ABSTRACT
In Children’s Games in Street and Playground (1969) the Opies documented a variety of media-related practices: performances of advertising jingles and pop songs, passing references to public figures, guessing activities centring on film stars and advertisements and numerous pretend games involving media characters. Similarly, data from our two playgrounds reflect the dominant ‘mediascapes’ of UK children in 2009–2011 (Appadurai, 1996). Some games refer to specific media texts, but more often their play draws on much wider resources and includes enduring narrative themes (e.g. good versus evil, going on adventures), characters (e.g. witches, superheroes, family members) and actions (e.g. casting spells, escaping, caretaking). In our study, children often use referents broadly, drawing on current media texts as well as long-standing practices, so as to incorporate and remix referents to suit their play scenarios.
