A Systematic Review of Empowerment in Child-Computer Interaction Research

Based on a systematic review we explore how empowerment has been articulated in 188 papers in Child-Computer Interaction (CCI) literature since 2003. Using an existing framework outlining functional, educational, democratic, mainstream, and critical empowerment, our analysis shows that while empowerment is rarely defined in CCI papers, a wide range of different articulations coexists. We explore the prevalence of different articulations in the literature and how this has shifted over time. We show that although empowerment has been part of the CCI discourse since the early days, a shift can be noticed in terms of how empowerment is articulated from an emphasis on empowerment in its functional meaning towards a more even distribution and the advent of critical articulations of empowerment. We conclude the paper by looking ahead into a new decade of CCI research and posing three questions to assist CCI researchers in more clearly articulating the nature and understanding of empowerment.