[Air-l] popular culture and Internet practices

[Charles Ess]

> Hello,
> 
> I've been browsing this list for some time but haven't posted. I
> admire the work of a number of people on the list and am happy to see
> it running. I've been thinking lately about the relations between
> popular culture and internet practices. In particular, I'm interested
> in how youth draw on widely circulating (more global) texts while
> simultaneously being involved in producing these texts in, sometimes,
> surprisingly new ways. This interest especially came up with one
> youth I've been researching who is involved in building a new online
> game with others from different countries. I keep thinking about the
> different popular cultural texts he is drawing on, while he is also
> an active producer of culture. Anyway, I'm wondering if others on
> this list could point me in the direction of work that considers
> forms of activity of consuming and (re)producing popular culture with
> digital practices. My apologies if this is old ground on the list.
> 
> Kevin
Hi Kevin,
I'm a big fan of the work of AoIR member Gitte Stald and Thomas Tufte:
Tufte's work on Danish immigrant youth and media use intersects with your
interests quite precisely -

Tufte, Thomas. 2002. Ethnic Minority Danes between Diaspora and Locality ­
Social Uses of Mobile Phones and Internet.  In Thomas Tufte and Gitte Stald
(eds.), Global Encounters: Media and Cultural Transformation, 235-261.
Luton: University of Luton Press.
______. 2003. Minority Youth, Media uses and Identity Struggle: The Role of
the Media in the Production of Locality. In Tufte (ed.), Medierne,
minoriteterne og det multikulturelle samfund. Skandinaviske perspektiver,
pp. 181-195. Göteborg, Sweden: NORDICOM.

- as does Gitte's work on Danish youth and media use:
Her paper, ŒMore Research Needs To Be Done¹: Problems and Perspectives in
Research on Children¹s Use of Interactive Media" is available online
<www.nordicom.gu.se/reviewcontents/ ncomreview/ncreview1202/047-056.pdf> and
includes references to three of her other papers.

More broadly, I've been interested for some time in the interactions between
what Thai philosopher Soraj Hongladarom calls "thick culture" (one's
primary/native culture(s)) vis-à-vis "thin" but global cultures, including
the popular culture contents conveyed, absorbed, and reworked in interesting
ways by various peoples, including youth. You may find his discussion of
this helpful:

Hongladarom, S. (2001). Global culture, local cultures, and the Internet:
The Thai example. In C. Ess (Ed.), Culture, technology, communication:
Towards an intercultural global village (pp. 307-24). Albany, NY: State
University of New York Press.
(A version of this available from
<pioneer.netserv.chula.ac.th/ ~hsoraj/web/Global_Culture.pdf>.  You should
also check out his subsequent articles in First Monday.)

The CATaC conferences have happily attracted a lot of really interesting
work on this - including the work of Deborah Wheeler and James Piecowye on
youth, CMC, and the Middle East (see
<http://www.ascusc.org/jcmc/vol8/issue2/wheeler.html> and
<http://www.ascusc.org/jcmc/vol8/issue2/piecowye.html>)
In this direction, Michael Dahan and his students have likewise done some
comparative studies of youth and CMC - they presented a paper (or two?) at
AoIR 5.0 which may be available?

Finally (for now - smile!), the work of Frank Van Cappelle, Vanessa Evers
and Sugata Mitra at CATaC'04 on how children in India respond to and teach
their cohorts about computers as made available through the "Hole in the
Wall" project might also be of use.  (If you'd like to see this piece,
please mail me offlist and I'll provide you with contact information so you
can request the piece from the authors.)

It's just a start, but hope it helps. And let us know what you find out!

Cheers,

Charles Ess
Fall '04: Fulbright Senior Scholar
Universität Trier 
Fachbereich II
Fakultäten der Medienwissenschaft, Sinologie
Universitätsring 15
54296 Trier (Germany)
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Distinguished Research Professor, Interdisciplinary Studies
Drury University
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Home page:  http://www.drury.edu/ess/ess.html
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Exemplary persons seek harmony, not sameness. -- Analects 13.23