Intermediary Space and Media Competency: Children's Media Play in “Out of School Hours Care” Facilities in Australia

Abstract

To understand how children acquire their overall media competency, we need to examine media use in the many different environments in which children have access to media. This study examines children's public media use in the everyday environment of Out of School Hours Care (OSHC) services in South Australia. Along with the home and classroom, OSHC is one of the places where children commonly encounter media entertainments. Since OSHC is a recreational center, usually located on school grounds, the two most common purposes and ideological notions of media use—entertainment and education—overlap in the spaces of OSHC facilities. OSHC is thus theorized as intermediary space across temporal and spatial categories. The study will bring to light some of the social dimensions of leisure time media use. These findings are then applied to curriculum development for media use in OSHC services.