[Air-L] New book - The Digital Edge: How Black and Latino Youth Navigate Digital Inequality

[Jacqueline Vickery]

Wanted to make the community aware of a new book that was officially
released last week (paperback and Kindle editions available)

*The Digital Edge: How Black and Latino Youth Navigate Digital Inequality *(NYU
Press) by S. Craig Watkins, Andres Lombana-Bermudez, Alexander Cho,
Jacqueline Ryan Vickery, Vivian Shaw, and Lauren Weinzimmer.

https://nyupress.org/books/9781479849857/

*The Digital Edge* examines how the digital and social-media lives of
low-income youth, especially youth of color, have evolved amidst rapid
social and technological change. While notions of the digital divide
between the “technology rich” and the “technology poor” have largely
focused on access to new media technologies, the contours of the digital
divide have grown increasingly complex. Analyzing data from a year‐long
ethnographic study at Freeway High School, the authors investigate how the
digital media ecologies and practices of black and Latino youth have
adapted as a result of the wider diffusion of the internet all around
us--in homes, at school, and in the palm of our hands. Their eager adoption
of different technologies forge new possibilities for learning and creating
that recognize the collective power of youth: peer networks, inventive uses
of technology, and impassioned interests that are remaking the digital
world.

Relying on nearly three hundred in-depth interviews with students,
teachers, and parents, and hundreds of hours of observation in technology
classes and after school programs, The Digital Edge carefully documents
some of the emergent challenges for creating a more equitable digital and
educational future. Focusing on the complex interactions between race,
class, gender, geography and social inequality, the book explores the
educational perils and possibilities of the expansion of digital media into
the lives and learning environments of low-income youth. Ultimately, the
book addresses how schools can support the ability of students to develop
the social, technological, and educational skills required to navigate
twenty-first century life.


*Dr. Jacqueline Ryan **Vickery*
Associate Professor | Graduate Director
Department of Media Arts
College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences
University of North Texas
 http://jrvickery.com


*"Let us go forth with fear and courage and rage to save the world." - **Grace
Paley*