[Air-L] New Blog Series: New Media Practices in International Contexts

[Mimi Ito]

Here is an announcement of a series of blog posts that I am hoping  
might be of interest to some of you on this list.  --mi



New Media Practices in International Contexts Blog Series

January 26 2009

The Digital Media and Learning Research Hub, UCHRI

Futures of Learning (www.futuresoflearning.org)


We are very pleased to introduce our new blog series, New Media  
Practices in International Contexts. Our blog series looks at the  
intersection of youth, new media and learning in a range of countries  
outside of North America and Western Europe.  Inspired by the ways in  
which Scribner and Cole's (1981) work among the Vai of Liberia  
transformed activity theory, Brian Street's (1984, 1993) fieldwork in  
Iran contributed to the development of New Literacy Studies and Paulo  
Freire's (1970) work in Brazil influenced critical pedagogy, we  
believe that examining new media practices from an international  
(and, in some cases, transnational) perspective will enhance our  
current efforts to theorize youth, new media and learning.

Over the next three to four months we will be introducing six case  
studies – Brazil, China, Ghana, India, Korea and Japan – which  
challenge us to think about the intersection of youth, new media and  
learning in new ways. Beginning with Cara Wallis' analysis of China  
today, each country review will begin a discussion of the  
telecommunications landscape. Subsequent posts by HyeRyoung Ok  
(Korea), Anke Schwittay (India), Heather Horst (Brazil), Mimi Ito and  
Daisuke Okabe (Japan) and Araba Sey (Ghana) will focus upon internet  
and mobile phone practices, gaming as well as new media production.  
As we have discovered in reading and writing up the material, each  
case study provides a unique perspective on the ways in which  
infrastructure, institutions and culture (among other factors) shape  
contemporary new media practices. If you know of books or articles  
that we have missed, or have feedback on any of the case studies, we  
would really welcome a comment or an email.

Before I conclude, I want to add one final note. In the exploratory  
phase of this project we sent out requests for articles, books and  
information to various individuals and news lists. We were all amazed  
at the generosity of fellow researchers in providing summaries of the  
fascinating work being carried out in this space and, in some cases,  
extensive bibliographies. We would like to thank the following  
individuals for their valuable suggestions and assistance:

Julie Soleil Archimbault, Francois Bar, Paul Braund, Larissa Hjorth,  
Răzvan Nicolescu, John Postill and Mikko Villi.

In addition, many of us have also found discussions on the Media  
Anthropology and Association of Internet Researchers extremely  
valuable. We are very grateful to these two communities of scholars.