As president John F. Kennedy stated in his famous speech in Rice University about the mission to moon: “We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.” The same applies to exploring sociotechnical environments. Those are always evolving and sometimes even hostile. To add some challenge, one should concentrate the forerunners of use, i.e. children and youth.
Researching minors in digital environments is issue of several variables compared to doing research among general public. The rule of the thump is that no rule applies per se. There are issues related to age group, ethical issues, and most important issues on methodology. The imagination sets the limits on how to research digital environments. Roughly the 2x2 taxonomy is between quantitative – qualitative and emic -etic. Based on the taxonomy, the methodological array is defined in context of researching minors . Researching digital environments has only one rule as there is no rules. Services and applications can be used as designed, yet most probably those are also used in undesignated manner. Other distinct feature is that leisure is before business, so extracurricular factors have significant effect. Also, there seems to be conflict between parents and minors in almost every aspect of being online or using digital services or applications. Therefore, typical methods of inquiry easily end with biased data.
The presentation is based on empirical notions on 20+ years of research of media and digital literacies, research of educational technology and research of sociotechnical environments. We reflect on state-of-the-art research and methodological development. As a part of a project of our extensive European research consortium the theoretical foundation is laid on work of extended research group, discussion on methods is also validated by our peers. As a conclusion we present outline for sound inquiry of minors in sociotechnical environments as well as we bring about critical notions about digital literacy.