A digital scholarship project on materialism among children and adolescents

The chapter discusses a digital scholarship project collaborated between the Department of Communication Studies and the University Library of Hong Kong Baptist University. The main objective of the project is to develop a publicly accessible website to showcase the various research methodologies used in 14 studies conducted by the first author as well as their findings. These 14 studies were carried out to analyze how materialism affected children and youth in Hong Kong, Mainland China, Macao (Macau), and Singapore. The website shares original data sets, research instruments, interview transcripts, and drawings of interviewees. More importantly, research results are visualized in an interactive manner. It is hoped that the website could facilitate other researchers to develop models, test hypothesis, and conduct cross cultural analysis on materialism. The website is also designed to provide guidelines for educators and parents to counteract the undesirable effect of commercial communication to children and youth. This chapter discusses the research and the digital projects, marketing strategies of the website, and self-reflection of the first author.