“Consuming Children: Commercialisation and the Changing Construction of Childhood” is the title of a major research project that runs from 2006 to 2009 at the Norwegian Centre for Child Research (NOSEB), which is housed at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim. The project aims to utilize insights and innovative methods, drawn from the new sociology of childhood, in analyzing children’s changing status and experiences as consumers. This project is part of the centre’s aim to establish a research group on Media, Consumption and Globalisation.
The unique issues and perspectives that arise as children become an integral part of consumer culture need further study, particularly in the fields of cultural and educational studies and childhood studies. This project seeks to integrate three aspects of this phenomenon, namely marketing, the cultural product/text and the consumer (Buckingham 2000), and to focus on children in two age groups that are currently a major focus of marketing interest. The coordinating research group consists of researchers from Media Education, Early Childhood Education, History, Media Science, Psychology and Sociology.
