PARENTAL MEDIATION OF TABLET USE BY PRE-SCHOOLERS IN VIETNAM

Abstract

Past research on the use of tablet in the household context by pre-schoolers has been scant. This thesis involved in-depth interviews, observations and photo-taking with 42 mother-child dyads of varying socioeconomic profiles in the Ho Chi Minh City Metropolitan Area in the South of Vietnam. Most importantly, we found that 41 out of 42 Vietnamese mothers practised four types of tablet mediation activities: gatekeeping, discursive, investigative and diversionary which were not mutually exclusive, but were employed from low to high levels of strictness or concurrently depending on the situations and the child's response. This thesis, therefore, confirms the need for traditional parental mediation theory which remains rooted in the television effects paradigm to adapt more quickly to the emerging complex new media environment and to capture the highly nuanced parental mediation adaptations through a refined framework that includes gatekeeping, discursive, investigative and diversionary activities.