Barnbruden ”Thea” - om barnbloggen som utställning och samtidsarena för konstruktioner av barndom

Abstract

Children’s blogs are becoming an increasingly popular phenomenon in what could be seen as a contemporary space for communication over age boundaries. This article is an attempt to shed light on the importance of an intersectional approach in the analysis of childhood constructions in social media. On the basis of a fictional child blog made up by Plan Norway, as part of a controversial campaign against child marriage, this article focuses on age, but also, gender, sexuality and ethnicity as main social variables in the process of constructing “Another” Scandinavian child portrait. An exhibitional approach involving both text and visuality is used in an extended discussion of online constructions of childhood. Children’s blogs are presented as a “glocal” arena with huge social and political potential regarding one of today’s strongest discourses of childhood: the discourse of the competent but vulnerable child.