Peer-reviewed article

Children's media engagement and media literacy in platformized environments: primary school teachers' perspectives.

Calp Ş, Bulut P · 22 Jun 2026

Abstract

Introduction This study explores primary school teachers' interpretations of children's media engagement, the ways media content is reflected in children's values and behaviors, and the pedagogical positioning of media literacy within platform-dominated digital environments. Grounded in debates on platform imperialism, the study examines how teachers make sense of children's everyday encounters with global digital platforms and how they position media literacy in response to these conditions. In doing so, it addresses four interrelated questions concerning students' media engagement, value and behavioral reconfigurations, the role of global platforms, and teachers' pedagogical responses. Methods A qualitative case study design was employed. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with 71 primary school teachers working in public schools across different regions of Türkiye, including village, town, and city settings. Participants represented diverse age groups and levels of professional experience. The interview data were analyzed through thematic analysis. Both inductive and deductive procedures were used in order to identify recurrent patterns of meaning across teachers' accounts, while concepts such as platform imperialism, cultural autonomy, and pedagogical resistance provided an analytical frame for interpretation. Results According to teachers' accounts, children's media experiences were increasingly organized within algorithmically structured and platform-centered environments. Teachers described these environments as reshaping authority relations, value orientations, and everyday practices. They associated children's media engagement with patterns such as platform concentration, normalization of risk, fragile critical filtering, moral ambiguity, consumption-oriented value formation, and shifts in epistemic authority from institutional actors toward digital platforms. Teachers also described family mediation as a site of tension, sometimes reinforcing and at other times partially limiting platform influence. In response to these perceived conditions, teachers positioned media literacy not simply as a technical competence but as a pedagogical orientation involving critical verification, ethical awareness, resistance to manipulation, and participatory engagement. Discussion The findings suggest that children's media engagement is interpreted by teachers not merely as an issue of individual media use, but as part of a broader restructuring of childhood within platform-dominated environments. In this context, media literacy emerged in teachers' narratives as a contextually grounded pedagogical response to algorithmic authority, information fragility, and shifting cultural norms. The study contributes to discussions of childhood, digital culture, and education by offering an empirically situated account of how platformized environments are understood and negotiated in primary school contexts.