CcaM, Center for research on Children, Adolescents and the Media

Welcome to the website of CCAM. CCAM is part of the Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR) at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. CCAM strives to better understand the role of media in children's and adolescents' lives. In addition, CCAM tries to explore and explain the consequences of children's and adolescents' media use. An important aim of CCAM is to study the mechanisms that underlie the uses and effects of screen media. Research within CCAM is targeted at an academic audience as well as the public at large.

Currently, we are with 22 researchers in the center. Our research deals with multiple media: We focus on entertainment and information in traditional media, such as television and advertising, but also on entertainment, information, and interpersonal communication in new media, such as the Internet. Our orientation is interdisciplinary: We draw on psychological and sociological as well as on educational and communication theories. Our approach is multi-methodological: We use different research designs, including experimental, correlational, and causal-correlational research, and we rely on content analyses, surveys, and laboratory experiments to gather our data.