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The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science
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Mobilizing Fun in the Production and Consumption of Children’s Software

Mizuko Ito

Annenberg Center for Communication

This article describes the relation between the production, distribution, and consumption of children’s software, focusing on how genres of "entertainment" and "education" structure everyday practice; institutions; and our understandings of childhood, play, and learning. Starting with a description of how the vernaculars of popular visual culture and entertainment found their way into children’s educational software and how related products are marketed, the article then turns to examples of play with children’s software that are drawn from ethnographic fieldwork. The cultural opposition between entertainment and education is a compelling dichotomy—a pair of material, semiotic, technical genres—that manifests in a range of institutionalized relations. After first describing a theoretical commitment to discursive analysis, this article presents the production and marketing context that structures the entertainment genre in children’s software and then looks at instance of play in the after-school computer clubs that mobilize entertainment and fun as social resources.

Key Words: children’s software • children’s media • inter-active media • play • computer games • software industry

The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 597, No. 1, 82-102 (2005)
DOI: 10.1177/0002716204270191
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