Abstract
Digital media have been considered as carriers of new properties and dynamics of social belonging. Considering their characteristics of ubiquity, speed of connection, interactivity, and participatory culture, they imprint behavioral values, mediating relationships and building meanings, thus constituting important factors for understanding childhood in contemporary society. In the context of digital social networks, with the dynamics inherent in virtual spaces, web celebrities appear, ordinary people who become known on the internet and who become targets of interest and appreciation by countless followers, whose narratives are inserted in a historical, cultural and socioeconomic context. In the analysis of web celebrities, their power of “affectation” should not be understood as a singular gift but as traits and values built in line with what a given society, at a given moment, values. This study is part of a broader research on the processes of signification of the self and the world from the interaction of children with web celebrities. Recognizing that the most relevant transformations for the constitution of human development are not in biology, but in the historical and cultural circumstances, in the interactions, and in the peculiarities of the experiences of each subject, the aim is to reflect on childhood in the age of digital media, seeking to understand the significant interaction of children with web celebrities. The text is based on Semiotic Cultural Psychology, Childhood Sociology, and studies on the formation of identities and cultures in digital social networks.
Keywords:
Childhood; Digital media; Webcelebrities