gradual involvement in social activities in their cultural environment. Consequently, the
relevant unit of analysis is not the individual child but the joint activity that occurs in an
interaction: between a child and an adult, between a child and another more experienced
child, between a child and his/her communities (de la Ville & Tartas, 2010, p. 32), between a
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child and media objects (Van den Berg, 2008).
Based on the Engström's activities system model (Kaptelinin & Nardi, 2006, p. 300) we
propose therefore a theoretical framework that puts children's activities in the context of
individual and collective objectives, mediated by the socio-cultural context (Figure 1).
Regarding the Engström model, we propose communities instead of community (s)" thus
attempting to represent the various communities (primary and interest) online and offline in
which children are integrated. The behaviour of the children in the school context is not
independent of family influence, although this may be more or less present. The same
applies to their interaction with peers and objects media.
The concept of "division of labour" in the Engström model was thought in the context of
Organizations, therefore it is substituted by "community management" as a macro-social
structure that coordinates the micro level relationships. For example, the relationships that
occur in a given school community are conditioned by the structures of political and
economic power. The tools represent artifacts (technology, media, language, etc.) that
mediate the activities. The result of these activities has consequences for the social capital:
"the aggregate of the actual or potential resources in possession of a durable network of
more or less institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance or recognition"
(Bourdieu, 1985: 248).

Figure 1 - Theoretical framework of reference for the research

Children rarely have the opportunity to speak for themselves in research projects and
appear through the voice of adults. Although these adults are mostly parents, teachers and
researchers and act in the best interest of the child, such attitudes have a load of
protectionism and sometimes control (Oakley, 1994). In this regard, Gauntlett (2005) argues,
"while research on the effects puts children in the position of passive recipients of media

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 messages, in the perspective of knowing what children do with media we intend their
participation as actors with creativity and capacity for critical analysis. "
In this investigation, children are recognized as competent social actors who participate in
social change and in this process are also transformed. Children belong to a culture that is
different from that of adults so an ethnographic approach was used to channel their voice.
This article seeks to answer the research goal presented in Table 1.

Table 1 - Research goals, activities and tools

Research Goal Research Activities Tools school 1 school 2 school 3

Observation of online activities and
Field diary
Understanding the role of peer group behaviour x x x
media objects, particularly Content analysis of
the Web Site “Friends” in Analysis of the interaction between posts on forum
building cultural identity; children through email and in the Social network
forum
analysis tool x x x

To analyse if children relate to the

Focus group
Web Site “Amigos”’ in a social manner
x

The Social Education for Media (SEM) Workshop was proposed by the researcher to schools
in the context of the subject “Civic Education”, presenting its philosophy, skills to acquire
(Table 2) and resources to use. Its duration was one weekly hour per class.

Table 2 - Skills and learning activities

Skills Learning- Activities

Informative and persuasive communication in News, brands and advertisement; Watching and analysing advertising
media commercials.

Using the "myStoryMaker" app to build stories in animation; writing

Writing in multimedia environments
small news on the Amigos website.

Video-recording an interview with a colleague on the drawing "Gift for

Creating audiovisual and web content my best friend"; creating an avatar for the profile on the Amigos
website.

Interpersonal communication and Group activities; using email and the forum; electing the moderators
participation and editors of the forum; playing and discussion games.

Online safety Using the "SeguraNet" app; forum discussion

The research design is presented in Figure 2. The first stage consisted of the design of the
program, articulating the Portuguese national curriculum for citizenship with the educators’

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views. At this stage, the school management asked Parents for their permission to carry out
the research and they approved. The researcher in charge of SEM decided to inform
children about their rights not to participate in research if they wish.
The second stage covered the design of the Web Site “Friends”. The outcome consisted of
several homepage proposals created by children during a participative design session (Costa
& Damásio, 2010, pp. 103-104)..
At the third stage, the website was developed, introduced in every school and participant
observation took place. The fourth stage consisted in extracting email messages exchanges
and forae posts from the Web Sire “Friends” database and analysing it with an SNA tool
(UCINET1 and NetDraw2).

Figure 2 - Research Design

The SEM workshop was sought as a contribution to increasing media literacy in children,
through learning activities that at the same time allow the researcher to participate openly

1
Borgatti, S.P., Everett, M.G. and Freeman, L.C. 2002. Ucinet for Windows: Software for Social Network Analysis.

Harvard, MA: Analytic Technologies.

2
Borgatti, S.P., 2002. NetDraw Software for Network Visualization. Analytic Technologies: Lexington, KY

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or covered up (observing) in children’s lives, for a wide period of time: listening to what is
said, observing their activities and asking questions – in order to answer the research
questions (Hammersley & Atkinson, 1995, p. 1).

The Sample

The sample was selected based on a convenience criterion, and the social economic
condition was obtained from an interview with those in charge at each school. The children
from school 1 belong to families in which the parents have mainly medium-and high-class
status; at school 2 the parents have mostly medium-class status; and at school 3 the parents
have mainly low-class status, and the majority of them are unemployed. A total of 59
children participated in this study.
The first study case took place from October 2009 to June 2010, and the remaining from
January to March 2012.
Being the focus of this paper the role of media objects (in a Web environment) in children
identities, Social Network Analysis played a central role in extracting meaning of online
interactions and the individual role of their members. Therefore an explanation of SNA core
concepts will be presented in the next section.

Social Network Analysis Core Concepts

SNA considers three core elements – the network, the interactions and the attributes. The
network is a group of people that interact together for some reason and these individuals
are actors represented graphically by nodes. The interactions between them are
represented by links. Each tie might be directed, undirected or bonded. A directed tie is
represented by an arrowhead link, indicating a direction (the origin and the target) and an
undirected tie is represented by no arrowhead in the link, indicating that direction in that
case does not make sense or does not exist. Double arrowhead links represent bonded ties,
indicating reciprocity or co-presence (Hanneman & Riddle, 2005; Lusher, Robins & Kremer,
2011). Attributes are individuals’ features that are able to influence relationships inside a
group: age, skills, status, language, experience, among others (Lusher, Robins & Kremer,
2011; Ehrlich & Carboni, 2005). The data to perform SNA can be collected through different
forms - surveys, questionnaires, observation, written documents analysis or online existing
data sources. After this process, the data is stored into a sociomatrix, being the most
common a square matrix with as many rows as actors (nxn). The ties between actors are
represented in a numerical form, using a binary code system for the so-called adjacency
matrix (Borgatti, Everett & Freeman, 2002; Izquierdo & Hanneman, 2006). Converting the
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sociomatrix into network drawing graphs facilitates the data examination.
The core SNA concepts relevant to this paper are described below.
One of the key concepts in SNA is centrality. The centrality of a node in a social network is a
measure of its structural importance and prominence in the group. Centrality measures the
tendency of an actor to be nominated by others, to connect others within the network and
his/her power inside a network (Izquierdo & Hanneman, 2006; Lusher, Robins & Kremer,
2011).
Density is also a valuable concept in SNA. Density concerns the relation between the number
of ties in a network and the number of possible ties in that same network. Considering
Borgatti, Everett and Freeman (2002) approach, in a direct binary network the number of
nodes is represented by n and the number of possible ties would be nx (n-1). Density
measures give the speed of information flow, the levels of social capital available on the
network and the degree of connectivity within a social network. Social capital measuring or
evaluation can be regarded as one of the outcomes foreseen by this type of analysis. Social
capital is embodied in the relations between people and is the value of the aspects of social
structure that function as resources that actors can use to achieve their interests (Coleman,
1998). The basic idea behind social capital is very simple: relations matter and have a value.
In the context of this study, social capital should be understood at two different levels: at
the individual level, it explains why individuals change their patterns of relations on the
network in search for a more prominent position; at a collective level, it stands for the
overall sense of trust that exists on the network at a systemic level and that allows it to
endure time and reinforce existing and newer links.
Another useful concept in SNA is cohesion: the idea that inside a larger group there might be
small cohesive groups: cliques. In terms of friendship ties, for instance, people usually form
cliques because of age, gender, ethnicity, religion, ideology, and many other things. The
smallest cliques are composed of two actors: the dyad. In SNA is common to see actors
(nodes) that link sub-groups, being called bridges. For Lusher, Robins & Kremer (2011)
bridges occupy structural holes that unify the groups and their lack would result in a
breakdown of the subgroups.

Ethical considerations and practices

The term ethnography derives from the combination of two Greek words: ethnos (people)
and grafein (write or draw), i.e., etymologically ethnography means describing "people."The
application of the term, in practice, becomes more complicated as soon the following

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questions are placed: "Who is able to make these descriptions?" and "how can such
descriptions to be made?" (Schroder, Drotner, Kline, & Murray, 2003, p.63-64).
Ethnography is a method or set of methods that the researcher uses to participate openly
and "covert" (observing) in people's lives, by an extended period of time: listening to what is
said, watching their activities and asking questions - in order to respond to problems under
analysis (Hammersley & Atkinson, 1995, p. 1). The main aim of ethnography is to describe
what happens when people in a given context perceive their actions and those of others
(Hammersley & Atkinson, 1995, p. 6). In any investigation there are ethical considerations to
take into account, that go far beyond the informed consent.
An ethnographic approach requires, first, that the researcher spend significant time in the
field so that familiarity and trust are established (Christensen in Davis, 2010; Gauntlett,
2005). One question immediately arises: what position should the researcher adopt in the
field and in the particular case of pre-teens, how he/she can be accepted as a “non-adult
And by "non-adult" we mean someone that in an act of communication takes an egalitarian
position of partnership and mutual respect that encourages the free expression and
exchange of ideas. And this position is only effective if perceived as such by the "other" (in
this case the child). This process is not immediate or even might never happen:
On the 1st day of field work in one of the schools, when the researcher was alone with the
children presenting herself, one of the girls asked: - you are the teacher of civic studies,
aren’t you? – The research did not pretend to be identified with a "teacher". Therefore, in
previous contacts with the school teachers, she did not assure that she intends that her role
in classes was perceived by children as a researcher. For the school teachers, in the
application information to parents and children, the researcher’s role was presented as
teacher. To counteract this role of “formal teacher”, the researcher asked the children to
treat her by first name. During the first session another girl asked the researcher if there is
home work to do. She answered no, and started to inform children that they have activities
during the classes, on the garden and on the website "Friends". This information was
received with great enthusiasm by the children.
Such situation did not happen again in the other schools. Before starting the fieldwork, the
researcher asked teachers to refer to her as a researcher. In the school 2 and 3, the time with
the children occurred outside class’s time and "not being a teacher" has become natural for
everyone. [Field notes]
In the particular case of research with children, there is at the outset an asymmetry in power
relations and, in particular, when the contact occurs at school. This constitutes a major
9
limitation in conducting studies in this area and surpassing it is an ongoing challenge for the
researcher (Almeida, 2009a, Sarmento, 2007, cit. Carvalho in 2010, p. 176).
One of the activities in the school 1, in which the children were asked to comment on the
forum the announcement of an episode of "Avatar: The Legend of Aand", Ana3 turned to the
researcher and asked:
- "I do not like it very much ... but do you get offended?" – The researcher replied that the
important thing was her opinion, and "to dislike it" is a possible answer. She wrote on the
forum: "I did not like it because I found it a bit childish and I think it is for children aged four
and five years." [Field notes]
This event draws attention to the traditional behaviour of the children inside school.
Whenever the researcher takes the initiative for a given activity, it is intended that the
children see their role as "neutral" and are not disturbed by their choices and opinions.
Another issue and most importantly, is related with the ethical principles that should guide
research with children. The conjunction of the research interests with those of the children
participants or even the adults responsible for them (parents, teachers, etc.) must be guided
by ethical principles that ensure the confidentiality, privacy and security for everyone
involved (Burgess, 1991 cit. Carvalho in 2010, p. 171).In an ethnographic perspective, the
commitment that exists between the participants and the researcher creates conditions to
informants to reveal intimate aspects, which should be kept confidential (Schroder, Drotner,
Kline, & Murray, 2003, p . 99).
In practice, there are four ethical principles that an investigation must respect (ibid.):
• To avoid, by all means, somehow harm the informants;
• To create benefits for informants, avoiding an investigation that takes place only for
research;
• To respect the values and judgments of informants;
• And treat them with a sense of justice.
According to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, children have the right to be
informed, consulted and heard in all aspects that relate to their lives, which includes their
participation in scientific studies. The caretakers of children, whether in the family or in
other institutions also have the right to express an opinion on the participation of children in

3
fictitious name

10
research. Therefore, prior to completion of the three case studies with children in the school
environment, authorization to schools, parents and children was requested.

Results

Under the present study we performed the analysis of email messages exchanged between
the members of the children community, their teachers and the researchers, as well as the
analysis of the members’ participation in the Forum. The SNA tool used for data analysis is
UCINET and for data visualization was NetDraw.
The participant observation generated important insights about individual and group media
usages. Genre differences and peer group influence could be observed on children’s
preferred media and brands. It was observed that children preferred games developed by
global corporations, and in their opinion the contents of educational games, available from
Portuguese Institutions were childish and uninteresting. In playing games in Seguranet, an
online platform developed by Ministry of Education under the European Commission Safer
Internet Programme, a child did comment: - «it is so boring, this is babies’ stuff!». Another
group behaviour that could be observed was that the whole class started laughing when
they listen to the music on the games page. Therefore, if the educational content (from the
children’s perspective) does not have the same "quality" as entertainment content they will
not be motivated to use it.
The evaluation by children of the Social Education for Media workshop was very positive.
When children were asked: - If the website “Amigos” (friends) was a person… how he/she
would be? - The answers were as follows: «“A friend”, “with a lot of information”, “he/she
helps us”, “abnormally normal” (in a sense that it is not usual), “he/she knows us and...a lot
of things”, “he/she is funny”, “he/she likes playing games...”».Therefore the Web Site as a
media object is easily treated by children as other people.

The research question “What is the role of media objects (Web sites, social networks, brands,
etc.) in the construction of identities?” led to others that allow us to more directly take
account of the fact that there is a Web Site "Friends" and activities related to brands in three
schools:

• How do pre-teens evaluate the "Other" (and themselves) through brands?

• Does the shared communication platform for all three schools lead children from a
particular school to communicate with children from other schools?
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 • What social structure SNA helps us to unravel and which actors contribute most to
this setting?
• Were there any differences in the children usage of the Web Site among schools?

The study revealed that brands serve to create cohesion and conformity behaviours in the
group. The conformity was observed during the focus group on Hannah Montana with girls,
in which one of her fans, before reaching her time to participate and anticipating the
negative criticism of most colleagues said: "They say that Miley is tacky but she is not! " and
'The Hannah Montana is the same person that Miley just Miley is not tacky. It is vain, is the
same person that Miley...is ...a good singer ... "and she looked at her best friend who
encouraged her and said, “…and you like her is there any problem?”». This girl have received
from her best friend a drawing with the kit of Hannah Montana, however, under the
pressure of the group made a point of saying that Hannah was "vain" and Miley (who she
seemed to like more now) was not "tacky “. Another fan of Hannah Montana, after listening
the negative comments about Hannah Montana from colleagues, immediately has agreed
with them: "She is vain, tacky, tacky ... convinced, tacky... because she has to add bracelets
...to clothing, lipstick ... and she even sings well ... but it spoils a bit ... the songs always have
something that is not right ... Miley's songs are better."
Among the content and functionality of the website "Friends" the forum has had a unique
contribution to children and research. First of all, given to children the management of the
forum, through the roles of moderators and editors elected by peers, promoted children's
initiative and they started to participate more and more, submitting topics for discussion of
their interest. Secondly, the action of editors was an effective mechanism for correcting
spelling mistakes, and all children exercised this role in relation to peers, not only the
editors. This happy incident "the race to the typos of others" proved to be more effective
than the comments of the researcher, and highlights the increased power of peer group
facing that of adults.
The topics of interest, proposed in forum by the children of the School1 were the most
popular and allowed the researcher to access their representations within the peer group via
media, therefore constituted an important contribution to research.
The discussion that was established in the two following themes of the forum illustrates the
potential of media objects in building social capital and in expression of identities. For
example, on the theme "do you like to write? - a girl proposed to her classmates to write a

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story together. Note that this child was not elected as moderator, but knew how to take
advantage of the fact that any member logged on the website "Friends" is able to start a
topic for discussion. In the initial responses of classmates, children answered if they like or
dislike writing. Everything changed when the boy in charge for editing and moderating the
forum from the other class made the following comment: "It is a good idea, I'm with you"
and started the story. A collaborative writing process among two classes was initiated and it
came to have great adhesion from all children.
The story unfolded around a wise "Matriarch" that could give advice to any issues for those
people in need. Some of the questions that children asked to Matriarch belong to the Self
Project:

Kitty cat: why I can not to have a sister?

Most muscular man in the world: why teenagers have pimples on their face?
Belgemon: why am I adopted?
Secret Agent: why we get older?

That demonstrates the usefulness of digital media in identities experimentation through

adolescence, in line with the "psychosocial moratorium" of Erikson (Buckingham, 2008).
The construction of the collective history of class illustrates that the interaction could
become participation and the activities and media objects have a social role in this process.
The second theme was introduced by a boy: "... in an article of Visão Júnior4 was announced
a new game for the Ps3, Heavy Rain", shows the process of diffusion and adoption of
innovations among children, in this case for a game. Girls and boys in both classes from
school 1, have participated in the discussion, although most children do not know the game.
The proposer of the topic in the forum said: "[children' names], if you want to know more
about the game ask me. I play it on the school break!! ».
Still in the same discussion about the game, one of the most prestigious and influential boys
in the other class exerts his moderating role advising classmates against playing such game
for allegedly being violent and only for adults.
It is in this process of negotiating intra-community and extra-community that tastes and
regulating mechanisms of the peers’ community will be reinforced or changed.
The forum has not had the same success in the other two schools; in school 2, it could be

4
Visão Júnior is a Portuguese newsmagazine for children

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explained due to the program of Media Education has occurred after classes, colliding with
the leisure activities of children. In the school 3, the lack of success is mainly related with the
low level of reading literacy among children and the deficient access conditions to the
internet at school.
The analysis of children' exchanges in email and forum revealed that there was only
communication between children from different classes within the same school, i.e., most
children contact the people they know "face to face" of their outreach group (the class, the
school) and not strangers. These data are consistent with the results from the EU Kids Online
project, which accounts for only 11 percent of children between 9 and 16 years reporting
having contacted online people who did not know face-to-face (Livingstone, Haddon, Görzig,
Ólafsson, & al., 2011, p. 27).
The social network analysis (SNA) applied to messages exchanged in email and forum
allowed us to visualize the message exchanges that took place in each community of
belonging (the class, the school) and in the virtual network formed by the three schools.
When applied to data from the email to the universe of the three schools, the SNA revealed
that the researcher in charge of the media education program, played the role of an
aggregator between the three networks (Figure 3), and let us to conclude that even in
mediated environments, adults have a role in the development of children as proposed by
Vygotsky and currently is common practice in educational contexts.
In the Sociograph of Figure 3 the red squares represent female members/nodes and the blue
ones represent male members. The numbers (labels) near the nodes are the IDs of each
member (meaning children, teacher or researcher). The ID69 is the researcher, being the
only tie among the 3 schools. Since two classes from school 1 have participated in the study,
one can visualise four networks: on the right of the image related to ID69 there are two
dense networks with one girl (the ID98) acting as a bridge between the two classes and
corresponding to IDs 77 to 104. The network formed by the IDs 126 to 139 is the School2
and the IDs 143 to 151 belongs to school 3.
Each network has different densities, meaning that more communication did occur in the
ones that are denser. The IDs in the left side arranged by column are the Isolates, the
members of the network that did not exchange emails with others. Most of them are
teachers and children from school 2 and 3.

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 Figure 3 - Sociograph for the network of 3 schools email exchanges

The calculation of densities from UCINET are presented in Table 3 and if we think of density
as an indicator of the levels of social capital available on the network, the speed of
information flow and the degree of connectivity within a social network we find that in
school 1 density from email matrix is the highest (34%), followed by school 2 (25%) and
school3 email density is the lowest (7%).

Table 3 – Density for each school network (email and forum)

Data Density Nº of ties

Email matrix,School 1 34% 337
Class A 63% 152
Class B 55% 131
Email matrix,School 2 25% 76
Email matrix,School 3 7% 27
Network of 3 schools 9% 441
Forum matrix - School 1 48% 356
Forum matrix - Schools 2 and 3 10% 79

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 Table 4 – Density for forum network

Forum Density Number of connnections

School 1 48% 356
School 2 15% 64
School 3 12% 27

Comparing with data from participant observation, the density results may be related to
children higher traditional literacy (reading, writing and arithmetic) in school s 1 and 2 and
media literacy in particular, which has provided a more successful experience in the usage of
email, forum and the Web Site “Friends” in general. Another explanation and very important
one, is the more deficient conditions in school 3 to internet access, and the priority given by
teachers to the curricular program (what is understandable since the classes are bigger than
in the other schools and the success in learning is below the average) with several SEM
sessions cancelled. Another reason about densities differences among school1 and 2,3 was
the observed motivation of members of school 1 in create topics and participate.
Time is also an important issue: the researcher had the opportunity of staying one academic
year in school 1 and only three months in the other ones.
As expected, the levels of social capital (density) are higher in class than in school network,
which is in agreement with the greater cohesion resulting from the close relationships in the
classroom.
The media object forum seems to have more potential for increasing levels of social capital
than the email. The forum presented an opportunity for the child to compare to others and
this is important for the creation of processes of identification and difference.
The SNA methodology also showed a trend toward homophily in gender in email exchanges,
in agreement with observation.

Conclusion

The study revealed that brands serve to create cohesion and conformity behaviours in the
group.
Overall, the activity of playing collaborative games during the classes was very useful not
only for the research purposes but also to group cohesion, but not with some negative
outcomes. It was not easy for the Researcher-SEM to control classroom events, as they used
to occur when all the children have the same assignment to do, such as preparing an

16
interview or writing about the animals’ rights. In every class where children are allowed to
play games, the large majority of them seem distracted and the activities on the forum that
need some focus and learning before they answer it, resulted in vague yes and no answers.
However, it was not the case for the most committed students.
The SNA allow us to uncover which actors in the network have more influence power, the
most prestigious and the ones who contribute the most to social cohesion or establish links
to other communities; these data are consistent with the participant observation. If in the
context of the school institution these actors are identified easily by teachers, in mediated
learning environments this information is very important to the knowledge and
development of the community.
The data from participant observation confirms that the SNA methodology is relevant for the
monitoring of individual and group behaviour in mediated environments and to observe
(visualize) homophily behaviours, cohesion, conformism and identities negotiation among
peers.
The depicted analysis also points to another important analytic feature, the fact that for this
particular network, social capital is either an outcome of existing relations, and this happens
most at a relational and individual level, but also a propeller of social interactions, a process
that occurs as a consequence of the levels of trust that derive from the institutional
framework that supports the network.

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