Abstract

This study sets out to explore the practices and typologies of the newly coalescing cross-platform media landscape, whilst placing particular emphasis on productions aimed at children within the UK. Rather than in much previous research, which has concentrated on the ‘effect’ of media technologies on an audience or the everyday ‘use’ of media technologies, this study focuses on a user’s ‘needs’ as potentially answered by media technologies, with the overarching objective being to explore whether an awareness of these needs can inform professional cross-platform development and production processes. Headline questions set within the study are: whether it is possible to develop a basic taxonomy of children’s needs within cross-platform media technology environments, and do professional cross-platform development practices correspond with children’s user needs?