Parent networks in digital societies: Stories from the UK, Austria, Denmark and Portugal amidst COVID-19

We reflect in this blog, on just-completed fieldwork with 16 households across the UK, Austria, Denmark and Portugal – on parents’ experiences of creating and maintaining their networks in digital societies. In all four national contexts, there has, for some time now, been a proliferation of both formal and often conflicting parenting advice online, an increasing reliance on technology for schools and parents to communicate, and numerous apps and platforms for parents to connect informally. But do parents feel well connected? In what ways do digital media facilitate connections? What shapes the unevenness of parental experiences? With funding from the University of Surrey, a team of European colleagues – Ranjana Das, Niklas Chimirri, Ana Jorge and Christine Trültzsch-Wijnen – set out recently to investigate some of these questions with a pilot study in the UK, Austria, Denmark and Portugal.