ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the videos created by children and young people who use the virtual world Club Penguin. The growth of interest in ‘fanvids’, videos which are created by non-professionals for an audience interested in the subject/content of the video, can be discerned in a range of interest areas and include child audiences. The environment features a range of spaces avatars can visit, such as a coffee shop, a nightclub, a pizza parlour, a theatre and shops. Users are also able to adopt puffles, which are virtual pets. The site also has some limited social networking functions, in that users are able to chat using text and can send each other postcards. Increasingly, young children’s musical practices involve social networking, with children aged from five to eleven in a previous study of their use of virtual worlds reporting regular use of online music sites such as Limewire, in addition to using YouTube to access music videos.
