[Commlist] New book The Internet of Toys

New Book Announcement


  *The Internet of Toys Practices, Affordances and the Political Economy
  of Children’s Smart Play *

Giovanna Mascheroni (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore) and Donell 
Holloway (Edith Cowan University) (Eds.)

https://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9783030108977

The Internet of Toys (IoToys) is a developing market within our Internet 
of Things (IoT) ecosystem. This book examines the rise of 
internet-connected toys and aims to anticipate the opportunities and 
risks of IoToys before their widespread diffusion. Contributors to this 
volume each provide a critical analysis of the design, production, 
regulation, representation and consumption of internet-connected toys.  
In order to address the theoretical, methodological and policy questions 
that arise from the study of these new playthings, and contextualise the 
diverse opportunities and challenges that IoToys pose to educators, 
families and children themselves, the chapters engage with notions of 
mediatization, datafication, robotification, connected and post-digital 
play. This timely engagement with a key transformation in children’s 
play will appeal to all readers interested in understanding the social 
uses and consequences of IoToys, and primarily to researchers and 
students in children and media, early childhood studies, media and 
communications, sociology, education, social psychology, law and design.

*Praise for the book*

*

*

If you hadn’t already wondered about and worried about the ‘internet of 
toys,' you certainly will after reading this thought-provoking volume. 
For although much is written on our increasingly surveilled digital 
lives, little research has examined what it means to grow up having 
known nothing else. Yet while the reasons to fear a datafied future are 
immense, the empirical work with children is often heartening, bearing 
witness to their creativity and humanity."

SONIA LIVINGSTONE, author of ‘The Class: Living and learning in the 
digital age’

This edited collection is broad in scope and makes a unique contribution 
to current thinking in the fast-emerging area of the Internet of Toys. 
Researchers variously position the toys as consumer technologies, 
investigate privacy and safety concerns, analyse the integration of 
these toys into children’s play and consider design processes, with the 
editors pointing to possibilities for future research in the field. With 
its solid foundation in diverse scholarly perspectives encompassing 
social, political, technological and economic dimensions, this book is a 
must-read for anybody wanting to gain an overview of different 
approaches to understanding the phenomenon.

LYDIA PLOWMAN, author of ‘Growing Up With Technology: Young Children 
Learning in a Digital World’

The Internet of Things is the Wild West of surveillance capitalism and 
there is no more disturbing area than the internet-enabled toys, or 
“social robots” that shepherding children into the world of agency and 
play. The Internet of Toys cries out for critical examination by 
communications scholars, and Mascheroni and Holloway bring together a 
leading group of authors to examine both threats and opportunities in a 
comprehensive treatment that extends from law to political economy and 
methodology to phenomenology. A landmark collection.

NICK COULDRY, author of ‘The Mediated Construction of Reality’

Giovanna Mascheroni is Senior Lecturer of Sociology of Communication, 
Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Italy.

Donell Holloway is Senior Lecturer at Edith Cowan University, Australia.



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