In Keeping Together Long Distance Families: Technology as a Social Actor, Mădălina Ionescu shows how technology has allowed family members who have been separated due to economic migration or other reasons the ability to stay connected. Particularly, the paper is focused on research on Romanian children whose parents work and live in Western Europe.
According to Ionescu, 350,000 Romanian children were left home by their parents who worked in Western Europe. Ionescu reports that Romanian parents are moving to the EU for a combination of political and social factors of Romania (push factors) and in the country of destination (pull factors). However, the author argues that technology makes it so that economic migration does not have to be a barrier in itself to parenting. A project called ‘La mamma ti vuole bene’ was created by Romanian local public libraries in order to facilitate Skype calls between Romanian children and their parents in Italy. The project was created to “prevent and diminish social and emotional problems of children left back in Romania, to offer support for children and their family, and to improve school attendance.” There are also apps that are specifically designed to facilitate communication between separated families. The app Keepy allows for the sharing of kid-made art with families, who can respond in video format. With Kindoma app, the kid picks a fairytale from the library for a family member to read while they are able to see each other in the corner of the screen. There are several others. Ionescu argues that as long as screen time is limited, there is a lack of concrete evidence to show any harm done by moderate screen time. Music and advertising campaigns were also run to raise awareness about these families.
I personally found this paper to be a little hard to understand. Some statistics seemed to contradict one another. Ionescu writes “2 per cent of Romanian children (from government data) and 7.5 per cent (from NGOs data) have at least one parent working abroad.” Why the discrepancy? Which data source is accurate? Additionally, sentences like “I think it is not bad at all,” and subheadings like “Let’s talk numbers!” seem to lose credibility for the paper. It is certainly not what I am used to seeing in academic articles. There seems to be some unnecessary information such as excessive lists of statistics, long descriptions of digital literacy courses and a numbered list of the most used social networks without much context. I think the piece may have been translated from another language, which may account for inconsistencies and comprehension difficulty. I wonder-how much of the piece was lost in translation?
You pose an interesting critique. Although I did not read this paper, I do understand the frustration of reading a paper made up of seemingly jumbled statistics. In addition to some content potentially being lost due to the language barrier, I also wonder how much content may have been lost due to cultural and relational differences between countries.
I read a different article, but your points about the article loosing credibility seem legit. In response to the actual content of the paper from what I can tell, I think it discusses one of the more positive aspects of technology – keeping people, particularly families, together amidst not being in close regional proximity. In this course, we often default to talking about the negative aspects of increasing technology, however, it is important to remember things like this.
Your critique of this paper was interesting and valid. One thing I would note is that causal language can sometimes be more digestible and approachable for broader audiences, so that could be why they chose to not be as formal in their headings and sentences. I agree with you that it is not something you normally see in academic papers, but it is possible that we will start to see this tone and style more especially for accessibility and digestibility purposes. I like the topic of this paper and your summary of the piece was great. Families being able to communicate remotely is a really important aspect of socializing and staying connected.
Hi Alana, I also read this article. While I found its area of focus to be very interesting, I also got distracted by some of the things you mentioned in your discussion, such as the interesting subheadings and some of the language she used. It made it somewhat difficult to understand. While this may make the article feel less credible, I feel like the abundance of data used made up for that however. Perhaps some data was not necessary, but personally it helped me better understand the severity of the situation that many families face today.
I didn’t read this article but I understand the confusion regarding the reading as a whole. I think your description of the study of these children was really interesting and reminded me a lot of how we adapted to Covid-19 without seeing the people we care about for a very long time. Obviously, this is a different scenario, one that may even be harsher than the pandemic, but the apps you described got me thinking about FaceTime. It is so important for children to be active and participate in real world actions, but if there is no way around seeing their parents, I think that technology has the next best solution for keeping in touch with people. I know for me that zoom and FaceTime were essential for me during quarantine when I felt I was around the same couple of people, missing others. I can’t imagine what that would be like for children and their parents.