[Air-L] Query on supportive teen online affinity groups

[Cecilia Aragon]

Hi Mimi,

I have a suggestion for your second question but not your first. Over the
last five years, my colleague Katie Davis and I, along with our students,
have been researching a group of millions of overwhelmingly female and
nonbinary teens who contribute to online fanfiction repositories, often
rewriting mainstream stories to reflect their own lived experience. In the
process, these frequently marginalized teens develop identity, improve
their writing skills, and find community and support.

The numbers involved are staggering. On one fanfiction site alone, young
people with a median age of 16 have published over 61.5 billion words of
fiction in the past twenty years. For contrast, the Google Books English
fiction corpus, covering the past five centuries, contains 80 billion words.

But what's even more interesting is how these young people are both
teaching and learning from each other, via a process facilitated by
networked publics that we've come to call *distributed mentoring*.

Fanfiction has frequently not been taken seriously, but Katie and I believe
it's become a crucially important outlet for marginalized teens in
particular. If this is interesting to you, we have a webpage
<https://depts.washington.edu/hdsl/research/distributed-mentoring/> on our
research and a book
<http://ceciliaaragonauthor.com/writers-in-the-secret-garden/>, *Writers in
the Secret Garden*, coming out from MIT Press in August.

Best regards,
Cecilia

--
Cecilia R. Aragon, Professor
Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering, University of
Washington, Seattle
http://faculty.washington.edu/aragon | @craragon
<https://twitter.com/craragon>
New book *Writers in the Secret Garden
<http://ceciliaaragonauthor.com/writers-in-the-secret-garden/>* available
for preorder <http://amzn.com/026253780X> from MIT Press

On Fri, May 31, 2019 at 9:19 AM Mizuko Ito <mito at itofisher.com> wrote:

> Dear AoIR colleagues,
>
> I am seeking to expand my knowledge of teen online affinity networks for a
> new project I am scoping out, and was hoping to tap your wisdom.
>
> We are looking to partner with youth online community organizers and
> influencers to promote positive social support and mental wellness through
> digital channels. The goal is to work with networks involving teens (ages
> 13-18) who experience disproportionate amounts of  discrimination, trauma,
> and stress, and are not currently well-served by more conventional mental
> health services. We’re particularly interested in serving girls of color
> and subgroups (eg. immigrant, Latinx, and Muslim teens), and LGBTQIA+
> teens.
>
> Two questions:
>         • Do you know of online groups, communities, networks, or
> influencers who serve these groups of teens, and who might be possible
> partners for this kind of effort?
>         • Are there channels and forms of teen online participation that
> might be fruitful avenues for reaching vulnerable teens? For example, young
> women of color in college might form GroupMe or FB groups for social
> support, but I’m not certain if a similar practice exists at the high
> school level.
>
> The project is U.S. focused but I’d be interested in examples from outside
> the U.S. as well.
>
> I would be super grateful for any suggestions and advice, including
> literature to read and general feedback. Thanks so much for considering.
>
> Best,
> Mimi Ito
> Professor | UC Irvine @mizuko
> Director | Connected Learning Lab
> CEO | @connectedcamps
> http://www.itofisher.com/mito
>
> New Book!
> Affinity Online: How Connection and Shared Interest Fuel Learning <
> https://nyupress.org/9781479852758/affinity-online/>
>
>