[Air-L] American Youth's Differential Use of New Media

[Caitlin Fisher]

Hi Tina. Take a look at HASTAC's digital youth project (led by Mimi  
Ito and sponsored by the MacArthur Foundation)-- blog posts about it  
and relevant links pasted below (taken from <http://www.hastac.org/node/1806 
 > ... go to that url for live links).  I tried to send a bit more  
context a moment ago, but the post was rejected... hopefully you won't  
get much the same info twice.
best,
Caitlin

Caitlin Fisher, PhD
Canada Research Chair in Digital Culture
Director, Augmented Reality Lab
Dept. of Film
303 GCFA
York University
4700 Keele St.
Toronto, Canada
M3J 1P3

caitlin at yorku.ca
416 736-2100 x22199



***********************************

Here's the link to Mimi's blog:
http://www.itofisher.com/mito/weblog/2008/11/living_and_learning_with_new_m.html



This is a reblog from Mimi Ito's blog, with the summary and live links  
to the full paper produced by the Digital Youth Project she has led so  
ably for the past three years. It also includes links to summaries and  
press releases. Congratulations to Mimi and her team! And special  
thanks, as usual, for the leadership of the MacArthur Foundation in  
making real research, not baseless punditry, the starting place for  
serious thinking and serious conversation.



REBLOGGED from MIMI ITO'S BLOG, NOVEMBER 20, 2008


Living and Learning with New Media: Summary of Findings from the  
Digital Youth Project

dyouthreport.jpg
It's been over three years in the making, but we are at long last  
releasing the results of our Digital Youth Project. The goal of this  
work was to gain an understanding of youth new media practice in the  
U.S. by engaging in ethnographic research across a diverse range of  
youth populations, sites, and activities. A collaboration between 28  
researchers and research collaborators, this was a large ethnographic  
project funded by the MacArthur Foundation as part of their Digital  
Media and Learning initiative. I was one of the PIs on the project  
together with Peter Lyman, Michael Carter, and Barrie Thorne.

The project has been quite a journey, and has been by far the most  
challenging and rewarding research project I've undertaken so far. It  
tested my skills at so many levels -- fieldwork, conceptually,  
theoretically, and in management. I feel so fortunate to for the  
opportunity to have undertaken this project with fabulous colleagues  
and a team of graduate students and postdocs who taught me so much  
along the way.

I'm particularly proud of the shared report that we have just  
released, which was a genuinely collaborative effort, co-authored by  
15 of us on the team, and including contributions from many others. We  
took a step that is unusual with ethnographic work, of trying to  
engage in joint analysis rather than simply putting together an edited  
collection of case studies. We spent the past year reading each others  
interviews and fieldnotes, and developing categories that cut across  
the different case studies. Each chapter of the book incorporates  
material from multiple case studies, and is an effort to describe the  
diversity in youth practice at it emerged from a range of different  
youth populations and practices.

You can find all the details in the documents linked below, and a  
summary of our report. The book is due out from MIT Press next fall,  
but in the meantime you can read a draft of it online. Our book is  
dedicated to the memory of Peter Lyman.

Sadly, I won't be able to attend, but my team will be celebrating the  
release of our report at a reception at the American Anthropological  
Association meetings in San Francisco. Saturday November 22, at  
6:30-8:00pm, San Francisco Hilton & Towers, Golden Gate Ballroom.

Click here to download a two-page summary of the report.

Click here to download the summary white paper.

Click here to access the full report.

Click here for the press release and video being hosted by the  
MacArthur Foundation.

RESEARCH SUMMARY

Over three years, University of California, Irvine researcher and her  
research team interviewed over 800 youth and young adults and  
conducted over 5000 hours of online observations as part of the most  
extensive U.S. study of youth digital media use to date.

They found that social network sites, online games, video-sharing  
sites, and gadgets such as iPods and mobile phones are now fixtures of  
youth culture. The research finds today’s youth may be coming of age  
and struggling for autonomy and identity amid new worlds for  
communication, friendship, play, and self-expression.

Many adults worry that children are wasting time online, texting, or  
playing video games. The researchers explain why youth find these  
activities compelling and important. The digital world is creating new  
opportunities for youth to grapple with social norms, explore  
interests, develop technical skills, and experiment with new forms of  
self-expression. These activities have captured teens’ attention  
because they provide avenues for extending social worlds, self- 
directed learning, and independence.

MAJOR FINDINGS

Youth use online media to extend friendships and interests.

Most youth use online networks to extend the friendships that they  
navigate in the familiar contexts of school, religious organizations,  
sports, and other local activities. They can be always “on,” in  
constant contact with their friends through private communications  
like instant messaging or mobile phones, as well as in public ways  
through social network sites such as MySpace and Facebook. With these  
“friendship-driven” practices, youth are almost always associating  
with people they already know in their offline lives. The majority of  
youth use new media to “hang out” and extend existing friendships in  
these ways.

A smaller number of youth also use the online world to explore  
interests and find information that goes beyond what they have access  
to at school or in their local community. Online groups enable youth  
to connect to peers who share specialized and niche interests of  
various kinds, whether that is online gaming, creative writing, video  
editing, or other artistic endeavors. In these interest-driven  
networks, youth may find new peers outside the boundaries of their  
local community. They can also find opportunities to publicize and  
distribute their work to online audiences, and to gain new forms of  
visibility and reputation.


Youth engage in peer-based, self-directed learning online.

In both friendship-driven and interest-driven online activity, youth  
create and navigate new forms of expression and rules for social  
behavior. By exploring new interests, tinkering, and “messing around”  
with new forms of media, they acquire various forms of technical and  
media literacy. Through trial and error, youth add new media skills to  
their repertoire, such as how to create a video or game, or customize  
their MySpace page. Teens then share their creations and receive  
feedback from others online. By its immediacy and breadth of  
information, the digital world lowers barriers to self-directed  
learning.

Some youth “geek out” and dive into a topic or talent. Contrary to  
popular images, geeking out is highly social and engaged, although  
usually not driven primarily by local friendships. Youth turn instead  
to specialized knowledge groups of both teens and adults from around  
the country or world, with the goal of improving their craft and  
gaining reputation among expert peers. While adults participate, they  
are not automatically the resident experts by virtue of their age.  
Geeking out in many respects erases the traditional markers of status  
and authority.

New media allow for a degree of freedom and autonomy for youth that is  
less apparent in a classroom setting. Youth respect one another’s  
authority online, and they are often more motivated to learn from  
peers than from adults. Their efforts are also largely self-directed,  
and the outcome emerges through exploration, in contrast to classroom  
learning that is oriented by set, predefined goals.

IMPLICATIONS

New media forms have altered how youth socialize and learn, and raise  
a new set of issues that educators, parents, and policymakers should  
consider.

Adults should facilitate young people’s engagement with digital media.  
Contrary to adult perceptions, while hanging out online, youth are  
picking up basic social and technical skills they need to fully  
participate in contemporary society. Erecting barriers to  
participation deprives teens of access to these forms of learning.  
Participation in the digital age means more than being able to access  
serious online information and culture. Youth could benefit from  
educators being more open to forms of experimentation and social  
exploration that are generally not characteristic of educational  
institutions.

Because of the diversity of digital media, it is problematic to  
develop a standardized set of benchmarks against which to measure  
young people’s technical and new media literacy. Friendship-driven and  
interest-driven online participation have very different kinds of  
social connotations. For example, whereas friendship-driven activities  
centers upon peer culture, adult participation is more welcomed in the  
latter more “geeky” forms of learning. In addition, the content,  
behavior, and skills that youth value are highly variable depending on  
what kinds of social groups they associate with.

In interest-driven participation, adults have an important role to  
play. Youth using new media often learn from their peers, not teachers  
or adults. Yet adults can still have tremendous influence in setting  
learning goals, particularly on the interest-driven side where adult  
hobbyists function as role models and more experienced peers.

To stay relevant in the 21st century, education institutions need to  
keep pace with the rapid changes introduced by digital media. Youths’  
participation in this networked world suggests new ways of thinking  
about the role of education. What, the authors ask, would it mean to  
really exploit the potential of the learning opportunities available  
through online resources and networks? What would it mean to reach  
beyond traditional education and civic institutions and enlist the  
help of others in young people’s learning? Rather than assuming that  
education is primarily about preparing for jobs and careers, they  
question what it would mean to think of it as a process guiding  
youths’ participation in public life more generally.



On 8-Jan-09, at 12:41 PM, Lois Scheidt wrote:

> Hi Tina,
>
> I too study youth--adolescents in my case.  Much of what you might be
> looking for doesn't really exist...there is limited academic work on  
> youth
> and new media.  Your best sources for American youth information is  
> the PEW
> Internet Studies.  Beyond that much of the information that is  
> available
> comes from corporate venues.
>
> Hope that helps
>
> Lois
>
> On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 12:17 PM, Tina Matuchniak @UCI <tmatuchn at uci.edu 
> >wrote:
>
>>
>> Hello,
>>
>> I am a graduate student at the University of California, Irvine,  
>> currently
>> working on a project about use of new media (SNS, games, video  
>> production,
>> etc.) amongst youth.
>>
>> I was wondering if someone could point me to any studies on American
>> youth's differential use (by gender, race, SES etc.) of new media.
>>
>> Thank you for your time,
>>
>> Tina Matuchniak
>> Graduate Student
>> Department of Education
>> University of California, Irvine
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> The Air-L at listserv.aoir.org mailing list
>> is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http:// 
>> aoir.org
>> Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at:
>> http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
>>
>> Join the Association of Internet Researchers:
>> http://www.aoir.org/
>>


Caitlin Fisher, PhD
Canada Research Chair in Digital Culture
Director, Augmented Reality Lab
Dept. of Film
303 GCFA
York University
4700 Keele St.
Toronto, Canada
M3J 1P3

caitlin at yorku.ca
416 736-2100 x22199

On 8-Jan-09, at 12:41 PM, Lois Scheidt wrote:

> Hi Tina,
>
> I too study youth--adolescents in my case.  Much of what you might be
> looking for doesn't really exist...there is limited academic work on  
> youth
> and new media.  Your best sources for American youth information is  
> the PEW
> Internet Studies.  Beyond that much of the information that is  
> available
> comes from corporate venues.
>
> Hope that helps
>
> Lois
>
> On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 12:17 PM, Tina Matuchniak @UCI <tmatuchn at uci.edu 
> >wrote:
>
>>
>> Hello,
>>
>> I am a graduate student at the University of California, Irvine,  
>> currently
>> working on a project about use of new media (SNS, games, video  
>> production,
>> etc.) amongst youth.
>>
>> I was wondering if someone could point me to any studies on American
>> youth's differential use (by gender, race, SES etc.) of new media.
>>
>> Thank you for your time,
>>
>> Tina Matuchniak
>> Graduate Student
>> Department of Education
>> University of California, Irvine
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> The Air-L at listserv.aoir.org mailing list
>> is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http:// 
>> aoir.org
>> Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at:
>> http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
>>
>> Join the Association of Internet Researchers:
>> http://www.aoir.org/
>>
>
>