Dissertation in Progress - New pages [en]

Conclusion

2017-03-26T15:32:26Z

Lombanaphd:

In this dissertation I have investigated the new media practices and skills that a group of five Latino/Hispanic immigrant youths growing up in Austin, Texas, developed through their activities in the contexts of family/home, after-school, and social media networked spaces. In my analysis I have tried to understand whether these practices and skills contributed to the process of assimilation into the United States. As second- and 1.5-generation immigrants, Gabriela, Inara, Sergio, Antonio, and Miguel were involved in a process of incorporation into a new country that started with their parents’ decision to move to the U.S. in search of better economic opportunities (labor migration). In the dawn of the twenty-first century, the U.S. was characterized by a context of rapid socio- technical change, socioeconomic stratification, demographic transformation, networked communication, and systemic inequalities. Although structural and individual factors have shaped the outcomes of the assimilation process, I sought to reveal the agency exercised by five Latino/Hispanic immigrant youth as they navigated multiple settings, made their own choices, and participated in a range of mediated activities. In this conclusion I focus specifically on four key findings from my analysis of the case studies discussed in previous chapters:

* 1) The five Latino/Hispanic immigrant youths were assimilating into the United States and digital tools were being leveraged in that process.

* 2) New media practices and skills accelerate the process of cultural and linguistic adaptation of second- and 1.5-generation Latino/Hispanic immigrant youth.

* 3) Although the five Latino/Hispanic immigrant youths gained new media skills that helped them to advance in their process of assimilation, their skills were not developed to high levels of expertise.

* 4) Digital inequalities and participation gaps persist and continue to evolve in complex ways.

In the pages that follow I discuss each of these findings and briefly review their evidentiary support. Next, I elaborate upon some recommendations for parents, educators, learning designers, researchers, and policy makers working with Latino/Hispanic immigrant youth. Finally, I offer an update on the outcomes of the process of assimilation of the five youth by looking at the trajectories that they followed after we left the field in 2012.

'''1) The five Latino/Hispanic immigrant youths were assimilating to the United States and digital tools were being leveraged in that process.'''

Drawing on contemporary sociological theories I have conceptualized assimilation as a complex process that is uneven and multidimensional. Assimilation is a long-term process that unfolds over at least three generations but is not inevitable. It may or may not happen according to different individual and structural factors. In this process, immigrants and their children adapt and incorporate into the culture, economy, education, and other social domains of the host country in diverse ways. Hence, assimilation is, at its core, a problem of social inclusion. It is a process about immigrants’ participation in several dimensions of the host country, socioeconomic mobility, and access to opportunities. The evidence I have found and discussed in the previous chapters proves that Inara, Gabriela, Antonio, Sergio, and Miguel are advancing in their process of U.S. incorporation, mainly in linguistic, cultural, educational, and social dimensions.

Contrary to the anti-immigration arguments developed around the non- incorporation of the “new immigrants” to the U.S., particularly those persons with Mexican origins and Latino/Hispanic ethnicity-race, the five kids from this study and their families were adapting with different speeds according to the resources they had brought to various dimensions of the host country. All of the five youth, for instance, had made progress in their education and completed several years of U.S. public school. Although only Gabriela was enrolled in the advanced curriculum track and was a high achiever, the other four were able to successfully pass their grades and complete their years in school. Inara, Antonio, and Sergio actually graduated from high school at the end of our fieldwork in summer 2012. The opportunity to participate, for free, in the educational dimension of the host country was crucial for the five kids and shaped many of the mediated activities that they developed across the contexts of home/family, after- school, and social media networked spaces. As discussed in the previous chapters, several of the media practices developed across these contexts were related in various ways to the educational experience that these youth had in the host country. Doing homework in a networked way at their family houses, collaborating with peers in the production of digital videos at the CAP after-school program, and hanging out on Facebook with their friends from school, for instance, were media practices related to the U.S. schooling experience.

Language proficiency determined the youths’ assimilation trajectories. English was the language of choice for the new media practices they developed in the family/home, after-school, and social media networked spaces. From status updates to comments to video productions, all the media content they created and re-circulated on social media was in English. With the exception of Inara, who listened to Latin music and exchanged Facebook private messages in Spanish with her cousins in Mexico, all the other youth used English as their main language of communication on social media networked spaces. Even at the CAP after-school program where the Mexican and Latino/Hispanic cultural resources were valued and participants could speak Spanish with some of their peers and adult supervisors, English was the main language spoken and the only one used in all the videos, blog posts, and other transmedia content they produced. Additional evidence of their linguistic assimilation was the availability of both languages at the family/home context, and the possibility of using both for communication among family members, especially among the youth. The brokering activities that these kids developed as they translated content and tried to help their parents learn English reveals the existence of a family/home context that was not isolated linguistically. On the contrary, it was a context open to bilingualism, where languages were juxtaposed, and where media content in both languages could be accessed both individually and communally. Hence, despite the panic of the anti-immigration discourse about the linguistic threat of Spanish speaking immigrants from south of the Rio Grande, evidence from this study reveals that Latino/Hispanic immigrant youth with Mexican origins are becoming proficient in English.

All five youth were also adapting to the U.S. cultural dimensions. Specifically, they were able to participate, with different degrees of engagement, in a hyper-mediated popular youth culture that they could access, many times for free, using digital tools and networks. The youth culture these working class immigrant youths were involved with was not one of the street, the neighborhood, or the mall, but instead a technologically mediated one they could consume, produce, explore, and re-circulate using new media technologies. Accessing personal computers, game consoles, cameras, mobile devices, and media production gear in the family/home and after-school contexts, these youths managed to adapt to a vibrant U.S. popular culture that they and their peers from school were passionate about.

Evidence of cultural assimilation can be found by looking at the cultural resources these kids used for their interactions on social media networked spaces, the media content they preferred to consume at home, and even the media products they created at the CAP after-school program. By recognizing the Latino/Hispanic immigrant youths’ adaptation to the U.S. popular culture I do not imply that these youths were losing their connections with their parents’ culture of origin. That connection still existed but was usually not maintained through the new media practices I have analyzed. Instead, it relied more in family rituals, foods, and oral culture at the family/home context that were beyond the limits of my research project. With the exception of the music consumption practice of Inara, Gabriela, and Sergio, who had an eclectic taste that included different genres of Latino music, the Mexican culture rarely appeared in their new media practices.

I also found evidence of the social adaptation of the five Latino/Hispanic immigrant youth. In this dimension of the assimilation process, disparities appeared the social resources and support systems that these youths and their families could access. Although all of them were assimilating socially to the U.S. working class, they did it with different directions and speeds. While Gabriela and her family experienced fast mobility and were trying to become incorporated into the middle class, the other youths and their families were moving slower and adapting to the working class. The media practices immigrant youth developed in each of the activity contexts are evidence of their participation in social exchanges among their peer networks. Latino/Hispanic immigrant youths leveraged media technology to socialize with their peers. Despite the low quality of access to technology that they had in the family/home context (with the exception of Gabriela), all were actively using computer-mediated communication and social software to stay in touch and hang out with their friends.

However, because those friends came mainly from the regular classes, and after- school programs where minority, working class, and low-income youth participated, their networks were characterized by homophily. Particularly for youths that were not enrolled in advanced placement classes or were part of the school teams or bands, their networks of friends tended to be resource-poor and homogenous.47 However, even for youth like Antonio and Sergio who were on the regular track, the opportunity to participate in the CAP after-school program provided them with opportunities to diversify their social networks with new peers and mentors and to create new bonds. The CAP connections at times allowed them to experience some economic assimilation as they found temporary video production jobs at local studios with the help of Mr. Lopez, the after-school program supervisor who acted as a social and cultural broker for them.

Finally, I also found evidence of some youths’ adaptation to the civic dimension of the U.S., at least during specific periods of time. By being in flow with streams of information from Social Network Sites (SNSs) and Media Sharing Sties (MSSs),
47 As a result of the homophily of their networks, some of these Latino/Hispanic immigrant youths had less access to adult social support and guidance, and restricted access to useful information (e.g. college application, creative career jobs, and higher education financial aid).

Latino/Hispanic youths became aware of U.S. current affairs at specific moments of time. That awareness, however, came from non-traditional news sources such as visual memes and amateur YouTube videos. For instance, during the last phase of the anti-SOPA/PIPA civic campaign in December 2011 and January 2012, Miguel and Sergio actively participated by circulating related content through their social networks and trying to create awareness among their friends. Curiously, the two 1.5-generation immigrant boys were more engaged in a civic campaign than the youths who were born in the U.S. They were the ones who actively tried to protect the Internet from censorship and openly supported the free access to information and knowledge. As explained in chapter four, these two youths were also the ones who were engaged in gaming and visual meme new media cultures, and through their participation, they found a pathway of incorporation into the civic dimension of the host country.

'''2) New media practices and skills can accelerate the process of cultural and linguistic adaptation of second- and 1.5-generation Latino/Hispanic immigrant youth.'''

Digital media technologies have become essential tools for the immigrant experience in the twenty-first century and they can support a rapid incorporation into the linguistic and cultural dimensions of the United States. Despite differences in quality and quantity of technological access, each of the five Latino/Hispanic working class immigrant youths grew up using personal computers, game consoles, mobile devices, and the Internet, and were in flow with rich streams of U.S. media content since an early age. Digital tools and networks were part of their everyday life in the host country. Second- and 1.5-generation immigrant youth exercised their agency while using media technologies not only as consumers and re-circulators of U.S. popular culture, but also as producers of English language media texts. Evidence presented in the previous chapters reveals that the new media practices and skills that Latino/Hispanic youth developed with these tools across the contexts of after-school, family/home, and social media networked spaces helped them to rapidly adapt to the linguistic and cultural dimensions of the United States. As the evidence reveals, compared to the process of assimilation that their parents developed, Latino/Hispanic youths were way more advanced in their adaptation to the U.S. popular culture and the English language of the host country.

The analysis of the family/home context, particularly, revealed that labor immigrant parents from Mexico were investing economic resources into new media technologies and believed that these tools supported the education of their children in the United States. Despite their low socioeconomic status and levels of education, all of the immigrant parents from this study made efforts to build domestic media environments that were connected to the Internet (Wi-Fi and DSL), had at least one personal computer, several game consoles, satellite/cable television, mobile devices, and multiple TV screens. Moreover, parents who could afford to provided access to smartphones with networked capabilities and anytime/anywhere connectivity. By equipping their households with new media technology and connecting them to the Internet, immigrant parents, regardless of their parenting style, helped to configure networked domestic media environments that were porous to the culture and language of the host country. The family/home contexts where the five youths grew up, therefore, were not isolated from U.S. popular culture and the English language. Instead, they were more open and flexible to the cultural and linguistic juxtapositions that could be created while different family members used digital media devices. As a result, each of the five kids actively consumed and re-circulated U.S. popular culture at home, and also were able to maintain communication and social exchanges, in English, with their school peers. By using digital tools and connecting to digital networks at home, the five Latino/Hispanic youths had the opportunity to become more engaged in their assimilation into the U.S. cultural and linguistic dimensions. Furthermore, some of these youths, especially the ones with lower quality and quantity of technology access, were able to creatively and resourcefully make media assemblages at home in order to be able to access U.S. cultural products such as music and movies.

The everyday frequency of the activities developed in the multi-context of social media networked spaces also supported fast adaptation to the linguistic and cultural dimensions of the U.S. The language that the five youth chose for computer-mediated communication, the cultural resources they interacted with, and the streams of media in which they flowed, were mostly from the host country. As these youths developed hanging out and messing around practices on SNSs and MSSs, they rapidly adapted to a vibrant U.S. youth popular culture. This culture was diverse, a mixture of: commercial mainstream media produced by professionals and corporations, and DIY alternative media produced by amateurs and grassroots communities. The abundance of media content these youths could access, for free, on the social media networked spaces they visited facilitated a messing around practice in which they constantly explored media streams, discovered music and videos, and re-circulated them with their peers. All were rapidly adapting to the cultural dimension of the U.S. as active consumers and as a networked audience. They leveraged the affordances of digital media to not only access the U.S. media content they liked but also re-circulate it among their social networks. Furthermore, some of these youths, with different degrees of engagement, were also positioned as producers of culture and published their media texts, in English, on MSSs such as Flickr, YouTube, and Cheezburger. Hence, it could be said that all five youth leveraged, in different ways according to the resources they had the affordances of the contemporary networked communication environment and managed to participate, even from the periphery, in a vibrant and diverse U.S. popular culture.

As a media production “figured world,” the context of the CAP after-school program was also very important for supporting a rapid incorporation into the cultural and linguistic dimensions of the United States. By participating in the CAP, Antonio and Sergio were able to collaborate with ethnically and socially diverse U.S. youth from Freeway High and other two local schools in the making of several digital media products. These creative works were all in English and consisted of their stories about life in the United States. From their self-created webisodes to the short narrative film to the biographies that both Antonio and Sergio wrote for the CAP website. Being able to produce those English media texts and publish them online with the help of an adult mentor, positioned Antonio and Sergio as youth authors and media producers in the host country. Interestingly, although the context of the CAP recognized several symbolic resources of Latino/Hispanic culture, including the Spanish language, and several of their participants were second-generation immigrants with Mexican origins, all the creative media works they produced and most of their interpersonal communications were done in English. The fact that even in a context of activity that valued biculturalism, Latino/Hispanic immigrant youth chose to communicate, socialize, and create in the English language, can be interpreted as evidence of their rapid incorporation into the linguistic and cultural dimensions of the United States.

'''3) Although the five Latino/Hispanic immigrant youths gained new media skills that helped them to advance in their process of assimilation, in most of the cases their skills were not developed to high levels of expertise.'''

Through the media practices that Latino/Hispanic immigrant youth developed in the contexts of family/home, after school, and social media networked spaces, they gained a range of new media literacy skills that helped them to advance in their process of incorporation into the United States. Using their new media skills, they exercised their agency and found opportunities of participation, with different degrees of engagement, in society, culture, and education, and (sometimes) even in civics and the economy. New media skills helped these youths navigate the different contexts encountered while growing up in the United States: from the distribution cognition skill acquired when doing homework in the domestic networked environment; to the transmedia navigation ability gained while producing multimodal media texts in the CAP after school program; to the networking skill obtained when re-circulating media among their peers on Facebook; to the appropriation competency learned when sampling visual memes in computer-mediated conversations. However, development of new media skills was uneven among the five Latino/Hispanic youth and constrained by the different kinds of resources and social supports they could access at their contexts of activity. As analyzed in the previous chapters, although they were able to obtain basic abilities in networking, transmedia navigation, distributed cognition, and appropriation, none of them consistently developed a high level of expertise in any of these new media skills. Furthermore, none of them was able to acquire important new media literacy skills such as collective intelligence and simulation. <ref>The new media skill of collective intelligence refers to the “ability to pool knowledge and compare notes with others towards a common goal” (Jenkins et al., 2006, 39). The absence of this skill among Latino/Hispanic youths was in direct relation to the lack of diversity of their social networks and the lack of access to mentors, adults, and teachers who could introduce them to the collaborative production of knowledge. The skill of simulation consists in “the ability to interpret and construct dynamic models of real world processes” (Jenkins et al., 2006, 39). Because this skill requires system-based thinking, high achieving purposes, and usually the knowledge of programing languages, it is not surprising that given the lack of engagement in complex academic tasks none of the five youths had opportunities to develop it at the contexts of activity I have analyzed.</ref>

In most of the cases, new media skills remained at basic and middle levels due to a complex interaction between structural and individual factors. The five kids developed skills according to the interplay among their individual motivations, social supports, and the cultural, economic, social, human, and technological resources they could access at the different contexts of activity.49 For instance, it was common for all five youth to gain new media skills while hanging out on Facebook and messing around on MSSs. Friendship-driven genres of participation were important for them because a major motivation of using new media technologies was socialization and communication with their peers from school. One of their major motivations was maintaining connection with their peers and bonding with them. Given the characteristics of Freeway High School as a minority-majority, economically disadvantaged, and low performing school, the peer networks that these youths interacted with were homogenous in terms of socioeconomic status and ethnicity-race, and low in terms of educational attainment. Their school peers tended to have similar tastes, academic orientation, and social class. Hence, their social networks were characterized by homophily. As a result, the purposes these youth had when developing friendship-driven practices online usually did not involve high achieving and complex academic tasks that could bring their skills to higher levels of expertise. For instance, the synthesis of new knowledge that was part of the networking skill remained underdeveloped as these youths were more motivated by the re-circulation of content produced by others and by searching media bites in vast repositories of information.

A big motivation that influenced the media practices and skill acquisition of Latino/Hispanic immigrant youth online was the possibility of accessing, for free, rich information flows and streams of U.S. media content that could be used for doing homework, entertainment, and informal learning. When doing so, their motivations were related to getting homework done; consuming, discovering, and re-circulating U.S. youth popular culture (e.g. music, memes, videos); and learning about their particular interests (e.g. photography, fashion, videogames, videography, filmmaking). Despite diverse purposes, these motivations rarely lead to a sustained development of a new media skill over a long period of time. As I have discussed in the previous chapters, a common pattern in the acquisition of the new media skills by the five Latino/Hispanic immigrant youths was that these abilities were usually acquired without any guidance and scaffolding beyond support encountered among their peers. Their lack of access to social support, adult mentorship, and more diverse and resource-rich peer networks at their contexts of activity limited the kind of tasks they did and the level of expertise they gained.

In the absence of high achievers among their peer networks and lack of interaction with adult mentors in the SNSs and MSSs they visited, they tended to develop simple and low-risk activities with new media. The purposes for which they used technology did not address complex real world problems, and usually were not connected to a broader understanding of the social, cultural, and economic systems. For example, deployment of the distributed cognition skill was limited to their abilities to search the web using Google in a basic way; and the youths missed the opportunity to tap into social institutions and experts that could help them augment their cognition and access specialized knowledge.

However, some of the Latino/Hispanic immigrant youth were able to hone their new media skills to a higher level of expertise, at least during short periods of time, and at particular contexts of activity. Gabriela’s development of the networking skill through the publishing of her own photographs in Flickr and video montages in YouTube; Antonio’s gaining of the transmedia ability through the making of webisodes for the CAP; and Sergio’s honing of the appropriation skill through the remixing of visual memes in Cheezburger, for instance, reveal that some of these youths were able to experiment, to a certain degree and during specific periods of time, “geeking out” media practices. That is, practices characterized by an intensive use of media technologies and a commitment to specific media proprieties, production activities, and subcultural identities. When “geeking out” these youths were able to acquire high levels of expertise, increased their participation in culture, and moved closer to the center of specialized knowledge communities. Although gaining higher levels of expertise was usually not sustainable in a long period of time, they were able to experience it at least temporarily.

Sometimes, “geeking out” was conditioned by a greater access to technological resources and social support in a specific context of activity. For instance, Antonio stepped up his transmedia navigation (at the level of rhetoric) skill during the year he participated at the CAP after school program, but he could not sustain its development once he graduated from high school. After he lost access to CAP’s social support and video production gear, Antonio was not able to figure out how to continue producing transmedia narratives. Even though he was motivated to pursue a career in filmmaking and wanted to tell stories across media, his motivation was not enough to overcome the barriers of a lack of access to social support, adult mentorship, and technical resources. Moreover, it seemed that his dependence on using professional production gear limited his explorations of other means of media production he could access such as the camera of his mobile smartphone, and the use of found footage and visuals from Internet repositories.

In other cases, even in the presence of technological resources and social support, some of these youths were not able to sustain a “geeking out” practice that could bring their skills to a higher level of expertise. That was the case for Gabriela and her acquisition of the networking skill, specifically at the level of dissemination and the tapping of social networks to disperse media products. Although Gabriela was the youth with higher quality and quantity of technological and social resources and the one who published more content on MSSs, several years after she had started posting photos on Flickr, she still believed she couldn't “figure out how to work” it. That is, she could not take her networking skill to a level of expertise where she could effectively connect with other social networks and a potential audience. In her case, the barrier was more a matter of the personal motivation she had when publishing content on MSSs (e.g. using a platform just for hosting media production and building a personal portfolio) than an issue of lack of access to technical and social resources.

Likewise, in the case of Sergio’s development of the appropriation skill, it was his personal motivation what shaped his visual meme practice and most of his interactions on the Cheezburger MSS. Although at certain moments of time he was able to demonstrate a high level of technical and cultural expertise in remixing and creating visual memes, he did not sustain his practice during a long period of time. Such inconsistent development of the appropriation skill was related to the way in which he interacted with the visual meme online community. Because his motivation seemed to be more personal than directly connected to the Cheezburger community, he did not try to enrich and diversify his social network online or to acquire a higher status and reputation. Such lack of social connectivity and interaction within the Cheezburger community limited the visual meme practice of Sergio and the sustained development of expertise in the appropriation skill.

'''4) Digital inequalities and participation gaps persist and continue to evolve in complex ways.'''

In a context of rapid technological change, growing socioeconomic disparities, and increasing ethnic-racial diversity, digital inequalities and participation gaps in the United States continue to evolve in complex ways. Despite the widespread use of computers, smartphones, and the Internet among the U.S. youth population, disparities in skills, social supports, individual purposes, parenting styles, and access to digital technology persist. The interplay between these factors, as well as their relationship to structural inequalities in education, occupation, and income, continue to shape how young people participate in culture and society. In the case of the five Latino/Hispanic working-class immigrant youths, my analysis reveals the paradox of being simultaneously networked and disconnected. The analysis of new media practices among Latino/Hispanic working-class immigrant youth illustrates some of the contradictions that appear when less advantaged youth become connected to digital networks but lack the social supports, and scaffolding to fully participate.

Despite being children of Mexican immigrants with few resources and low levels of educational attainment, the five Latino/Hispanic youths grew up surrounded by a networked communication environment that they accessed, with different frequencies and qualities, in their everyday life. Although these youths have been able to leverage this environment to advance their incorporation into multiple dimensions of the host society, they have not fully become participants in new media cultures. Their participation has been characterized by peripherality. That is, by an ambiguous position in which they, as newcomers, can have casual access to new media practices and participate in the culture by undertaking simple and “low-risk” activities such as web searches, media re- circulation on Facebook, camera operation, and digital video editing.

Their peripheral participation was the result of the complex interaction between their skills, individual purposes, social supports, and the quality of access to technology. While the lack of high- quality access to digital tools at times limited their opportunities to become full participants, at other times, their purposes and personal motivations determined the low quality of their engagement. Still, at other times, the underdevelopment of new media skills and limited access to social support in the context of activity kept their participation in the periphery.

For instance, despite his motivation to fully participate in the YouTube community of game commentators, Miguel could not produce and upload his own videos. The barrier to participation was clearly shaped by the low-quality access to technology he had at home. However, he still found ways to connect to the community of game commentators and, with great social motivation, was able to engage in conversations with them. In contrast, when Antonio developed his music production practice at home, the barrier to full participation in MSSs emerged more from a combination of the simplicity of his individual purposes, lack of entitlement as a producer, and limited social support. In this case, Antonio was able to produce music with the technology he could access at home and was able to download music software by following the conversations of music producers online. However, he did not publish content on the SoundCloud platform nor did he engage in conversations with community members. Neither at home nor at the MSSs was he able to find the social supports that would act as scaffolding for more engaged participation. The interplay between limited social support and the desired outcomes that he identified when composing music (he rarely finished a single track he felt he could publish) kept Antonio on the periphery of the digital music culture (particularly that of dubstep producers). Likewise, Sergio and Antonio’s participation in Vimeo’s filmmaking communities remained peripheral due to a combination of low motivation to publish (e.g. lack of confidence and entitlement), little scaffolding, and the low quality of access to technology (e.g. loss of digital files).

Social supports have emerged as one of the most critical dimensions of the digital inequalities confronted by Latino/Hispanic immigrant youth in the United States. Specifically, the social supports that youths can access in the context of the family/home – those shaped by different parenting styles – turn out to be crucial for the development of new media practices, skills, and the quality of participation across multiple contexts. Evidence presented in previous chapters reveals that the “accomplishment of natural growth” parenting style, as compared to that of “concerted cultivation,” constrained skill acquisition and new media practices of production and distribution. It was clear from the analysis of the five Latino/Hispanic immigrant families that the Garcia family, which was experiencing rapid social mobility and was en route to middle-class assimilation, was able to provide more social support than the others.

Gabriela’s parents developed a version of the middle-class “concerted cultivation” parenting style. They structured and monitored the activities of Gabriela and pushed her to achieve academically; they engaged in joint new media practices with her and actively mobilized social and economic resources to support her new media practices (e.g. digital photography). In contrast, having fewer resources and less social mobility, parents from the other four working-class families developed versions of the “accomplishment of natural growth” parenting style. They could not provide as much guidance and scaffolding for their children, and could not mobilize as many social and economic resources. With the exception of brokering practices (media and language brokering) wherein youths helped their parents to learn English and taught them how to use digital technology, these four families rarely engaged in joint new media activities. As a result, Inara, Antonio, Miguel, and Sergio, had more difficulty accessing social supports at home and ultimately did not develop a sense of entitlement that could have helped them to more effectively manage social interactions across various sociocultural contexts.

Previously considered evidence revealed that Gabriela had a sort of “digital home advantage” that allowed her to more fully participate in media production and distribution (although still from the periphery) than the other four youths in the context of family/home. Feeling confident in the digital content she created with high-quality technology (SLR camera, laptop computer, and iPhone) that her dad had bought her, she was able, for instance, to publish photographs and videos on MSSs like Flickr and YouTube. Although she did not engage in conversations online, try to connect with an audience, or network with other young creators, she at least felt entitled to publish her own media creations online and share links to that content with her peers from high school and members of her family.

The complex interaction between inequalities in skills, purpose, social supports, and access to technology has shaped the participation of Latino/Hispanic immigrant youths in new media cultures. Although they were not able to fully bridge the participation gap that emerged from the interplay of their lower socioeconomic resources, the low quality of their education, and their lower position in the U.S. social hierarchy, they were able to navigate the evolving contours of those gaps and found ways to be connected from the periphery. They became aware of media practices while being connected to digital networks. They also found opportunities to develop these practices in a meaningful way and gained new media skills at a basic level. Their major disconnection, however, was not technology. Although the low quality and quantity of technology access limited some of their practices, the major obstacles to full participation came from their limited access to social supports and scaffolding, their individual purposes, and the homogeneity of their social networks (homophily). This fact reveals how digital inequalities and participation gaps have evolved in paradoxical ways. While a diversity of young people are connecting to a networked communication environment and starting to leverage the affordances of digital technologies, participation gaps emerge in relation to youths’ position of power in the social hierarchy, their access to social supports, the richness of their social networks, and their level of expertise in new media skills.

'''Recommendations'''

This study and its main findings open opportunities for further investigation on Latino/Hispanic immigrant youth use of new media technologies and on their process of incorporation into several dimensions of the United States. Moreover, the analyses also open possibilities for media and learning design, and policy and educational interventions in the city of Austin and the state of Texas that could support processes of social inclusion of the children of labor immigrants from Mexico and other Latin-American countries who usually hold a position of disadvantage. I would like to conclude with a set of recommendations for researchers, educators, media designers, parents and policy makers.

1) Second- and 1.5-generation Latino/Hispanic immigrant youth are a transformational force in the U.S. and are reshaping the future of the country. Although they can quickly adapt to the host country leveraging new media technologies, their potential as full participants in society, culture, and economy, requires of a more robust system of support that goes beyond public school and after-school programs. Setting up inter-institutional collaborations that can provide scaffolding and social support to Latino/Hispanic immigrant youth can help to boost their potential as transformative agents in the U.S. There is a need for spaces and programs, such as community and civic organizations, that could facilitate the access to more diverse and richer social networks, adult mentors, and other kind of social supports that could help scaffold a more fully participation in culture, economy, civics, and society.

2) The context of the Latino/Hispanic immigrant family emerges as an important site for leveraging the networked communication environment and opens a range of possibilities for intergenerational learning. There is a need for learning materials and experiences, in both English and Spanish, that support the cultural and language adaptation for all members of the family and encourage intergenerational and communal activities at the family/home context. These learning materials and experiences can help parents to bridge the acculturation gap in relation to new media skills while they participate in communal activities with their children at home. This kind of new media engagement can help to create a more robust system of social support within the Latino/Hispanic family.

3) There is an urgent need to strengthen the sustainable development of new media literacy skills and encourage higher levels of expertise among Latino/Hispanic immigrant youth. For doing so it is crucial that educators actively incorporate these skills in formal schooling, foster their development across the curriculum, and connect them with other (non-school) contexts of activity. Given the affordances of the networked communication environment and the ability of Latino/Hispanic youth to leverage them, providing higher quality education, complex and meaningful challenges, and robust social support can improve the development of higher levels of expertise in new media skills. Furthermore, it is necessary that educators cultivate the acquisition of some of the new media skills (particularly collective intelligence) that remain underdeveloped among Latino/Hispanic immigrant youth.

4) Researchers working with Latino/Hispanic immigrant youth need to put more attention to the juxtaposition of languages and cultures that digital tools and networks are allowing across contexts, especially at home. Studying the complex ways in which such layering of practices, languages, and cultures occurs can help us to better understand some of the creative, innovative, and resourceful ways in which Latino/Hispanic youth are navigating their process of incorporation into the United States. Such knowledge, furthermore, can be useful for fostering multicultural dialogue in an increasingly diverse nation.

5) Alternative theories of assimilation benefit from the study of media practices and digital inequalities. Researchers building the theory of segmented assimilation need to incorporate the study of immigrant youths’ new media practices in their research endeavors in order to develop a better understanding of the unevenness and messiness of the process of incorporation across multiple dimensions. For instance, instead of considering only two possible trajectories of acculturation, the model would benefit from considering more pathways, and different speeds in the trajectories of immigrant generations. Given the acceleration the possibility of greater juxtaposition of cultures and languages in a networked communication environment, considering more trajectories could help to better understand the complexity of the assimilation process and the greater agency of immigrant youths in the twenty-first century.

6) In the complex evolution of digital inequalities and participation gaps, Latino/Hispanic working class immigrant parents have played an important role providing access, with different qualities and quantities, to digital tools and networks. However, many of them have little knowledge about new media technology beyond their belief that they are good for education and schooling. Latino/Hispanic parents, especially the ones with low educational attainment and non-proficient in English, need more information in Spanish language about digital tools, new media skills, and the Internet, so they can provide greater support to their children. Given Latino/Hispanic immigrant parents’ interest in supporting education through investments in new media technology, there is an urgent need of high quality learning materials and programs, in both Spanish and English, for this population. Latino/Hispanic parents, as much as children and youth, need to develop some level of social and cultural abilities to participate in digital culture. Only in this way, they would be able to provide greater social support for their children and youth.

== References ==
{{Reflist}}

Notes

2016-02-11T14:19:04Z

Lombanaphd: Created page with "Link here to the dissertation log"

Link here to the dissertation log

Chapter I. Theory

2015-06-21T12:32:38Z

Lombanaphd: Created page with "I have assembled an interdisciplinary framework that integrates theories from media studies, sociology, anthropology, communication, and new literacy studies. This framework a..."

I have assembled an interdisciplinary framework that integrates theories from media studies, sociology, anthropology, communication, and new literacy studies. This framework allows me to examine the problems of assimilation and digital inequalities, with a media practice approach that recognizes youths as social actors and creative agents. In the sections below I introduce the theories that compose the general foundational framework of this dissertation. However, in each of the body chapters I expand this foundational framework with a more comprehensive literature review according to the specific context of analysis (family/home, after-school, and social media networked sites).

= Assimilation Theory =

"Assimilation is not a static or unchanging concept; its definition and specifications have evolved steadily as American society has changed in its more than several-century experience of immigration" (Alba and Nee 2003)

Researchers, politicians, and the general public have used the concept of assimilation to describe the processes of incorporation of foreign immigrants into a host society, or in other words, the process in which people of different ethnicities and races negotiate and adapt to a new social environment. This concept, however, is contested. Due to particular historical contexts and the complexity of the process of incorporation and ethnic interaction, social scientists in the twentieth century have conceptualized assimilation differently. As the U.S. has become more culturally and ethnically diverse, as well as with changes in the economy, researchers have developed theories of assimilation that consider more dimensions of the complex process. While some researchers have considered the host society as homogenous, others have assumed it to be heterogeneous and highly stratified, while some have tried to address multiple dimensions (e.g. socioeconomic, educational, civic, identity, psychology), others have focused only on two dimensions of the process (e.g. culture and economy).

== Classic and Alternative Assimilation Theories ==

What is known in the social science literature as classic assimilation theory (e.g. Warer and Strole 1945; Blay and Duncan 1967; Gordon 1978) assumed a single and unified U.S culture and society where immigrants became incorporated progressively and inevitably. Although classic assimilation studies described the process of immigrant adaptation, identified different dimensions, and operationalized several indicators to measure the extent of incorporation of individuals and groups to the U.S., their theories were often ethnocentric and idealized conformity in a homogeneous white Anglo middle-class culture and society. Given the racial and ethnic characteristics of the European migration that took place at the turn of the twentieth century, as well as the historical and economical context of massive industrialization, a "straight-line" process of incorporation into a core white Anglo mainstream seemed to describe the experience of many of the white European immigrants and their children in the U.S. However, as the immigrant population became more ethnically and racially diverse after the new wave of massive immigration post-1965, and as the economic context changed entering a post-industrial era, such assumptions of Anglo conformity and assimilation into a unified white middle-class could not accurately describe the uneven experiences of the "new immigrants" and their children in the U.S. In order to better understand the variety of outcomes and complexity of the assimilation process in contemporary U.S. stratified post-industrial context, researchers developed alternative theories. While some scholars theorized about the possibility of positive assimilation into a new melting pot that is heterogeneous and in which the mainstream majority is diverse (Alva and Nee 2003); others have conceptualized the assimilation process as mixed, with both positive and pessimistic outcomes depending of the segments of the society in which immigrants assimilate (Portes & Zhou 1993; Rumbaut 1996; Zhou 1997; Portes & Rumbaut 2001).

May 2015

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Lombanaphd:

=== Wednesday May 13 ===

=== Monday May 18 ===
Mary's literature review suggestions:

BEDROOM CULTURE

McRobbie, Angela and Jenny Garber. “Girls and Subcultures.” Resistance through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-War Britain. Ed. Stuart Hall and Tony Jefferson. London: HarperCollins, 1976. 208-22.

Steele, J. R. and J. D. Brown. (1995). Adolescent room culture: Studying media in the context of everyday life. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 24(5), 551-576.

Harris, A. (2001). Revisiting bedroom culture: New spaces for young women’s politics. Hecate, 27(1), 128-138.
Kearney, Mary Celeste. (2007). “Productive Spaces: Girls’ Bedrooms as Sites of Cultural Production.” Journal of Children and Media 1.2 (July) 126-41.

Also, most of Sian Lincoln's work has focused on teenagers and bedroom culture, including:

Lincoln, S. (2004). Teenage girls’ “bedroom culture”: Codes versus zones. In A. Bennett and K. Kahn-Harris (Eds.), After subculture: Critical studies in contemporary youth culture (pp. 94-106). New York: Palgrave.

IMMIGRANT MEDIA - WITH A CRITICAL APPROACH
*I'm less familiar with this area of research, but here's what I do know about that does not take an "effects" approach:

- Hamid Naficy's work - on Iranian immigrants and both film and TV

- Lee, Minu and Chong Heup Cho. “Women Watching Together: An Ethnographic Study of Korean Soap Opera Fans in the United States.” Cultural Studies 4.1 (1990) 30-44.

- Haluani, Rona Tamiko and Leah R. Vande Berg. “‘Asian or American’: Meanings In, Through, and Around All-American Girl.” Critical Approaches to Television. Eds. Leah R. Vande Berg, Lawrence A. Wenner, and Bruce E. Gronbeck. Boston : Houghton Mifflin, 1998. 214-35.

There's also work by Patrick Mullins on nickelodeons and assimilation in the early 20th century.

=== Friday May 22 ===

1. One main thing was for you to address your own involvement in the project, to be a bit more reflexive about your presence in the school/after school space and how it influenced your insights. DO this in the introduction.

2. Another main thing was reorganizing the conclusion a bit, but mainly to end the dissertation with a reflection on where some of the students are now and the likely challenges they face in the school-to-work transition.

3. Also, the committee asked you to address Bourdieu and the notion of social capital. In this section you might simply use a paragraph to explain how he uses the term and then include your critique of his theoretical and/or analytical framework.

Other comments were more related to post-dissertation, including Mary's suggestions to think about gender.

Chapter I. Methods

2015-05-20T05:31:43Z

Lombanaphd:

The research design and methods for this dissertation have been greatly shaped by the Digital Edge Project; a three-year research project that examined young people’s new media and learning ecologies. As part of the research team led by S. Craig Watkins (Principal Investigator), I spent over a year conducting ethnographic fieldwork at Freeway High School, and two years analyzing the data we collected. Although there are several similarities and intersections between the Digital Edge Project and my dissertation, there are also important differences between the two, especially regarding the objectives, research questions, sample of participants, data analysis, and limitations. When describing the work of the Digital Edge, I will use the plural pronouns “we” and “us” to credit the work and findings of the research team I was part of. In contrast, when describing the specific research questions, findings, and analyses of this dissertation, as well as the case studies I personally conducted, I use personal pronouns to distinguish my work from the larger collective project.

= Objectives and Research Questions =

This dissertation is concerned with the problem of immigrant youth assimilation into the U.S. and the problem of digital inequalities. I examine these issues through a series of case studies about the mediated activities of five Latino/Hispanic immigrant youths, with working-class socioeconomic backgrounds, in three contexts: the family/home, an after-school program, and the multi-setting of social media networked spaces. My aims are:

# to understand the characteristics of the new media practices and skills that five Latino/Hispanic immigrant youths develop as they use digital tools;
# to investigate the assimilation process of five second- and 1.5-generation Latino/Hispanic immigrant youth in a context of networked communication, a hyper-mediated culture, and structural inequalities;
# to contribute to the theory of segmented assimilation by considering how immigrant youths’ new media practices shape the process of incorporation into a host country;
# to understand the complex evolution of digital inequalities and participation gaps.

While the first and fourth objectives intersect the aims of the Digital Edge project, particularly in its goals of studying diverse youths' engagement with new media, formal and informal learning, and unique media ecologies; the second and third objectives are unique to my dissertation and specifically relate to the problem of immigrant youth assimilation in the U.S. From these general objectives, I formulated a number of specific research questions and further refined them in the course of this dissertation project. My main questions are:

# What are the new media practices and skills working class Latino/Hispanic immigrant youth develop in the contexts of family/home, after-school, and social media networked spaces?
# How do new media practices and skills help Latino/Hispanic immigrant youths to navigate their assimilation process in the U.S.?

Answering the main and secondary questions I will try to untangle the complex interplay of digital inequalities and structural factors, and understand how it shapes immigrant youths' trajectories of assimilation. Moreover, these questions are intended to help me understand the agency of Latino/Hispanic immigrant youth exercised as they communicated and socialized using networked technologies in their everyday life. Specifically, their agency in the contexts of family/home, an after-school program, and social media networked spaces.

= The Site =
== The Austin Metropolitan Area ==
The research from the Digital Edge project and this dissertation is located in the particular local context of the larger metropolitan area of Austin. Named the 11th biggest city in the U.S. in 2013 according to the Census Bureau population estimates, this area is one of the fastest-growing regions in the country. Once provincial, known for its legislative and educational operations, in the last twenty-five years Austin has exploded as a major destination not only for immigrants from other countries, but also for Americans from all over the U.S. The "new immigration" has in particular increased the share of the Latino/Hispanic population. It went from 23% in 1990, to 31% in 2000, to 35% in 2010. According to a recent report, Austin is ranked as the 20th largest area of a Hispanic population in the country (Pew Hispanic Center 2013), with a population of 885,400, the city has become ethnically diverse. The Latino/Hispanic group has a share 35.1%, the white Anglos 48.7%, Blacks or African Americans 8.1%, and Asians 6.3% (Cohen et al., 2013).

Although the metropolitan area of Austin has a history of spatial segregation, that has been gradually changing. The eastern portion of the city, separated from downtown by Interstate I-35, is historically home to minority communities, a configuration established even before the highway’s completion in the early 1960s (Straubhaar et al., 2012). With recent development efforts, combined with the massive scale of the "new immigration" and the boom of the area as a technological and innovation hub, Austin has experienced a wave of gentrification that has displaced minority populations unevenly throughout the city. A look at a map of the Latino/Hispanic population in Austin shows that although this group is concentrated in three major zones (80% plus): lower east Austin, greater Dove Springs, and the St. Johns area, this population is also concentrated in several little pockets (60-80%) distributed unevenly across the metropolitan area (Robinson, 2011). It is precisely in an area that contains one of these growing Latino/Hispanic clusters, where Freeway High School is located. Specifically, this public school and its community are located on the north urban fringe of the city, in what used to be a middle class suburban area in the 1970s but has increasingly become inhabited by working class families in the past two decades.<ref>Data from the Census Bureau (2010) shows that Hispanic population in the Austin has spread from the traditional enclaves or barrios of the East Side and Dove Springs to all parts of the metropolitan area. Besides being a majority in much of East and Southeast Austin, they have become the majority in portions of North and South Austin (Toohey, 2014). Interestingly, the movement of working-class Latino/Hispanic families to the edges of the city in the past decades has coincided with what some scholars describe as the rise of suburban poverty in the U.S. That is, the growth of poverty and low-income families in major U.S. city’s suburbs during the 2000s (Kneebone & Berube, 2015).</ref>

== Freeway High School ==

Because of its minority-majority student population, its location at the margins of the city, the socioeconomic background of most of the students families, and its digital media after school programs and elective classes, Freeway High School offered us a unique opportunity for researching digital inequalities of the U.S. Moreover, given the size of the Latino/Hispanic student population (951), the school was also an appropriate site for investigating the problem of the assimilation of Latino/Hispanic immigrant youth and their new media practices.

Freeway High School (FHS) was a large-scale public school located at the edge of the city, near what could be considered the urban fringe. The school served a community that was racially and economically diverse. However, the majority of the population was minority (88.8%) and economically disadvantaged (61.7%). In 2011-2012, Hispanic/Latinos made up 47.5% of a total of 2,002 students, whites 11.2%, Asians 13.3%, and African-Americans 24.2%. (Texas Education Agency 2011-2012) Almost half of the students (45%) classify for the Free Lunch Program, and 11% are in the Reduced-Price Lunch Program (Propublica, 2013). According to the Texas Education Agency Academic Excellence Indicator System the school had an "academically acceptable" rating in the year 2010-2011. The school provided few educational programs like Advanced Placement (AP), gifted and talented programs, and advanced math and science classes. Furthermore, very few students were enrolled in AP classes (24%), and even less are in gifted/talented programs (6%) (Propublica, 2013).

The general climate of Freeway High School was one of a crowded and low performing school, with the majority of students in the regular curriculum track (83.7%), budget cuts, and pressure on teachers (to get students pass the tests). The school banned students' use of mobile and digital devices, and blocked social network sites inside computer labs and classrooms. However, the school also offers elective classes and after-school programs that focused on digital media production and embraced new forms of learning. The Digital Edge team centered its interactions and observations around four spaces that have digital media technology orientations: two elective classrooms (a video technology class and a video game design class) and two after-school programs. Two members of the research team spent a total of approximately 150 hours in each classroom and four members spent more than 70 hours in the after-school programs doing participant observation.

== Digital Media Oriented After-School Programs ==

The Digital Edge research team observed two after-school programs on a weekly basis: the Digital Media Club (DMC) and the Cinematic Arts Project (CAP). While the DMC expanded through two classrooms/computer labs and was supervised by both Mr. Warren and Mr. Lopez (the teachers of the game design and video technology elective classes, respectively), the CAP was only supervised by Mr. Lopez and most of its activities happened in only one classroom. Both classrooms provided access to more than forty I-Mac desktop computers, midi keyboards, drawing tablets, and other media production gear. The I-Mac computers ran OS-X, were connected to the internet, and had several media production software applications such as I-Movie, Garage Band, Key Note, Adobe Suite (Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects), Final Cut Pro, and Celtix. The computers also have an integrated camera, a microphone, and headphones. Some participants of the Digital Edge study frequented these spaces in a regular or casual basis depending on the intensity and structure of each program.

=== The Digital Media Club (DMC)===

The DMC functioned as a two-classroom open computer lab where any student from Freeway High could work on multimedia projects, play computer games, mess around with software, browse the internet, geek out in media production (music, video), or simply hang out with friends. The DMC was an unstructured program and had an ambiguous nature that facilitated the participation of members and non-members of the club. On the one hand, the two classrooms where the club met during the after school hours (4:15pm-6pm approximately) were open spaces for any Freeway High student. On the other, the official members of the club had opportunities for working and collaborating on specific production projects that went beyond the computer lab, and enjoyed certain privileges such as checking out equipment (e.g. laptops, cameras). Activities were very diverse at the DMC and included playing video games, editing videos, creating portraits with the IMac cameras, making beats, photoshopping, browsing the web, and messing around with visual effects software.

=== The Cinematic Arts Project (CAP) ===
The CAP was a structured program run by a partnership between Mr. Lopez and the directors of a local film production company. At the time of our fieldwork, and one year after its creation, the CAP became a non-profit organization focused on teaching the art of digital storytelling and audiovisual production to young people. Although the CAP started as a project that emerged from the DMC, it grew very fast and in its second year it included not only students from Freeway High (10) but also from two other public high schools from the district (30). The program offered access to professional digital cinema tools (e.g. cameras, computers, lighting kits, microphones, software), peer and project-based learning, and adult mentorship. Most of the CAP activities took place in Mr. Lopez's classroom/computer lab and they happened from November 2011 to April 2012. Due to the intensity of the activities (everyday, from 4:30-7pm approximately) and the number of participants, during the months that the CAP was running the DMC faded away from Mr. Lopez's classroom.

The CAP had clear goals and structure. Students collaborated in five teams led by recent graduates from Freeway High in the creation of a short fiction film, a documentary, a making-of video, three webisodes, and multimedia content for the web. An executive team of producers and high school teachers supervised all the teams with experience in media production. The program had a sophisticated division of labor that resembled the professional structures of media production. For instance, the Narrative Team was divided in several departments such as Production Management, Camera & Electrical, Sound, Art, Costume & Wardrobe, Hair & Makeup, Music, and Editorial. Each department had students assuming diverse roles that went from directors to camera operators to grips, allowing them to learn and practice particular skills. Some of the major goals of the CAP were to submit the fiction film to an international film festival, send a group of selected students to the festival, fundraise money for the international trip, and recruit sponsors among the local community who could support the project economically and with production gear.

= Qualitative Methodology =

In the Digital Edge project our research design relied on multiple qualitative methods that included classic ethnography, participant observation, informal and semi-structured interviews, focus groups, and action research. A qualitative approach was appropriate for examining young people’s new media and learning ecologies and their participation in digital media cultures. It allowed us to gain a nuanced understanding of the characteristics of the multiple technologies that youth access at specific contexts of activity and their interconnection with their wider media ecologies. Furthermore, it helped us to understand the many different nodes that composed their learning ecologies (peer group, family, after-school, social media). The qualitative approach also allowed us to look closely at some of the activities (including learning) where youths exercised their agency as they participated in digital media cultures and developed new media practices. This approach was also useful for investigating the problem of youth assimilation into the U.S. Although this problem has been thoroughly examined with quantitative methodologies, looking at it from the micro-perspective of immigrant youths' mediated interactions and mediated experiences was useful for revealing its complexity and interplay with digital inequalities. Particularly, this research approach allowed me to analyze the linguistic, social, and cultural dimensions of the assimilation process of Latino/Hispanic immigrant youths in the U.S.

== Ethnography ==
One of the main qualitative methods used by the Digital Edge project was classical ethnography (Emerson, Fretz & Snow 1995; Rubin & Rubin 2005; Spradley 1979; Foley 2002). After having established an initial rapport, we conducted semi-structured in-depth interviews with students, mentors, teachers, and parents/guardians, during an academic year (2011-2012). Our goal was to document the nuances of young people’s new media and learning ecologies over a long period of time, and to elaborate a series of ethnographic case studies for each of our participants, families, and settings. Given the amount of hours spent doing participant observation in the elective technology classes (+150) and the digital media oriented after-school programs (+70), we were able to create a “thick description” (Geertz, 1973) of these spaces and their culture. The quality, quantity, and frequency of interviews during an extended period of time also allowed us to construct vivid and nuanced analysis of the youth's new media ecologies and practices, their family/homes dynamics, and activities on social media networked spaces.
Each member of our team was matched with between two and five students (14-18 years old) across all grades (18 in total) that we followed for a year, having approximately 12 semi-structured in-depth interviews each. I personally worked with two participants, Antonio and Sergio, who were second- and 1.5- generation Latino/Hispanic immigrants.<ref>I am thankful to the Digital Edge team of researchers who collaborated in the fieldwork conducting participant observations and interviews: Alexander Cho, Jennifer Noble, Vivian Shaw, Jacqueline Vickery, S. Craig Watkins, and Adam Williams.</ref>

== Participant Observation ==
During the academic year 2011-2012, the Digital Edge team conducted participant observation in two elective classes and two after-school programs. Following the traditional stages of participant observation (Howell 1972), researchers first established a rapport with the participants of the study, then immersed themselves in the field, recorded observations as fieldnotes, and finally analyzed and organized the information gathered. According to the types of participant observation described by Spradley (1980), there were differences between the role that members of the team played when observing the elective classes and the one played at the after-school space. While at the elective classes the method was of active participation, at the after-school program it was passive participant observation. The two members of the team who spent approximately 150 hours in each classroom became more involved in the population and collaborated in several projects and curriculum design. In contrast, the four researchers, including me, who conducted approximately 70+ hours of fieldwork observing the after-school played a more passive role.
At the after-school programs, we limited our interactions to one of bystanders who hung out at the space on a weekly basis. Our observations focused on the digital media practices and social interactions that the students developed. We did not participate actively in the after-school activities nor become members of the community, and both the subjects of the study and the supervisors of the after-school setting recognized us as outsiders who were working in a project associated with the University of Texas and with the principal investigator Professor S. Craig Watkins.

Given the nature of the digital media after-school programs we observed, the fieldwork expanded across multiple spaces where the activities of the program took place. For instance, inside the Freeway High School building the DMC after-school program was split between two computer lab classrooms, the one of Mr. Lopez, the video technology teacher, on the second floor, and Mr. Warren’s, the videogame teacher, on the first floor. Researchers decided to observe either of these two spaces according to where their assigned subjects of study spent the most time. While some subjects were inclined towards gaming practices spent most of the time in the first floor computer lab, others participants interested in digital video and music production spent most of their time in the second floor classroom. I personally, spent more time observing Mr. Lopez’s classroom since it was in this space where the activities of the CAP took place from November 2011 to May 2012.

While observing the CAP, I had the opportunity to see how after-school activities expanded to other spaces inside the Freeway High campus such as the cafeteria, the theater, the second floor hall, and two adjacent rooms next to Mr. Lopez's classroom. In these locations students developed shots, rehearsals, casting sessions, screenings, and brainstormed. Moreover, I also had the opportunity to observe some activities of the CAP that took place outside of the school setting in several locations around the Austin metropolitan area. Students shot scenes, delivered public presentations at educational conferences, organized fundraising events, and participated in a local film industry event.

==Action research intervention ==

After spending a year at the school doing ethnographic research, three members of the Digital Edge team, including me, conducted an action research intervention in collaboration with Mr. Lopez and a group of sixteen high school students, that included four of the participants of our original sample of eighteen students. Two of them (Inara and Antonio) were part of the subsample of my dissertation. The intervention was a three-week summer camp (summer 2012) in which all participants formed a digital media and design studio. Together, we redesigned the space of Mr. Lopez's classroom/computer lab in order to make it more participatory, and structured the learning environment applying the principles of the connecting learning model (participation, hands on learning, constant challenge, and interconnectedness). One of our goals was to see how the model worked in practice, in the context of Freeway High and with some of the participants we had been following for several months. For this experience, we purposefully integrated new media tools for social connection, creation, and linking the classroom, community and home. We created several design challenges that allowed students to engage with real world problems, particularly ones related to toxic food environments and childhood obesity. During this intervention students were able to  experience learning as hands-on, experiential, and connected to their communities and their environment. Hence, it could be said that the intervention provided an enrichment opportunity for Freeway High students, supporting learning that was connected, relevant, production centered, and interest-motivated.

= Notes =
<references />

Index

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Lombanaphd: Created page with "* Introduction * Chapter I. Methods * Chapter I. Theory * Chapter II. Family/Home * Chapter III. After-school * [[Chapter IV. Social Media Networked Spaces..."

* [[Introduction]]
* [[Chapter I. Methods]]
* [[Chapter I. Theory]]
* [[Chapter II. Family/Home]]
* [[Chapter III. After-school]]
* [[Chapter IV. Social Media Networked Spaces]]
* [[Chapter V. Follow-ups]]
* [[Conclusion]]
* [[Appendix]]

April 2015

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Lombanaphd: Created page with "==April 22== Sending the final draft"

==April 22==
Sending the final draft

About

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Lombanaphd: Created page with "My name is Andres Lombana-Bermudez and this Wiki documents the making of my doctoral Dissertation. I am an interdisciplinary designer/researcher born and raised in Bogota, Col..."

My name is Andres Lombana-Bermudez and this Wiki documents the making of my doctoral Dissertation. I am an interdisciplinary designer/researcher born and raised in Bogota, Colombia, now living in Austin, TX. I work at the intersection of youth, digital technology, and learning. I am a PhD candidate in Media Studies at UT-Austin and previously completed a MSc in Comparative Media Studies at MIT. I study how young people use technology for learning, creating, connecting and participating in culture/society/economy. Having been a long life student of the relationships between youth, technology, and everyday life, I am familiar with qualitative and quantitative methods, and especially skilled in content analysis, ethnography, and action research. I am particularly interested in studying new media practices, digital inequalities, innovation, and designing for learning, fun and engagement. Parallel to my academic work I have sustained a cross-media design practice and developed several creative projects. My artwork has been exhibited internationally in museums and galleries such as the Italo-Latin American Institute in Rome, the Ethnological Museum in Berlin, and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) Art Gallery in Washington D.C. Currently, I am a member of the Aprendiendo Juntos/Learning Together Council (AJC), a mentor at the Youth and Media Lab at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, and a research assistant for the Connected Learning Research Network.

Journal articles

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Lombanaphd: Created page with "* Academic Journals to publish articles from the dissertation chapters."

* [[Academic Journals]] to publish articles from the dissertation chapters.

Core Themes

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Lombanaphd: Created page with "The framework that constitutes this project is a network of several major theoretical threads: * Participation * Networked and Convergence Culture * [[Social, Cultural..."

The framework that constitutes this project is a network of several major theoretical threads:
* [[Participation]]
* [[Networked and Convergence Culture]]
* [[Social, Cultural and Economic Capitals]]
* [[Latino/Hispanic label]]
* [[New Literacies]]
* [[Digital Inequalities]]
* [[Youth]]
* [[Media Practices and literacies]]
* [[Digital Divide]]
* [[Identity]]
* [[Segmented Assimilation]]
* [[After school programs]]
* [[Home and family]]
* [[Internet]]
* [[Immigrant Latino Family]]
* [[Place]]
* [[Figured Worlds]]

Prospectus

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Lombanaphd: /* Prospectus */

== Prospectus ==
* [[The Final Proposal]] (defended)
* Working [[Table of Contents]]
** [[The Site]]
** [[Participants]]
** [[Methods and Data]]
** [[Home Chapter]]
** [[After School Chapter]]
** [[Internet Chapter]]

* Earlier and messy versions of the [[proposal process]].
** [[Proposal]]
** [[Hypothesis]]
** [[New proposal]]
** [[Notes]]

Hispanic High School Graduates Pass Whites in Rate of College Enrollment

2015-03-21T05:49:49Z

Lombanaphd: Created page with "http://www.pewhispanic.org/2013/05/09/hispanic-high-school-graduates-pass-whites-in-rate-of-college-enrollment/ by By Richard Fry and Paul Taylor (2013) * High School Drop-ou..."

http://www.pewhispanic.org/2013/05/09/hispanic-high-school-graduates-pass-whites-in-rate-of-college-enrollment/
by By Richard Fry and Paul Taylor (2013)

* High School Drop-out Rate at Record Low : A milestone.
* A record seven-in-ten (69%) Hispanic high school graduates in the class of 2012 enrolled in college that fall, two percentage points higher than the rate (67%) among their white counterparts,1 according to a Pew Research Center analysis of new data from the U.S. Census Bureau.
* In the class of 2012 Hispanic high school graduates (69%) were more likely to be enrolled in college in October 2012 than either whites (67%) or blacks (63%).
* The positive trends in Hispanic educational indicators also extend to high school. The rise in high school completion and college enrollment by Latino youths
* Most recent available data show that in 2011 only 14% of Hispanic 16- to 24-year-olds were high school dropouts, half the level in 2000 (28%).
* Despite the narrowing of some of these long-standing educational attainment gaps, Hispanics continue to lag whites in a number of key higher education measures.
* Young Hispanic college students are less likely than their white counterparts to enroll in a four-year college (56% versus 72%), they are less likely to attend a selective college,3 less likely to be enrolled in college full time, and less likely to complete a bachelor’s degree.
* importance that Latino families place on a college education. According to a 2009 Pew Hispanic Center survey, 88% of Latinos ages 16 and older agreed that a college degree is necessary to get ahead in life today (Pew Hispanic Center, 2009).
* Young Hispanics are increasingly staying in school.:: In October 2000 there were three newly minted Hispanic high school graduates for every one recent Hispanic high school dropout. By October 2012 there were five newly minted Hispanic high school graduates for every one dropout.
* The trends on Hispanic recent school dropouts are consistent with other better known Hispanic dropout statistics. The National Center for Education Statistics reports the high school dropout rate for 16- to 24-year-olds. In October 2000 28% of Hispanic 16- to 24-year-olds were school dropouts according to this measure (National Center for Education Statistics, 2013). By October 2011 14% of Hispanics in this age group were dropouts.
* Hispanic students are increasingly likely to graduate from high school (in this instance “graduate” refers to those who obtain a regular high school diploma and does not include students obtaining a GED). A recent comprehensive investigation of high school graduation rates finds that 78% of Hispanics graduated from high school in 2010, an increase from 64% in 2000 (Murnane, 2013).

Internet Chapter

2015-03-20T23:11:17Z

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0. Introduction
Living and growing up in contemporary U.S. is an experience of immersion in a hyper-mediated environment where communicating, learning, and socializing, are highly mediated activities. All the five Latino/Hispanic immigrant youth from our study developed a range of computer-mediated activities on Social Network Sites (SNSs) and Media Sharing Sites (MSSs) during our fieldwork, and had been practicing them through several years. For all of them, spending time and energy in online activities, was part of their everyday life and was meaningful. From school, home, after-school, or any other location from where they could connect to the Internet, these youths entered social media networked spaces and navigated them in different ways according to the social, economic, technological, cultural, and human resources they had. Among other activities, on these mediated spaces they hanged out with their friends, performed identities, searched information, and spread media content they could access for free. In some specific cases they also published media content they had created by themselves or in collaboration with their peers. As these Latino/Hispanic immigrant youth developed meaningful media practices through their experiences online, they shaped their process of assimilation to the U.S. In this chapter I examine the characteristics of these practices and some of the new media skills that Latino/Hispanic youth gained through their participation on SNSs and MSSs. What were the characteristics of their participation on social media networked spaces? Which were the characteristics of their social networks (diversity, richness), and the media content they discovered, spread, and produced? What kind of new media skills and practices did they developed and how did they shape the process of assimilation to the U.S.?
This chapter is organized in three big sections. In the first, I set up the theoretical framework for analyzing youth online activities in a new communication environment. Doing a brief historical review I introduce the social media networked spaces, their technological affordances, and the sociocultural practices that have been developed on them. After that I discuss the potential and challenges of the new communication environment in relation to participation, culture, and youth. I critically engage with the literature on participatory cultures and genres of participation, as well as with the one on digital inequalities, and set-up the theoretical framework for my analysis. In the second section, I look at the specific contexts of activity where the five Latino/Hispanic youth developed their media practices. I map their geography of social media networked spaces looking at the Social Network Sites (SNSs) and Media Sharing Sites (MSSs) where they hanged out, messed around, and sometimes also geeked out. In the last section I focus my analysis on two of the new media skills that these youths gained through their activities online (networking and appropriation), and discuss how they shaped the process of assimilation to the U.S. in several dimensions. Finally, at the end of the chapter I elaborate a conclusion reviewing the major findings from the analysis.

1. A New Communication Environment

As a result of the proliferation, development, and adoption of new media tools, networks, and practices, a new communication environment has emerged. Given the affordances of digital technologies and distributed network architectures, this environment is enabling transformations across multiple domains of human activity. Social, economic, cultural, and political institutions, relationships, and practices are increasingly organized through and around network structures. (Castells 2000, 2002, 2004; Benkler 2006; Varnelis et al. 2008) Although networks have existed before in the history of human civilizations, it has not been until the introduction of computer-based communication technologies and particularly the Internet that they have been able to fully perform their power and develop in scale and complexity. Networks are powerful because they can process multiple information flows and are flexible and adaptable. Digital technologies have increased networks' capacity for managing complexity, coordinating tasks, and circulating information between nodes. According to Castells, this “results in an unprecedented combination of flexibility and task performance, of coordinated decision-making and decentralized execution, of individualized expression and global, horizontal communication, which provide a superior organization form for human action"(2002, 2).

1.1. The Internet, the World Wide Web and the Rise of Social Media Networked Spaces
Connecting to the Internet has become an essential part of living and growing up in the U.S. According to the most recent reports from the Pew Research Center, 95% of the U.S. youth ages 12-17 are online (Madden et al., 2013a) and 97% of young adults ages 18-29 use the Internet (Fox and Rainie, 2014). Internet penetration and adoption has gone almost universal (Fox and Rainie, 2014). Especially for American youths, using the Internet and doing activities online has been woven into their everyday experiences. Web sites, search engines, email, and social media platforms nowadays play a fundamental role in the lives of youth. They have become some of the most important spaces where young people go to socialize, communicate, hang out, and engage in meaningful activities. Although online experiences happen with different frequencies, skills, and resources according to a variety of structural and individual factors, it could be said that for all youths living in the U.S., including the immigrants, the Internet is an important context of activity.
Given its networked nature, the Internet is in fact not one but a series of multiple and interconnected contexts. The Internet technological infrastructure, its architecture, the sociocultural practices that it fosters and people develop, and the information flows that circulate across its links and nodes, give rise to multiple spaces that are networked. As Julie Cohen (2007) has claimed in her essay about the spatiality of the Internet, "cyberspace is not a unitary phenomenon; there is not one cyberspace, but many." (225) Synthesizing the theories of network society and mathematical complex networks, Cohen defined the Internet as a networked space. That is, a space "shaped by the uses of information and communications technologies" (239), "constituted both by flows and by the path dependence of flows" (239), and "produced and experienced by embodied beings" (243). The emphasis on the embodied experience of networked space highlights the interconnection of the space of information flows with the "real-world space", and the linkage between offline and online contexts and behaviors. Although early utopian conceptualizations of the Internet emphasized the separation of the online and offline worlds imagining cyberspace as completely removed from the materiality of the physical space (e.g. "the electronic frontier," "placeless"), several researchers have started to recognize the porosity, co-dependence, and interconnection between physical and virtual spaces. (Byrne, 2008; Cohen 2007; Graham 2011, boyd 2014, Morrison, 2010; Baym 2006)
The Internet is the most important socio-technological system that exists in the new communication environment. As a “network of networks” (Dutton, 1996) the Internet has expanded globally creating the biggest communication system of interconnected personal computers (the PC/Internet grid). Thanks to its open, distributed, and multidirectional architecture (Benkler 2006; Karaganis 2008) and its principle of generativity (Zitrain 2007), the Internet has supported the making and functioning of new communication systems built on its top. As Karaganis (2008) has explained, collective efforts of governments and scientists developed a network that "supported not only survivability and interoperability but also a very wide scope for future innovation. The lowest-level internet protocols provided a platform for other networks and applications with more specific functionality." (258) The World Wide Web, peer-to-peer file sharing (torrents), e-mail clients, Usenet, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and Internet Protocol Television (IPTV), are all platforms and services built on the top of the PC/Internet grid. They can be understood as layers carried by the Internet. Among all of them, the World Wide Web is perhaps the one that popularized the Internet around the world and the one that became more embedded in our everyday sociocultural practices. When we talk about “going online” or “getting on the Internet” we are usually making reference to our use of the Web. Performing a search in Google, communicating on Social Network Sites (SNSs) with friends, discovering and playing music and videos on media-sharing sites, communicating via web-based email (e.g. G-mail, Yahoo, Hotmail), playing in virtual game worlds, and exploring a rich variety of pages and applications, are all activities performed on the World Wide Web.
Released as an open and free communication system in 1993 by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), the Web was designed to be a distributed network of multiple nodes (“hypertext documents”) linked by URLs (uniform resource locators). Using a client–server architecture, this hypermedia system could be accessed with a software application (“browsers”) that would retrieve, display, and travel across the nodes of the network. In their initial project proposal, Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau envisioned the evolution of the Web as an “open-ended” global system that would allow the users to add new links and nodes to the network, fostering both universal readership and authorship. (Berners-Lee & Cailliau 1990) Its goal, architecture, and open standards, gave the Web the potential to scale up very fast as more users joined and started to add and distribute content (e.g. web pages) and software (e.g. search engines, web apps). In the course of two decades, the Web went from having ten nodes in 1992 to having 697,089,489 nodes in 2012 (Internet Live Stats 2015).
Although since its origins, the Web was envisioned to be an interactive system that would allow people to connect, communicate, and interact with each other creating readable/writable information spaces, the popularization of its social capabilities, at a global scale, took several years. It was not until the end of the 1990s, with the creation of several Web applications (social software) such as blogs, wikis, SNSs, and the evolution of graphical web browsers, that the potential for universal reading/writing, participation, and sociability started to be embraced by more people and captured the popular imagination making the Web a sort of massive interactive medium. Because these platforms and services were easy to use and did not require any knowledge of coding and hypertext language, more people, including a large youth population, was able to start adding content to the Web, connecting and socializing with their friends in the several spaces that emerged. As Tim Berners-Lee explained in an interview with the BBC in 2005, “every person who used the web had the ability to write something (…) but editing web pages became difficult and complicated for people. What happened with blogs and with wikis, these editable web spaces, was that they became much more simple. When you write a blog, you don’t write complicated hypertext, you just write text.” (BBC News 2015)
As a consequence of lowering the barriers to entry as well as the increase in broadband and computer power, during the first decade of the 2000s, more people was able to participate creating and sharing content on the Web. Moreover, with the growth of participation, especially among youth, the online spaces and communities started to be organized more by friendship and not only by specific topics and interests as it had happened before with newsgroups, mailing lists, and forums (boyd 2007, 2014). Hence, it could be said that since social relationships started to become an important organizing principle for online spaces, the activities on the Web became more social. That is precisely why researchers, industry players, and the general public adopted the term “social media” to refer to the Web platforms and services (social software) that were created at this point on the evolution of the Web. As danah boyd has explained, social media refers “to the sites and services that emerged during the early 2000s, including social network sites, video sharing sites, blogging, and microbloging platforms, and related tools that allow participants to create and share their own content.” (2014, 6) Marketers, entrepreneurs, and developers also started to refer to these dynamic platforms and services with the buzzy term “Web 2.0″ and elaborated a business model that leveraged the potential of the Web (and its open standards) for supporting collaboration, participation, and peer production. Further, this model also harnessed the creativity, sociability and collective intelligence of the increasing number of participants (referred as "users") on the Web spaces with the purposes of economic profit. As Tim O’reilly, one of the evangelists of this business model, stated, some of the core competencies of Web 2.0 companies were “trusting users as co-developers,” “harnessing collective intelligence,” and “control over unique, hard-to-recreate data sources that get richer as more people use them” (O’Reilly 2005).
With social media platforms attracting more people from all segments of the U.S. population, and particularly youths, it could be argued that the Web acquired the status of a mass medium at the dawn of the new millennium. Facebook, Youtube, Flickr, Wikipedia, Twitter and Tumblr, just to name a few, are some of the dynamic Web platforms and services (social media) that have become popular among U.S. youth from all race-ethnicities and socioeconomic status in the last decade. These Web applications count with millions of users and visitors, active audiences and publics, that interact and create lively networked spaces. Facebook, for instance, had more than 158 million active U.S. users in 2013 (Nierhoff 2013); and Youtube had in 2011 128 million users per month in the U.S. (Statista 2011). With different degrees of engagement, resources, and skills, young people go to these networked spaces in order to socialize, communicate, share, search, create, and interact with rich multimodal content they can access for free. Hence, social media networked spaces have become part of contemporary American youth everyday life and are transforming the way in which young people are exercising their agency as social, cultural, and creative actors.
1.2. The Potential: Participation, Culture, and Youth.
In contrast to the old communication environment of broadcast mass media (e.g. radio, television, film), the new networked environment is more interactive, connected, and participatory. It supports many-to-many and peer-to-peer communication, decentralized individual and collective action, and a more active consumption/production/distribution of content. Given such affordances, the new environment is rich in information and knowledge created by both experts and non-experts, and diverse in commercial and non-commercial goods produced by both professionals and amateurs. As Couldry (2011) has stated, "today's media environment is not just saturated from particular directions but supersaturated from massively many directions, all in interaction with each other" (488). Particularly the Internet, with its open and decentralized architecture, offers the possibility to overcome the limitations of previous commercial and concentrated mass media in terms of oversimplification of complex discussions (homogeneity), and the overwhelming power of media owners to shape opinion and information. (Benkler 2006) The networked environment and the information communication technologies (ICTs), according to Benkler (2006), create the possibilities for the emergence of a culture that is more transparent, malleable, self-reflective, and democratic. According to him, this environment generates a kind of folk culture "where many more of us participate actively in making cultural moves and finding meaning in the world around us." (15) Having more opportunities to participate, individuals can become better readers, critics, and self-reflective participants in conversations, and can easily pull the cultural creations of others making the culture they occupy their own.
Participatory Cultures
Likewise, Jenkins (2006a) has also explained the transformative potential of the networked communication environment in relation to culture. According to him, digital tools and networks are enabling a particular kind of culture marked by the convergence of old and new media systems and practices. "Convergence culture," as Jenkins has argued, is characterized by the complex interaction (and collide) between top-down corporate media and bottom-up participatory cultures. "Within convergence culture, everyone is a participant --although participants may have different degrees of status and influence" (Jenkins 2006a, 132). The possibilities of media production, circulation, and reception afforded by the new communication environment have facilitated the popularization of more active forms of engagement that, although had existed before, had not become visible to the general public. In the new environment, some of the sociocultural practices of fans and other amateurs deeply engaged with media technologies have gained visibility and become popular. As Jenkins has explained, "though this new participatory culture has its roots in practices that have occurred just below the radar of the media industry throughout the twentieth century, the web has pushed that layer of cultural activity into the foreground" (2006a, 133).
Amateur printing, ham radio broadcasting, fanzine design, and 8mm home movies production, to name just a few, anticipate the participatory cultures that have become visible on the networked communication environment. All these pre-digital cultures, as well as the ones that have become visible in the digital age such as machinima making, game modding, and fan fiction web publishing, are characterized not only by the creative use of media technologies, but also by the building of communities and collective enterprises. (Jenkins 2010) They have "relatively low barriers of expression and civic engagement, strong support for creating and sharing one's creations, and some type of informal mentorship whereby what is known by the most experienced is passed along to novices." (Jenkins et al. 2006, 3) In these cultures, as Jenkins et al. (2006b) have discussed, "members believe their contributions matter, and feel some degree of social connection with one another (at least they care what other people think about what they have created)" (3)
To acknowledge the potential that digital technologies and networks have for enabling a more participatory culture can be useful. It has allowed several scholars to develop an understanding of the communities, practices, and relationships developed in the new communication environment and imagining social transformations (e.g. more democratic, creative, diverse societies). Although this approach has had the limitation of privileging a particular segment of the population (e.g. fans, passionate hobbyists, middle class), it has allowed researchers to map concrete examples of how the affordances of new ICTs are being leveraged by the most engaged audiences/users. Furthermore, it has allowed researchers to find examples of how the processes of social and cultural production in a networked communication environment are changing as individuals and collectives actively leverage digital tools and networks. Jenkins et al. (2006b), for instance, identified several forms of participatory culture such as affiliations (formal and informal memberships in online communities), expressions (creative media production), collaborative problem solving (working together in teams formally or informally), and circulations (shaping the flow of media). Emphasizing participation has become especially useful for studying the activities of youths online and their active engagement with media cultures from a perspective that sees them as social actors and not as passive audiences/consumers. Understanding youths as active participants in cultures has allowed researchers, particularly the ones from the fields of new literacies, learning sciences, and cultural/media studies, to qualitatively examine the practices and skills that youths are developing in a networked communication environment.
Youth and Genres of Participation
I find particularly useful the concept of "genres of participation" (Ito 2003, 2008; Ito et al. 2010) for analyzing youth engagement with new media cultures and online experiences. The notion of genre calls attention to the process of interpretation that takes place when individuals engage with media. As Ito et al. (2010) have explained, this concept "foregrounds the interpretive dimensions of human orderliness. How we identify with, orient to, and engage with media is better described as a process of interpretative recognition than a process of habituation and structuring. We recognize certain patterns of representation (textual genres) and in turn engage with them in social, routinized ways (participation genres)" (15) According to Ito et al., there are two high-level genre categories: friendship-driven and interest-driven. On the one hand, the former refers to the practices developed through everyday mediated interactions with friends and peers from specific local contexts such as schools. On the other, the interest-driven genre of participation is related to the practices of particular niche identities and hobbies. These specialized activities structure networks of affiliation between peers and mentors that expand beyond the local context.
The high-level genres of participation correspond to particular youth cultures, social network structures, and modes of learning (Ito et al. 2010). Friendship-driven, for instance, correspond to social networks structured around friends and a culture centered in peer sociability and "hanging out." As several researchers of have argued, U.S. youth, and especially teens, socialize and build their identities by interacting with their school peers. (Eckert 1989; Ito et al. 2010; Pascoe 2007) Leveraging the affordances of the networked communication environment youth is able to create spaces for co-presence where they can "hang out" online with friends. (Ito et al. 2010; boyd 2007, 2014) Social media platforms such as Facebook and Myspace, for instance, serve as spaces where youth can communicate, maintain ongoing contact, and exchange media content with their peers in a casual manner. By doing so, teens are able to "circumvent some of the limits that prevent them from hanging out with their friends" in physical space and participate in a peer culture (Ito et al. 2010, 39).
In contrast, the interest-driven genre of participation focuses on activities characterized by a greater engagement with media cultures, subcultural identities, and richer and more diverse social networks. Within this genre, Ito et al. have located the "geeking out" practices. These practices are characterized by an intensive use of media technologies and a commitment to specific media properties, production activities, and subcultural identities. As Ito et al. have pointed out, "geeking out" practices involve the acquisition of "high levels of specialized knowledge attached to alternative models of status and credibility and a willingness to bend or break social and technological rules" (66). "Geeking out" on interests implies participating in specialized knowledge communities, gaining reputation and expertise within them, and finding and producing credible information. (Ito et al. 2010, 67)
Friendship-driven and interest-driven genres, and hanging out and geeking out practices constitute a continuum of different degrees of participation, engagement, and informal learning. In between them, Ito et al. have located the "messing around" sub-genre, and its practices are supposed to serve as a transition between "hanging out" and "geeking out". By "messing around" they refer to the collection of new media practices that youth develop informally as they explore an environment saturated with information, navigate diverse media-sharing platforms, play games, discover new content, and experiment with digital tools and networks for producing and distributing creative content. According to Ito et al., although "messing around" practices are the first steps that youth take into "deeper social and practical engagement with a new area of interest," they do not "necessarily result in long-term engagement" (57).
As several studies have proved, the frameworks of genres of participation and participatory cultures are useful for understanding the agency of youth in relation to informal learning and new literacy practices. (Jenkins et al. 2006; Ito et al. 2010; Lankshear and Nobel 20XX, 20XX) However, little has been discussed by researchers in relation to how the participatory potential of the new networked environment, and particularly the Internet and the Web, is shaping the assimilation of immigrant youth to the U.S. As I have observed in previous chapters, all of the five Latino/Hispanic working class immigrant youth from our study, were engaged in different ways with new media cultures, digital tools and networks. With differential quality and quantity according to the resources that their families and schools have, they have grown up accessing computers and the Internet, and interacting within a networked communication environment. Although I have already analyzed how new media practices and skills developed in the contexts of home/family and afterschool have helped these five Latino/Hispanic immigrants to advance in their assimilation processes, I have not fully discussed how the activities developed online also shaped their trajectories of assimilation in the U.S. These activities, especially the ones developed on social media networked spaces, became part of the everyday life of Inara, Gabriela, Antonio, Sergio, and Miguel, and shaped their assimilation process. As they communicated, socialized, and interacted online, they confronted both opportunities and challenges to participate in U.S. culture, economy, and society, and to advance in their assimilation process.
1.3. Digital Inequalities and Participation Gaps
Gabriela, Inara, Antonio, Miguel, and Sergio have all grown up with access to computers and Internet connectivity. Although the quality and quantity of their material access has been low in most of their cases, all these Latino/Hispanic working class immigrant youths have had online experiences for several years (usually, since the age of ten and eleven when they entered middle school). During this time they have accessed networked computers both at public school and at their homes, and had also used mobile devices with networking capabilities. Browsing the Web, using search engines, exchanging emails, communicating on social network sites, watching videos and discovering music on YouTube, among other activities, have become part of their everyday life. These youths are part of the increasing number of Latino/Hispanic youths who can connect to the Internet and use Web platforms and services. They are also the first generation of immigrants in the U.S. who are growing up in a networked communication environment saturated with information and multimodal content.
The online experiences of each of the Latino/Hispanic immigrant youth are diverse and vary according to their motivations, skills, and different kinds of access to resources. At the level of material access, the major difference between the five youths is the ownership of a smartphone. Those who have access to this kind of mobile device, experienced a different kind of connectivity than the others because they can go online anytime and anywhere. Inara, for instance, said "I'm always on the internet, like 24-7," and mentioned the ability to accessing "my internet" when describing affordances of her android smartphone. Likewise, talking about her iPhone connectivity, Gabriela said "it’s like you can have it anywhere." Antonio also commented when describing his cellphone, "I can get on the internet anywhere I go because it [my smartphone] has a data plan." Anytime anywhere connectivity gave greater autonomy and mobility to these youths shaping some of their new media practices.
In contrast, Miguel and Sergio, who did not own smartphones, relied on fixed Internet access points at home and school where they could either use a computer or connect a networked device to a wi-fi network. Although for both Miguel and Sergio, the technology elective classes and the afterschool programs from Freeway High became important point of access to the Internet, their homes remained the major sources of connectivity despite their limitations in quality of hardware. At home, they managed to use any of the networked media devices they had available such as game consoles (e.g. wii, playstation3) and mobile devices (e.g. Nintendo DS and iPhone) to go online in an everyday basis. As Miguel explained in an interview, he connected to the Internet regularly but had to alternate between different points of access.
“Q: How often do you use the internet everyday?
A: Probably for me it’s like 15 times.
Q: That’s mostly afterschool?
A: Yes.
Q: Do you ever do it before school?
A: In the morning I’ll open it once and check my Facebook page. In the afternoon I use the computer, and Wii.
Q: How about during school?
A: Not really that much. Because it’s a block schedule, it’s only every other day that I have video game class.”
Interestingly, despite having networked computers and a wi-fi network, Freeway High School was not the most important Internet access point for any of the five Latino/Hispanic immigrant youths. One of the reasons for that was the fact that the school Internet connection blocked the access to several Web platforms and services that were popular among youths. Like many public schools in the U.S., Freeway High strictly regulated the use of personal mobile devices inside campus and blocked the access to social media. Social network sites and media-sharing platforms such as Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, and Tumblr could not be accessed neither using the school wi-fi connection nor the desktop computers. Usually, only the students who owned smartphones and who sneaked them into the school (a normal practice among them) were able to develop online activities on social media networked spaces while they were at the school building.
Although access to Internet connectivity in the U.S. has become almost universal for the youth segment of the population, disparities in the quality and quantity of material access still matter. Researchers have found, for instance, that more points of access, more time spent online, and greater autonomy of use are correlated with diversity of Internet uses, skills, and benefits from use (Hargittai & Hinnant 2005; Hassani 2006; Hargittai & Walejko 2008; DiMaggio et al. 2004; Selwyn 2004; Van Dijk 2005; Robinson 2009; van Deursen et al. 2011; Witte and Mannon 2010). Recent scholarship has also consistently found that the so called digital divide keeps evolving, is complex, and cannot be understood only as a matter of basic access to computers and internet connections (Warschauer 2002; DiMaggio et al. 2004; Selwyn 2004; van Dijk 2005, 2012; Chen and Wellman 2005; Livingstone & Helsper 2007; Hargittai 2008; Stern et al. 2009; Schradie 2011; Straubhaar et al. 2012, Watkins 2009, 2012) As DiMaggio et al. (2004) have argued, besides inequalities in access to technical means, there are also disparities in the autonomy of use (e.g. access time, content restrictions, quality of connections); the skills, education, and knowledge people bring to their use; the social supports; and the purposes for which people use the Internet (the higher the purpose, the more complex the tasks, and the more knowledge required for accomplish it).
In relation to participation, all the different kinds of digital inequalities matter because they shape the ways in which young people leverage the affordances of the networked communication environment. What some scholars have described as a "participation gap" precisely calls the attention over how disparities in skills, purposes, and supports, are limiting the levels of engagement, networking, content creation, and knowledge production online (Jenkins et al. 2006; Hargittai 2007; Hargittai and Walejko 2008). The interplay between social structural inequalities and digital ones shapes the contours of the participation gap and create complex dynamics between each other. As several studies have consistently revealed, social class and stratification are critical for understanding the activities people do online and their kind of participation (Livingstone & Helsper 2007; Seiter 2008; Hargittai 2007, 2008, 2011; Hargittai & Walejko 2008; Robinson 2009; Schradie 2011; Van Deursen and Van Dijk, 2010).
Researchers have found, for instance, that people with higher socioeconomic status develop more "capital-enhancing activities" than economically marginalized users (Hargittai and Hinnant, 2008; Zillien and Hargittai, 2009). Other researchers have also started to reveal that differences in online content production are corelated with social class and levels of education. (Hargittai and Walejko 2008; Schradie 2011) For example, Hargittai & Walejko (2008) proved in their quantitative study of 1,060 first-year college students from a U.S. university that the ones whose parents had higher levels of education, independently of their race-ethnicity, were more likely to create content and publish it online. In another analysis of this data, Hargittai (2010) also concluded that economically disadvantaged students had lower levels of Web know-how, and tended to engage in fewer information-seeking activities online (diversity of use) on a regular basis compared to the ones of higher socioeconomic status. These studies have started to provide evidence about how the affordances of the networked communication environment are not being leveraged equally but instead are highly stratified. Furthermore, they have also started to provide a socioconomic explanation about why even if more people is connecting to the Internet, very few are engaged in content production. These findings challenge the theories that understood the networked communication environment as a more egalitarian, democratic, and participatory space.
Combining ethnographic fieldwork in a California rural public high school, interviews with 67 teenagers, and a survey, Robinson (2009) proved that socioeconomic status determines the quality and autonomy of Internet access, and, as a result, constraints the benefits from online activities developed by youth. According to Robinson, economically disadvantaged students with low quality of material access and little autonomy, adopt a particular disposition towards the uses of the Internet. They develop a "task-oriented stance" of Internet use that is different to a more playful and exploratory attitude taken by youth with higher quality of material access. As Robinson pointed out, youths "with high-quality home access take a positive view of investing time in web surfing, confident that their investment will be rewarded by global knowledge acquisition. By contrast, due to constraints and opportunity costs, no and low-quality access respondents take a more task-oriented view of Internet use" (491). According to Robinson, the "task-oriented" disposition towards the use of the Internet characterizes a "taste for the necessary" orientation among economically unprivileged youth that constraints the benefits and skills they can gain while interacting online. Such disposition originates from "experiences of deprivation and urgency" and shortage in social, economic, cultural and human resources. (Robinson 2009)
Despite their working class background, immigrant status, and low quality of material access, all of the five Latino/Hispanic youth from our study managed to go online in an everyday basis and developed diverse uses of the Internet. None of them seemed to develop the "taste for the necessary" disposition that Robinson (2009) described for unprivileged youth from rural communities. Although these Latino/Hispanic immigrant youths were not involved in complex online tasks that allowed them to enrich and diversify their social networks, nor joined a specific collaborative project within an online community, all of them developed exploratory and playful activities on the Internet. Interestingly, their Internet-practice was paradoxical, diverse and limited at the same time. All of them, for instance, actively sought information related to school homework, popular culture, their particular creative interests, and many times, as they called it, about "random stuff." Antonio, for instance, explaining his everyday information seeking activities said,
"I go find some random websites and stuff like that. (...) Just any website that I find, I'll go on it and -- I'll just search random stuff like cats sometimes -- I mean, if it's in the middle of the night, I’ll just surf cat and find some weird stuff."
Likewise, Sergio observed he searched "everything" on the Internet. "If I don’t know anything, I Google it to be more well informed and well-rounded on the topic," he said in one of our interviews. Similarly, Gabriela mentioned that she used Google "a lot" for seeking information, and for answering "every question" she had. Inara and Miguel also explained they used Google to seek information about consumer products they wanted to buy such as clothing and music CDs. Although the fact that they developed diverse information seeking activities does not imply the acquisition of advanced and strategic skills, it does tell us something about their intense use of Web tools such as the Google search engine and their attitude towards exploring an environment rich in information and media content.
Hence, regardless the lack of scaffolding, social support, and low quality access (except for Gabriela), these five Latino/Hispanic immigrant youths developed an Internet-practice marked by certain degree of participation and agency online. As I will reveal in my analysis of the activities on social media networked spaces, the online experiences of these youths were marked by friendship-driven and interest-driven genres of participation. Their online activities were generally characterized by the development of hanging out and messing around practices. Regardless of the scarcity of geeking out practices, all of the five youths found social media networked spaces as important contexts of activity where they could advance their assimilation to the U.S., particularly in relation to the cultural, linguistic, and social dimensions.
2. Latino/Hispanic Immigrant Youth Agency in Social Media Networked Spaces.
During the period of our fieldwork, social media networked spaces were important contexts of activity for Inara, Gabriela, Antonio, Miguel and Sergio. On these spaces, the five Latino/Hispanic immigrant youths exercised their agency as social actors in various ways and with different results according to the motivations and resources each of them had. All of these Latino/Hispanic immigrant youths socialized with friends, messed around with media content, and explored their personal interests on social network sites and media-sharing sites. As many other youths growing up in the U.S. in the twenty-first century, they became active users of social media platforms and services. That fact is consistent with the most recent data on the uses of the World Wide Web by diverse segments of the U.S. youth population. As recent quantitative studies have found, Latino/Hispanics have become active users of social media. Based on a national survey conducted in 2012, researchers from the Pew Hispanic Center found that 84% of Latino/Hispanic Internet users (ages 18-29) reported using social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter (Lopez 2013). In another study that analyzed data from a nationally representative survey conducted with parents and teens (ages 12-17), researchers found that 77% of Latino/Hispanics youths actively use social media sites (Madden, M. et al 2013). However, despite the availability of quantitative data on the increasing number of Latino/Hispanic youth social media users, there is little known about the nuances of their practices, skills, and quality of participation. For the specific case of Latino/Hispanic immigrant youth with second and 1.5 generational status, that kind of inquiry can help us to understand how their experiences on social media shaped their process of assimilation to the U.S.
2.1. Mapping Social Media
In the past decade, many social media networked spaces have been designed, built, inhabited, transformed, and abandoned. Few have attracted massive numbers of users, gained global popularity, and became mainstream. Spaces like Facebook and YouTube have become some of the most visible territories in a social media map that is continuously changing according to multiple factors, including the evolution of sociocultural practices and technological innovation. All the five Latino/Hispanic immigrant youth from our study, for instance, hanged out and messed around on these two major spaces. However, each of them also developed activities on other web platforms according to their particular interests. Gabriela, for instance, following her interest in photography, invested time on Flickr, while Sergio, passionate about Internet visual memes, regularly visited 9Gag and Cheezburger. As these youths explored, discovered, and decided to spend time on different networked spaces, each of them configured particular social media geographies. Those geographies, as my analysis will reveal were characterized mainly by friendship-driven activities on a social network site (Facebook), and interest-driven activities on several media-sharing sites (including YouTube). Although other types of social media spaces such as collaborative projects (Wikipedia), and virtual game worlds (Minecraft and Perfect World) were also part of the personal geographies of some of these youths, I have decided to not include these categories in my analysis.

2.1.1. Social Network Sites (SNSs)
Since the early 2000s, Social Network Sites (SNSs) have increasingly become popular spaces for youth sociality, communication, and interaction online. Also called “social networking sites,” or “online social networks,” SNSs are Web platforms that offer a range of tools that can be used for maintaining social connections, exchanging messages, performing identities, and circulating media content. They are spaces where youths actively develop friendship-driven practices as they leverage the SNSs technical affordances for connecting and communicating with their peers. As several researchers have found, on SNSs youths maintain their offline social networks of peers from school and from other local contexts. (boyd, 2008, 2010, 2011, 2014; Ito et al, 2010; Livingstone 2008, 2009; Watkins 2009; Lenhart & Madden 2007) Despite the fact that technological affordances make possible the interaction with strangers and the creation of new networks, youths have consistently been using SNSs for interacting with friends they have already met in the physical world and for maintaining their pre-existent social connections. SNSs are spaces where youths continue to develop the practices of identity construction, socialization, and communication they are doing offline with peers from local contexts. Hence, as researchers have pointed out, SNSs amplify and enhance youths' pre-existing social networks (boyd, 2014; boyd and Ellison, 2013; Ito et al, 2010). That is precisely why hanging out in SNSs is so important for them and is embedded in their everyday life.
When discussing the motivations for joining SNSs, all the five Latino/Hispanic youth from our study made references to their offline friends and their peer culture. Inara, for instance, explained her migration to MySpace in middle school as a peer group experience. She said, "I got into it with all of my friends." Antonio, describing his reasons to join SNSs mentioned the pressure from his peers. He said,
"The first reason I got a MySpace was because of my friends. That’s the same reason I got on Facebook — because of my friends. And I think it was like more forced on me and I was like, “I kind of don’t want to do it.” But I did it anyways."
Likewise, when talking about his activities in MySpace during his middle school years, Sergio explained them as a normal part of his youth and peer cultures. He said,
"It was just one of those things that everyone has, and it was really fast and easy to use--to communicate with people. It was kind of, like, a youth thing, that most youth people are doing. Like, they get a social media place to communicate with friends."
Trends and network effects characterized youth migration to SNSs. At the time of our fieldwork, all of the five Latino/Hispanic youth had already participated in two of the big social media migrations of their generation. In middle school they had all gone to MySpace, and years later, usually in High School, they all had migrated to Facebook following their peers. In this way, youths flocked to the social media networked space where more peers were getting and being together. Describing how he and his friends abandoned MySpace, and how that SNSs "died off because everyone stopped using it," Antonio said,
"I think it's just one of those things -- the latest fad. That's what I'm thinking -- the latest fad, and after a while MySpace got boring and everyone switched to Facebook, and something new is coming up. Sooner or later Facebook's going to die off and everyone's going to join that new social media site."
Given the rapid pace of technological innovation, the evolution of sociocultural practices, and the network effects of adoption, some SNSs can become very popular and visible while others remain almost unnoticed for youth. Although dominant SNSs can reach global popularity and attract people from all corners of the world, other sites can remain popular just among people from a particular country and language (e.g. Orkut in Brazil). Even within the same country, SNSs have been used only by certain segments of the population. Researchers have revealed through several studies of SNSs adoption in the U.S. that racial-ethnic backgrounds and socioeconomic status determined the migration of youths to platforms such as MySpace and Facebook, particularly during their early stages of growth. (boyd, 2011; Watkins, 2009; Hargittai, 2008) Although at the moment of our fieldwork, the dominant SNS (Facebook) had already become mainstream for U.S. youth from diverse backgrounds, racial-ethnic and socioeconomic divisions continued to be reproduced on social media networked spaces. Because youths migrate to SNSs following their peer groups, and because their online interactions focus on communicating with their pre-existing network of friends, those spaces tend to be characterized by homopholy. That is, by the interaction with friends of similar age who share similar interests, identity, and values. (boyd 2011, 2010)
However, despite the persistence of socioeconomic and racial-ethnic divisions, mainstream SNSs like Facebook are spaces where Latino/Hispanic immigrant youth exercise their agency. That is possible because the technical affordances of SNSs support not only the maintenance of a network of contacts, but also the creation, consumption, and circulation of media content. Creating multimodal user profiles, sending private and public messages to single and multiple friends, subscribing to different sources of media content, and maintaining a network of contacts, are some of the meaningful practices immigrant youths develop on SNSs like Facebook. Through those activities youths actively construct, at the same time, their own selves and their peer relationships, enact their own identities and the ones of their peer groups, and display their own tastes and the ones of their peers. (boyd 2007, 2014; Livingstone 2008, 2011)
Participating in Facebook, the five Latino/Hispanic immigrant youth could develop their process of assimilation in various directions. Hanging out on the dominant SNS they had the opportunity to practice the English language, engage with U.S. pop culture and youth lifestyles. However, given the global scale of Facebook, while inhabiting this social media networked space, the five immigrant youths have also the opportunity to practice the Spanish language, cultivate a transnational network of friends, and engage with the culture, values, and lifestyles of Mexico, their families' country of origin. Such double opportunity is of particular importance for understanding how their activities on Facebook shaped their assimilation to certain dimensions of the U.S.
2.1.2. Media-Sharing Sites (MSS)
Along with the rise of SNSs in the first decade of the new millennium, Media-Sharing Sites (MSS) emerged as Web platforms dedicated to facilitate the publishing, sharing, and archiving media content produced by ordinary people. Also known as "content communities," and "user-generated content sites," MSS are social media networked spaces in which sociocultural interactions are built around specific kinds of media formats. They are important territories in the social media geography because they provide youths with free platforms and easy to use services where they could participate in various activities around specific new media cultures. Either expressing their creativity and emotions by sharing their own productions or participating in the consumption and commentary of the content created by others, youths have found in MSS, spaces where they could mess around and geek out following their personal interests.
Because of their technological affordances and the sociocultural practices users develop on them, MSS are the most dynamic and vibrant spaces for the thriving of participatory cultures on the Web. As a matter of fact, as Jenkins (2006, 2009, 2010, 2013) has argued, this kind of platforms and services have mainly made visible the practices and logics that participatory media cultures have developed in the past. Those cultures are characterized by the low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement, strong support for sharing and creation of media content, informal mentorship, social connectivity, and the belief among members that their contributions matter. (Jenkins et. al 2006) Although the degrees of engagement with those cultures vary and inequalities in the production of content proliferate, MSS offer several possibilities of meaningful participation, sociability, and agency. On the one hand, youths can go to these spaces to discover, explore, search, learn, experiment, and play with media cultures that they are interested in. On the other, they can enter MSS in order to engage in more intense activities of knowledge-production, specialized learning, collective problem solving, and subcultural identity construction.
All the Latino/Hispanic immigrant youth participated with different levels of engagement in at least one MSS, and it was common to all of them to develop messing around practices. Although their participation on MSS rarely included geeking out practices, they actively went to this kind of spaces and had the opportunity to interact with the vast amounts of media content produced by both amateurs and professionals. They messed around on mainstream and privately owned MSS such as YouTube, Vimeo, SoundCloud, Flickr, Cheezburger, and 9Gag, and made these spaces part of their everyday social media geographies. Navigating these spaces was important for them because it gave them free access to media content they could not only consume for entertainment purposes but also for learning in an open-ended way and for sharing with their friends in SNSs like Facebook. For these youths, given the low socioeconomic background of their families, having free and open of access to media content became a major motivation to go to MSS. When talking about her reasons for going to YouTube, Inara, for instance, explained that not having to spend money was one of them. She said,
“A: (…) you have everything (...) and you don't have to pay anything, you can just go, or you can find a movie there and just watch it in parts or find a show or something, because they have shows there. 
Q: So it's really about the flexibility of being entertained?
A: Yeah. Without having to try to buy a lot or invest in something that probably won't work.
Q: So the fact that it's free and accessible is really important to you?
A: Yeah.”
Like Inara, the other four Latino/Hispanic youths also mentioned in our interviews the "free" access to MSS as an important reason for visiting these social media networked spaces. Although the technical features of all the MSS they went included several SNS features such as the making of profiles, building networks, and messaging, only some of these youths experimented with these features. Specifically, when some of them decided to take a more active engagement, participating in a conversation, rating media content, and even publishing their own creative works, they registered to the MSS and made user accounts. However, the open architecture of all the MSS Latino/Hispanic youths visited allowed the users to interact with media content without registering on the sites as if they were in an open public space. Given the global scale of the MSS these five Latino/Hispanic youth visited regularly, they had the opportunity to immerse in an extensive repository of cultural materials that included both content from both the U.S. and Mexico. While exploring these social media networked spaces, these youths could search, explore, discover, and connect to media and communities that were not limited to the ones of the host country. Because of that, the way in which each of these youths navigated MSMs, could help them, or not, to advance their process of assimilation to the U.S. in different dimensions.
2.2. Facebook
"…every day. It's like an everyday thing." (Sergio)

With more than 1,000 millions of monthly users worldwide Facebook had become the dominant and biggest SNS at the time of our fieldwork (Sedghi, 2014). Using data from a survey conducted in 2012, researchers from the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project found that 94% of U.S. youth ages 12-17 have a Facebook account and 81% said that this was the SNS they used more often (Madden et al. 2013b). All the five Latino/Hispanic youth had Facebook profiles and hang out on this social media networked space regularly. While Inara, Sergio, and Miguel told us they visited the space several times everyday, Antonio and Gabriela observed they went every other day. Despite differences in the frequency of usage, all these youths invested time and energy on Facebook customizing their profiles, uploading images, composing status updates, sharing media, and communicating with their friends in a networked way.
Created in 2004 by an undergrad student from Harvard University, Facebook rapidly evolved from being a SNS focused in the niche demographic of U.S. college students to becoming a massive platform for diverse populations around the world. One year after its creation, Facebook started to diversify its demographics and allowed U.S. high school students and professionals from corporate networks to create user accounts. Continuing its expansion, as soon as in 2006, Facebook would become open to anyone regardless of its age, occupation, race, and location around the world. Few years later and according to its exponential growth, Facebook would achieve global popularity and become the dominant SNSs for all kinds of demographics. Although during its fast evolution, Facebook has changed several of its features and services, it has kept some of the technical affordances of SNSs. For instance, it has always allowed users to construct public and semi-public profiles within a bounded system and to articulate a list of contacts. However, as it has evolved it has also included new services and features such as news feeds, casual games, and the ability to easily exchange and publish multimodal content.
As boyd and Ellison (2013) have argued, examining a SNS is challenging because of the rapid pace of technological innovation and the co-evolution of user sociocultural practices. In order to examine activities on these platforms it is necessary to put attention to both the technological affordances and practices that characterized a particular moment in time. In the early 2010s, a SNS could be defined as,
"a networked communication platform in which participants 1) have uniquely identifiable profiles that consist of user-supplied content, content provided by other users, and/or system-provided data; 2) can publicly articulate connections that can be viewed and traversed by others; and 3) can consume, produce, and/or interact with streams of user-generated content provided by their connections on the site" (boyd and Ellison, 2013)
In my analysis of the activities developed by the five Latino/Hispanic immigrant youths on Facebook, I have decided to focus on the three technological affordances described in the above definition. Specifically, I will examine the practices developed around the building of profiles, the characteristics of the network of friends, and the consumption, creation and circulation of multimodal content. Given the moment of our fieldwork (2011-2013) and the qualitative data I have available, focusing the analysis on those features is productive. It helps us to understand the kind of agency that each of the five Latino/Hispanic had on this networked space, as well as how their practices shaped their assimilation process.
2.2.1. User Profiles and the Presentation of the Self
A profile is basically a home page inside the SNS system with information about each individual user. That information is presented as a multimodal assemblage of texts, images, and videos. At the moment of our fieldwork, a Facebook profile included several sections such as a "wall"/"timeline" for publications (comments and media exchanges), a list of friends or contacts, a profile picture or avatar, a background cover image, a box with a collection of photos, a list of groups, basic demographic information (gender, place of origin and High School), and various boxes for listing cultural interests (favorite music, films, TV shows, sports, games, and other Facebook pages).
Constructing a Facebook profile was one of the activities that all the five Latino/Hispanic youth developed on this social media networked space. Making a profile allowed them to manage an online identity and express their cultural interests in front of an audience of friends, and potentially also in front of a broader public. As several scholars have argued, making a SNS profile is an act of self-representation and construction of the self. (boyd 2008a, 2011; 2014; Papacharissi, 2011; Livingstone, 2008) A profile "can be seen as a form of digital body where individuals must write themselves into being" (boyd, 2008, 129). That online body or identity is not articulated in isolation but in relation to the network of contacts that the each member has. (boyd 2008a, 2011, 2014; Papacharissi, 2011; Livingstone, 2008) Although that networked characteristic of the construction of the self on a SNS was initially revealed only through the display of the list of contacts on the profile, it became more explicit when the technology allowed content provided by others to also be included in the profile. With the evolution of the technical capabilities of the SNS systems, Facebook profiles have become more dynamic, including not only the self-descriptive data provided by each member, but also "content provided by others (such as virtual gifts that are displayed on the profile or “tagged” photographs uploaded by others), and/or system-provided content (such as a subset of one’s Friend network and activities on third-party sites.)" (boyd and Ellison, 2013, 4).
All the five Latino/Hispanic immigrant youth linked their Facebook profiles to their offline identities and used their real names. Although the profiles were visible to their network of contacts, they were not fully available to the general public. As Antonio explained, "the only people that can see my stuff is my friends." These youths kept their profiles in a semi-public mode in which their digital identities were performed only to a limited audience of contacts that included peers from school and from other local contexts, and in some cases also members of their family (Gabriela, Inara, and Sergio had relatives in their networks). Although their profiles would appear listed in a public search, only the basic information about them such as the profile picture and their name would be displayed. All of them messed around with the Facebook privacy settings in order to limit the visibility of their profiles and keep some degree of intimacy. Sometimes they customized the profile privacy settings with the help of their friends, other times they did it by themselves. Inara, for instance, explained that regarding the privacy settings of her profile, "people change it for me or they tell me how to do it."
Demographic Information
Looking at the demographic information from their profiles, the first thing that stood out is how little data they decided to enter into the SNS system. Although Facebook encourages users to self-report information about gender, age, place of origin, education, religion, political interests, relationship status, and language, they decided to include very little of it in their profiles. Their demographic information was in most of the cases limited to their high school affiliation, place of origin and the place where they live. Interestingly, all of them, with the exception of Sergio (who had San Jose, California), wrote in their profiles Austin, Texas, as their place of origin. Hence, even though Miguel and Sergio were 1.5 generation immigrants who were born in Mexico, they did not mention their foreign origin on their Facebook profiles. This fact, along with the absence of any references to their knowledge of Spanish language could be understood in several ways. On the one hand, it could be read as sign of their assimilation to the U.S. On the other, such hiding of ethnic traits could also be interpreted as a safety strategy for minimizing the risks of being exposed in public as a minority. Still other option is that they simply decided to not include that information because it was simply irrelevant for them and their friends.
Cultural Interests
In contrast to the little effort invested in self-reporting demographic information, some of these youths spent a considerable amount time creating lists of cultural interests that would be displayed in their profiles. As Sergio explained,
"A: So, pretty much on Facebook, I have a lot of the things that I like on there. I’ve put all the movies that I like, all the bands that I listen to, a lot of the books that I like to read, and things along those lines. Like video games and interests.
Q: So, you put that on your status, or on your profile?
A: On Facebook, you can “like” pages. So, it’s kind of like liking those things that you like in real life, and letting people know.
Q: Oh. So you have done that?
A: Yeah.
Q: What happens when you like a page?
A: It automatically puts it on your page, and it lets you customize the order in which you like it."
Displaying cultural interests on their profile was a meaningful practice for the five Latino/Hispanic immigrant youths. By doing so, they performed "taste statements" and signaled their cultural and aesthetic preferences to an audience. (Liu 2007; boyd 2008b) Each of the five Latino/Hispanic immigrant youths listed their interests with different levels of commitment. Although it was relatively easy to do, not all of them were invested in searching and liking pages and elaborating a comprehensive taste statement on their Facebook profiles. For instance, while Gabriela had only three musicians/bands in her profile, Antonio had 81, and Sergio 623. As Table 2 shows, there was great variation across each category of interest (Facebook pages, music, TV shows, movies, sports, and games).

Name Friends Pages likes Privacy Photos music likes tv likes movies likes books likes apps and games likes Language Status Updates User since
Gabriela 187 9 private many 3 0 0 0 0 English rarely middle school 8th grade 2009
Inara 150 202 private many 26 0 23 0 0 English rarely sophomore 2009
Miguel 176 345 private few 66 0 0 0 16 English daily middle school 8th grade 2009
Sergio 253 1034 private few 623 37 77 21 3 English daily sophomore 2009
Antonio 107 189 private few 81 17 66 7 3 English once a week junior 2010

Table 1. Facebook Profiles.

The differences in the amount of cultural products they liked and displayed in their profiles reveals not only youths' desire of showcasing their tastes but also a certain understanding of the technical affordances of Facebook and networked communication. At the moment of our fieldwork, liking the pages of favorite cultural products, artists and other pages, involved having access to information and updates from them. Liking implied also following and subscribing to the content their produced and circulated on Facebook. Hence, listing interests was also connecting to particular information flows. As I will discuss later when talking about the "news feed" feature, this activity was also related to becoming a more connected member of an active audience. For instance, Sergio, who had the most comprehensive list of interests, added many bands to his list of interests so he could be updated about the latest information about their new album releases and concerts. Discussing one of the entries in the social media journal he kept for two weeks as part of our participatory ethnography methodology, I asked Sergio about his practice of liking pages and adding many bands to his music interests.
"Q: How many pages did you like in March 5?
A: I know it was over 20 because I went on this website called “Mickey Says,” and there is where I downloaded a lot of Indy music. So I came across a couple of Indy bands that I started liking, so I liked them on Facebook so I could keep up with when they’re releasing something new.
Q: So you like it a lot?
 A: Yes.
Q: 20 pages is not few. I mean, it’s few for you because--
A: It’s few for me. [LAUGHTER] Yes.
 Q: How many pages can you like when you like a lot?
A: I just like 50 and up. ‘Cause I liked at least 100 pages in one day when I came across music. 
Q: How can you like so many pages of music?
A: I don’t know. Music is just something I can get into even if it’s not great to everybody else."
Interestingly, the cultural interests displayed in the profile of each of the five youths rarely included cultural products and pages that were related to Mexico, the Latino/Hispanic race/ethnicity, or the Spanish language. On their Facebook profiles, the taste statements of the five Latino/Hispanic immigrant youths revealed a passion for U.S. popular cultures and a preference for the English language (English was also their language of choice for the Facebook interface). The TV shows, Movies, Games, Books, Sports and Facebook Pages they listed were mostly cultural products or personalities from the U.S., few from the U.K., and very little from other countries (especially some Korean TV shows, and Swedish metal bands). Only Inara had listed on her profile cultural interests that were related to the Mexican heritage of her family and the Latino/Hispanic culture. In the music category, Inara had 4 items related to the Latino/Hispanic culture (Reggaeton, Salsa, Merengue, and Shakira). The other 27 items were artists from the U.S. (e.g. Miley Cyrus, Green Day, Beyoncé, The Doors) and the U.K. (e.g. The Beatles, The Rolling Stones). In the category of Facebook pages, Inara also had 2 other items that displayed certain aspect of her bicultural taste such as the page of Mexico and the page of Spain. However, on Inara's profile the signs of Latino/Hispanic cultural traits were only noticeable if one looked closely to the whole lists of interests. This fact shows that according to the taste statements and presentations of the self that these five Latino/Hispanic immigrant youths articulated in their Facebook profiles, all of them appeared as culturally and linguistically assimilated to the U.S.
Photos
Although the technical affordances of Facebook do not allow users to tweak the layout of their profiles as other SNSs such as MySpace, it encourages them to add visual and textual content to a predesigned template. When crafting their profiles, users can experience, to a certain degree, a sort of Web publishing practice that is easy to do and can easily be shared with an audience. Making a profile is a practice that allows users to express themselves and develop their creativity within the limitations of a fixed template. As multimodal designs for screens, Facebook profiles combine images and writing. The friends and interests lists displayed on the profile, for instance, include both texts and images. Each item on the list has a little square image displayed above a typed text. Those images are visible not only on their Facebook home pages but also on the lists of friends of their contacts, and in any commentary they one makes on the SNS. Although the Latino/Hispanic immigrant youths could have chosen to display an image of a cartoon, a place, or an object as a profile picture, at the moment of our ethnographic Facebook walk-through activity, they were using photographs in which their faces were noticeable. All the photographs from their profiles were casual, taken in everyday locations, many times by themselves (as in "selfie" mode), and also had the quality of low-definition cameras.
Besides the main profile images, Facebook also supports the publishing of photographs in albums, status updates and cover images. "Photos," is precisely one of the sections of the profile layout dedicated to this kind visual content. Since Facebook allows users to add metadata to the images they publish, they can tag their friends in any picture, and those photographs would appear automatically in the "Photo" sections of the users that have been tagged. All the five Latino/Hispanic immigrant youths had this section of their profiles filled with several photographs taken and published by themselves as well as by other contacts. Regardless they were passionate about photography or not, all of them took pictures with the digital devices they had available, shared them with friends, and used them in their Facebook profiles. For instance, Inara, who did not have a camera nor was particularly interested in photography, had many pictures of herself taken with her cellphone. In those pictures she appeared with her friends as well as with some members of her family. Looking at those images during the Facebook walk-through activity, Inara described how she took the pictures and added effects to them using her mobile phone. For instance, when explaining how she took a photograph in where she appeared with two other friends from school she said,
"A: I was in class, in Environmental Science. We were doing a lab so I was bored and it was like click. And then...
Q: And you put a filter on it obviously.
A: Yeah.
Q: Is there like a program on your phone that you did that with--the filter?
A: Yeah. My phone has like effects on it. I like having effects on it. I'll show you more pictures that I've taken. Profile pictures.
Q: How often do you change your profile picture?
A: Not, not, not regularly."
Interestingly, the visual content of the "Photos" sometimes provided clues about the race/ethnicity of the Latino/Hispanic immigrant youths. That was the case of a couple of photographs from family events and trips that Antonio and Inara published in which some Mexican cultural traits could be appreciated. Both of them had pictures of Quinceañera parties where they appeared with their parents, siblings and other members of the family, wearing formal clothing and some of them hats. Inara also had several photographs of the trips she had made to visit her family hometown in Cohahuila, Mexico, and the events she had participated over there (e.g. a traditional wedding). In those photographs she appeared in a Mexican rural setting, hanging out with relatives and friends of her age, as well as with older members of the family such as her grandmother. Although Sergio and Gabriela also had photographs in where their families appeared, they did not suggest any particular reference to Mexican or Latino/Hispanic culture.
2.2.2. Maintaining connections, Communicating, and Socializing
For the five Latino/Hispanic immigrant youths hanging out on Facebook was important because it allowed them to maintain and make visible their network of friends. Although most of their Facebook connections were peers from Freeway High, some contacts were from the previous middle schools where they had studied and from previous places where they had lived. Being able to stay in touch with those old and distant friends was one of the affordances that the SNSs provided. Hence, Facebook amplified their social network and was useful for overcoming spatial barriers. Miguel, for instance, mentioned in an interview that he started using Facebook in eight grade precisely when he and his family moved to a house in the north east suburbs of the city. As he explained, he opened his account,
"Because whenever I moved, a lot of my friends I wasn’t going to see again, so I made a Facebook so I could still connect with them."
Likewise, Sergio said he made a Facebook account when he moved to Austin from Stockton, California, at the beginning of his sophomore year. He explained he had to open an account in order to keep in touch with his friends since they were switching from Myspace to Facebook. Similarly, Inara, who had changed neighborhoods inside Austin, said that Facebook allowed her and her friends to "keep in contact with each other". As she described in an interview,
"(...)There’s some of my friends that I have not seen in like forever, and we found each other on Facebook, and it’s awesome, and it’s, “Hey, by the way, I miss you, and I hope we hang out soon.” Stuff like that. Because most of the times, people change their phone numbers, and you can’t really keep track of phone numbers. And Facebook is one of those things that if you lose the number, you still have another option to be contacted."
Although the size of the networks of contacts of the five Latino/Hispanic immigrant youth was not very big, each of them had more than a hundred nodes linked to their profiles (see Table 1.). Having access to the lists of all their connections as well as to their updates, made easier the communication within them, especially because Free Way High had many students (almost 2000). As Antonio said, on the networked space of Facebook, "it's easy to communicate with a lot of my friends," and doing so was something he liked a lot. Like him, the other found Latino/Hispanic immigrant youths valued Facebook as a tool for communication among their own social networks. Using this kind of social software allowed these youths to manage and visualize their peer social networks, and to experiment with networked communication. Inara, for instance, compared the affordances of Facebook with the ones of an address book. She said,
"I use it because you know what goes on with people, outside of school, and you don't really see all those people in school, either way. So if you want to go do something, and you don't have them in your class and you're like, "Hey, do you want to do something?," or if you don't have their phone number.
Q: You use Facebook like a giant address book.
A: Yes, this is basically my address book on my phone. This is connected to it now."
As Inara noticed, she and her friends leveraged Facebook in order to coordinate their activities outside of school. This SNS offered many tools for communication. From private messages to semi-public walls/timelines of comments to live chats, youths could use many channels to coordinate activities with their friends. Their choice usually depended on the degree of intimacy they wanted to have in their communication, being private message the most personal and direct one.
The Wall/Timeline
The wall/timeline was perhaps the most important tool for public communication within Facebook. On this space, users and their contacts could post text messages and links, upload and embed images and videos, and "tag" other friends, pages or events. The walls/timelines of the five Latino/Hispanic immigrant youths were semi-public because they were only visible to their contacts and not to the broader audience of all the Facebook users or the Internet. As mentioned previously, all the five youths had customized their privacy settings and restricted the visibility of their profiles to the narrow audience of their network of friends. However, some of them had also limited the access to the wall/timeline section in order to keep certain contacts such as family relatives away from their semi-public interactions.
Gabriela and Inara, for instance, created restrictions in the visibility of their walls/timelines so members of their families could not have access to the conversations they had with their peers. Gabriela, for instance, said she had to keep her family from seeing her wall/timeline because they could "get noisy" on her. In order to do that he created a special list of users within Facebook that could only see certain content from her profile. During the Facebook walk-through activity, she explained her reasons to do so in the following way:
"Q: so you don't want your family seeing things?
A: What I post usually because then if it's like something random or there's song lyrics, then they ask, "What's going on? Are you okay?" And all this. And they get into your feelings or this and that.
Q: So who? Is it cousins or...
A: There's aunts and uncles, and then there's parents, friends, and I have my sister. I didn't know that. I didn't know that I had my sister. Mainly my aunts and some of my cousins that got nosy on me.
Q: So you don't want them seeing what you post? So they're not blocked from your profile. They just can't see your updates.
A: Yeah.
Q: Gotcha. Can they see your pictures?
A: Yes.
Q: They can. So it's mainly your status updates that you don't want them asking you about.
A: Yeah."
Likewise, Inara, who also had family members as contacts decided to restrict the access to her wall/timeline. As she explained, a friend of her helped her to set up a restricted list so her parents and other adults could not see their interactions with other friends. As she explained,
"A restricted. Yeah. It's where all my family is. Except for like the cousins. My favorite cousins. They don't care. I don't know where it goes at. Friend did that for me."
In contrast to the two girls, Miguel, Sergio, and Antonio did not have any restrictions for their Facebook contacts. This could be explained, on the one hand, by the lack of adult family members they had on Facebook (only Sergio had some relatives). On the other hand, it could be also understood as a sign of a parental and family attitude to monitor the activities of female youth. As discussed in a previous chapter, that was precisely the case with Gabriela's family and their concerted cultivation strategy. Especially her father monitored her activities online and offline and kept an ongoing dialogue with her regarding friendship, and achievement. In the case of Inara, it is interesting that she had a restricted list in Facebook despite the fact that their parents did not seem to monitor that much her activities. However, since her social network had several adult family members that were living in Mexico (most of them had not migrated to the U.S.), it is possible that she wanted to keep them away from her wall/timeline. As she pointed out, only her "favorite cousins" who lived in Mexico were excluded from her restricted list.
Creating Multimodal Messages as Status updates
It was precisely on the wall/timeline were several friendship-driven activities were developed. Given its semi-public visibility as well as its openness, most of the socialization and communication happened there. On this section of the Facebook social media networked space, the five Latino/Hispanic immigrant youths carved out a space to share information, goof off, and joke. It was a space for hanging out. One of the most common media practices on the Facebook wall/timeline was posting status updates. It consisted in writing messages that would appear not only on the personal wall/timeline but will also be embedded in the news feeds other contacts so they would be notified of what their friends were up to. All of them reported in our interviews doing this practice and we saw evidence of it during the Facebook walk-through activity when looking at their walls/timelines full of messages written by them and their friends. However, each of the five youths posted these messages with different frequencies. While Sergio declared updating his status everyday, Miguel said they he it every week, and Antonio, Gabriela and Inara (who owned smartphones) observed they did it with varied frequencies. Explaining the frequency of her status updates, Gabriela said she did so, "Only when I actually have something clever to say." Likewise, Inara mentioned, "sometimes when I get on there I don’t even know what to say. So, I just leave it blank." Interestingly, the three youths with anytime/anywhere connectivity were not the ones who reported updating their status with more frequency during the period of our fieldwork. For these three youths, creating this kind of message was not an everyday practice but something they could do whenever they wanted, in a casual way. As Antonio said, "That's just like whenever I want to. I would say like every other week I would post something. But it's random -- whenever I want to."
The content of the status updates was diverse and each of the five youths practiced different kinds of messages according to their moods and communicative needs. From summaries of their daily life to information about TV shows to motivational quotes, the messages each of the five Latino/Hispanic immigrants wrote reflected their peer culture and their cultural interests, and they were always in English language. Inara, for instance, said,
"I like to put quotes on my status, because I love quotes. Whenever I read something, I want to people to know, what life is about, don’t give up, something like that…"
Other times, the status updates were deliberately about ephemeral things, or what these youths called "random" stuff. As Inara explained while looking at some of her status updates during the Facebook walk-through activity,
"We just do like random stuff. We don't try to make a whole like story with like comments. "So how did you do that?" By asking questions and just randomly like to say stuff."
Likewise, Antonio said he would write his status updates about anything he wanted. He said,
"For Facebook I’ll just post whatever I want -- say I’m craving a burger, I’ll post it on there. “Oh. My God. This burger was amazing” -- I’ll post that on there too.""
Sergio, who was by far the most active of the five youths on Facebook during the period of our fieldwork, said he posted status about "what is happening or happened in the day" as well as "media-related stuff." As he explained, he used his status update to share links to different kinds of content. "I go on YouTube or Vimeo or Tumblr and I’ll share links of a music video, a picture, a link to their page, a link to their events that are coming up, like concerts and stuff like that," Sergio said. By sharing information about popular culture in their status updates these youths displayed their identity and performed taste statements in a more dynamic and conversational way than the lists of interests of their profiles. Sergio, for instance, developed this kind of practice for talking with his friends about their favorite TV shows. As he explained,
"I do that for TV shows like How I Met Your Mother, I’ll say when a new episode’s coming out, or I’ll comment about what happened in a new episode that came out, or something like that.
Q: What do you say?
A: I ask people if they saw the new episode so we can talk about it.
Q: In your status?
A: Yeah. 
Q: So, you say like, “Have you watched the new episode?”
A: “Has anyone seen the new How I Met Your Mother episode?” And then some people would comment."
How I met youth Mother was a U.S. romantic comedy sitcom broadcasted by CBS since 2005. The show told the story of a group of young white, middle-upper class, American friends living in New York City. Among Sergio's peer group, this show was very popular and they watched it every week. Antonio, perhaps Sergio’s best friend, for example, was a fan of this show and also talked about it when writing his status updates on Facebook. As he explained in one of our interviews,
"I could say, “I finally watched the new episode of ‘How I Met Your Mother.’” And then I’ll put a little quote over the actual show. "
By letting his friends know he had seen the latest episode, Antonio signaled his TV taste, up-to-date knowledge of the evolution of the show, and articulated an identity as an active member of an audience. Moreover, by posting that kind of message in his wall/timeline he was able to display a mark of "coolness" among his friends. This activity was meaningful for him and his peer group, and revealed the active use of U.S media texts to build relationships and to acquire status among a group of friends that was in its majority composed of Latino/Hispanic youths. Hence, by using U.S. popular media texts immigrant youths jockeyed for status among their network of friends in an effort to mark themselves as knowledgeable about the American culture. As boyd (2010) has argued, "teens want to be validated by their broader peer group and thus try to present themselves as cool online and off." (11) In a certain sense, it could be said that among these Latino/Hispanic immigrant youth, displaying signs of assimilation to the cultural and linguistic dimensions of the U.S. on Facebook semi-public messages, was meaningful and validated them as cool among their peers. Such display of acculturation through their Facebook status updates was perhaps even more evident in their practice of embedding U.S media texts and composing multimodal messages.
Spreading Media
The use of popular media content in the messages that the five Latino/Hispanic youth wrote in their walls/timelines, however, was not limited to textual quotations. Leveraging the technical affordances of Facebook and other social media networked spaces, each of these youths created multimodal messages using music videos, films, visual memes, amateur funny videos, and other media texts from popular culture. Combining texts with images and videos, they created messages that could not only be read but also played and clicked. The media-sharing site YouTube, particularly, became the most important source of content for the writing of multimodal status updates. By grabbing the link to a YouTube video, these youths could easily embed it in their status update and share it with their network of friends. "It’s the same thing as uploading a post. You just upload the link with the post," said Sergio when explaining how easy it was to embed videos in a status update.
Particularly in relation to music, YouTube videos became very handy for expressing feelings and emotions on Facebook. Gabriela for instance, said she sometimes embedded music videos in her status updates to express her emotions. She said, "if I had a bad day or something relates to me in a song then I usually post it on Facebook." Likewise, Inara explained she "put a YouTube on" a status update for expressing her artistic self. She mentioned, for instance, she "would put 'Somebody that I Used to Know'" a song from Gotye, a Belgian-born Australian musician, that had an artistic quality. As she said,
"I really like it. I don’t know. I think it’s artistic. I can see it’s very artistically bound. I just like everything about it."
Other times, Inara would "put on" YouTube videos on her status updates because the lyrics. For instance, she would post a video of a song from Kid Cudi, an American rapper from Cleveland, Ohio, who had "really deep lyrics." She observed,
"Kid Cudi has really deep lyrics too. His music always puts me in a trance. I just like it. Even though at times it’s mostly about weed and stuff like that I just like it because he has really nice lyrics. His voice kind of makes it more totally his style kind of thing."
Sharing YouTube music videos on the walls/timelines was one of the friendship-driven media practices in which each of these youths exercised their agency as an active audience engaged in a process of searching, discovering, and re-circulating. This practice revealed their ability to leverage some of the affordances of the networked communication environment for spreading media content. As Antonio commented in one of our interviews, sharing music videos with his friends and liking bands and songs were precisely his major motivations to go to Facebook. He explained,
“A: I’ll usually just go through Facebook because it’s only place I share stuff. Either go “like” their page, I’ll post video links on my page, like, there’s something I like about this band, or something I like about the song. 
Q: So you post video links?
A: Yes. (...) Q: You go to YouTube and find the video?
A: Yes, I just post the link.”
On the social media networked space of Facebook, these youths articulated messages in a multimodal way that appealed to their peers. These messages were expressions of a new media youth culture that relied on screens and speakers, and where images, texts, and videos were used at the same time for creating meaning. According to some of these youths, with their multimodal messages they composed and posted on their walls/timelines they felt capable of helping cultural producers. As Antonio explained in one of our interviews, by "spreading the word" about the bands and movies he liked, he actively helped artists and media producers to "get them more publicity." He said,
"Q: Do you ever share information about films, TV, bands, artists, celebrities? A: Yes. A lot. That I like them, I'll spread the word about them, try to get them more publicity. Q: And what kind of information do you share? A: I usually link them or if they have a music video I'll post that up. Or if they have like a little -- what would you call that -- trailer, I'll post that up. Q: So you link to their pages? A: Yes. Q: And do you -- how do you introduce them, like the bands? A: I mean, I just write a little something I like about them and that's -- here's a link. I mean, I don't go all crazy with it."
Although most of the media texts that Antonio helped to spread through his social network were all in English and mainly made by U.S. professional and pro-am producers, he also disseminated information about his own projects when he needed to do so. He was aware of the communicative power he had within the social media networked space of Facebook and understood he could use it for spreading media and supporting the project he liked. During the period of our fieldwork, for instance, he was able to circulate information about the Cinematic Arts Project (CAP), the after school program he participated and where he helped to create several media texts such as videos and photographs. Explaining how he understood the spreading of media as a kind of "support" he said,
"If there's like a band or movie I like, I'll support them. I know I've been posting the Cinematic Arts Project screening a lot, just because we need a lot of support -- donations. So I do that a lot."
Likewise, Sergio posted several status updates about the CAP in which he embedded photographs, videos, links, and other information about events and their youth media productions. While looking at this kind of statuses during the Facebook walk-through activity, Sergio explained to me that by sharing information about the CAP he helped to advertise the work that he and his peers were doing. According to him, in this way he helped the CAP publicity team to spread the word about the work they were doing. One of those messages was precisely a status update in which he posted a link to the blog entry he wrote for the CAP website. Proudly about sharing his work, Sergio wrote: "Nice. My story is up on the page :)"
Information Flows, Streams and News Feeds
The "news feed" was the other major section of the Facebook social media networked space where the five Latino/Hispanic youths developed their communication, socialization, and friendship-driven practices. At the time of our fieldwork (2011-2012) this Facebook feature consisted in a dynamic list of media content (a stream) that included the status updates, photos, videos, and other activity generated by the network of friends and the pages and cultural interests that each user liked. The "news feed," therefore, was a communicative space where the stories generated by different nodes of the personal social network were displayed dynamically and aggregated in real time. It was also an interactive space that encouraged users to take various actions such as reading, watching, commenting, liking, and scrolling. Interacting with the "news feed" was one of the most important practices for the five Latino/Hispanic immigrant youth not only because it was featured as one of the main sections of the Facebook home page but also because of the information flows that circulated through it. As a matter of fact, hanging out on Facebook, implied going to the "news feed." Gabriela, for instance, explained her use of Facebook in the following way,
"Just go on my news feed, or if I have any notifications, go look at what...whatever they did. So, that’s pretty much it."
Likewise, while talking about what the expression "checking my Facebook" meant to him, Miguel said "looking at the recent posts." According to Sergio, the ability to have access to the updates of other people in a fast manner was something that he liked and one of the reasons to hang out in Facebook. As he observed,
"A: I like that you can see what people are doing faster than on MySpace. It was kind of the same thing, but you don't really have to go to someone's page to see what they recently did. Whereas Facebook is kind of like Twitter, as soon as someone says something you can see it. 
Q: So, you get, like, feeds?
A: Yeah. 
Q: So you like that, to get the feeds on your page?
A: Yeah. "
By interacting with the "news feed" these youths experienced being "in flow" (boyd 2010b) within an information landscape created not only by the content their friends actively shared, but also the content that the pages and cultural interests they followed distributed. They experimented with "social awareness streams" (Naaman, Boase, and Lai, 2010; boyd and Ellison 2013) they were part of and could actively shape. As boyd and Ellison pointed out,
"streams of quotidian, ephemeral content encourage people to participate more in that they provide an initial artifact around which others can engage. Features that support actions associated with status updates—the ability to post comments to, share, or register interest in an update—also encourage a stream of activity that is prompted by an update but often takes on a life of its own in the central stream." (boyd and Ellison 2013, 4)
For all of the five youths, being in flow with these streams of content helped them to be aware of U.S. current issues. Since none of them reported watching TV news, reading a newspaper, or listening to the radio, it was precisely in the content that circulated in the "news feed" where they were updated about the public issues and current events. For them, the content of the information streams was indeed like the news. Inara, for instance, explained in one interview that Facebook was her source of news.
“Q: How often do you follow current news topics?
A: Never. Unless if somebody is talking about it I’ll be like, “What?” “Yeah. It was on the news last night.” I’m like, “Oh. I don’t watch the news or anything.” (…) Sometimes on Facebook I would see news. I click on it and it gives you the whole article. And I would read it. I’m like, “Oh. I didn’t know that was going on.” Or I would see it or probably people here in school are talking about it. Or teachers are talking about it. I don’t know. Just stuff like that.”
Even when only a few people from their social networks shared news about current events, the fact that this content was part of their streams of information indicates that these youths were exposed to some information about their local, national, and international contexts on Facebook. Hence, despite the fact that the majority of the content from their "news feed" was friendship gossip, random peer talk, and U.S. youth popular culture, there was information about public affairs and current issues in their streams. Antonio, for instance, explained that although he did not consume news on TV, radio, or newspapers, he was exposed to them sometimes in his Facebook because one of his friends shared news articles in her status updates.
“Q: Would you say that people in your network share information related to politics, your community, or current affairs?
A: Some of them do but not a lot of them. I know there's a friend of mine that wants to become a journalist, so she reads a lot of articles and sometimes posts them up. Q: Articles from like newspapers?
A: Yes.
Q: Just one of your friends?
A: Yeah. Just right now there's only one.”
Likewise, Sergio explained to me that on his "news feed" he was able to get not only information about U.S. politics and public affairs, but also about "a lot of different things" since he had various groups of people in his Facebook social network. He said,
“A: Because on Facebook I know a lot of different groups that do a lot of different things. For example, a lot of people inform people on what’s happening politically. (...) there’s a few groups that have different music interests--so, I can tell who likes what differently from others.”
Sometimes the information about current events and public affairs was consumed by these youths as visual memes, parodies, and as amateur video commentaries. As Miguel explained, one of his main uses of Facebook was for "getting informational or funny things." That kind of information circulated through his "news feed" not only by the content generated by his friends, but also by the pages he had listed as part of his cultural interests. As boyd and Ellison (2013) pointed out, in Facebook, "each person’s stream is populated with content provided by those that they’ve chosen to Friend or follow"(2013: 8). With the evolution of Web technologies, Facebook, had started to work as a news aggregator that combined not only content generated by the network of contacts, but also by the pages and cultural interests the user had liked and listed in his/her profile. Hence, by liking bands, TV shows, films, and other pages, Latino/Hispanic immigrant youths could subscribe to the content they created and it was automatically delivered to their "news feeds." This practice opened the possibility of becoming a more connected and engaged audience that could not only stay up to date with the content created by their favorite media franchises, but who was also empowered to re-circulate that content among their networks of friends. That was precisely what happened when Sergio actively re-circulated visual memes about the anti-SOPA/PIPA campaign that had been aggregated to his "news feed." These media content came directly from pages such as 9Gag he had liked and listed as part of his cultural interests in his Facebook profile.
It could be said that the technical affordances of the Facebook "news feed" feature allowed the friendship-driven practices to overlap with the interest-driven ones. Although it was not the case for all the five Latino/Hispanic youth, the ones who liked, and therefore, subscribed to many cultural interests and pages, interacted with streams of content that were full of content made by peers, music bands, transmedia franchises, gamer groups, microcelebrities, and TV shows. Such variety of content was also challenging since the information that appeared in the "news feeds" was neither organized by topics nor by networks. This stream usually appeared as a vibrant and messy quilt of media content created, in real time, according to the frequency of status updates and a Facebook algorithm.
Hanging out on SNSs like Facebook became an experience that not only involved the network of peers from local contexts, but also included networks of content from a rich variety of sources. Although that kind of overlap of networks was experienced more intensively by the youths that liked/followed more cultural interests and pages, the other ones were also able to get a taste of it as their peers were re-circulating content generated in other networks. However, despite the overlap of information flows and the messiness of the "news feed," all the content from the social awareness streams of the five Latino/Hispanic immigrant youths was in English. At least during our interviews and the Facebook walk-through activity, we were not able any traces of Spanish language in their profiles. And only in the cases of Inara and Sergio we saw a couple of messages in Spanish that appeared on their "news feeds." This fact revealed, that despite the fact that their social networks included many peers from the Latino/Hispanic ethnicity-race and with Mexican origins, their communication and sociability, on the Facebook semi-public space was developed using mostly U.S. cultural materials. As a consequence of that, it could be said that their participation on this social media networked space supported their assimilation to the U.S. cultural, linguistic, and social dimensions.

6.2.3. Navigating Popular Media Sharing Sites (MSSs)
Each of the five Latino/Hispanic immigrant youths navigated a unique geography of MSS that they configured according to the particular interests they had and the social, economic, cultural, and human resources they could access. While Inara and Miguel spent time in only one MSS; Gabriela, Sergio, and Antonio visited several. Although in very few cases they decided to publish their own media creations and to engage in public conversations on this kind of social media networked spaces, all the five youths found opportunities to participate in different ways. Particularly, they developed several messing around practices that were meaningful. On the MSSs they looked around, learned about different topics, explored diverse visual, audiovisual, and aural media content, and discovered pathways to different kinds of information.
Name SNSs Content Publishes Content User Account Coments Activities
Gabriela Tumblr, Flickr, Twitter, YouTube Audiovisual, photography, images, music, text yes yes no searches, subscribes, creates, recirculates
Inara YouTube Audiovisual, music no no no searches, recirculates
Antonio YouTube, Vimeo, Soundcloud Audiovisual, photography, music no yes no searches, recirculates
Miguel YouTube Audiovisual, music, news no yes yes searches, subscribes, comments, rates, recirculates
Sergio YouTube, Vimeo, SoundCloud, Reddit, 9Gag, MemeBuilder Audiovisual, photography, visual memes, music, news yes yes no searches, subscribes, creates, recirculates
Table 2. Media-Sharing Sites Geography
However, as it can be seen in Table 2, the chose to go to MSS that were privately owned, had millions of users, and were very visible on the Web. At the time of our fieldwork, all of these MSS had already reached massive levels of popularity and could even be considered to be dominant spaces in their specific kinds of media content. This issue had implications for the kind of engagement Latino/Hispanic youth developed. The MSSs were crowded by millions of users, rich in media content, and hosted communities and participatory cultures that where difficult to notice. Once these youths entered popular MSSs they found themselves in an ocean of media content they had to navigate by themselves according to their interests, skills, and resources they could access. Their behavior was the one of an active audience that searched and discovered media content, and re-circulated it. In some specific cases their participation became more active as they also were able to subscribe to content providers, rate the media content, join conversations, and even publish their own creative works online.
2.3.1. YouTube
"...YouTube (...) it’s like a library of videos. It’s a public library for videos." (Sergio)
YouTube, for instance, had already become the biggest video repository available on the Web. In its official statistics, the company owned by Google Inc., reported having 800 million monthly visitors, and 4 billion video views per day in early 2012. Founded in 2005 YouTube had experienced exponential growth and rapidly became the most popular site for watching and uploading videos. In 2012 the variety of media content on the platform included not only amateur and pro-am content but also professionally produced videos and advertisement of all kinds of genres. Hence, at this point of its rapid evolution, YouTube was not only a space were multiple participatory cultures, grassroots communities, and gift economies could thrive, but also a territory colonized by commercial culture, advertisement, and marketing logics. Hence, in 2011-2012, YouTube was already a global scale hybrid platform that supported the practices of DIY content creators, professional media corporations, and a massive audience of consumers.
Not surprisingly, it was precisely YouTube a common destination for the five Latino/Hispanic immigrant youths. With diverse frequencies all of them invested lots of time and energy searching, watching, and discovering audiovisual media content. While some went to the platform in an everyday basis, others did it every other day. Sergio, for instance, said he usually spent between two-three hours everyday on the platform. Similarly, Inara and Miguel said she could play up to five videos everyday. In contrast, Gabriela said she went every other day, and Antonio explained he had stopped going regularly and tried to go just twice a week. Their motivations were diverse. Although all of them mentioned using the platform for "entertainment," "amusement," and "passing time," they also mentioned going there to learn and find information about topics they were interested.
Diversity of Media Content
On YouTube, the five Latino/Hispanic immigrant youths could explore, discover, and find a rich variety of audiovisual materials as if they were in a vast "cabinet of curiosities." Following their particular interests these youths searched for content and watched both commercial and amateur audiovisual materials. Inara, who wanted to pursue a career as a fashion designer and who did not have access to cable television at home, explained that she used YouTube to watch professional video programs about fashion week events. She said,
"If I want to see Fashion Week, they'll have all the videos of Fashion Week and put all the videos of who did this and that..."
In contrast, Miguel, who was interested in videogame design and a gamer himself, found videos about his favorite games (Minecraft and Perfect World) produced by famous youtubers like Uber Haxornova. As he explained,
"A: He [Uber Haxornova] is a YouTuber that pretty much records himself playing a video game and talking [in English] about it or just talking in general, and he just -- he's like pretty much a comedian because he's pretty funny.
Q: Talking over his own playing the game?
A: Yeah. That's pretty much it. It's the people themselves that are entertaining to listen to.
Q: Do you remember how you found out about this YouTube person?
A: Yeah. I was searching up Minecraft videos -- just Minecraft videos no matter what, and I found him and I just subscribed to him."
In order to subscribe to several channels of DIY video makers, Miguel created an account in Youtube he could use to receive updates from content producers he liked and to rate and comment videos. He reported having 25 subscriptions, mainly from the genres of machinima and videogame commentary, all in English language, and the majority of from the U.S. and with big audiences on the YouTube platform. Uber Haxornova, for example, was a 22 years old American youth who had more than 2.6 million subscribers and had been publishing videos since 2008 (more than 4,000). By subscribing to these channels Miguel was able to receive updates about the new releases from the youtubers he liked. Similarly, Sergio and Gabriela had also created user accounts, experimented with this practice of media syndication, and became part of the growing audience of DIY video producers. Gabriela, for instance, was subscribed to more than 30 YouTube channels from amateurs and pro-ams. As she commented, she liked to watch those videos because they "just keep her entertained." Charles Trippy Friend x Core (CTFxC), the channel of a white middle class American couple who had more than 1 million subscribers, for example, was one of her favorite ones. As she said,
“A: I follow this one couple, CTFXE (phonetic), they have made a video for every day ever since they got engaged until the wedding. And I follow them and they’re still making videos.
Q: What kind of videos do they post?
A: Just their daily life. (...) Well, they got noticed, I guess. So I’m guessing that they’re paid to keep it going. And so they have, like, their own store for their little logo, CTFXC (phonetic). Yes, and so they sell their shirts. And then I know that he’s in a band I like (...) “We the Kings.””
Music Discovery
Besides becoming members of the growing audience of DIY video producers from new media genres such as machinima, v-logging, and gaming commentary, some of the five Latino/Hispanic working class immigrant youths also leveraged the YouTube platform for participating in music subcultures and developing alternative tastes. Although the practice of searching and playing music for free on YouTube was common to all of the five youths, the three boys developed a more active engagement in relation to specific genres of music. Dubstep for Antonio, death metal for Miguel, and indie rock for Sergio, were some of the music genres they explored on YouTube. For some of them being able to discover bands and artists and expand their knowledge about particular genres of music was in fact the most important service that YouTube offered. As Sergio said,
"I’d say it’s more important for the music that I listen to. That’s how I found out my Indy bands. My hipster music."
With some exceptions from the U.K. and Canada, the majority of these "independent alternative" bands were from the U.S. and all song in English language. According to Sergio, being able to find "not well known" bands and to follow their trajectory from their beginning was an important part of his "hipster music" fan practice. He explained,
“A: I listen to bands that haven’t even started yet.
 Q: Like amateur musicians in their garages or--
A: Yes. Could be. Or they could have, like, gigs already and whatnot. But they’re just not well known.
Q: Like who?
A: “Frontier Brothers,” yes.
Q: “Frontier Brothers?”
A: But they have, like, live gigs, yes. And they’re kind of an Indy band. (...) They only have, like, three songs on YouTube and one album on iTunes. And there was a band called “Funeral Party.” I started listening to them before they released their first album. 
Q: “Funeral Party?”
A: “Party,” yes. They released an album and it was all over the internet and YouTube and iTunes. And I was, like, they became big in, like, less than two years.
Q: Wow. 
A: They started playing in backyards in Los Angeles. And it was very violent at their shows, I guess.”
Likewise, for Antonio, who went to YouTube only few times a week, searching and discovering underground Dubstep artists from the U.S and U.K was an essential part of his messing around practice. Although he also used other platforms, he mentioned going to YouTube to find "a lot of good artists." He said,
"I listen to Flux Pavilion (...) DJ Fresh, sometimes I’ll listen to Skrillex, Zomboy, Figure, Excision. Mostly -- there’s not a lot of dubstep out there, so -- that I really like -- I like the in your face -- loud in your face -- dubstep. Sometimes some people make the low-volume one -- I don’t really like that. I usually go on Soundcloud, Beatport, YouTube, for other artists, because I’ve found a lot of other good artists who aren’t really known on those sites."
Discovering underground music on YouTube was part of music fan practice that also involved sharing links to the videos in SNSs, searching information about musicians in Google, liking the artists pages in Facebook, and looking for and downloading free MP3s. As Sergio explained, the space of YouTube was usually the point of start of a process of active music consumption. As Sergio said,
“A: Sometimes I’ll be on YouTube and they have suggestion videos, and one video leads to another until I come across something new. And then I’ll do more research on their music. Find out how many albums they have. And then I’ll download all their albums.
Q: Do you download them from where?
A: Wherever I can find them. Sometimes they’re not available so I’ll have to wait and wait until I find a website that has them.
Q: So do you just do a search in Google for albums?
A: Yes.
Q: And how about on YouTube? Do you do searches, as well? 
A: When I find out who the artist is I’ll go back and I’ll listen to more of their videos that they have on YouTube.
Q: So YouTube is, like, a reference place for finding new artists and new bands?
A: Yes.”
The music–driven messing around practices developed on YouTube included the interaction with a recommendation system that suggested videos all the time in relation to the content that was being played. Exploring the suggestions generated by the YouTube algorithm allowed youths to immerse themselves in a vast archive of videos that included a rich variety of audiovisual formats. Professionally produced music video clips, official and unofficial recordings of live performances, amateur videos that combined music and photographs, among other formats proliferated the YouTube ocean of audiovisual content. Although the explorations did not always lead them to find music they liked, in many cases it did allow them to discover new bands and artist and to expand their knowledge of specific subcultures. Even for the youths that had eclectic taste and were not into any subcultural genre like Inara and Gabriela, interacting with the system of recommendations allowed them to expand their eclectic taste.
Video tutorials and learning
However, as space that supported the thriving of participatory media cultures, YouTube offered access to many video tutorials of diverse topics produced by amateur and pro-ams. From videos about dance movements to videos about computer software features, youths had the opportunity of interacting with content that helped them to learn to do things. Inara, for instance, watched video tutorials about how to do hair styles and dance steps. Miguel watched videos about how to install video game mods and master game mechanics in MMORPGs. Both Antonio and Sergio, mentioned watching tutorials for learning about media production. According to Sergio, YouTube was the main source of tutorials for him at home. He said,
"Like, YouTube is blocked, here [Freeway High School], and at home, YouTube is one of my main sources for tutorials, because then I get a spoken kind of tutorial rather than just going back and reading it, because if I watch a tutorial on YouTube, I can just close the video out...I wouldn’t really need to see it. Someone would just be speaking on what I need to do, and that way it would be more efficient."
Likewise, Inara explained that the video tutorials she found in YouTube were convenient and allowed her to have access to informal teachers "right there." As she said,
"I guess convenient, in a way. Like, if I don't know -- let's say how to French braid or how to French braid, and there's a person who's showing you how to French braid, or even something like educational too. Like there's how to do this or how to study for this test or and stuff like that. It's kind of like you have your own teacher right there. And if you want to learn new dance, you find the video and they'll show you."
Antonio, who messed around with music production at home, explained he watched video tutorials for learning how to use software for sound synthesis. As he observed, the availability of video tutorials in YouTube was part of the informal learning ecosystem he had set-up for making music. Talking about the computer software he used at home, he commented that one of his reasons for choosing it was the availability of tutorials on Youtube. He said,
“A: I downloaded them [music software] off the Internet, cracked version, because it costs too much for me.
Q: Which ones? 
A: FMA and Massive -- They’re really good for synth making -- you can also make kicks on them. I’m leaning more toward Massive right now because I find it’s simpler and there’s more tutorials on YouTube about how to do stuff. If I were to search how to make a sound that sounds like Skrillex -- he’s a dubstep artist -- there’s many tutorials on YouTube about how to do that.”
Commenting and uploading content. Differences in participation.
However, despite having access to many tutorials made by DIY media makers, these youths rarely decided to participate in the conversations that occurred on the YouTube platform. Although many of those videos were created as part of the collective efforts of participatory cultures, in the social media networked space of YouTube, the low barriers to participation did not always encouraged a deeper engagement. Rarely these youths decided to upload content and to engage in the conversations that formed around the videos. Due to their lack of access to social and human resources at home (the place where they usually connected to YouTube), and their little experience participating in public conversations, most of these Latino/Hispanic immigrants never wrote comments and rarely rated videos. Antonio, for instance, explained he did not leave comments because he did not "like talking through the Internet" nor "networking" online. Sergio, who reported having learned cinematic tips and photoshop software through watching DIY video tutorials on YouTube, explained that he never participated in conversations because the environment was not welcoming and characterized by what he called "snowball effect." He said,
“A: I don’t really like commenting on YouTube.
Q: Why?
A: Because then they’ll have, like, a snowball effect, depending on what the emotion is behind the comments. If it’s a positive comment, it might get just... I always think a lot of people just comment negatively on everything on purpose just to troll. So it could be a positive comment and someone would be, like, “Oh, you suck.” And I was, like, “Okay. I don’t know how to comment to that so I’m just going to stop.” Or it could be, like, someone says, “You suck.” And then another person would be, like, “Well, you don’t know what you’re talking about.” And then they start insulting each other over YouTube, but they don’t know each other in real life. So I think that’s really pointless.”
Interestingly, it was only Miguel, the only youth who participated in the conversations that happened on the YouTube social media networked space. He wrote comments in English and rated videos related to the two MMORPGs he played (Minecraft and Perfect World). These videos not only helped him to learn game mechanics and skills, but also allowed him to be exposed to the knowledge generated by experts from the gaming community. For instance, one of the latest comments he had written was in a video about an event in which "few famous Minecraft people" had created a map of the Hunger Games and competed against each other in overcoming several challenges. By following several Youtubers that were gamer experts, Miguel was able to connect with knowledge producers and with an active networked audience. Somehow, the gamer participatory cultures and communities formed around specific MMORPGs seemed to scaffold a more active participation on Youtube both in commentary and video production. Miguel, for instance, explained that although his use of YouTube was limited to subscribing and commenting, he wanted to make and publish his own videos about player-generated guides and commentary. He said,
"A: I only use it to comment and subscribe and stuff. When I get a new computer, I want to make YouTube commentator videos. Q: On video games A: Yeah."
Miguel, as a gamer, experimented a greater engagement with the new media cultures he was passionate about. Despite the constraints he confronted in terms of access to high quality technology and tools at home, he had the opportunity to develop some geeking out practices in YouTube. As a member of an active and networked audience of gamers, he felt encouraged to join conversations, rate videos, and also re-circulate the content of the videos in other SNSs such as Facebook. This fact reveals not only the fact that specialized gamer communities thrived on YouTube, but also that Miguel had developed the skills to find them and understood some of the values and rules of the community. However, as he also observed, although he wanted to make more contributions to the community, he felt he did not have access to the technology he needed in order to start creating and publishing his own videos.
Among the five Latino/Hispanic immigrant youth, inequalities in material access at home seemed to be correlated with the ability to publish content on YouTube. Among all of them, only Gabriela, who had access to photo and video cameras at home, and who also owned an iPhone, reported having posted videos on the platform. Although she did not mentioned being interested in a specific knowledge community like the ones created by gamers, she was interested in one of the most popular DIY video genres on YouTube: creative photo and video montages set to music. This genre populated the YouTube social media networked space and was being developed by both collective grassroot communities and individual amateur producers. As she explained in an interview, although her interests on making this kind of videos started on the YouTube platform, she was able to learn about it at one of the video technology elective classes he took at Freeway High.
“Q: And how did you get into this? How did you start doing this?
A: A YouTuber. Yes, a YouTuber.
Q: Oh, really?
A: Yes.
Q: So you got the idea from someone on YouTube?
A: Yes.
Q: And then how did you learn how to do it? A: My video tech class.
Q: With Mr. Perez?
A: Yes.
Q: And then what application are you using to do these?
A: Not Final Cut but, iMovie, there you go.
Q: iMovie okay. So is this something new you’ve gotten into?
A: Yes.
Q: What do you like about it?
A: It’s just fun, yes. It’s kind of nice to see, like, you’re working on something and the end looks really nice, a little nice final product.
Q: And have you shared them with anybody?
A: Just my dad and a couple friends.”
The fact that Gabriela decided to keep the two video montages she had published on YouTube hidden from the public searches, reveals her lack of connectivity with a particular community on the social media networked space. "I don’t want, like, some creeper looking, like, at my life," she said. Gabriela was concerned about the visibility of her video montages on YouTube because they were made with imagery from her everyday life. One of the videos was about her vacations during a spring break, and the other one about life events in the year 2011. In both video montages she showed images about her family, friends, and her dog, and they were set up to music that "fits the moment perfectly" and that she found on YouTube. According to her, publishing the video montages on the platform allowed her to be able to easily circulate the videos among an intimate circle of family members and friends. "Just so I can have the link to share," she said. Such practice, as well as the ones of editing and composing her DIY videos, taking pictures, and recording videos with her own devices, revealed the start of a transition from messing around to geeking out activities. As Gabriela invested time and energy learning to create video and photo montages she acquired specific technical knowledge and honed her skills as an audiovisual storyteller.

6.2.3.2. Other MSS
Besides going to YouTube, some of the Latino/Hispanic immigrant youth had also the opportunity to travel to other MSSs making their personal social media geographies more diverse. As stated before, these MSS territories were very popular on the Web and had become dominant with millions of users and massive amounts of media content. Antonio and Sergio, for instance, visited SoundCloud, and audio distributing platform that in 2012 reported having 15 million users who uploaded approximately 10 hours of content every minute, and an audience of 180 million listeners. Although neither Sergio nor Antonio published content on SoundCloud they developed several messing around practices searching and discovering underground music from their favorite genres (dubstep and indie rock) as well as rating some of the tracks they listened. Interestingly, Antonio, who had explored music production at home and created some rough dubstep tracks preferred to not publish the tracks on this platform. According to him he felt that his tracks were not lacked the quality to be published online. This sort of belief, together with his low disposition to engage in conversations online in public spaces, limited his participation to messing around practices.
Likewise, Antonio and Sergio visited the Vimeo platform in order to mainly search, discovery, and watch videos, animations, and films. By 2012, Vimeo had over 14 million active members and 75.3 million unique visitors, and was popular among indie filmmakers and their fans. [7] Both Antonio and Sergio mentioned liking this platform very much because its "cinematic" and "professional" quality. Although they had created user accounts during the year of our fieldwork and mentioned rating videos on this platform (giving likes), they did not publish by themselves any of the videos they had created in the Freeway High elective classes and afterschool program. With the exception of the videos from the Cinematic Arts Project in which both of them had collaborated (webisodes and the trailer of the narrative film) which were published on Vimeo by one of their mentors, their creative work did not circulate on this social media networked space. When asked about the reasons to not doing so, both of them explained that their video projects were either incomplete or they had lost access to their digital files due to hardware problems.
Photography
Gabriela, with a passion for photography that had been cultivated at her home since early age, developed messing around practices on MSS in which she experimented with online publishing and re-circulation of visual imagery. On the one hand, she had an account in Flickr, one of the biggest photo sharing sites with more than 6 billion images, 51 million registered members, and more than 80 million visitors per month in 2012. On the other, she also invested time and energy on Tumblr, a popular blogging platform that in 2012 had over 42 million blogs and received over 13 billion global page views. While on Flickr Gabriela had a public account for publishing her photography works; on Tumblr she had a private account where she re-circulated ("re-posted") the entries of several visually oriented blogs that she followed. In both MSSs she actively looked around, satisfied her curiosity, and discovered sources of inspiration.
However, Gabriela leveraged each platform in different ways. On Tumblr she followed "more and more random, random, random people," and "re-posted" the media content she could relate to. She also kept her account private so only people with a link to it could see it. In contrast, on Flickr she had a public account where she could display her own photographs and build an online portfolio. Despite the possibilities for socializing and building mentor relationships on Flickr, Gabriela did not join groups nor contacted other photographers. Instead, she took a more messing around and individualistic approach. As she explained, her main practice was looking at the pictures taken by advanced photographers so she could learn about new forms of composition and get new ideas. Talking about Flickr, she said,
"A: It’s like a lot of high skilled photographers. Like they’re really, really skilled, so...
Q: Yes. So what do you like about that?
A: That I see, like, “Oh, well, I don’t have to stick to this,” I can also, like, do different things, because it doesn’t just have to be this type.
Q: So you get ideas from it?
A: Yes.
Q: Cool. And do you get feedback on Flickr?
A: No.
Q: No.
A: I don’t...nobody follows me; I don’t follow anybody.
Q: No. Do you read comments ever on Flicker?
A: Nom.
Q: No. So it’s more just to look.
A: Yeah."
Despite the lack of social interactions and exchanges on Flickr, Gabriela leveraged the affordances of the platform for building an online portfolio where she could showcase her creative work. "I just use it mainly, like, as a portfolio I guess," she said. Gabriela had opened an account in 2009 and had consistently been uploading a selection of her best photographs. At the time of our fieldwork in 2012, she had curated and published 78 photos on her Flickr gallery and had created two albums (one about dogs, other about nature). The majority of her images were about threes, pets, Austin downtown urban scenes, the city lake, and a few were portraits of her friends. Some of the pictures had been modified with Photoshop software and had color-saturation effects. Moreover, all the pictures published between 2009 and 2011 had a watermark with the nickname "Gaby" that she had layered on the top of the photographs. This nickname was also the one she used for her Flickr account and could be interpreted as a sign of creative identity construction and authorship. Although the practice of writing titles and descriptions for the photographs was supported and encouraged by the Flickr platform, Gabriela had only written a title for few, and always used the English language.
Internet Visual Memes
"I can of saw a meme, like, on the internet I’d seen them. I didn’t really think they were funny. I don’t remember what the first meme I saw was, but then, like, I started going into websites that had more and more memes. And then I started just getting more involved with memes." (Sergio)
Besides Gabriela, the other Latino/Hispanic immigrant youth who was able to experiment with the publishing of creative media works on MSSs was Sergio. Following his passion for humor, graphic design, and visual memes he spent lots of time and energy, both at home and at school, interacting on the Cheezburger and 9Gag platforms. According to him, he loved memes because they were creative and funny. As he said,
“A: I love memes.
Q: Really?
A: They’re really funny.
Q: Tell me...give me an example.
A: Some of the memes that I like are De-motivationals. Like, instead of motivating posters, they just de-motivate, they take your motivation away. And I think, some of them are really, like, creative and funny.
Q: Show me, I mean, just describe to me one of those.
A: Some of the memes are like, people who take pictures from somewhere, and then they’ll caption it their own way.
Q: Yes.
A: And, like, I believe they’re really funny. They have, like, other means, like where they take situations, and then they make jokes of them, like they have one called, “Lame Pun Coon.” It’s a raccoon that tells lame jokes. And like one of them was, like, “The camping trip this weekend was in tents,” instead of intense. And I just thought, I think those are funny. (…) They’re very creative.”
On the two meme-especialized MSSs he visited, he was able to mess around and sometimes also geek out. He developed a sort of "peripheral participation" that allowed him to learn despite the massive number of users and vast ocean of media content he encountered. As a matter of fact, the two MSSs he went were dominant and big and had several participatory cultures and communities that were not as easy to identify given their size and overlap. Cheezburger was a platform that served as a meme hub for all the MSSs from the Cheezburger Network, a big Internet humor company from the U.S. In 2011 the platform had more than 16.5 million users a month and generated more than 375 million monthly page views. Cheezburger social media networked space offered not only a vast media repository of visual memes and millions of users to network but also a web application for creating memes. 9Gag, in contrast, functioned as a more traditional MSS allowing the users to upload images, GIFs, and videos they had already created using software or some of the meme generators available on the Web. 9Gag was also one of the biggest spaces for sharing visual memes online and was popular worldwide. In the year 2012 it had an average of 80 million visitors and a total of 2 billion page views.
In an effort to become more knowledgeable about Internet visual memes, Sergio invested time and energy on these two spaces exploring and discovering a vast repository of multimodal designs. On these MSSs he encountered vibrant participatory cultures and grassroot communities that actively remixed and circulated media content. Although he did not participate in conversations, contact mentors, nor make friends, he experienced a sort of "peripheral participation" that allowed him to learn and be aware of the lower barriers to entry. Eventually, by being aware of his capacity to participate, he created and published some memes he composed by himself. For instance, using the memebuilder application from the Chezzburger platform, he had the opportunity of developing a multimodal design practice that included the layering and remix of images and texts with the purpose of composing a humorous message. As Sergio explained, using Cheezburger’s memebuilder,
"You can change the font, and stuff. Each image is different, but it's just like LOL cats. (...) It gives you the option of uploading whatever you want. You have the option of uploading, or choosing from the stock photos, and stock memes that they have."
Sergio created several memes using this feature and published them on his Cheezburger user page. During the time of our fieldwork he reported creating 5 different memes on this platform. Looking at his user page around that time, I found 11 different memes in which visual elements of U.S. popular culture and Internet culture had been remixed and captioned in English. From images of Moby Dick cover books to screen captures of YouTube videos personalities to photographs of U.S. politicians, Sergio actively remixed visual content creating humorous multimodal media texts. Similarly, in 9Gag, he also published visual memes he had created using the vast repertoire of imagery that was available online. During our fieldwork he uploaded only three multimodal compositions to 9Gag and on his user page one could only found five different memes including two designs he had just re-circulated from other user accounts.
However, despite publishing content in Cheezburger and 9Gag, Sergio did not participate in the forums nor leave comments in other people’s memes. Although he was interested in learning about the language of humorous visual memes, his activities, for most of the time, remained at the level of messing around. Although his practice involved the acquisition of specialized knowledge, he did not connect to other meme makers or 9gaggers beyond up-voting media content. He was not interested in meeting mentors on these platforms nor wanted to earn a reputation and status on them. For Sergio, these MSSs served as social media networked spaces he could navigate by himself, participating from the periphery, and eventually geeking out while publishing his own creations and deploying his knowledge of the meme language. By doing so he was able to develop a "meme literacy" (Lankshear and Knobel, 2006; Milner, 2012; Shifman, 2014) that he actively practiced by creating his own multimodal designs, exploring extensive image collections, and re-circulating a variety of memes with his friends outside the meme-related MSSs.
6.3. New Media Skills
Participating in friendship-driven and interest-driven activities on multiple social media networked spaces fostered the acquisition of several new media skills. As the five Latino/Hispanic immigrant youth hanged out, messed around, and sometimes also geeked out on SNSs and MSSs they gained technical and sociocultural abilities that help them to navigate their process of assimilation to the U.S. Particularly, in relation to the U.S. cultural, linguistic, and social dimensions, skills such as networking, performance, negotiation, transmedia navigation, and appropriation were very important. Gaining these competencies allowed Latino/Hispanic youths to exercise different levels of agency on social media networked spaces and to experience some of the affordances of the new communication environment. As social actors, active consumers, explorers, re-circulators, and producers of media content, they encounter opportunities of exercising their agency and expand their communication capacity. By doing so, they were also able to practice the English language (reading/writing/listening), socialize with their high school peers, articulate public and semi-public identities, and develop an understanding of U.S. popular and civic cultures, current events and politics. Although Inara, Gabriela, Antonio, Sergio, and Miguel were able to acquire, with different levels of expertise, all these new media skills, I will only be able to focus my analysis on two of them: networking and appropriation.
6.3.1. Networking: Search, Synthesize and Disseminate.
Perhaps the most important skill that the five Latino/Hispanic immigrant youths acquired through their online activities was networking. This skill consisted in "the ability to search for, synthesize, and disseminate information" (Jenkins et al. 2006) and was acquired through both friendship-driven and interest-driven practices. As the Latino/Hispanic immigrant youths interacted, communicated, explored, and socialized on spaces rich in information flows and streams of media content, they developed the networking skill. Despite their little access to social, human, and economic resources, they figured out ways of navigating the complex social media networked spaces and, exercising their agency, expanded their communication capacity. Each of them, for instance, searched, discovered, looked around, circulated, re-circulated, subscribed, and interacted with media content on both SNSs and MSSs.
However, the networking skill was not evenly developed among all the five Latino/Hispanic immigrant youths. According to their interests and their access to resources, they navigated different social media geographies and expanded their networking capacity in specific ways. While some of them went to a few social media networked spaces, others visited several. All of them hanged out and messed around on SNSs and MSSs but only a few geeked out. Hence, although all participated on these spaces, they did it in a different manner. For instance, the ability to "effectively tap social networks to disperse one's own ideas and media products" (Jenkins et al. 2006; 51) was developed differently by Gabriela, who published content on Facebook and MSSs, than by Inara, who only published content on Facebook. In the case of Gabriela, being able to move across several MSSs and engage in publishing and re-circulation practices allowed her to gain a greater networking capacity (although still pretty basic) than the one of Inara who only created and re-circulated content on one SNS.
Each of the five Latino/Hispanic immigrant youths navigated their geographies of social media with little support from their parents and teachers. Although they arrived to mainstream MSSs that were rich and diverse in social networks, they were not always able to find participatory cultures that offered them the scaffolding they needed for deep engagement. Although some of them were able to mess around on MSS, searching, exploring, and discovering media content, only few were able to synthesize (even at a basic level) and disseminated information on these spaces. In contrast, it was on the dominant SNS, Facebook, where all the five youths were able to develop their networking skill. On this space, they amplified the social networks they had offline and felt comfortable socializing, communicating, sharing and publishing content. They did so in a semi-public way, keeping their profiles and activities visible only to their contacts. Their social networks were characterized by homophily, composed peers of similar age, and similar socioeconomic background. Although they had friends from diverse race-ethnicity, the majority were minorities, and particularly Latino/Hispanic. As a result, the information they searched, synthesized, and disseminated on Facebook was predominantly related to U.S. popular culture, Internet culture, and the English language.
Despite the lack of diversity (in terms of social class and age) that characterized the social networks of the five Latino/Hispanic immigrant youths on Facebook, they were dynamic in terms of circulation of media content and information flows. Thanks to the evolution of web technologies, all the five youths actively combined their explorations and discoveries in other MSSs with their dissemination practices on Facebook. The practice of re-circulating and spreading media content on Facebook was developed by all the five youths and it supported their acquisition of the networking skill. Re-circulating media content they found on MSSs (especially YouTube) allowed these youths to experiment with the expanded communication capacity that the evolution of social software and the Web had made available to ordinary users. By experiencing the ability to shape information flows they became aware of their capacity to support bands, projects, cultural products, and any other project they wanted. At a basic level, when they embedded videos, images, and links in the messages they posted on their Facebook walls/timelines, they were able to acquire the networking skill. That is, search, synthesize, and disseminate information. Especially Antonio, Miguel, and Sergio articulated an understanding of their ability to leverage their social network on Facebook. As Miguel explained, Facebook was useful, "because your voice can be heard a little bit better or better whenever." He continued,
"Because instead of trying to tell people individually -- people might be busy or they might not have time -- on Facebook, you can just post a quick message or a quick status and people can read it and if they want to join they can apply or something."
All of the five youths became, at different moments of our fieldwork, resourceful networkers that searched, synthesized and disseminated information they found across the social media geographies they traveled. Although this information was mainly about youth popular cultures, it also contained sometimes elements of U.S. political and civic cultures. Generally speaking, it could be said that the five youths were not interested in politics nor shared links to news, immigration debates, or ethnic/racial community organizations. However, at certain moments, some of them developed civic and political actions in where they used their networking skill. That was precisely the case of the activities developed by Sergio and Miguel during the last phase of the anti-SOPA/PIPA campaign in January 2012. Both of them decided to take an action and tried to mobilize their networks on Facebook in order to stop a U.S. bill. Embedding visual memes in their status updates they expressed their concerns about Internet censorship and actively made an effort to inform their audience of friends about the need to "keep the Internet free" and protect their rights to share media content. As Sergio explained,
"I kind of talked about it because a lot of people were saying wrong information. So, I talked about what it really was. (...)I don’t like that idea [SOPA/PIPA bill]. It’s like the Internet is a free and open place for anyone to go and said what they need to say, or share what they need to share, and no one has the right to stop that."
Besides visual memes, Sergio and Miguel also shared links to the action-websites created by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Google, where people could easily send a message to the Congress and sign a petition in opposition to the SOPA/PIPA bills. As Miguel explained in an interview, he did not only sign the petition form that Google had made available online but also spread the link through his social network on Facebook. He said,
“Once when it was the SOPA act, I linked a petition form (…) for my friends to sign and stuff.”
Interestingly, it was precisely the two Latino/Hispanic 1.5 generation boys who lacked smartphones and who had more limited points of access to the Internet the ones who were mobilized, at least for one cause during the period of our fieldwork, to take an action and participate in a civic campaign. Both Sergio and Miguel were also highly invested in new media cultures such as gaming and Internet visual memes. These two cultures and their communities actively participated on the discussion of the SOPA/PIPA bill on the networked public sphere and generated many pieces of media that circulated shaping the information flows. Hundreds of visual memes explaining the consequences of the SOPA/PIPA bill, for instance, were created and distributed during the 16 months the campaign lasted. Hence, interacting with the gaming and visual meme cultures, Sergio and Miguel found a gateway to the civic engagement and an opportunity to deploy their networking abilities with a political purpose. For instance, both of them articulated a voice and an identity expressing their concerns over Internet censorship, and were able to circulate information about their communication rights and the need to keep the Web free. In a certain sense, their civic action was intended to protect their ability to network online and to be able to search, synthesize, and disseminate the information that matters to them. Through their engagement with new media cultures they felt they had certain freedoms and rights in the U.S. and took an action to try to defend them. Explaining his reasons for participating in the anti-SOPA/PIPA campaign, Miguel said,
"Because that pretty much takes away some of our rights, like freedom of speech -- we can't, you know, -- like even like making parodies, they would be considered copyright fraud."
Although the activism of Sergio and Miguel was temporary and only lasted for the last phase of the anti-SOPA/PIPA campaign, it revealed their networking skill in action and with a civic purpose. The success of this civic campaign in stopping the U.S. SOPA/PIPA bill confirmed in a certain way the potential of the networked environment to allow a more participatory and democratic culture. Sergio and Miguel, as participants in this mobilization, felt empowered by their networking skill and were able to develop a civic dimension of their assimilation process that was rarely experienced in other contexts. It could be said that by actively participating in some of the anti-SOPA/PIPA distributed actions they became aware of an important aspect of U.S. citizenship and civic culture such as the freedom of speech and communication rights. By exercising their networking skill they experimented with how those rights looked in practice. The outcome of it made them not only proud of their affiliations to the gaming and visual meme cultures, but also allowed them to advance in their assimilation process to the U.S., particularly in the civic and political dimensions.
3.2. Appropriation
Understood as "the ability to meaningfully sample and remix media content" (Jenkins et al. 2006), appropriation was an important new media skill for Latino/Hispanic immigrant youth. Because this skill required "taking culture apart and put it back together" (Jenkins et al. 2006, 32) it was useful for developing the assimilation process in the cultural and linguistic dimensions. All the five youths had opportunities to acquire this skill, at least at a basic level, when navigating their social media geographies. For instance, when crafting their Facebook profiles or creating multimodal messages in status updates and comments, they could remix U.S. popular culture materials and communicate by means of sampling U.S. media content.
Some of the conversations they had on the semi-public space of Facebook could be analyzed as complex multimodal designs where videos, photographs, images, sounds, movie quotations, and other textual references were appropriated for expressing a message and communicating with friends. Let’s consider for instance the Facebook conversation that Sergio had with Jen Lee, one of his Asian American female friends from Freeway High, when he posted a status update about a blog entry he wrote for the CAP website. The status update was a multimodal message that included a text typed by Sergio ("Nice. My story is up on the page :D"), an URL link, a photograph of the Freeway High kitchen classroom taken by a CAP photographer, the title ("Freeway High classes collaborate on Cooking Show") and four lines of text from the blog entry. Following this message, Jen Lee, who was quoted in the blog entry as one of the producers of the Cooking Show replied:
"Jen: I don't remember saying any of that..."
and then Sergio said,
"Sergio: it was word for word..."
After that, the conversation became like a collaborative remix in which text and images of Internet visual memes (Rage Faces) were published one after the other.

Jen: ...no....
Jen: [Troll Face image]
Sergio: I hate you.
Jen: [Okay Guy image]
Sergio: [OMG Face image]
The use of visual memes like the Troll Face, the Okay Guy, and OMG Face, was common on Facebook semi-public comments and status updates. Especially Miguel, Sergio, and Antonio sampled images of the Rage Comics meme genre in their messages with the purpose of expressing their emotions and also signaling their knowledge of Internet culture. This meme genre included a growing set of amateur-looking cartoon faces (usually created with simple drawing software) that were associated with a particular emotion or behavior. The Troll Face, for instance, was used for expressing enjoying and harming people; the Okay Guy for communicating agreement and self-deprecation; and the OMG face for astonishment and revelation. Although these Rage Comics started in 2008 as elements of four-panel comics dedicated to the adventures of Rage Guy, the characters rapidly became popular and started to be used independently (exploited), as symbols that could be easily sampled for creating new meanings. Several websites provided ready to use images of the different Rage Comics characters that could easily be embedded in status updates, and re-contextualized in collages and other remixes.
With the growth of the Rage Comics genre, the characters diversified and included not only amateur-looking cartoons but also vector drawings of politicians, athletes, and other famous U.S. personalities. One of the most common memes appropriated by Antonio and Sergio on their status updates and comments, for instance, was the Obama Not Bad rage face. This visual meme resembled a sturgeon face that the U.S. President made during a visit to the Buckingham Palace while visiting the Queen of the United Kingdom in 2011. Although in its origins, this meme was used with the catchphrase "Not Bad" written below, as the image became widely popular, the text was no longer necessary. As Antonio explained to me,
“A: I know there’s a meme of Obama. (...) it looks like he’s going, “Not bad” with his face. And I mean, whenever I like something that’s not bad, I’ll usually post that on somebody’s wall or something.
Q: Really?
A: Yeah.
Q: Just to say like something is not bad?
A: Yeah.
Q: And it has like words?
A: Yeah. It says “not bad” on it. Most of the time — if you know the meme you don’t need it.”
Rage Comics images became part of a reservoir of cultural materials Latino/Hispanic immigrant youths, especially the boys, used when communicating online. By actively instantiating these images on Facebook semi-public conversations, they developed the skill of appropriation at a basic level. They experimented with intertextuality and learned to speak/write/play with the most popular symbols used by U.S. youth (especially males) on the Internet. Appropriation, even at the basic level of embedding visual memes in multimodal conversations demonstrated that these youths were not only aware of popular forms of expression among U.S. youth but also capable of sampling U.S. cultural resources for communicating and socializing with their friends. Interestingly, although they could have combined the use of these cultural resources with the rich Mexican visual repertoire, they didn’t do it. On their online media practices, these Latino/Hispanic immigrant youth didn’t seem to appropriate the ethnic-racial symbols from the country of origin of their families, nor the Spanish language. When they composed their status updates and participated in semi-public conversations with their Facebook friends they always seemed to prefer the English language and the U.S popular culture materials.
However, beyond the simple act of instantiating memes in comments and status updates, the appropriation skill was developed to a greater extent when these youths created their own memes. Sergio, for instance, created and published several memes on Cheezburger and 9Gag. Usually, the way in which he produced his visual remixes was using the memebuilder application that the Cheezburger platform provided. As he explained, the technical part of the remix was not difficult. He said,
"Basically, you can go to memebuilder, and the original memes are found from other websites, so they'll just upload the main photo, and that way they'll let you write whatever text you want on it."
Although he had the technical skills for using Photoshop software and could access school computers for doing so, he preferred to use the web application because it speeded up the process of remixing and also automatically published the new memes on the Cheezburger platform. While the technical tools for remixing memes could be accessed and mastered easily on the Web, the understanding of the Internet visual memes culture required investing more time and energy. Through almost two years of messing around, and sometimes also geeking out on meme-related MSSs, Sergio was able to learn the language of memes, its aesthetics, and logics, and eventually also to express himself through it. Making visual memes required analysis and commentary, and a deep understanding of the vocabulary, structures, and different genres of memes. Sergio, in particular was interested in the genres of Rage Comics, Advice Animals, and Stock Character Macros. The remixes he created were derivatives of memes from these genres, and had a humor purpose. According to Sergio, creativity and humor were the most important aspects of memes and the reason why he loved them.
One of the memes that Sergio created and published on Cheezburger, for instance, was a joke about iPod batteries. For this remix, he tried to follow the conventions of Stock Character Macro genre, using an iconic picture and captioning with a "catchphrase." Specifically, he used the macro image of Jimmy McMillan, an African-American political activist and founder of the Rent Is Too Damn High Party. The image was a photograph in where McMillian appeared speaking in a debate with his right hand pointing up (signaling making a point) and holding white papers on the other. According to the conventions of the genre, Sergio captioned the photograph (using the Impact font, white bold letters, and black borders) with the upper text: "The Life of this Battery," and a bottom text: "is too damn high." Given the Stock Character Macro genre a twist, and taking a distance from a mere meme derivative, Sergio juxtaposed this image over the one of an iPod screen indicating "Low Battery status of 5000299008%." By designing this multimodal text, Sergio was able to create a new meaning, and a funny commentary, about the short duration of iPod batteries.
By creating memes and developing his appropriation skill Sergio was able to increase his knowledge of the U.S. popular culture, and, particularly, about the humor that was being developed by U.S. youth online. In making the visual meme about iPod batteries, for instance, Sergio took apart U.S. cultural resources and put them back together creating a new meaning. He combined cultural materials that were part of the meme repertoire, analyzed them, and re-contextualized them using the logic and structures of the meme language. He followed the genre conventions and updated them with his own commentary. Although is remixes never became popular nor gained more than a couple of votes on the MSSs where he published them, they still stood as signs of an attempt to become a more active participant on the participatory cultures and communities he discovered on MSSs.
Humor, remixes, and visual memes, furthermore, could also be gateways for political awareness and civic participation. For Sergio, developing the skill of appropriation through the practice of meme making helped him to become aware of U.S. news and political processes. Even from his peripheral participation, navigating Cheezburger and 9Gag, allowed him to develop a little understanding of U.S. politics and to recognize his capacity to act through making remixes. That was precisely what he did when he made a Facebook profile image remixing a photograph of him with a black banner over his eyes. "I took a picture of myself and put a censor bar over my face, like my eyes," he said while explaining to me one of the actions he did during the last week of the anti-SOPA/PIPA campaign in January 2012. By making this visual composition and using it as a profile picture on Facebook, Sergio deployed the appropriation skill he had acquired. In this case he was able to, on the one hand, use the technical skills for layering the censorship symbol of a black banner over a picture of himself. On the other, he demonstrated a certain level of understanding of U.S. current affairs, and an interest in a particular civic and political action.

4. Conclusions
Social media networked spaces were an important multi-context of activity for Latino/Hispanic immigrant youth. They offerd a multi-setting where youth could not only socialize and communicate with their friends but also interact with a rich world of information and media content. Moving across their particular social media geographies, Gabriela, Inara, Sergio, Antonio, and Miguel developed friendship-driven and interest-driven practices and acquired new media skills according to the resources they could access. While all of them hanged out and messed around on Facebook and Youtube, some of them also explored other MSSs finding sometimes opportunities to geek out on spaces like Flickr and Cheezburger. Their social media navigation was marked by a preference to go to popular and densely populated spaces that had millions of users, vast collections of media content, and where privately owned. With differences in the quality of their participation and engagement on SNSs and MSSs, all of these youths acquired new media skills that helped them to advance in their process of assimilation to the U.S. in several dimensions.
Navigating the information flows and dynamic streams of media content they found on social media networked spaces was a complex task that each of the five Latino/Hispanic youths did according to the motivations and resources they had. Common to all of them, was the little support and mentorship they had from adults, teachers, parents and other family members. Their online experiences were mostly supported either by their peers from school or by themselves. That is precisely why their hanging out practices on Facebook turned out to be the more dynamic ones. They had active participation, social relationships, feedback communication, creation of multimodal content, and circulation of media content. Activities on this SNS where structured by their local networks of peers from school and other friends they had met in person. These experiences were a continuation of their everyday process of communication and socialization, and were marked by the use of the English language, and the use of U.S. popular culture materials. Moreover, because all the five youths have adjusted their Facebook privacy settings, the experiences on this space where semi-public and had certain level of intimacy. This characteristic seemed to encourage a more active participation perhaps because youths felt more comfortable in a space that was only visible to their Facebook contacts than one that was public and visible to the whole Internet. On Facebook they felt greater freedom to express themselves, be in flow, and shape the streams of media content that circulated through their network of friends.
In contrast, when participating on MSSs, these youths encountered spaces that were open and public, and where information flows and social networks were way denser and messier. They visited MSSs that had vast amounts of media content, were densely populated, and hosted several participatory cultures and communities that overlapped in complex ways. Navigating these MSSs was a more complex task than the one they did on Facebook, and each of the five youths did it with little support, mostly only by themselves, guided by their interests on U.S. popular culture and creative media production. Although the possibility of connecting with the grassroots communities and expanding their social networks by building bridges was latent on the MSSs, none of the five Latino/Hispanic youths did so. All of them preferred to develop messing around practices in which they searched, explored, discovered, and re-circulated media content. Even the youths that had interest in media production and who had made their own media, rarely developed geeking out practices in which they could gain greater expertise, build mentor relationships, cultivate a reputation, and tap a bigger audience. Their participation, therefore, was peripheral. They were motivated to go to these spaces by a need to explore, discover, and access media content for free. After their explorations and findings they re-circulate it this media content outside the MSSs through the more intimate social network of friends they had on Facebook. Gabriela and Sergio, the only ones who published their own creative works online, also did so motivated more by a need to host their own media content online and to share links to them with their friends, than by gaining status or power in Flickr, 9Gag, or Cheezburger. As Gabriela explained in a follow-up interview, she did not connect to other users, groups, and communities in Flickr. She said,
"I haven't really figured out how to work Flickr. I've had it for the longest time and I haven't figured out how, like, to work it."
The fact that even Gabriela, the one with greater social, economic, human, cultural, and technological resources among the five Latino/Hispanic youths, couldn't figure out "how to work" a MSSs where she actually published content, is revealing of the evolving digital inequalities and participation gaps non-dominant youth has to confront. Although the networked communication environment’s technical affordances expand the possibilities of a more democratic and participatory culture and society, not all youths are inclined to get involved in complex collective tasks, tap networks that they are not familiar with, and connect with the communities that they find on popular and public MSSs. Having access to technology and even being able to produce and publish their own media content also does not warranty that youths will enrich and diversify their social networks.
It could be said that the experience of the five Latino/Hispanic youth was paradoxical, marked by both increasing connectivity and access to media content, and a lack of social bridging and connection to online communities. They were at the same time, networked and disconnected. Their participation was mostly peripheral on MSSs and they navigated those social media networked spaces without finding the support and scaffolding needed for becoming more active participants. Moreover, they did not feel motivated to gain status on those communities or to find mentors. In contrast, they preferred to navigate MSSs in a more solitary, but at the same time networked way, that allowed them to be in flow with information and vibrant streams of media content.
However, despite the paradoxical nature of their activities online, the five Latino/Hispanic youth were able to gain several new media skills that helped them to advance in their assimilation process. For instance, they gained networking and appropriation skills with different levels of expertise. All of them experienced, at least at a basic level, the power of networked communication and became aware of their capacity to search, discovery, spread media, and shape information flows. Given the characteristics of their social networks, however, that capacity was shaped by the kind of interests and resources that they and their peers from school had. Although their peers were diverse in terms of ethnicity-race, all of them had lower socio-economic status, and the majority were minorities. While in terms of cultural interests and taste, their social networks were highly invested in U.S. popular culture, in terms of language they preferred to communicate in English. Furthermore, with the exception of Inara who had family members from Mexico on her network, the other youths had networks of peers that were all living in the U.S. As a result, the information they searched, synthesized, and disseminated online, as well as the cultural materials they appropriated and re-contextualized, were mostly from the U.S.
In conclusion, the activities that the five Latino/Hispanic youth developed on social media networked spaces supported their assimilation to the U.S. in multiple dimensions. Not only did they find informal pathways to participate in sociocultural exchanges (in English) with their peers from school, and to be aware of some of the U.S. current events (through popular culture), but also, eventually they found opportunities to participate in civics and politics. The analysis of the experiences of Latino/Hispanic immigrant youth on the computer-mediated multi-context of SNSs and MSSs revealed that the networked communication environment is being leveraged by immigrant youth and helping them to assimilate to the U.S. Technological affordances and sociocultural practices can indeed support immigrant assimilation process to the cultural, social, linguistic, and even the civic and political dimensions of the host country. This kind of assimilation, however, is marked by the socioeconomic status of the families and friends, and by the quality of their access, education, and social supports. Hence, although Latino/Hispanic immigrant youth are participating on social media networked spaces, they are not diversifying their social networks nor enriching them. Although they are indeed gaining new media skills at a basic level, they are not fully developing them given the lack of scaffolding, mentorship, and guidance they encounter online as well as their lack of motivation and necessity to do so.
5. References

Youthful steps towards civic participation: does the Internet help?

2015-02-04T00:57:13Z

Lombanaphd: Created page with ""The Internet is widely hailed as the technology to bring direct participatory democracy to the masses, enabling citizens to become actively engaged in the political process (..."

"The Internet is widely hailed as the technology to bring direct participatory democracy to the masses, enabling citizens to become actively engaged in the political process (Katz et al. 2001; Wellman et al. 2001).

Further, young people especially are dubbed ‘the Internet generation’ or ‘online experts’, labels they themselves relish, although some have challenged this generational discourse (Sefton- Green 1998; Facer & Furlong 2001).

In this article, we examine whether using the Internet draws young people into participation.

It seems to be widely assumed that the Internet can facilitate participation precisely because of its interactivity, encouraging its users to ‘sit forward’, click on the options, find the opportunities exciting, begin to contribute content, come to feel part of a community and so, perhaps by gradual steps, shift from acting as a consumer to increasingly (or in addition) acting as a citizen.

The UK Children Go Online (UKCGO) project conducted a series of focus group discussions, followed by a national survey of 9- to 19-year-olds across the UK, examining young people’s Internet use in detail. The project balances an assessment of two areas of risk with two areas of oppor- tunity in order to contribute to academic and policy frameworks on children and young people’s Internet use.

In total, 1511 interviews with 9- to 19-year-olds were completed. Some 1077 parents of children aged 9–17 agreed to complete a questionnaire of which 920 paper questionnaires were received and 906 were usable.

Based on the literature and findings reviewed thus far, the model pre- sented in Figure 1 hypothesizes several causal paths, as follows:6
1. Demographic variables (age, gender and social grade) have a direct influ- ence on the range of interaction with websites, and they have a direct influence on the range of civic websites visited.
2. Use variables (self-efficacy, average time spent online, years online) also have a direct influence on the range of interaction with websites, and they have a direct influence on the range of civic websites visited.
3. Demographic variables have an indirect influence on both interaction with websites and visiting civic websites, mediated by use variables.
4. Interaction with websites is positively associated with civic website visit-
ing. Scales to measure the breadth of interaction and the range of civic websites visited were constructed as follows.

==== findings ====
* it appears that young people with certain demographic characteristics are more motivated to pursue civic interest participation than their peers, whether they use the Internet more or less and whether they feel more or less self-confident.
*does the Internet invite its users to ‘sit forward’ and become engaged? Some of the opportunities we have examined in this article facilitate peer-to-peer connection, some provide information needed to participate in society, all require young people to go beyond the content provided for them by others and to seek out, select and judge, even to create content for themselves as part of a community of actors that is larger than any individual.
*This suggests a positive trans- fer of skills and interests across online activities, providing moderate support for the possibility that young people who engage with the interactive potential of the Internet become drawn into a greater range of participation, including visiting civic and political websites.
* short-lived participation
* young people’s motivation to pursue civic interests online depends on their background and their socializa- tion, and it is not affected by the amounts of time spent or levels of expertise online.

Hargittai, Eszter. (2007).‘‘Whose Space? Differences Among Users and Non-Users of Social Network Sites.’’ Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 13:276–97.

2015-02-03T22:27:41Z

Lombanaphd: Created page with ""Are there systematic differences between people who use social network sites and those who stay away, despite a familiarity with them? Based on data from a survey adminis- te..."

"Are there systematic differences between people who use social network sites and those who stay away, despite a familiarity with them? Based on data from a survey adminis- tered to a diverse group of young adults, this article looks at the predictors of SNS usage, with particular focus on Facebook, MySpace, Xanga, and Friendster. Findings suggest that use of such sites is not randomly distributed across a group of highly wired users. A person’s gender, race and ethnicity, and parental educational background are all associated with use, but in most cases only when the aggregate concept of social net- work sites is disaggregated by service. Additionally, people with more experience and autonomy of use are more likely to be users of such sites. Unequal participation based on user background suggests that differential adoption of such services may be contrib- uting to digital inequality."

The Demographics of Social Media Users

2015-02-02T05:04:17Z

Lombanaphd: Created page with "Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project Post-Election Survey, November 14 – December 09, 2012. N=1,802 internet users (18 + ages). Interviews were conducted..."

Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project Post-Election Survey, November 14 – December 09, 2012. N=1,802 internet users (18 + ages). Interviews were conducted in English and Spanish and on landline and cell phones. Margin of error is +/- 2.6 percentage points for results based on internet users. Facebook figures are based on Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project Omnibus Survey, December 13-16, 2012. Margin of error for Facebook data is +/- 2.9 percentage points for results based on internet users (n=860).

* internet users under 50 are particularly likely to use a social networking site of any kind, and those 18-29 are the most likely of any demographic cohort to do so (83%). Women are more likely than men to be on these sites. Those living in urban settings are also significantly more likely than rural internet users to use social networking.

According to demographics:

* White, Non-Hispanic (n=1,332) 65%
* Black, non-hispanic (n=178) 68%
* Hispanic (n=154)72%

Cohort of 18-29 is the one who uses SNSs the most.
* AGe18-29 (n=318) 83%

February 2015

2015-02-01T19:10:47Z

Lombanaphd:

== 1/02/2015 ==

I have been struggling with starting to write the chapter on the Internet. It has not been easy to organize the mess of qualitative data related to the online activities and experiences of the participants of my study. Although my argument seems to be clear in relation to how the five latino/hispanic immigrant youth are all connected and active online, it has been difficult to refine my critical approach. How can I reveal the peripheral participation they have? How can I show the lack of resources and the lack of effective participation? How can I show that even if their online practices help them to assimilate, they remind limited? One interesting aspect to show is how this tools are helping them to indeed connect to the U.S culture and society and to assimilated in terms of culture and language. However they are missing the opportunities to connect to their home cultures. Is that good? or bad? How about the individualistic practices and uses they have of the web and their networks? It seems they do not totally leverage the power of the networks for helping their families, nor fostering their ethnic identity and cultural resources. In a way, they use the internet to be away from that and do not explore it to connect to those roots. How does that affect what they can do online? How do that affect their agency.

Of course, they are being active online and connecting to many sources of information, also performing identities, and hanging out with their peers. Their peer culture is being fostered. At some moments some of them are also active in terms of civics and politics, but none of those activities are related to their identities as LAtino/Hispanic and Mexican immigrants. How do that influence their agency. They do not talk about that. But I just wonder if that kind of regretting or hideness of their ethnic identity limits what they do online. Also , questions of geography, power, hierarchy and descrimination play here. None of them talks about that, but I wonder if it is there, in the digital space, and is one of the reasons why they do not engage beyond clicking or subscribing to channels. They are also young, and have been online just for some years, in SNS for 2-3 years. They are still learning to be in cyberspaces.

== 2/5/2015 ==

Thinking about ideas for the introduction of the dissertation:

* Narrate experience in Austin, as spanish speaker and south american. Identification and positioning as "hispanic" "latino and "mexican"
* Everyday life and encounters with people from Mexican origin. Workers. Working class. Kitchens, gardeners, housekeepers, cleaners, cable guys, service workers, construction workers.
* Foods and street names.
* On the radio.
* Immigrants who have lost their Spanish language. Theyr cultural capital. Lost of transnational connections.
* a well established local culture of Mexicans.
* i-35 as a connection with MX

Anecdotes could mention the immigrnats generations who have lost their language and wish they could speak Spanish.

== 2/16/205 ==

Explain role of the chapter on social media platforms in the dissertation:

After having examined how new media practices and skills developed at the family/home and afterschool contexts shaped the process of assimilation, this chapter provides another layer of analysis for understanding the uneveness of this process. Especifically, in this chapter I analyze the activities developed by Latino/Hispanic immigrant youths online, on the multi-context of several social media networked spaces. Ellaborating a critical analysis I explain the characteristics of these youths participation in what have been described by some scholars as a networked communication environment that is more participatory and democratic. In order to do so, I look at the motivations, practices, skills, and supports that these youths had as they became active users/participants of several social media platforms. I critically engage with the literature on participatory cultures and genres of participation and reveal the limitations and possibilities of the activities developed by these Latino/Hispanic youths online. Although I use the categories of friendship-driven and interest-driven genres of participation, I point out to the especific characteristics that such genres had when developed by Latino/Hispanic working class immigrant youth. Given the lack of social, cultural, human, and economic resources, the participation of these youths in social media networked spaces is paradoxical, marked both by connectedness and disconnectedness. However, although the potential for leveraging digital networked technologies is not fully realized, my analysis also reveals that the activities developed online are helping these youths to advance in their assimilation process, especially in the cultural and linguistic dimensions. By addressing the paradoxical nature of the participation in social media networked spaces, this chapter makes a significant contribution to the dissertation and our understanding of the evolution of digital and participation gaps. It provides qualitative evidence on how the assimilation process of five Latino/Hispanic working class immigrant youth is uneven, segmented, and shaped by activities developed in social media networked spaces. The chapter is connected to the previous chapters through the thematic threads of new media practices, skills, and differential access to resources.

The two questions that drive the narrative of this chaper are:

- What are the characteristics of Latino/Hispanic working class immigrant youths participation in social media platforms? What is the quality of their engagement, content, and social networks (diversity, richness)?

- How does participation in these networked spaces help Latino/Hispanic immigrant youths to advance their process of assimilation? Which new media practices and skills are they developing at this multi-context of activity and how are they shaping their assimilation?

Other extra questions:

- What are the spaces where they are participating? hanging out, messing around, geeking out?

- What are the social media networked spaces where they participate?

== 20/2/2015 ==

Regarding the generational status of the subjects of my dissertation, all of them can be considered immigrants involved in assimilation process according to the theoretical framework I use. The notion of assimilation is contested. There are many definitions, theories, and studies. However, the literature is consistent in that the process happens across several generations. That is why, even if these students have second and 1.5 generational status, they are still, as well as their families, in a process of assimilation to the U.S. There are many approaches to understand this process and I will discuss some of them in the chapter of my theoretical framework. The theories that I am engage with are the ones of segmented assimilation and my goal in this project has been precisely to make a contribution to them given their lack of attention to immigrant media practices. Researchers from this paradigm have relied in studying second generation immigrants (native born) in order to understand the incorporation of immigrants to a host society.

The idea of second generation immigrant youths navigating two worlds is interesting and I do not see it as opposed to the one of assimilation. As a matter of fact learning the customs of the host culture and learning to navigate its institutions has been considered part of the assimilation process Since the models of assimilation usually include at least three generations, doing such activities is an essential step in a longer process of assimilation. Researchers of the segemented assimilation, for instance, have included the possibility of navigating two worlds in their models of assimilation trajectories. According to them, the split of the two worlds is characteristic of two different trajectories: downward social mobility with dissonant acculturation between parents and children, and time-honored mobility with selective acculturation (both parents and children becoming bicultural). What I have found in my analysis is that the split of two worlds does not necessarily leads to downward mobility and dissonant acculturation even if the parents, with the exception of Gabriela's, are not becoming bicultural.

I would speculate that the split between the worlds of the home/family and school/peer/popular culture has become thinner and softer given the affordances of the new media technologies and practices. As I discussed in the chapter about the home/family, these youths live in households that are networked and where the two worlds can be accessed and juxtaposed. Furthermore, as my analysis reveals, their immigrant parents are also invested in supporting the access to the U.S. school/peer/popular culture world at home by buying media technologies such as computers, game consoles, and providing access to the internet. One of the interesting findings of this study is to notice how even if the five immigrant youths are navigating two worlds, the worlds are no longer as separated but are becoming juxtaposed (especially at home) in a way that does not create as much conflict as the segmented assimilation researchers have previously argued. Hence, I would say that digital tools and networks and the networked communication environment are allowing these Latino/Hispanic immigrant youths to advance their process of assimilation, especially in the cultural and linguistic dimension, in a faster way. This process, contrast to what segmented assimilation researchers have theorized, is not necessarily leading to confrontation with their less acculturated parents and downward mobility, even if the context of reception is the one of working class and marginalized communities.

The issue of ethnicity and identity is very important and I definitely avoid arguing that these youths are becoming fully Americanized. However, given the data that we have it is difficult to make compelling claims about how these youths are mantaining their Mexican costumes and ethnic traits alive. What our data reveals is that in terms of language, education, and popular culture, all the five youths are assimilating to the U.S. and becoming acculturated very fast. Hence, although I wont say they are completely loosing their ethnic traits, I would argue they are becoming bicultural and more confortable identifying with that identity. Although the data on their self-identification is scare, I have quotations from the interviews with Antonio, Inara, Gabriela, and Sergio, where they claim they belong to both cultures and idenfify either as Latinas, Hispanics, or Mexican-Americans. I have planned to refer to this self-identification and biculturalism in the dissertation conclusion and have avoided addressin the issue of ethnic identity fully in the other chapters given the few data that we have. For instance, it is difficult to argue that they are holding their customs and ethnic traits, and not assimilating, when they rarely write and speak in Spanish (some of them are not even literate in this language and can only speak it) and their interests are rarely connected to Mexico. I think that the lack of connectivity with the Mexican culture is precisely one of the barriers they confront for engaging more fully in social media spaces and cultivating transnational cultural capital. It seems, as other scholars have argued in the context of schooling, that their Mexican cultural capital has been substracted and that limits their networking abilities.

== 25/2/2015 ==

Technologies are not good nor bad, nor even neutral.
The internet is also like that.
Societies, and their values and structures will shape the uses of technology. Inequalities will be reproduced. And could even be more enhanced with technology. Segregation as well.

== 28/2/2015 ==

Making progress in the chapter about the internet. Now maybe passed the half ot it. Or maybe just arriving to that middle point. Thinking about the conclusions, it is worth to consider these observations:

* agency in the circulation of media. the sharing of media. although most of the time was about tnetertainment, at some moments was a about more relevant issues. Especially related to the Internet. Showed some of them cared about the Internet, censorship, copyright. Rights to share media content.

* agency in keeping a network of friends. Extended network. Although it was not diverse nor rich, it existed with more than a hundred contacts. exploring new forms of participatin and civic action. Performance skills. Performing in a new networked communication environment.

* news. getting news feeds from friends. News from entertainmnet, from the cultural interests they loved it. Not that much about their ethnicity/race nor the country of origin of their families.

* new language. mastering practicing a new language. more visual, interactive, video driven. new way of develioping conversations.

* a space for exploring the U.S culture and language. Immersed in a very rich world of information.

*

Networked information economy and society

2015-01-29T23:35:19Z

Lombanaphd:

== Networked Information Economy==

The rise of the era of the networked information society

big changes in "Advanced Economies"

* Production has shifted from the physical goods (cars, blue jeans, paper plates) to information goods and services (movies, wordprocessing software, tax preparation)

* Communication tools have shifted from a centralized, mass-market approach (CBS primetime shows, ABC evening news, Howard Stern on the radio) to a much more distributed and interconnected approach (the Internet).

New ICT allow decentralized, non-market production.

"The central thesis is that a new stage of the information economy is emerging. The industrial information economy of the mid-nineteenth and twentieth centuries is now being displaced by the “networked information economy”, characterized by decentralized individual action carried out through distributed, nonmarket means."

"the design of new technologies (i.e. the Internet) allowed for user-to-user communication. Second, the price of computation, communication, and storage is steadily declining. In the old industrial information economy, the desire to communicate was often frustrated by price constraints on the mode of communication (printing, mailing, broadcasting)."

Non-proprietary models of production made possible by the networked information society also can be harnessed to promote justice and human development.

==== Enhanced Autonomy ====
improvement of individual autonomy in three ways:

* improves individuals’ capacities to do more for and by themselves.

* improves individuals’ capacity to do more in loose affiliation with others in a non-market setting.

* improves individuals’ capacity to cooperate with others through formal or organized groups that operate outside the market sphere.

==== The Networked Public Sphere ====
greater participation in the public sphere

* has given individuals alternatives to the news and commentary of mass media.

* a new and more accessible forms for discussion and debate.

* through both coordinated collective action and loose uncoordinated but coordinate action individuals can affect the content and focus of mass media news and commentary.

==== A Critical Culture and Networked Social Relations ====
emergence of a more critical and self-reflective culture, this process might be called the democratization of culture.

1) making culture more transparent

2) making culture more malleable.

"In the industrial information economy the technology that was used to create culture was expensive, or if it wasn’t, the technology needed to spread those creations was. (...) But in the networked information economy not only has the physical capital become easier and cheaper to amass, the economic constraints on distribution are far less in the digital world. Not only does this allow individuals to create and distribute cultural products, it also allows them to speak back to the cultural products they consume"

== The Role of Technology in Human Affairs ==

A methodological assumption for Benkler's thesis. Possibilities that a technology offer, different actions, relationships, creations.

"Different technologies allow for different kinds of human actions and relationships."

"it does not state that technology dictates the kinds of actions and relationships that will arise. But it does suggest that, all other things being equal, if a technology makes it easier to perform an action that action will be more likely to occur; and, similarly, that if society lacks certain technologies which are pragmatically necessary to an activity, that activity is not likely to occur."

Example of Gutenberg printing press and different religious attitudes.

"the same technology (the printing press) had different effects on literacy in communities that endorsed individual worship and study of the Bible and in communities that discouraged such behavior."

"the role of the new technology upon which networked information economy is built can and will be exploited differently in different social structures. If we deny (as we should) technological determinism, we should also realize that there is no guarantee that this new technology will be exploited to improve society, enhance individual autonomy or promote democratic values."

"The role of this technology will be determined not just by its internal logic but according to our external societal attitudes."

== Commons-based peer production ==

peer-production : a new mode of production, one that is powerful, efficient, and sustainable.

According to Benkler, “peer production has an advantage over firms and markets because it allows larger groups of individuals to scour larger groups of resources in search of materials, projects, collaborations, and combinations than is possible for firms or individuals who function in markets. Transaction costs associated with property and contract limit the access of people to each other, to resources, and to projects when production is organized on a market or firm model, but not when it is organized on a peer production model.” (Coase’s Penguin, 376-377)

Furthermore, commons-based peer production generates benefits to the society because it creates a context where individuals can become virtuous and contribute to the public good. As Benkler and Nissembaum claim, “commons-based peer production fosters virtue by creating a context or setting that is conducive to virtuous engagement and practice, thereby offering a medium for inducing virtue itself in its participants.” (403)

By participating in OS projects, peers develop and practice several virtues such as autonomy, independence, creativity, productivity, benevolence, charity, generosity, altruism, camaraderie, friendship, and cooperation. Besides that, “commons-based peer production generates new modes of contributing to the public good by facilitating the collaborative engagement of thousands of ordinary individuals in the voluntary, creative, communal, regular, non-commercial production of intellectual and cultural goods, for a wide variety of reasons and motives. (Benkler and Nissembaum, 417)

Key terms:

Peer Production- Production systems that depend on individual action that is self-selected and decentralized, rather than hierarchically assigned.

Decentralization- Conditions under which the actions of many users work together effectively despite the fact that they do not rely on reducing the number of people whose will or authority counts to direct the action.

Contemporary society is witnessing an emergence of more effective peer production that does not rely on the price system or a managerial structure for coordination.

The Act of Communication
1. The Utterance- writing an article or drawing a picture
2. Relevance & Accreditation- Rendering the utterance as worthwhile
3. Distribution- How one takes on an utterance, and distributes it to other people who find it relevant and credible

"I call this commons-based peer production. Commons (as opposed to property) because no one person controls how the resource is used, they are either open to the public or a defined group. Peer production because it is done through self-selected, decentralized individual action."

Peer-Production cooperation is usually maintained by a combination of (104):

* Technical architecture
* Social norms
* Legal rules
* Technically backed hierarchy validated by social norms

== The Economics of Social Production ==

Why do people participate and collaborate outside of the profit motive? Why is this becoming a factor now? Is it really efficient? (91)
Motivation

* Extrinsic Motivations: Imposed from the outside such as money, rewards, of threats of punishment. (94)
* Intrinsic Motivations: Come from within such as pleasure or pain (94)

Some studies have shown that adding money value to activities previously done for intrinsic motivations actually lowers the level of activity. (94)

Sociology-based view of motivation- two ultimate rewards for humans in a social structure (95):

* Economic Standing
* Social Standing

Some resources are more efficiently mobilized by social forces rather than monetary wealth (95). However, such resources are culturally contingent and cross-culturally diverse (96) as well as the relationship between economic and social rewards.

The amount which individuals are motivated by social rewards also varies between people. Yet, due to technological innovation, there are now conditions under which these social motivations can be turned into an important modality of economic production (98)

Commons-based peer production and social production are sometimes more efficient than market-based production (106)

2 scarce resources in information production (107):

1. Human creativity, time and attention
2. Computation and communications resources

changes in technology have caused social sharing and exchange to become a viable mode of production by lowering the capital costs required for effective individual action (121).

== Networked Public Sphere ==

"The fundamental elements of the difference between the networked information economy and the mass media are

* network architecture (distributed, multidirectional)

* the cost of becoming a speaker.

"The first element is the shift from a hub-and-spoke architecture with unidirectional links to the end points in the mass media, to distributed architecture with multidirectional connections among all nodes in the networked information environment." 212

"The second is the practical elimination of communications costs as a barrier to speaking across associational boundaries."

>>> the potential:
"Together, these characteristics have fundamentally altered the capacity of individuals, acting alone or with others, to be active participants in the public sphere as opposed to its passive readers, listeners, or viewers."

more speakers and participants in conversation and, ultimately, in the public sphere.

>>> the possibility is not always realized due to multiple factors, inequalities, dispositions, habitus, differential accesses.

"The qualitative change is represented in the experience of being a potential speaker, as opposed to simply a listener and voter. It relates to the self-perception of individuals in society and the culture of participation they can adopt. The easy possibility of communicating effectively into the public sphere allows individuals to reorient themselves from passive readers and listeners to potential speakers and participants in a conversation." (213)

>>democratizing potential of the Internet

* Evolving tools (and information flow structures) of networked communication / catalogue of tools used to communicated in the networked public sphere : e-mail, mailint lists, www (and all its apps on the top), static web pages, blogs, various larger-scale, collaborative-content production systems (wikipedia, slashdot

the WWW,
"enables a wide range of applications, from basic static Web pages, to, more recently, blogs and various social-software-mediated platforms for large-scale conversations"(216)

"blogs are part of a broader category of innovations that make the web "writable. That is, they make Web pages easily capable of modification through a simple interface. "
"The second critical innovation of the writable Web in general and of blogs in particular was the fact that in addition to the owner, readers/users could write to the blog."

The writable web : allows conversations.

"Common to all these Web-based tools-both static and dynamic, individual and cooperative-are linking, quotation, and presentation."

"On the Web, linking to original materials and references is considered a core characteristic of communication.

"The culture is oriented toward "see for yourself." (...) Linking and "see for yourself" represent a radically different and more participatory model of accreditation than typified the mass media."

"The networked public sphere is not made of tools, but of social production practices that these tools enable." (219)

>>> information and cultural production activity of nonmarket actors but not all actors. There are certain conditions for doing that kind of social production of information and culture. The same with the production of knowledge.

"The primary effect of the Internet on the public sphere in liberal societies relies on the information and cultural production activity of emerging nonmarket actors: individuals working alone and cooperatively with others, more formal associations like NGOs, and their feedback effect on the mainstream media itself." (219)

"More fundamentally, the social practices of information and discourse allow a very large number of actors to see themselves as potential contributors to public discourse and as potential actors in political arenas, rather than mostly passive recipients of mediated information who occasionally can vote their preferences." 219

Networked communication environment and youth

2015-01-28T20:43:53Z

Lombanaphd: /* Reflections on youth, participation, and networked publics */

The adoption of digital media among young people is redefining how researchers think about media practices,participation in social life, and the role of networks in the age of connected media. Drawing from studies acrossvarious disciplines how are the use of digital media platforms and new formations of networks transforming whatsome scholars refer to as participatory culture? Specifically, how is youth participation in peer-drivencommunities, learning ecologies, and/or civic life evolving with the adoption of digital media and in the context ofnetworked publics and platforms? In your essay discuss, for example, the distinct attributes of digital media, networks, and participatory culture. Also, what is the relationship between digital media, networks, and participatory culture?

Young people growing up in advanced capitalist and post-industrial societies are living immersed in a new communication environment that is networked, rich in information, and participatory. The development and adoption of digital technology infrastructures, tools, procedures, and communication media, during the last three decades, has facilitated the emergence of this new environment. By participating, interacting, and using digital technology across different contexts young people practice new forms of mediated communication and sociability. In the new communication environment, young people are active and visible participants. They are not only able to take roles as producers of culture, information, and knowledge, but they are also able to carve out their own spaces for socializing. Young people are creating unique networked publics where they discuss, share, and socialize with they peers. The consequences of such active and visible practices are shifting the balance of power between young people and adults. Such balance shift needs to be understood as part of broader series of transformations in society, culture, and economy.

The transition towards a network society is one of the most important changes that have surrounded the adoption of digital technologies. Networks are organizational forms that consist on a set of interconnected nodes. They are very powerful organizing tools because they are flexible, and adaptable. As Castells has argued, although networks have existed before in the history of human civilizations, it is has not been until the introduction of computer-based communication technologies and particularly, the Internet, that they have been able to perform they power and develop in scale and complexity. Digital technologies increase the capacity for managing complexity and coordinating tasks. According to Castells, "This results in an unprecedented combination of flexibility and task performance, of coordinated decision-making and decentralized execution, of individualized expression and global, horizontal communication, which provide a superior organization form for human action." (2) The proliferation of networks powered up by digital technologies since the 1970s has given rise to a new form of society, economy, and culture.

Among all digital technologies, the Internet is the most fascinating one and powerful. Thanks to its communication power, radical decentralization, and open architecture, the Internet is at the core of all the current sociocultural and economical transformations. As a network of interconnected computers, the Internet has become more pervasive and ubiquitous, facilitating not only the free flow of information but also the improved access to it. As Karaganis has explained, thanks to being an open and decentralized system, the Internet privileged the transmission of data over what was conveyed. With the increased digitization of all kinds of media, the Internet grew capable of communicating rich media content. Its open architecture (indifferent to the uses it is put) not only facilitated its widespread adoption, but also supported the development of new distribution models. According to Karaganis, collective efforts of governments and scientists, developed a network that "supported not only survivability and interoperability but also a very wide scope for future innovation. The lowest-level internet protocols provided a platform for other networks and applications with more specific functionality." (258) So far, the new distribution models have been able to handle all types of data represented in digital form. From numbers to texts, to images, sounds, and videos, digital content is published, accessed, and shared on the Internet.

The Internet is a great example of the affordances of digital media as technologies of expression, social interaction, and communication. In contrast to analogous mass media such as broadcast radio, television, and film, digital technologies allow both many-to-many and peer-to-peer communication, decentralized individual action, and active consumption/production of content. Benkler has noticed that the Internet solves some of the basic limitations of commercial and concentrated mass media such as the oversimplification of complex discussions (homogeneity), and the overwhelming power of media owners to shape opinion and information. The radical decentralization of the Internet has enabled new patterns of social and cultural production and exchange, and of course, has enabled the building of networks. However, the kind of networking allowed by the Internet was of a very specific kind, self-directed and individualist. Self-publishing, self-organizing, self-networking, are characteristics of a new pattern of behavior that Castells has labeled "networked individualism." Internet is the material support for networked individualism. As Castells explain, the Internet enables a social trend towards "networked individualism" where "individuals build their networks, online and off-line, on the basis of their interests, values, affinities, and projects." (131) Thanks to the communicational power of the Internet, individuals can reach many others, can inform them, and build networks with them. Although these networks can be considered me-networks due to their individualism (Castells), the decentralized individual action has the capacity of aggregating coordinated effects with other individuals allowing cooperation and collaboration (Benkler). According to Castells, networked individualism is a social pattern not a collection of isolated individuals.

Contemporary youth, using digital technologies, practice this kind of networked individualism. They have been building their networks (online and off-line) on the basis of their interests, values, projects, and affinities. The Internet has provided young people with powerful communication tools such as Social Network Sites (SNS) that are useful to organize their social, educational, and cultural life. As researchers of digital media and youth such as Livingstone, Watkins, boyd, and Ito et. al. have demonstrated in their studies, young people using digital media technologies and networking online have not isolated themselves from other peers. In contrast, boys and girls are using these technologies to enhance their physical peer networks and facilitate their face-to-face interactions. They are communicating more actively (and constantly) with friends, sharing their experiences and expressions. As Watkins has explained, teens have made of the Internet a place of their own, a place where they can hangout, in order to solve some of their restrictions on mobility and controlled free time. In her studies of SNS, boyd has also argued that digital media technologies and the Internet have become integral to "processes of building performing, articulating, and developing friendships and status in teen peer networks." (113) By sharing emotions, expressions, texts, and ideas, young people is strengthening their connections with their peers. The networked individualism of digital youth is, therefore, a hybrid process that mixes online and offline negotiations and interactions.

However, before addressing more deeply the characteristics of SNS and other digital media technologies used by youth such as mobile phones, chats, and music players, it is necessary to describe, briefly, the characteristics of the new communication environment where all these technologies are integrated. Because in this environment all media are progressively interconnected, and because the social uses of the digital technologies are increasingly focused on the production of networks, information, knowledge, and culture, I would refer to it, following Benkler, as a networked information environment. In contrast to the previous mass-media environment of broadcasted communication, the new environment is rich in information and knowledge created by both experts and non-experts, and is diverse in commercial and non-commercial cultural goods produced by both professionals and amateurs. As Benkler explains, due to the declining price of computation, communication and storage, the material requirements for effective information production and communication are now owned by a great number of individuals. Including young people, a significant part of the world's population has now access to computer-based digital media technologies that allow them to produce, and distribute information, knowledge, and culture on a global scale.

According to Benkler, in the new networked information environment, the removal of physical constraints on information production creates the conditions for a new kind of culture that is more transparent, malleable, self-reflective, and democratic. What he calls networked culture is a kind of folk culture "where many more of us participate actively in making cultural moves and finding meaning in the world around us." (15) Members become better readers, more self-reflective and critical, and more self-reflective participants in conversations within their own culture. Having greater freedom to participate, individuals can easily pull at the cultural creations of others making the culture they occupy their own.
However, since commercial and proprietary cultural goods circulate in this culture alongside the noncommercial and nonproprietary ones, some of the networked practices have been blamed by the mass media industries as forms of piracy. Interestingly, and despite the criminalization and persecution of practices such as file sharing and remixing, non-market individual and cooperative production continue to thrive, and young people have been at the leading front of their development. Because in the networked culture participants are not "constrained to organize their relationship through a price system or in traditional hierarchical hierarchical models of social economic organization" (Benkler, 8), they can experiment with a diversity of production strategies for information such as cooperative, non-proprietary, and noncommercial production. Such experimentation has leaded to innovative projects produced in a cooperative peer-based mode such as Wikipedia and Linux.
Jenkins has also elaborated a useful framework for understanding the new kind of culture that emerges in the networked information environment. He has called this culture "convergence culture" to emphasize the complex interactions between old and new media, between top-down corporate media and bottom-up participatory culture. According to him, "within convergence culture, everyone's a participant --although participants may have different degrees of status and influence." (132) The changing conditions on the production, circulation and reception of media content enable new forms of interaction of active engagement that coexist with passive old forms of consumption. While new media consumers are active, migratory, socially connected, noisy, and public; old consumers are passive, predictable, isolated individuals, silent and invisible. New media consumer practices are similar to the ones that have been historically practiced by fan-viders, fan fiction writers, punk musicians, zinesters, djs, and radio amateurs. Historically, when young people have taken into their own hands the production and distribution of media texts, they have engaged themselves in creative and innovative uses of communication technologies.

It is not a coincidence that both Jenkins and Benkler refer to the folk nature of the emerging culture. A networked information environment where the constraints to publish, organize, and network, is apt for the construction of a culture that encourages participation, grassroots creativity, and bartering. Although corporate and mass media industrial culture and practices are still alive, they have to converge with the energy and public visibility of the emerging participatory cultures. As Jenkins has explained, participatory cultures have existed before our current media environment, but they have remained invisible to the public. The participatory culture of fans, for instance, has been produced "by fans and other amateurs for circulation through an underground economy and that draws much of its content from the commercial culture.” (285) The new environment, and in particular, the Internet, provides a new platform for amateur cultural production and distribution. For instance, fan-viders can not only find the video recordings of their favorite shows on Internet-based platforms such as Youtube, but can also distribute their fan-vids in the same platform. As Jenkins explain, "though this new participatory culture has its roots in practices that have occurred just below the radar of the media industry throughout the twentieth century, the web has pushed that layer of cultural activity into the foreground." (133) The visibility of the participatory practices has of course triggered the alert of the media industries that are trying to figure out how to stop what they call violations of copyright and how to collaborate and take advantages of the creative energy of the new active participants.

Thanks to the availability of a reliable system of distribution and production, participatory cultures are thriving in the networked information environment. Jenkins has stated that there is a "public reemergence of grassroots creativity as everyday people take advantage of new technologies that enable them to archive, annotate, appropriate and re-circulate media content." (136) Girls and boys make a big portion of the everyday people participating. Grassroots creativity and amateur production have historically been part of the characteristics of youth cultures. Young people with available free time and access to communication technologies have embraced the Do-It-Yourself ethos and produced media in their bedrooms, schools, and the streets before the existence of the Internet. However, as with the case of other participatory cultures, they productions were under the radar and difficult to find. In the networked information environment, youth participatory cultures such as the ones developed by anime fan-subbers, machinima filmmakers, and video-games modders, are thriving in a global scale. Young people who are active consumers/producers of media are blurring the boundaries between play and labor, work and leisure, by engaging themselves in the labor of love of amateurs.

Although, the new communication environment and forms of cultural production have been criticized by some commentators such as Keen and Terranova alluding to the cacophony of information and the free labor, their arguments are not as convincing as the ones celebrating its potential. For instance, in contrast to the furious attack of Keen to amateur production because is noisy, messy, and lacks expertise, Shirky has showed how doing something for the love of it can be very useful for organizing groups. When the amateur motivation is empowered with the new media tools that facilitate networking and publicity, amateurs are able to coordinate actions in larger scale, attracting other individuals with similar motivations to join them. Especially for girls and boys, who due the ideological and structural constraints of their status of youth, are not usually consider experts and professionals, amateurism is definitely empowering them.

Through the process of making, creative youth is also connecting. As Gauntlet has explained, when individuals make things, they make new connections between the materials they use and the new expressive things they create. They also make connections with other individuals by sharing their creations and contribute to building relationships by sharing the meanings of what they have created. Finally, by making things and sharing them with others, individuals feel greater connection with the world. They are active rather than passive and feel more engaged with the environment. Thanks to the interactive, expressive, and social, potential of digital media technologies, processes of making things are becoming part of the everyday life of youth people. For example, digital life styles that involve using mobile devices such as smart phones, facilitate the making and sharing of different kinds of media texts independently of the location. Female and male youth using smart phones can create and distribute typographic messages (SMS, IM, emails, tweets), photographs, videos, and audio recordings, everywhere as long as they have connection to the network.

As Lange and Ito have explained in their study of American youth and new media, what is special about content production in the networked information environment, is that the things young people is making with digital technologies are now "at hand and more amenable to modification, remix, and circulation through online networks." (247) Because young people can now participate in different networked publics, they are finding opportunities to not only circulate their work to different audiences but also to learn about media production. In many cases, those audiences provide feedback and recognition to the young people, and help them to find career paths. According to Lange and Ito, "what is significant about contemporary networked publics is that they open up multiple aspirational trajectories for young people. While some may aspire to professionalization and large audiences, others, see their creative work as a serious amateur hobby, pursued for the love of it and not for financial gain." (290) The transformative potential of this networked and public participation is that, as more young amateur media makers find places to discuss, learn, and share their creations, the long-tale of niche audiences expands. This fact, according to Lang and Ito, could motivate other youth to engage in media production in the context of public participation.

In conclusion, young people engaged with digital technology, networks, and participatory cultures, are being empowered. Although not all youth is having access to the technologies and knowledge to participate in the networked environment, the ones that are doing it are gaining autonomy, freedom, independency, and agency. They are becoming at the same time more individualistic and more connected. Because youth cultural and social practices become more visible, the balance of power between youngster and adults is changing. As culture in advanced capitalists societies is becoming more democratic and networked, the messages produced by youth are being heard by a wider audience and are starting to be taking seriously by different publics. New opportunities for civic participation, learning, and entrepreneurship are opening to youth.

References

Benkler, Y. (2006). The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom. New Heaven, Connecticut: Yale University Press.

Castells,M.(2002). The Internet Galaxy: Reflections of the Internet, Business, and Society. Oxford:Oxford University Press.

Jenkins,H.(2006).Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York:New York University Press.

Gauntlett, D. (2010) “Creativity, Participation and Connectedness: An Interview with David Gauntlett.” In Stefan Sonvilla-Weiss', Mashup Cultures. Dordrecht : Springer.

Keen, A. (2007). The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet Is Killing Our Culture and Assaulting Our Economy. New York: Doubleday.

Karaganis, Joe. (2008). “The Ecology of Control: Filters, Digital Rights Management, and Trusted Computing." In Structures of Participation in Digital Culture, edited by Joe Karaganis. New York: Social Science Research Council. Pp. 256-280.

Ito, M., Baumer, S., Bittanti, M., boyd, d., Cody, R., Herr-Stephenson, B., Horst, H. A., Lange, P. G., Mahendran, D., Martinez, K. Z., Pascoe, C. J., Perkel, D., Robinson, L. Sims, C., & Tripp, L. (2009). Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Livingstone, S. (2002) Young people and new media : childhood and the changing media environment. London : SAGE.

Shirky, Clay. (2010) Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and generosity in a connected age. New York : Penguin Press, 2010.

Terranova, Tiziana "Free Labor," Producing Culture for the Digital Economy. Pluto, 2004.

Watkins, S. C. (2009) The young and the digital : what the migration to social-network sites, games, and anytime, anywhere. Boston: Beacon Press.

Hargittai's works

2015-01-26T21:47:48Z

Lombanaphd: Created page with "== Persisting Effects of Internet Skills on Online Participation == Hargittai et al. == =="

== Persisting Effects of Internet Skills on Online Participation ==
Hargittai et al.

== ==

Youth and digital life styles

2015-01-20T18:08:51Z

Lombanaphd: Created page with "The perspective of digital lifestyles groups researchers who look at online everyday practices, connectivity, mobility, and uses of social media by young people. Some of the r..."

The perspective of digital lifestyles groups researchers who look at online everyday practices, connectivity, mobility, and uses of social media by young people. Some of the researchers from this perspective have emphasized the unique characteristics of the youth that uses digital media and have even labeled with names such as the "Net Generation" (Tapscott) or "Digital Natives" (Palfrey and Gasser).

In Growing up Digitally, (1998) Tapscott argues that young people growing up with the internet are very different from any generation before them (baby-boomer adults). For Tapscoot, everyday use of digital technology has an impact in the personalities and identities, including their attitudes and approach to learning. He has a kind of technological determinist approach to the analysis of youth and digital media. For him, the major shift is the change from broadcast to interactive tehcnology. Emphasizing the fact that the new generation uses computers instead of television sets, Tapscott situates youth in an interactive world where they are not just viewer of listeners but also, and overall, users. According to him, child development has changed due to new digital media, especially the computer and the Internet. He argues that young people is getting more knowledgeable, that they believe strongly in individual rights such as privacy and rights to information, and that they are developing strong values towards collaboration, interpersonal networks, and social responsibility.

In Born Digital (2008), Palfrey and Gasser use the term "digital natives" to refer to all youth born after 1980, particularly, the youth that is born in postindustrial societies and belong to the elites. According to them, because this youth has grown up using social digital technologies, they have developed specific practices and skills such as multitasking, sharing of information, and creation of new knowledge and new art forms. Digital media technologies have become mediators of major aspects of teen’s life such as social interactions, friendships, and civic activities. Palfrey and Gasser explain that digital natives relate to information different, they perceive it as malleable, they can control it and reshape it. The authors also point out that youth are constantly connected and they rely on the connected space for getting all the information they need. As Palfrey and Gasser point out, digital natives are "connected to each other in terms of how they relate to information, how they relate to new technologies, and how they relate to one another." (13) The authors express their concern for the existing inequalities in accessing technology and learning the skills of digital natives. They recognize the existing of a digital divide not only between poor and rich countries, but also inside the rich countries themselves. They claim that the biggest concern is the impact of participation gap between "those who are Digital Natives and those who are the same age, but who are not learning about digital technologies and living their lives in the same way." (14) For the authors "the costs of leaving the participation gap unaddressed over time will be higher than we should be willing to bear." (15)

In The Young and the Digital (2009), Craig Watkins, has looked at the youth digital life style by researching the use of social media among American youth. Using the results of a multiyear study, he argues that young people go online to maintain existing relationships with their peers and shows that the participation in online communities necessarily does not lead to social isolation. According to him, social media extend and complement off-line relationships. He states, "life in the online world is intricately connected to life in the off-line world. It always has been and it always will be." (155) By examining how young people use Facebook, MySpace, and World of Warcraft, he reveals that digital mediated interactions are more about interacting with real people rather than with virtual personas, more about doing and sharing with friends than meeting strangers. In his study, Watkins also points out the fluid aspect of the digital lifestyle. Showing how young people moves back and forth between different SNS such as MySpace and Facebook, he claims that being digital means "being fluid and in a constant state of evolution."(95) By participating in different online communities and engaging with social media, young people is able to manage different identities and networks.

In Young People and New Media (2002), Sonia Livingstone, present the analysis of a one year (1997-1998) field study of young users of ICTs across different context such as leisure, home, and family. Using an ecological approach to the study of media, she looks at how youth experiences a mediated live. Analyzing the contexts where young people uses new media, Livingstone describes the multiplication of personally-owned media and the diversification of media forms and contents. She notices the blurring of previously distinct social realms such as home/work, entertainment/information, and education/leisure. The blurring and convergence could be understood as a result of a digital media lifestyle. According to her, due to the development of interactive technologies and the convergence of multiple media formats, there is an increased individualization in the consumption of new media. Towards the end of her book, Livingstone also addresses the theme of literacies in relation to the hypermediated lives that youth is experiencing, and highlights the transformation of the "once-mass audience" into "participatory users of information and communication technologies." According to her, since the contexts of home, family, and leisure have become very important for learning and practicing literacies, researchers and policy makers should try to understand the nature and diversity of domestic practices surrounding new media.

Researchers from this perspective have also looked at the information-seeking practices that youth is constantly doing with digital media. In “Toward a model of the everyday life information needs of urban teenagers," (2006) Agosto, D. E., & Hughes-Hassell, S. established a theoretical model of urban teen development and constructed categories for analyzing their information seeking practices. In their model, urban teens search for information related to the social, emotional, reflective, physical, creative, cognitive, sexual selves. After an extensive review of previous models, Agosto and Hughes conclude that teenagers seek information in order to facilitate the teen-to-adult maturation process. According to them, information seeking is both a self-exploration and world exproration. Young people purposefully seek information in response to perceived needs and they also receive information incidentally through their monitoring of the world.

In “Teens on the Internet: Interpersonal Connection, Identity, and Information,” (2006) P. Greenfield, et al., have found that youth identity experimentation occurs mainly with friends and family, not with strangers. In their study of internet chat and bulletin boards they identify a common peer culture where teens discuss race, sex, and illness. According to them, this culture can be seen particular teen behaviors such as the use of abbreviated linguistic codes, the habit of multitasking, and the way of keeping track of conversation in multiparty internet settings. Although the authors mention the existence of an online teen culture, their description of it is very superficial.

Another study on the uses of Internet in youth everyday life is the one made by S. Jones et al., “Everyday life, online: U.S. college students’ use of the Internet” (2009). They analyze the survey data collected in 29 university campuses in the USA. According to them, Internet use is part of college students' life and students take ubiquitous connectivity and access for granted. They point out that the transition to web 2.0 technologies and the SNS by college students has been seamless and has allowed them to expand their social circle. According to them social communication is the primary use of the Internet and the use for coursework has decreased compared to what students did in 2002. Based on a previous study, Jones et al. identify a pattern of evolution in the use of Internet by USA college students. The evolution goes from using "e-mail and web browsing, to using Google and search functions (reference tool), to MySpace/Facebook and social networks (social communication), to music (entertainment)".

There are several studies about how the uses of social media by young people are related to identity, self-expression, and taste. However due to the limits of time I am not going to review them. I will just mention them and highlight their main focus. Addressing specific issues of identity, danah boyd's “None of This Is Real: Identity and Participation in Friendster” (2008) reveals the dynamics of identity performances that people can make in SNS. In a similar way, Hugo Liu has study SNS profiles from MySpace in order to understand the kind of performance that users make online. In “Social Network Profiles as Taste Performances.” (2007) he argues that SNSs list of interests function as an expressive arena for taste performance. He elaborates a semantic typology of taste statements (prestige, differentiation, authenticity, and theatrical persona) and applies to an statistical analysis of a massive sample of MySpace profiles (127,477). After the analysis, he shows evidence that the prestige and differentiation statements are widely use among MySpace users. In “Taking Risky Opportunities in Youthful Content Creation: Teenagers’ Use of Social Networking Sites for Intimacy, Privacy and Self-Expression” (2008) Sonia Livingstone, studies teens practices of identity construction and management within SNS and considers the risks and opportunities that SNS have triggered among adults.

Youth and Participation

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The concept of participation goes together with the democracy, civic engagement, and community life. Associated with youth, this concept highlights not only the agency that young people has in their society, culture and economy, but also the literacy practices that they develop through their interactions. Hence, the perspective that focuses on participation has been characterized by studies and theories that are related to processes of learning and the development of skills and competences for participating in communities, societies and cultures.

In Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century (2006), Jenkins et al. used the term "participatory culture" to describe a culture with "relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement, strong support for creating and sharing one’s creations, and some type of informal mentorship whereby what is known by the most experienced is passed along to novices. A participatory culture is also one in which members believe their contributions matter, and feel some degree of social connection with one another. (at the least they care what other people think about what they have created)." (3)

According to Jenkins et al. this kind of culture is emerging, becoming more visible as the "culture absorbs and responds to the explosion of new media technologies that make it possible for average consumers to archive, annotate, appropriate, and recirculate media content in powerful new ways." (8) Using as example case studies of young people in the USA, Jenkins et al. stated that young people is taken part of this process through: affiliations, expressions, collaborative problem solving and circulation. Although Jenkins et al. point out that these processes can be either formal or informal, their survey focuses on the informal kind of learning that happens out of school. They claim that media education must take into account the variety of formal and informal contexts in where young people is learning and make a call for incorporating the “new media literacies” in the classroom and out-of-school activities.

The authors claim that beyond the digital divide (unequal access to technology), what is important for American society is to fill the participation gap (unequal access to the opportunities, experiences, skills, and knowledge that will prepare youth for participation in new media culture). In order to address that problem, Jenkins et al. propose a set of skills that they call the new media literacies, and that are the cultural competencies that young people need to acquire in order to become fully active, creative, and ethical participants in contemporary participatory cultures. These skills are play, performance, simulation, appropriation, multitasking, distributed cognition, collective intelligence, judgment, transmedia navigation, networking, and negotiation. As the authors explain each skill and provide examples of how they are being developed by young people, they highlight the fact that the new media literacies shift the focus from individual expression to community involvement.

In Convergence Culture (2006) Jenkins addresses the theme of participatory cultures as a way to explain the changes that are taking place in contemporary media culture. In this book, in particular, he illustrates different kinds of participatory cultures by looking at media fandom and its practices. According to him, the current media environment has made visible to the public the sociocultural practices of fan communities. As he explains, "though this new participatory culture has its roots in practices that have occurred just below the radar of the media industry throughout the twentieth century, the web has pushed that layer of cultural activity into the foreground." (133) Thanks to the infrastructure that networked digital media provide, the sociocultural practices that fans used to have with media are becoming more and more popular. Media consumption turns out to be more participatory. According to Jenkins, the participatory culture of fans, has been produced "by fans and other amateurs for circulation through an underground economy and that draws much of its content from the commercial culture.” (285) Because fan practices such as remix and appropriation are based in an active appropriation of the culture produced by media corporations, the public visibility of participatory culture has disrupted the commercial distribution and consumption of media. In order to illustrate fan practices, Jenkins provide several examples of how youth is engaged in these activities. When he talks about machinima, fan subbing, modding, or fan fiction, he tends to focus on the role that youth has played in the development of these practices and communities.

In "Communities of readers, clusters of practices" (2010), Jenkins revisits previous conceptualizations of participatory cultures and elaborates an argument about their pedagogical potential. According to him, the major characteristic of these cultures is that they are communities, collective enterprises. It is precisely the sense of collective enterprise, as in a community of practice, what creates a shared space. Creativity, in participatory cultures, is understood as a trait of communities. Likewise, expression occurs through collaboration. That is why the ethos of participation, when applied to learning relies on mutual support networks. The emphasis in communities allows Jenkins to make a difference with the kind of learning 2.0 and education 2.0 formulations that tend to only highlight the wonder of the new technologies. For Jenkins, what matters in participatory culture are communities of participants not technologies. He argues that the pedagogy of participatory culture requires that teachers not only teach how to use technology or how to create a video or a podcast. Instead, they should also create the shared space for the formation of a community of practice, and as well allow students to participate in other informal communities of expertise where they can learn.

In this text, Jenkins also addresses the relationship between new media and participatory cultures from a historical perspective. By doing that, he is able to demonstrate not only that participatory cultures have existed long before digital media, but also that some of the practices of fans and amateur communities are not unique to the 21st century. According to Jenkins, the resources new media technologies offers, allow the creation of distinctive forms of participatory culture. For instance, he describes how the emergence of science fiction fandom in the 1920 and 1930 embraced the amateur press publication practices, and how the television fandom encouraged fans to remix footage using home video systems. As he explains, participatory cultures "embraced each new technology as it offered them new affordances which could support their ongoing social and cultural interactions." (241) Practices such as amateur printing, radio production, and home movies production relied not only in the use of new media technologies but more important, in the creation of a community of practitioners. Each community, has had their own assumptions about what cultural practices and identities are meaningful, and what it means to participate. An important question that Jenkins raises is, Are new media literacies just community practices developed before by the advent of digital networked media? In this sense, it is possible to argue that what digital media has enable is the visibility and popularization of participatory cultures and communities of practice.

The Digital Youth Project had also implemented the participatory perspective as part of its analytical framework. In Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out (2010), Ito et al. use the concept of "genres of participation" as a way for understanding and categorizing youth engagement with media cultures. According to them, there are two high level genre categories: friendship-driven and interest-driven. The former is related to the everyday negotiations with friend s and peers and involve practices that grow out of friendships in specific local worlds. The latter is related to hobbies, specialized activities, niche identities, and career aspirations. It focuses on practices that expand an individual social circle based on interests. As Ito et al. explain, "these genres represent different investments that youth make in particular forms of sociability and differing forms of identification with media genres." (18)

The two high level genres of participation correspond to different genres of youth culture, social network structures, and modes of learning. For instance, in relation to genres of youth culture and online participation, interest-driven corresponds to geeking out, and friendship-driven correspond to hanging out. Ito et al. also identify a third genre of youth culture and online participation, messing around, which could be associated with the both interest-driven and friendship-driven. In fact, messing around could act as a transition or bridge between the two high-level genre categories. The question of transition between genres is of crucial importance for understanding process of learning that bridge formal and informal contexts. In this book, Ito et al. focus on the informal contexts and leave unresolved the questions of how to the transitions between genres can happen. However, the authors are able to provide a detailed and comprehensive account of how these genres of participation happen across different contexts in which youth engage with digital media such as friendship, intimacy, family, gaming, creative production, and work. After analyzing each context, Ito et al. conclude that young people has diverse learning opportunities through their engagement with digital media and their interaction with peers, and offer some recommendations to educators and policy makers. They point out that, “educators and policy makers need to understand that participation in the digital age means more than being able to access ‘serious’ online information and culture; it also means the ability to participate in social and recreational activities online”(p. 347)

Networked youth

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Scholars from this perspective understand networks as the major cultural and organizational logic that structures culture, society, and economy. The emphasis on networks highlights the interconnectedness between people, media, computers, and people, media and computers. Networked society, networked culture, networked environment, networked publics. You name it. The network, as Castells has stated, is the dominant organizational paradigm. The networked era is the result of a historical process in where the proliferation and adoption of computer-based communication technologies (digital media) has created a powerful interconnected infrastructure for communication and for production/distribution of information.

As Benkler has explained in The Wealth of the Networks, due to the declining price of computation, communication and storage, the material requirements for effective information production and communication are now owned by a great number of individuals. Including young people, a significant part of the world's population has now access to computer-based digital media technologies that allow them to produce, and distribute information, knowledge, and culture on a global scale. In postindustrial countries, networked digital media has started to be taken for granted by teens and young adults.

According to Benkler, in the new networked information environment, the removal of physical constraints on information production creates the conditions for a new kind of culture that is more transparent, malleable, self-reflective, and democratic. What he calls networked culture is a kind of folk culture "where many more of us participate actively in making cultural moves and finding meaning in the world around us." (15) Peer-to-peer modes of production and many-to-many modes of communication are characteristics of this culture. Although Benkler does not talk specifically about youth in his book, some of the exemplary cases he uses to illustrate his argument are projects that young people has certainly joined such as Wikipedia, Linux, machinima and MMORPGs.

In Networked Publics, a thorough collaborative study of digital networked media and sociocultural transformations, Varnelis describes "Networked Culture" as characteristic of the historical moment that follows postmodernism, a societal condition that is the result of the evolution of the Internet and mobile telephony. According to him, the most significant change propitiated by this culture is the nature of publics, who are not longer simply audiences or consumers. Instead, they are networked publics where people can actively participate and produce political commentary, propaganda, cultural criticism, knowledge, and information. As Mimi Ito, another collaborator this book has said, "rather than assume that everyday media engagement is passive or consumptive, the term publics foregrounds a more engaged stance." These publics use the power of decentralized networks to communicate bottom-up, top-down, as well as side-to-side. According to Ito, "Publics can be reactors, (re)makers and (re)distributors, engaging in shared culture and knowledge through discourse and social exchange as well as through acts of media reception." The notion of networked publics highlights the rise of new forms of many-to-many communication, where distributing, aggregating, and producing information and culture have become available to ordinary people. Furthermore, thanks to the development of the multimedia capabilities of the Internet, publics can circulate both professional and amateur media. As Ito say, "now even casual communication, personal stories and opinion, and amateur works can be made easily available to large audiences."

danah boyd has investigated young people use of SNS as a form of participation in networked publics. In "Why Youth <3 Social Network Sites," (2008) she argues that SNS are networked publics characterized by four properties: persistence, searchability, replicability, and invisible audiences. According to her, SNS "allow publics to gather. At the same time, by serving as a space where speech takes place, they are also publics themselves." SNS are both spaces and audiences that are mediated; they exist thanks to technological networks such as the Internet. Having teens' use of MySpace as example, boyd describes different practices such as profile construction and its relationship with identity issues, teens' consideration of public/private space, and young people critical social development online. boyd concludes that by using SNSs teens are learning to navigate networked publics, developing strategies for managing the social complexities of these environments.

In a more recent text, "Social Network Sites as Networked Publics: Affordances, Dynamics, and Implications" (2010) boyd provides a more complete definition and description of the type of networked publics that are SNS. She claims that these networked publics are "simultaneously (1) the space constructed through networked technologies and (2) the imagined collective that emerges as a result of the intersection of people, technology, and practice." As boyd explains, networked publics have the same functions of other types of publics allowing people to gather for social, cultural, and civic purposes and helping them to connect with a world beyond their close friends and family. After describing the affordances and dynamics, boyd makes the argument that networked publics are transforming other existing publics, pointing out that the widespread of SNS are blurring the distinctions between networked publics and other publics, bringing the dynamics of the digital to the physical world.

The most coherent articulation between networks, youth, and digital media, is the one elaborated by the researchers of the Digital Youth Project, and their book Hanging Out, Messing Around, Geeking Out (2009) By focusing on youth, Ito et al., are able to ground the theory of networked culture and networked publics on the mediated practices that youth is developing. For them, the term 'networked publics' "foregrounds the active participation of a distributed social network in the production and circulation of culture and knowledge." (19) By studying everyday practices, researchers were able to observe how networked publics reshape how youth participate in their given social networks of peers in school and local communities. Ito et al. use two genre categories to describe the kind of networked publics that they found: friendship-driven and interest-driven. On the one hand, friendship-driven networked publics replicate existing practices of hanging out and communicating with friends, they are locally bound, tied to existing formal institutions such as school or church. On the other, interest-driven networked publics enable young people to have access to specialized publics that focus in particular hobbies or areas of interest. As Ito et al. explain, the specialized networked publics allow youth to connect with other media creators or gamers that have greater expertise or that are looking for mentorship or collaborations. According to them, these networked publics turn out to be very useful for young media creators and gamers who can use them "for distributing, publicizing, and sometimes even getting famous or paid for the work that they create." (20)

Home Chapter

2015-01-13T00:23:28Z

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Andres Lombana Bermudez Dissertation-in-Progress  Crossing New Worlds: New Media Practices and Assimilation Trajectories of Latino/Hispanic Immigrant Youth Growing-up in Central Texas. December 7, 2014
Chapter II

0. Introduction
The experience of immigration is overall a family affair. Family dynamics, relationships, and resources are essential to the immigrant youth process of assimilation. They shape many of the assimilation outcomes across multiple dimensions such as language, culture, socioeconomics, and education. Hence, researching the context of the family is crucial for understanding how the interaction between individual and structural factors shape different trajectories of assimilation, various forms of acculturation, and particular repertoires of new media practices.

I have divided this chapter in two major sections. In the first, I situate the five families of our study in relation to an assimilation process that is multidimensional and uneven. After introducing the five working class Latino/Hispanic immigrant families with a series of short profiles, I discuss the cultural dimension of the process of assimilation and highlight its importance in shaping immigrant family dynamics. Then I address the general characteristics of the Latino/Hispanic families that have been studied by researchers in the U.S., particularly their use of language and media technologies. In the second section, I analyze the five different family contexts according to their resources and parenting styles, map their domestic media environments, and try to describe the agency that immigrant youth exercised in these contexts and its outcomes in relation to the process of assimilation. In order to examine youths’ agency I focus in the activities they developed through their engagement with the new media tools and networks they accessed at their homes. Particularly, my analysis focuses on three media practices they developed using new media technologies (homework, media consumption, and media production) and two of the new media skills they acquired (distributed cognition and transmedia navigation).

1. Immigrant Families
Because immigration is a family affair, the process of assimilation cannot be understood without looking at the context of the home. Especially for children and youth, resources and relationships acquired, mobilized, and developed at home shape their assimilation trajectories. It is precisely within the familial context where researchers have started to analyze the immigration process as an intergenerational one in where structural and contextual factors of the host society interact with internal individual characteristics. Family composition, parental resources, values, language, and sociocultural practices, for instance, are some of the individual factors that have been measured across several assimilation studies. (Portes & Zhou 1993; Rumbaut 1996; Zhou 1997; Portes & Rumbaut 2001; Kasinitz et al. 2008; Alba and Nee 2003; Alba et al. 2011) While structural factors emerge from the social, geography, cultural, and economic macro contexts, individual-level factors remain in micro contexts such as the one of the family.

Studying the family, household, or home, has been useful for understanding the individual and familial transformations that occur as immigrants incorporate to the new country. Focusing in this context as a unit of analysis, immigration scholars have been able to reveal some of the complexities of the process of assimilation to a new society and the multiple changes that are experienced in terms of gender roles, family relationships, language, and cultural norms. (Chávez 1985; Hondagneu-Sotelo 1999; Pessar 1982; Hondagneu-Sotelo 1994; Kibria 1993; Menjivar 2000; Velez-Ibañez and Greenberg 1992) While some researchers have privileged the study of adult’s relationships and functions within the immigrant family (Donato 1993; Hirsch 1999; Hondagneu-Sotelo 1994, 1999; Kibria 1993; Menjivar 2000; Tienda and Booth 1991), others have focused their analysis in the study of the children and youth. For instance, researchers have studied the relationships between parents and children in the processes of language socialization at home (e.g., Baquedano-López 1998; Zentella 1997, Orellana 2009); the impact of the immigrant children’s educational experiences in family life (e.g., Delgado-Gaitan 1992; Valdés 1996); children and youth' media usage (Katz 2014; Moran 2011); and the relationship between children’s cultural assimilation, identity development, and psychological well-being (e.g., Suárez-Orozco and Suárez-Orozco 2001). Across several longitudinal studies, assimilation scholars have also analyzed youth trajectories of incorporation, especially of the "new second generation," focusing on large-scale social patterns, parental resources, and the long term outcomes of immigrant youth assimilation process (Rumbaut 1996; Zhou 1997; Portes & Rumbaut 2001; Kasinitz et al. 2008).
Immigrant youth experiences are heterogeneous and as diverse as their family socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds and their contexts of reception. Family dynamics, parenting styles, modes of incorporation, and the resources that immigrant parents have brought with them and have cultivated in the new country, shape multiple dimensions of children and youth assimilation process. Because not all immigrants start their assimilation trajectories with the same individual and structural factors, their social mobility and cultural participation needs to be understood intergenerationally according to their particular circumstances. This is especially relevant when analyzing the pathways of immigrants from Latin America and Mexico because they come from different backgrounds and arrive in diverse contexts of reception. Given the nature of their journeys and the social inequalities of their countries of origin, many of the so-called Latino/Hispanic immigrants arrive in the U.S. with low educational attainment and few economic resources. Hence, it could be said that they start their immigrant assimilation trajectories from a position of disadvantage. In the case of the Mexican immigrants who have arrived to the U.S. during the last four decades, for instance, it is very clear that the majority of them came to work in menial jobs. Data from 2009 showed that Mexican immigrants are overwhelmingly represented in jobs that are low skilled, including construction, transportation, and service occupations (Brick et al. 2011). Furthermore, compared with other immigrants, Mexicans have the lowest levels of formal education. According to a report from 2011, 65% of Mexican immigrants 25 and older have less than a high school degree compared to 32% of all other foreign-born adults. (Brick et al. 2011).
1.1. An Intergenerational Voyage: The Movements of Five Families with Mexican Origin.
"To be able to work more, to live more comfortably than in Mexico, mostly that’s why we moved here. There I didn’t have – there is work but they don’t pay much, there isn’t too much money, that’s why I came." (Mr. Florez, Miguel's Father)
Gabriela(14), Inara(19), Miguel (14), Antonio (17), and Sergio (18) were all members of immigrant families with Mexican origin. All of their parents migrated to Texas in search of economic opportunities and with the goal of becoming part of the U.S. labor force and the dream of improving their lives. Given the few resources they brought, and the market demand for low skilled labor, all these immigrant families started their assimilation trajectories in the U.S. by being incorporated to the working-class. At the moment of our fieldwork, all of these families were continuing their assimilation process, moving not only geographically, but also culturally, economically and socially. Settled up in the north of Austin metropolitan area, all these parents and children lived in an ethnically and racially diverse suburban area that had both low middle and working class households. All the children had been attending public schools in the U.S., and with the exception of two families, both parents were employed and contributed with their income to the households. As each of the journeys of these immigrant families reveal, they had advanced in their process of assimilation across multiple dimensions according to the different social, economic, cultural, technological, and human resources they had brought, cultivated, and mobilized. Their assimilation process has been uneven and multidirectional, and different members of the families, in particularly youths, had assimilated faster than adults across the cultural and linguistic dimension.
Through a series of family profiles I will try to provide a concise picture of the voyages that each of the subjects from this study, and their parents, has been experiencing during their migration. Movement is an essential feature of immigration, and both youth and their parents experience it at different paces, with different degrees of agency, and with different outcomes. The family profiles trace their movements across space, time, culture, and social class, and are intended to introduce the unique characteristics of the family contexts where Gabriela, Inara, Miguel, Antonio, and Sergio grew up. Although they are not intended to be comprehensive, the profiles outline the families' assimilation trajectories, and highlight some of the most important structural and personal factors that have shaped the incorporation of these Latino/Hispanic youths to the U.S. Despite showing the heterogeneity of these journeys, the profiles are also intended to reveal some common patterns, especially in relation to the lack of resources brought by the parents at the moment of entering the U.S. All of these families were assimilating to the new country in complex and uneven ways, but only one of them, the one of Gabriela, was in route of transitioning to the American middle class.
The Aguirre Family (Inara del Carmen Aguirre)
Mr. and Ms. Aguirre moved to the U.S. thirty years ago from a rural town in the northern Mexican state of Coahuila, in search of economic opportunities. With fair educational attainment (both had graduated from high school), little knowledge of English, and few material resources, they first settled up in Houston and were able to start working in menial jobs and raising a family. Mr. Aguirre worked as a gardener mowing lawns in middle class suburban houses, while his wife stayed at home taking care of their two U.S. born sons and eventually found opportunities doing low skill jobs as a housekeeper. One year after Inara was born in 1993, the whole family moved to Austin as Mr. Aguirre was looking for ways of starting his own landscaping business in a smaller city. This movement helped the family to continue advancing their assimilation process to the U.S. working class, and moving upwardly in socioeconomic terms. The two parents had improved their English skills, became U.S residents, and the three children were enrolled in U.S. public schools. Although the two older male brothers graduated from high school and dropped out local community college, the younger, Inara, was about to finish high school and wanted to study fashion design.
In Austin, Mr. Aguirre worked for the City in the maintenance department and had managed to grow a landscaping enterprise where he employed his two older sons. Released from the tasks of child rearing, Ms Aguirre enrolled in ESL classes and obtained an associate degree as a nurse's assistant. After living in a neighborhood closer to downtown area for nine years (Muller), the family moved to the northwest part of the city in what used to be the suburbs, and lived in an ample old suburban house Mr. Aguirre bought. As the two older sons became independent and found ways of renting their own places, only Inara continued to live in the house with her two parents. Spanish was the spoken language at home, and the media domestic environment was fair and distributed across the bedrooms and the living room. Besides having lived in Houston for twelve years and in Austin for eighteen, the Aguirre family had cultivated their transnational resources and maintained their connections with their extended family in Mexico. They visited their hometown in Coahuila periodically for vacations, received family guests from Mexico in their house in Austin during holidays, and allowed their children to live with their grandmother in Mexico during several summers.
The Chapa Family (Antonio)
From a rural town in the state of San Luis Potosi, northern Mexico, the Chapa family migrated to Central Texas 20 years ago in the search of safety and economic opportunities. Both parents brought with them few human and economic resources. They did not speak English and their literacy level in Spanish was low since they had only completed elementary school in Mexico. They immigration process happened in a stepwise manner. First, Mr. Chapa migrated to Dallas, started to work in the informal construction sector, and rented a house. Two years later, Ms. Chapa and Maria, the older children, reunited with him. While Mr. Chapa worked long hours taking several construction jobs, Ms. Chapa took care of the house and Maria. After a couple of years living in Dallas and saving money, they decided to move to Austin, a city that according to Mr. Chapa was calmer, smaller, and easier to navigate. In Austin, the Chapa family continued their process of assimilation and expanded its members with two U.S. born children (Antonio, the one of the middle, and Jose, the youngest). Parents kept working hard in low skill jobs and learned basic English skills through their interactions at work and with the help of their children who acted as translators. After living in a small house in the north west of the city, the family moved to an old suburban house that Mr. Chapa was able to buy. Slowly, the family continued assimilating to the U.S. working class and moving upwardly. The three children were fluent in English and went to elementary, middle, and high school. Maria graduated from FHS two years ago, Antonio finished last year, and Jose is in his freshman year. Mr Chapa became a U.S. citizen and continued working in construction and Ms. Chapa obtained a green card and started to work as a janitor in a cleaning service company. Although Spanish was the spoken language at home, English was also practiced by children through their multiple interactions with the new media tools and networks they could access at the household. Although their home media environment was not rich, it was fair and played a central role in both the cultural assimilation to the U.S and the maintenance of contact with the Mexican and Hispanic/Latino cultures. Despite the fact that the Chapa family was able to make periodical visits to their home town in San Luis Potosi in years previous to the economic crisis and the increasing narco violence in northern Mexico, the hardship of recent years have limited their availability to travel back to their country of origin and cultivate their transnational resources.
Martinez Family (Sergio)
The Martinez family journey is a story of separations and reunions, movements back and forth between Mexico and the U.S., Texas and California. From a rural town in the state of Tamaulipas, northeastern Mexico, Ms. Martinez and her recently Mexican born child (Sergio) moved to the U.S. in search of economic opportunities, safety, and family support. They left in Mexico a divorced father and two older children. As a single mother with a baby, Ms. Martinez settled up in Stockton, California, where her sisters lived, and started a new life. With few economic resources, low levels of education (middle school), and the help of her extended family, Ms. Martinez raised Sergio in California. Thanks to having been born in the U.S., Ms. Martinez had the benefits of being a U.S. citizen (second generation immigrant) even though he had lived most of her life in Mexico. Taking advantage of her citizenship she was able to obtain for Sergio a resident permit and green card. Despite her little knowledge of English, Ms. Martinez found low skilled jobs in the cleaning sector, and worked very hard in order to take care of Sergio. Although her two older sons visited Ms. Martinez in California several times, only the one in the middle, Mario, decided to live with her and lived in Stockton for few years, while the oldest, Julia, decided to settle up in Texas and start a family. Meanwhile, Mr. Martinez, the father, never migrated to the U.S.
After fourteen years living in California, Ms. Martinez and Sergio moved to Austin, Texas, in order to reunite with Julia and Mario. Julia had already had three children and lived with his husband in a big and old suburban house in the North East of Austin. Mario, had moved to Texas after dropping out community college in Stockton and had also started to raise a family in a low income suburban household near his sister home. After settling up in Julia's house and customizing a garage as a one master bedroom, Ms. Martinez and Sergio adapted very fast to the life in their new home and city. They found support in Julia and Mario, who, although had low wage jobs and were very busy, lived now very close. Once in Austin, Sergio entered his junior year in high school and Ms. Martinez started to take care of her new home and reconfigured family. She cleaned, cook and helped to raise her grand children, as well as contributed to the home budget with the salary she earned working as a janitor at a church school. The reunification, allowed the family to move upward in their assimilation process and access more social, economic, cultural, and human resources. Although Spanish was the language spoken at home by the adults, English was spoken by children and heard through multiple media devices. Julia worked in the service industry and was fluent in English, and her husband owned a truck and worked in construction. The domestic media environment was fair, with television sets in all the bedrooms and in the living room, satellite television, several videogame consoles, wireless internet connection, an old desktop computer, a high fi stereo, and a telephone landline. The Martinez family did not maintain their transnational connections in Mexico, and Sergio had just visited Tamaulipas once for meeting his father at the age of fourteen years old.
The Flores Family (Miguel)
From Mexico City, center of Mexico, the Flores family migrated to the U.S. in a stepwise manner and in search of economic and educational opportunities. First, Mr. Flores moved to Austin, Texas, nine years ago, leaving in Mexico City his wife and two younger tween children (Miguel and Marcus). With few economic resources, undocumented, little knowledge of English, and low level of education (middle school), Mr. Flores settled up in the south Austin with the help of his two older brothers who had migrated years before and worked in the service industry. Very quickly Mr. Flores started to work in local restaurants, was able to manage having several jobs as a cook, and saved money. After two years of hard work, Mr. Flores was ready to receive his wife and six years old twin children who traveled from Mexico City undocumented. He rented a mobile house in the north of Austin where the reunited family settled down. Once in Austin, Ms. Flores took care of the house and childrearing, while Mr. Flores continued advancing his career as a cook working in several kitchens and improving his skills. The twin brothers went to public schools, learned English very fast, and advanced to high school. As Mr. Florez increased his income the domestic media environment became richer with several television screens, video game consoles, and a desktop computer. The family modes of transportation became more flexible with two USV cars. The Flores family was moving upward and integrating to the U.S. working class despite their undocumented condition. They also moved geographically within the city of Austin. As the family expanded with two U.S. born children (second generation and U.S citizens), and Miguel and his twin brother finished middle school, Mr. and Ms. Flores decided to move to a bigger mobile house located in the northeastern fringe of Austin. Although Ms. Flores continued to take care of the house and childrearing, Miguel and his twin brother started to help taking care of the younger brothers (5 years old, and 3 years old) so their mother could engage in activities outside the house such as taking English classes in a community program. Given their undocumented condition of many of its members, the Flores family could not visit their extended family in Mexico City and did not maintain transnational resources.
The Garcia Family (Gabriela Maria)
Mr. and Ms. Garcia migrated to the U.S. from different Latin American countries and met in the U.S. after they have independently settled up. On the one hand, Ms. Garcia came to Austin twenty-three years ago from a rural town in Honduras, a country that faced a political crisis and war conflict. She migrated to the U.S. in search of safety and economic opportunities and brought with some economic resources, little knowledge of English, and low educational attainment (high school degree). On the other, Mr. Garcia moved to Austin twenty years ago from the border city of Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, in northeastern Mexico. He brought with him fair economic resources, some knowledge of English language, middle educational attainment (graduated from high school and attended college for a few years) and cultural know how of the U.S. At the moment of his migration, Mr. Garcia had already been back and forth several times between the U.S. and Mexico and had cultivated social resources at both sides of the border. One of his brothers had lived in Austin for several years and helped him to settle up and quickly find a job. Despite not having college degrees, both Ms. and Mr. Garcia have been able to venture into some kind of entrepreneurship leveraging their social resources, especially from other family members who lived in Austin. Mr. Garcia had a managerial position in his own window screen business, and Ms. Garcia worked independently as a personal chef (catering service), a nursing aid, and a housekeeper in an exclusive neighborhood in the south west of the city.
The Garcia family was trying to move upward fast and made several efforts to transition to the mainstream middle class. Besides their occupation advancement, the family was in the process of improving its educational achievement. Gabriela (14) and Eva (12), the two U.S. born children (second generation immigrants), were in school advance placement classes and had been constantly pushed by their parents to succeed academically and to pursue a postsecondary education. Thanks to its economic well-being, the family built a rich media domestic environment in a suburban household located in the northeast of the city. Both parents have learned to speak and read English, and although were not totally proficient, tried to communicate in this second language with their children inside the home and to engage in communal media practices. In their efforts to assimilate to the mainstream middle class and foster a nuclear family, Mr. and Ms. Garcia lived in the same household as friends although they were divorced and each had its own room. That unusual configuration made the interactions inside the Garcia family very unique, and Mr. Garcia was the person who not only provided most of the economic, cultural, and human resources, but also the one who was spending more time taking care and monitoring the two girls. Although the social resources of Mr. and Ms. Garcia did not expand transnationally and they did not maintain connections and did not visit their countries of origin, their social ties within the U.S. were fair and expanded across several states. The family frequently enjoyed visiting extended family members in California and Florida, and also received several guests in his house in Austin.

1.2. Cultural Changes
Among all the transformations that go along with the process of assimilation to a new country, the ones related to culture are intensively experienced at the family context. The cultural dimension of the process of assimilation alters family dynamics and relationships among its members as they assimilate to the host mainstream dominant culture at different paces. As immigrants confront the challenges of living in a new country they develop particular repertoires of cultural practices such as language and media uses, social norms, consumer preferences, and lifestyles. Family repertoires or assimilation vary according to the social, cultural, economic, and human resources parents have brought, the context of reception, and practical decisions that members of the family take in their everyday life. Languages spoken at home, celebration of ethnic rituals, ethnic media consumption, food traditions and religious practices, for instance, are all part of the cultural repertoires that are developed at the family context and that alter the process of cultural assimilation in complex ways.
Adaptation to the host culture, normative rules, system values, and new language could be challenging and stressful for all members of the immigrant family. For children and youth, however, cultural assimilation can be more complicated given the fact that they acculturate faster than their parents as they have exposure to mainstream institutions such as the school, native peer culture, and have more leisure time for engaging in activities related to the new culture such as mainstream media consumption. As children and youth gain more cultural skills, their position and role within the family can change and the differential pace of cultural assimilation between parents and youth can generate tensions within the family. What several social scientists have described as "dissonant acculturation" precisely refers to the way in which different levels of cultural assimilation can create conflicts and behavioral problems within the family as children and youth feel alienated from parents. (Suarez Orozco M. & Suarez-Orozco C. 2001; Hernandez and McGoldrick 1999; Portes & Rumbaut 2001; Rumbaut 2005)
In the context of family life, cultural assimilation can have different outcomes, both positive and negative, and influence other dimensions of assimilation such as the economic and social ones. Segmented assimilation scholars, for instance, have theorized and empirically tested the relationship between socioeconomic outcomes and three different types of cultural adaptation. In their typology of intergenerational cultural assimilation, Alejandro Portes and Ruben Rumbaut explained how three different parent-child acculturation styles were aligned with three different pathways of socioeconomic mobility. (1) "Consonant acculturation" is related to the upward socioeconomic assimilation pathway and occurs when parents and children join a process of rapid abandonment of the home language and culture, and together search for integration into the mainstream culture while fostering their family cohesion. This of cultural assimilation occurs in a context of reception of mainstream middle class. (2) The "selective acculturation" type also leads to upward socioeconomic assimilation but a slower pace, as parent and children combine elements of the new and original culture, in a reception context of a co-ethnic community and working class. Parents and children gradually learn the new language and mainstream cultural repertoires, while at the same time retaining their original language and some of their ethnic values and norms. (3) "Dissonant acculturation" is related to downward socioeconomic assimilation and takes place when children learn the English language and adopt mainstream lifestyles faster than their parents in a reception context of racial discrimination and poverty. This process leads to intergenerational conflict and the reversal of roles within the family. Children assume adult responsibilities at an early age and have to act as brokers between their parents and the host culture. According to researchers, in the “dissonant acculturation” intergenerational tensions emerge because children feel embarrassed of their parents as they try to assimilate to the mainstream. (Portes & Rumbaut 2001; Rumbaut 2005)
Trajectory
Context of Reception
Outcomes
Acculturation
Upward
Middle class
High education and occupational attainment, Integration into the economy
Consonant. Parents and children fully adopt mainstream culture. Monolinguism. Preservation of parental authority
Upward
Working class and strong co-ethnic communities
High education achievement, time-honored integration into the economy through education
Selective. Bicultural. Bilingual. Parents and children adopt certain mainstream cultural practices. Preservation of parental authority.
Downward
Working class and hostile context of reception characterized by discrimination
Low educational and occupational achievement
Dissonant. Marginalized. Parents do not learn to speak English. Lost of parental authority.

However, despite being an important model for the study of immigrant families, the three different acculturation types described in the theory of segmented assimilation do not take into account the complexity and messiness that happen when cultural transformations are observed on the ground. As other scholars of immigration have pointed out, segmented assimilation theory is too pessimistic and exaggerates the structural factors working against nonwhite immigrants (Alba and Nee 2003; Waters et al. 2010; Kasinitz et al. 2004, 2008). By doing so, the segmented assimilation theory idealizes the relationship between race-ethnicity and poverty, ignoring that immigrants can have social mobility even though they keep their racial and ethnic markers. As social scientists have started to prove through empirical, multi-method, and longitudinal studies, the so called "dissonant acculturation" does not necessary determine a downward process of socioeconomic mobility towards marginalization, but it could also be related to a slow upward movement within the working class. In the longitudinal "New York Second Generation" study, for instance, Kasinitiz and a group of researchers found that children of immigrants growing up in New York City, despite living a context of racial discrimination, poor schools, and the lack of economic opportunities in an hourglass economy with a shrinking middle class, are not only doing better than their parents, but also better than some of their native peers. (Kasinitz et al. 2004, 2008; Waters et al. 2010) According to their findings the different types of acculturation (consonant, dissonant, selective) outlined by Portes & Rumbaut (2010) do not seem to matter much for the socioeconomic outcomes of second-generation immigrants. (Waters et al. 2010)
In the case of all the five Latino/Hispanic families from my dissertation study, cultural changes could be described as a mixture of "selective" and "dissonant acculturation". As I intent to reveal through this chapter, as well as through the whole dissertation, the acculturation process of these families and their youth turned out to be more uneven and messier than the one described by segmented assimilation researchers and did not necessary lead towards a downward trajectory. Disparities between the acculturation processes of parents and children were actually quite big and, although they did not generate that much intergenerational tension (at least during the fieldwork period), several reversal roles and brokering activities emerged in all the five families. Cultural transformation, therefore, occurred both a selective and a dissonant manner. Given the low social, human, and economic resources of almost all the parents (the only exception was the Garcia family), all of them confronted acculturation gaps that were especially felt in the use of language and digital media technologies. The socioeconomic outcome of the cultural adaptation, however, was not marginalization despite the dissonance. These families were assimilating socioeconomically to the U.S. working class in the particular reception context of the fastest growing city in Texas and a robust high tech economy that demanded low skilled labor in several services such as construction, cleaning, food, and gardening. In Austin, these families encountered a reception context where some of their original cultural repertoires were already mixed and enrooted in the everyday life of the city in the form of foods (e.g. breakfast tacos, tamales, aguas frescas), language (e.g. Spanish, names of the streets), ethnic media (radio, television, print), and music (e.g. tex-mex, conjunto banda, cumbia). Although their position in this reception context was low given the deep history of subordination of Mexican origin people living in the U.S. southwest territories, it also offered opportunities of adaptation and slow socioeconomic mobility that compared to the ones they would find in their countries of origin, was better in terms of earning capacity, education, safety and access to new media tools and networks.
In order to understand the complex and uneven cultural assimilation process that these five immigrant youths have been navigating at the family life context, I will briefly discuss some of the cultural characteristics of the Latino/Hispanic family focusing on the issues of language and digital media use.
1.3. The Latino/Hispanic Family
The study of Latino/Hispanic families in the USA has been the topic of a prolific scholarly research since the 1970s. Sociologists, economists, anthropologists, educators, geographers, psychologists and communication scholars have studied the Latino/Hispanic domestic sphere in order to understand immigration, labor, delinquency, teen pregnancy, educational attainment, youth development and media consumption. As a result, an emergent body of knowledge on the cultural characteristics of Latino/Hispanic families has emerged.
Relying in quantitative data collected by the U.S. government and other institutions, early studies on Latino/Hispanic families overemphasized their disadvantaged position and fostered the creation of a pathological narrative of a "culture of poverty" and social ill around this segment of the population. As Robin Hardwood et al. state, "Demographic trends have contributed to research emphasizing social ills among Latinos" and have created a bias "towards problem-focused research in studies of Latino children, youth, and families." (22) For instance, one of the long lasting assumptions made by U.S. social scientists was that low academic achievement and failure was directly related to the cultures of Latino/Hispanic families, especially Mexican ones. Such bias positioned these cultures as a deficit and contributed to strengthening ideologies of racial/ethnic superiority and hierarchy (Suarez-Orozco and Suarez-Orozco 1995; Valdez 1996; Villenas and Deyhle 1999). In reaction to that, some scholars made the call for more studies that examined the Latino/Hispanic population in terms of normative growth, development and resilience (Fisher et al. 1998; Garcia Coll et al. 1995).
Other scholars turned to critical qualitative methods in order to analyze this population in their specific sociocultural, political, and economical contexts, revealing their cultural strengths, resilience, and agency. Since the 1990s, sociologists and anthropologists in the field of education and youth development have developed various critical qualitative studies about Latino/Hispanic families. Understanding Latino/Hispanic as a heterogeneous group, researchers have started to reveal the diversity of this population and its cultural power in a context of the racial and social inequalities and demand for low skill labor. Ethnographic works have documented the voices and stories of Latinos/Hispanics and provided new insights on their contexts and practices, revealing them as positive, creative, and appropriate. Instead of analyzing the Mexican and Latino/Hispanic culture as a deficit, these researchers focused on its strengths, and explained how cultural traits such as bilingualism, strong family cohesiveness (familismo), and ethnic notions of education (educacion) have become resources to achieve in the U.S. (Suarez Orozco 1995; Delgado-Gaitan and Trueba ; Trueba 1993; Valenzuela & Dornbusch 1994).
As researchers have tried to come to terms with the homogenous notion of the Latino/Hispanic population and its heterogeneous reality, they have been able to identify ethnic characteristics that persist across most of the U.S. Latino/Hispanics and are especially salient among the ones with Mexican origin. Although these traits serve to differentiate Latino/Hispanics from the dominant culture, they are not static and remain in constant change as immigrant and host cultures interact, come closer, and influence each other. Familismo (familism), respeto (respect), marianismo (marianism), machismo (machism), and educación (moral education), are some of the most salient values that shape Latino/Hispanic family dynamics, parent-chidlren relationships, and gender roles. Familismo refers to the exitence of a strong family orientation, identification, and cohesiveness in which all the family members feel responsibility and attachment for each other (Baca Zinn 1982; Cortes 1995; Fulligni et al. 1999; Marin 1993; Parra-Cardona et al. 2006). The value of respeto is related to the conformity with strict age and gender roles, the respect towards elders and authority, and can at sometimes involve passivity and lack of questioning (Sabogal et al. 1987; Valdez 1996). Marianismo and machismo, are associated with the specific gender roles that mothers and fathers plays within the family (D’Alonzo and Sharma 2010; Ingoldsby 1991; Jezzini et al. 2008; Opazo, R. M 2008; Paternostro 1998). While the latter emphasizes the mother self-sacrifice and main role in child-rearing, the former refers to the role of the father reinforcing a patriarchal culture. Finally, the value of educación refers to a broader and encompassing notion of education that includes both moral education (being good) and academic attainment. On the one hand, the Hispanic/Latino parents emphasize moral development as they make several efforts for making sure their children "follow the good path of life" (el buen camino) (Azmitia and Brown 2002; Delgado-Gaitan 1992; Sabogal et al. 1987; Reese et al. 1995; Valdez 1996). On the other, researchers have also found out that academic attainment is also part of the value of educación, and, contrary to popular U.S. dominant culture mythologies, Latino/Hispanic parents have higher aspirations for their children. (Henderson 1997, Goldernber & Gallimore, 1995)
1.3.1. Language
Researchers have always considered use and proficiency with the language of the host country an indicator of cultural assimilation. In the case of Latino/Hispanic families in the U.S., a robust indicator of their assimilation process is that their members become literate in English. However, as many of the changes that are experienced during this process, linguistic assimilation does not happen in a linear and harmonious way. Instead, assimilation seems to be messier and multidirectional especially when observed in the context of family life. For Latino/Hispanic families, to become proficient in English does not always involve loosing Spanish, and not all family members learn the new language at the same speed. While children and youth usually learn it faster, parents often are slower. In the context of the family, different approaches to the use of language are developed according to the resources parents have brought and the ones they have gained and mobilized in the U.S. While some families become Spanish-only speaking, others decide to engage with both English and Spanish within the home, and still others become English-only speaking families. In the case of the working class immigrant Latino/Hispanic families of our study, all of them have developed an approach that although apparently seems to be the one of Spanish-only homes, when analyzed closely, it turns out to be more bilingual, with both English and Spanish being spoken, listened, written, and read by family members according to different levels of expertise.
Despite the media panics about the lack of linguistic assimilation of the Latino/Hispanic population and the spread of ideologies of language purity in the U.S. in where the Spanish language and bilingualism are seen as threats to the national identity, quantitative and qualitative studies continue to reveal that immigrants and native Latino/Hispanics are gaining English proficiency according to their generational status (Portes & Rumbaut 2001; Kasinitz et al. 2008; Alba and Nee 2003; Alba et al. 2011). While foreign born or first-generation Latino/Hispanics tend to be less proficient in English, almost all of the second and third generation U.S. born Latino/Hispanics speak the host language. In a recent survey conducted by Pew Hispanic Center, 92% of second and 96% of third generation Latino/Hispanics considered themselves proficient in English, while only 38% of first generation immigrants reported being able of carrying a conversation in English. (Taylor et al. 2012) However, as the survey also revealed, Latino/Hispanics do also continue to speak their original language and think that future generations should speak it as well. A share of 95% of all the Latino/Hispanic adults (including both foreign born and U.S. natives) said it was important that future generations speak Spanish (Taylor et al. 2012). This evidence, combined with the fact that Spanish has become the most spoken non-English language in the U.S. with more than 37 million speakers (Gonzalez-Barrera and Lopez 2013), gives us clues to understand why the linguistic assimilation at the family context has become more bilingual. As the reception context increases the number of Spanish speakers, and the consumer market, media industries, and even the government, make efforts for targeting Latino/Hispanic population delivering content in both English and Spanish, members of Latino/Hispanic immigrants families can develop a more flexible and mixed approach to the languages spoken at home.

Especially among working class immigrant Latino/Hispanic families with few social, economic, and human resources, the unevenness of linguistic assimilation is noticeable in the way in which youth referred to the English proficiency level of their parents. Because youths have already navigated U.S. elementary and middle schools, have successfully completed English learning language (ELL) classes, were enrolled in regular High School classes, had native peers, and were engaged with U.S. media content, they were all proficient in the host language. Their parents, however, had fewer skills. Antonio, for instance, provided an explanation of the differences in the English skills of his mother and father when describing the languages that were spoken at home.
Q: Inside your house, do your parents speak in Spanish or in English?  A: In Spanish more -- they know a bit of English but not much (…) My dad knows more English than my mom because he had to take the U.S. citizen test -- you need to learn English for that -- well I think -- I don’t know. To find a job, most of the time he’ll need to know English so he knows a bit of English. He has a thick accent, but he knows it.
In the five working class immigrant families of our study, parents did have some understanding of the English language and made efforts to improve their skills. For instance, the mothers of Sergio and Miguel were both enrolled in English classes at a church and a community organization during our year of fieldwork. Inara's mother had also been enrolled in English language classes and attended a community college. Inara’s father, however, had learned English informally. In one interview, Inara explained how his father spoke with an accent because he had not had the opportunity of going to school. She said,
"He has a very, very hard accent. I'm like, "You've been living here longer than I have," but then again, he didn't come to school here. He just came to work, like every other Hispanic."
Parental English skills were directly related to the resources the family had and the educational opportunities they have been able to grasp either in the U.S. or their home country. In the case of Inara's working class family, the father remained busy doing hard work, managing his own gardening enterprise, and earning an income to support his wife and three children. In contrast, Gabriela's parents, with more resources and time, had been able to acquire English skills through their jobs and social resources. As a working class family transitioning to middle class, Mr. and Ms. Garcia had access to more spaces where they could learn the mainstream culture and practice English with native speakers. Further, they also tried to actively improve their English skills at their home encouraging their children to speak both languages. As Gabriela explained, her house was "like 60% English and 40% Spanish" and all the members of the family tried to speak both languages. Gabriela explained such family dynamic in the following way:
"A: My parents speak Spanish to me, but I speak English now, mainly because, like, when I go to my mom I speak English. And she practices her English with me, and so she speaks English to me. And then whenever she gets mad she talks to me in Spanish. But, like, with my dad, he usually talks Spanish to me, but I always talk English back. Like, English became my first language, but I understand Spanish, like, 100%.  Q: And I'm assuming they understand English as well?  A: Yes, my dad does. My mom, like, you have to say it a couple times sometimes."
The linguistic gap between parents and children opened a space for collaboration in where youth actively aided their parents to communicate and to learn the new language. Latino/Hispanic immigrant youths helped their parents doing translation work and became, at different moments and with various frequencies, language and cultural brokers. That is, they acted as translators, interpreters, or paraphrasers, helping their parents to navigate different situations and contexts (Chu 1999; Katz 2014; Orellana 2001; Orellana, et al. 2003; Song 1999; Tse 1995, 1996; Valdés 2002; Vásquez, Pease-Alvarez and Shannon 1994; Valenzuela 1999). Although often the brokering activities took place outside the home, they also happened within the family context. Sergio, for instance, helped her mother both doing translation work and teaching her English. As he explained,
"A: My mom can speak English, but not that well. So sometimes she'll need me to be a translator for her. When she goes to a doctor's appointment, if the doctor only speaks English, I'll go with her and translate. So, I'll always try to help her out by understanding her. Sometimes, she asks me to help her learn some English, so I'll try to speak to her in English, like some simple sentences, and she's been learning ever since.  Q: Have you tried to teach her?  A: Yeah. (...) She comes to me sometimes with how to put words in past tense and future tense, because she's also going to English school on Fridays, and when she needs help, I'll help her out with her homework like she used to help me out with my math homework.  Q: That's very nice. How do you feel teaching English? A: I kind of like it, because someone put the idea in my head a couple years back, because they realized I speak English, and when I started speaking Spanish to them, they were amazed at how I speak Spanish and English very fluently."
Although given the limitations of our study it is not possible to understand the nuances of the bilingual approach that each of the five immigrant families developed, our data reveals that they combined the use of both languages at home and that they were assimilating to the U.S. However, the uneven reality of their assimilation, clearly expressed in youths' bilingualism, did not seem to marginalize the younger members of these families as the segmented assimilation theorists have sustained. As it will be seen in the analysis of their media and technology use, immigrant Latino/Hispanic parents and their youth were engaged in a process of assimilation that fostered the interaction with both the host and original cultures.
1.3.2. Media Technologies
In a rapidly changing high techno-society such as contemporary U.S. the use of media technologies at the family context is one of the factors that makes the process of cultural assimilation more uneven and multidirectional. As the multiplication of media devices and screens inside Latino/Hispanic immigrant households continues to grow, parents and children are able to access, individually, not only different content, in both Spanish and English, but also different social networks. While they interact in a media-rich and networked communication environment, family members can connect to both their original and U.S. cultures according to their personal motivations and orientations. Although their engagement varies according to their social, cultural, human, and technological resources, peer group, age and gender, evidence reveals that Latino/Hispanic families, particularly youth, are becoming more connected to the U.S. culture and society, especially in terms of new media use and pop culture consumption. For instance, all the five immigrant Latino/Hispanic youths from our study lived in working class suburban households with media-rich domestic environments, and had not only access to broadcast mass media such as radio and television, but also to new media networked devices such as computers and videogame consoles that were connected to the Internet. Furthermore, most of these families, with the exception of the ones of Sergio and Miguel, had also access to smart phones and mobile connectivity that adults and youths used across multiple contexts, including the one of the home.
Research on the use of media technologies among Latino/Hispanic families has been conducted in the U.S. since 1980s by communication and cultural studies scholars, focusing, in particular, on television. This research has developed along with the increasing availability in the U.S. of Spanish-language television via major outlets such as Univision and Telemundo, and the increasing recognition of the Latino/Hispanics as an important segment of the U.S. consumer market. Using both quantitative and qualitative methods, researchers have investigated issues of biculturalism, identity formation, representation, youth development, and audience formation. A common finding across all the studies has been that Latino/Hispanic children tend to watch more television than the ones from other populations and that they consume content in both English and Spanish. (Greenberg et al. 1983; Subervi-Velez 1986; Moran 2011) Researchers have also found that Latino/Hispanic immigrant children are adapting faster to the mainstream pop culture due to their engagement with this medium and their advanced knowledge of the English language (Greenberg et al. 1983; Subervi-Velez 1986; Subervi-Velez & Colsant 1993; Moran 2011). Likewise, communication scholars have demonstrated that immigrant families leverage television to connect to the host cultural environment and the new language (Kim, 1977, 1988; Tan, 1983; Wilkin, Katz, & Ball-Rokeach 2009; Subervi-Velez 1986). Latino/Hispanic parents and their children, therefore, can leverage television viewing as a cultural resource and become more assimilated to the host country, in cultural terms. (Stilling 1997; Subervi-Velez 1986)
However, despite the emergent body of research on Latino/Hispanic immigrants’ media use that shows the positive aspects of television in the process of incorporation to the U.S., segmented assimilation researchers have revealed through their longitudinal and intergenerational studies, some negative outcomes of television watching. Drawing on quantitative data, Alejandro Portes and Ruben Rumbaut found that there was correlation between time of media exposure at home and second generation educational attainment and aspirations. As Rumbaut explained in "Paradoxes (And Orthodoxies) of Assimilation" (1997), the available evidence from the "Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study" showed that the role of television as agent of cultural assimilation was negative in relation to "successful" academic outcomes. (Rumbaut 1997) In a very reductionist way, and following a long tradition of "media effects" anxiety, Rumbaut argued that despite having high levels of engagement with television and knowledge of the English language, Latino/Hispanic immigrant children were not assimilating to the high achieving U.S. mainstream dominant culture. Instead, the more time they spent watching television seemed to be correlated with high school and college drop-drop outs, that is, with low educational attainment.
Anxieties about Hispanic/Latino excessive media use have not only been common in the analysis of broadcast mass media. In the twenty-first century, Latino/Hispanics high levels of digital media use are also becoming a matter of concern for researchers as new media is increasingly used for entertainment purposes. Ironically, after the fears about Latino/Hispanics lack of computer and Internet access and the popularity of the digital divide discourse in the 1990s, current studies are starting to warn us about the increasing amount of time Latino/Hispanic children spend with new media devices. Researchers from the Kaiser Family Foundation (2010) found out that Latino/Hispanic youth are especially avid adopters of new media and heavy consumers of entertainment, spending about an hour and a half more each day than White youth using their cell phones, iPods and other mobile devices to watch TV and videos, play games, and listen to music. (Rideout, Lauricella, & Wartella 2011) According to the study, Latino/Hispanic youth spend more time than their non-Hispanic white peers with each form of media (TV, movies, video games, music, computer, cell phone) except print (e.g., books, magazines). In contrast to the 8.5 hours per day of media consumption white youth had, Latino/Hispanics spent 13 hours per day. Furthermore, the study also showed that children from households with lower levels of education have increased their exposure to media. Pointing out minority youth high levels of media consumption, researchers argued that the although the digital divide seemed to be closed in terms of access to technology, a wider gap was emerging in terms of meaningful content creation and education. As Vicky Rideout stated in an interview for the New York Times, “instead of closing the achievement gap, they [new media] are widening the time-wasting gap.”(Ritchel 2012)
However, although from the macro perspective of quantitative data, Latino/Hispanics are starting to appear as heavy users of new media devices connected to the Internet, disparities in technology access remain, and continue to evolve, shaping young people new media practices. A Pew Hispanic Center report from 2011 revealed greater differences in broadband access between populations. While only 45% of Hispanic/Latino households had broadband Internet access, 65% of White and 52% of Black homes had access to broadband. (Livingston 2011). The same report showed that significant differences in Internet usage persisted between foreign (51%) and native-born Latino/Hispanics (85%), as well as between English language speakers (87%) and Spanish speakers (35%) (Livingston 2011). Controlling variables related to educational attainment, income, and occupation, researchers confirmed that in the case of Latino/Hispanics, both immigrants and natives, there is a strong correlation of material access and usage with educational attainment and income (Fox & Livingston 2007; Livingston, 2010). The quality of technology access at home continues to matter because, given the accelerated rate of planned obsolescence of new media devices, many of the content creation and educational activities are highly dependent on robust access computer power, software, and high Internet connectivity.
Beyond the macro perspective of quantitative studies, researchers have also started to examine how do the new media practices of Hispanic/Latino youth look on the ground. Qualitative studies on the new media practices of Latino/Hispanic youth have emerged from the fields of sociolinguistics, youth studies, and digital media and learning. Given the importance of the family and language for Latino/Hispanics youth it is not surprising that several scholars have focused on the analysis of activities at home and the intergenerational family relationships. (Orellana et al. 2003; De La Peña and Orellana 2007; Sánchez and Salazar 2012; Tripp and Herr-Stephenson, 2009; Tripp, 2011; Katz 2010, 2014) On the one hand, scholars have analyzed the role of Latino/Hispanic children as media brokers for their families actively helping their parents to navigate the U.S. environment and mediating their use of technology. (De La Peña and Orellana 2007; Katz 2010, 2014; Sánchez and Salazar 2012) On the other, researchers have looked at how Latino/Hispanic youths negotiate different rules and anxieties in their households in relation to computers and other forms of technology. (Horst, 2009; Tripp, 2011) As these studies confirmed, the qualitative evidence revealed that family dynamics, relationships, and resources shape the new media practices of Latino/Hispanic youth and the skills they are able to acquire.
2. Immigrant Youth Agency in Networked Domestic Environments
Besides their time in school and after school program activities, the five working class Latino/Hispanic immigrant youths of our study spent considerable part of their everyday life at the family context. Interestingly, none of them was engaged in street culture. They did not hang out on the streets, parks, or malls, and only in special occasions went to the movie theaters. In contrast, they hanged out at the bedrooms and living rooms of their family households developing a repertoire of cultural and social activities that in many cases involved the use of new media tools and networks. According to the new media domestic environments they had access, their family parenting styles and resources, and their interests and motivations, immigrant youths exercised their own agency at the context of home. By doing so, they developed a range of media practices and acquired new media skills that shaped their process of assimilation to the U.S., especially across the cultural, social, and educational dimensions.
2.1. Parenting Styles and Attitudes toward Technology
"We are very busy with the job, and although you might think you’re giving everything to your family, there are certain things you’re not providing." (Mr. Martinez, Sergio's Mother)
Immigrant youth new media practices at the family context are greatly shaped by the social, economic, cultural, and human resources of their parents, the family assimilation trajectory, and specific approaches developed towards child-rearing (what is known as parenting styles). As immigrant parents buy new media devices, engage in joint media activities with their children, and monitor (or not) the media uses at home, they practice particular kinds of parenting styles that reflect their aspirations, expectations, and values (Linvingstone 2002; Horst 2009). These styles are not only shaped by the immigrants' original culture and ethnic traditions, but also by the social class the family is assimilating in the host society. In the case of the five Latino/Hispanic immigrant families of our study, all the parents, with the exception of Gabriela's, have brought few resources from Mexico and have rapidly become assimilated to the U.S. working class by working in low-skilled jobs. As part of their assimilation process into a high-tech society and culture, and despite having a low socioeconomic status, these Latino/Hispanic immigrant parents have tried to set up media environments in their households with a range of digital and networked devices that go from television sets to videogame consoles to computers. Media technologies were important for all of these immigrant parents, and they valued them according to their particular imaginaries about education and entertainment, their expectations for their children, several discourses that circulated in the U.S. institutions (e.g. schools, media, consumer market), and few discourses they had been exposed in their countries of origin.
The parenting approaches of the five immigrant Latino/Hispanics of our study can be understood according to the two types of child rearing described by Anette Larau in her seminal work Unequal Childhoods (2003). According to Larau, families in the U.S. develop two kinds of parenting styles that are shaped by social class. That is, by parents' income, educational level, and occupation. While middle-class parents develop “concerted cultivation,” working-class and poor parents practice “accomplishment of natural growth”. (Larau 2003) In the former, parents assume greater responsibility in structuring children activities and managing their time, and "deliberately try to stimulate their children’s development and foster their cognitive and social skills" (Larau 2003, 5) In the latter, children are expected to grow up naturally, without the constant monitoring and periodic intervention of parents, have more autonomy and are expected to navigate on their own their relationships with institutions and peers. As Larau demonstrated, the outcome of the two different approaches leads to the transmission of differential advantages to children, being "concerted cultivation" the one that leads towards a position of privilege and a "sense of entitlement." While middle-class children learn to act "as though they had a right to pursue their own individual preferences and to actively manage interactions in institutional settings,” working class children have a "sense of constraint in their interactions in institutional settings" and are "less likely to try to customize interactions to suit their own preferences" (Lareau 2003, 6).
The two approaches outlined by Larau can be used to explain the trajectories of social mobility that immigrants experience in the U.S. Whereas immigrants that assimilate to the middle-class embrace a "concerted cultivation" parenting style; immigrants that assimilate to the working class practice the “accomplishment of natural growth” approach. In the case of the five working class Latino/Hispanic of our study, all of the parents, with the exception of Gabriela's, practiced some variation of the “accomplishment of natural growth” allowing their children to develop naturally with minimal input and monitoring. Interestingly, Gabriela's parents, in their effort to move upward and assimilate to the middle-class, developed a kind of "concerted cultivation" style in where they actively tried to guide their children, pushed them to achieve in school, and managed their extracurricular activities.
2.1.1. Discourses and Imaginaries
In all the five families, the outcomes of the parenting approaches shaped the configuration of the domestic media environments, and the new media practices and skills that where developed within the family context. For instance, in the four families that developed the “accomplishment of natural growth” approach parents did not participate in joint new media activities or actively monitor the use of new media devices. Given their busy schedule and hard work, little knowledge about technology and low levels of education, working class parents tended to have little or none participation in the youth new media practices at home. For instance, Mr. and Ms. Aguirre, did not had any rules regarding Inara's computer and Internet use. As Inara explained, her parents knew she was responsible and believed she understood how to use the technology.
"Q: Do your parents have any rules?  A: Rules?  Q: Yeah.  A: No. They know I’m responsible for whatever I do on the computer. And so, they’re like, “Whatever you do it’s your thing. But you know what you’re doing. And you know what consequences you’re getting into.”
Likewise, Mr. and Ms. Chapa, the parents of Antonio practiced a working class parenting approach with little mentorship and minimal involvement in new media practices. Their parenting style was based on trust and the believed that their children were doing the correct things. In our home interview, while answering a question about setting up of rules for media use at home, Mr. Chapa said,
"I don’t think it’s necessary, because I trust them, and I don’t think they will be doing things that are not correct. At least that’s the way I think, who knows? Only they know. You don’t have to be on top of them, telling them all the time what they have to do or not, because if they want to do it, they will do it anyway. I think you have to trust them. And, on the other hand, if you scold them a lot they will get mad. And regarding me, I don’t scold them."
In contrast to the variations of the “accomplishment of natural growth” parenting style that characterized the families of Sergio (18), Miguel (14), Antonio (17) and Inara (19), the one of Gabriela (14) practiced the "concerted cultivation" approach. By developing a variation of this parenting style Mr. and Ms. Garcia actively tried to transition from working-class to middle-class. Although their parenting style did not have all the elements and privileges than the one of a native dominant middle-class family, their approach intended to actively cultivate the development of his children by structuring their activities, buying them high tech consumer goods, developing new media practices together, and pushing them to succeed in school. Thanks to their higher incomes, independent entrepreneurial activities, and having a diverse and robust social network, the Garcias had not only more knowledge about digital technology (Mr. Garcia was the only parent who used computers in his work) and more access to consumer goods, but also had more time to spend with their children in joint family new media practices such as playing video games, doing home videos, and exchanging music files. Especially Mr. Garcia, in a sort of patriarchal fashion, actively monitored his children uses of the new media devices he has bought them. In one interview, Gabriela explained how her dad was aware of her activities online.
"Q: Do you think your parents know what you do online on Facebook and Twitter and Tumblr?  A: Yeah. My dad’s told me, “I know what you do. I know you too good. Trust me.”  Q: So, how does he know? How do you think he knows?  A: I think because we’re just open with him. I think he just knows us. It’s really weird how he knows us. He could just sit me down and be like, “I know you’re feeling like this.” And it’s actually correct. I’m like, “Oh my God. He knows me.”"
Gabriela description of her dad supervision reveals her feelings about the deep knowledge that her dad had about her new media use, and about her life in general. That sense of parental supervision, was not only based on the high level of communication that she maintained with her dad, but also in her dependency on him for paying Internet and cellphone connectivity and buying multiple new media goods. As Gabriela explicated, by paying for her cellphone service, her dad was able to monitor what she did with the new media tool. She said,
"My dad’s always like, “I pay your bill.” He’s like, “I see when you stop talking at night. And I can see how much you text.” (...) usually he’s like, “What time did you go to sleep last night?” If it was really late and I’m like, “Early.” He’s like, “Liar.”"
Ms. and Mr. Garcia developed a "concerted cultivation" parenting style in which they actively pushed their children to achieve and to "do better." Despite not having college degrees, both parents, and in particularly Mr.Garcia, played a vital role in building career aspirations and preparing their children to do well in school and go to college. As Mr. Garcia told us, "what we always tried to tell her (Gabriela) is that no matter what, she needs to do good, do better." Mr. and Ms. Garcia have invested a lot of time in keeping track of the academic performance of their two children and have nurtured, since early age, the idea that they have to excel in school and get involved in enrichment activities. As Gabriela explained, she felt a sense of responsibility in meeting their parent’s expectations. She said,
"A: They’re not so strict, but they really push me to do good in school. And I think that I know if I got a bad grade or if I failed a class or if I had to take summer school they would be really disappointed. And I would feel bad for not meeting my parents’ expectations.  Q: Expectations?  A: Yes.  Q: Do you like it that they have those expectations? Or do you feel like there’s a lot of pressure?  A: I don’t think there’s that much pressure. They don’t say it, but I can feel it."
In contrast to the Garcia family, the other four working class immigrant Latino/Hispanic families that practiced the "accomplishment of natural growth" parenting style did not constantly instilled high achieving expectations. Although Inara, Sergio, Antonio and Miguel parents valued education, they did not have a clear understanding of the U.S. schooling system and did not feel the need of pushing their children to have a high educational attainment. For these parents, the fact that their sons and daughters were enrolled at U.S. public schools, learned English, and passed their grades, even if they were in the general track, was understood as a sign of success and achievement. Although it was clear that all of these parents provided support and wanted the best for their children, their expectations were lower compared to the ones of Gabriela's, who were making efforts to transition to the U.S. middle class. Inara, for instance, explained the kind of expectations and support that her parents gave her in the following way:
"my parents, they really don’t push you to do stuff. They don’t push me. (...) They never force me into anything. (...) They’re more like, “No. You do what you want to do. We’ll support you.” Or sometimes they’d be like, “I think you’re putting too much on your plate. You should probably quit dance team.” They’ve been telling me that. I was like no."
2.2.2. The Home Computer and the Present
Regardless their parenting style, all the five immigrant parents made efforts to provide new media devices and Internet connectivity to their children. For these parents, new media technologies became part of living in the U.S. They believed new media devices and the Internet were important for their children development and life in the new country. Even though they had little knowledge of how digital tools and networks functioned, these parents provided access at their households according to the economic resources they had. For some of these parents, especially the ones with rural origins (Martinez, Chapa, and Aguirre families) they had had little contact with new media devices prior to their migration to the U.S. Although they had used television, radio, and telephone, they understood very little about how computers, networked mobile devices, videogame consoles, and the Internet functioned, and had not had the resources to learn about them in the U.S. However, in order to help their children complete schoolwork, they bought several new media devices. These parents, for instance, understood providing access to a computer and Internet connectivity at home, as a necessity they needed to cover in order to support the education of their children. Even more specifically, many of them understood the home computers as a tool for doing homework. Mr. and Ms. Chapa, Antonio's parents, clearly articulated in our home interview this reason for buying a computer.
[FATHER]: The kids needed it [the computer]. [MOTHER]: -- The kids needed it. [FATHER]: For their homework. (...) That’s why we bought it because they needed it for their homework.  [MOTHER]: They have many projects which need a computer. Q: Is it like a school supply?  [FATHER]: Yes. Q: Is it like buying a book, or something like that? [FATHER]: Yes, it was a need, and we had to buy it. Q: But before that, had you ever thought about buying a computer? [FATHER]: Maybe, but no-- we didn’t buy one, until we needed it. Q: And when did you find out you needed it? [FATHER]: Well, when they said they needed a computer for their homework."
Likewise, Ms. and Mr. Flores explicated they bought a home computer when Miguel and his brother started to have more homework, as they were advanced to an advanced track in middle school. After we asked them about the reason for buying the computer, they said,

"FATHER: For them, so that they could learn how to use it and do their homework, for school stuff mostly, it’s easier.  MOTHER: Yes, when they were in fourth grade they advanced them to – what’s it called? To higher level. (...) So, they had extra homework, they had to do some research work and we had to go to the library to search for that information, so we decided to buy it." "
The discourses of education, learning, and school homework had a great influence in the working class Latino/Hispanic immigrant parents and seemed to be the main drive for having a computer and an Internet connection at home across all the five families. However, motivations changed according to the new media device that parents bought for their children. Some of these working class immigrant parents, for example, bought videogame consoles and portable game systems, as presents and rewards so they could stimulate their children to do well in school. Miguel's dad, for instance, explained in our home interview, how he maintained a practice of giving his children new media devices, as they advanced in their school trajectory and improved their English skills. Mr. Flores said,
"I told them, “Learn English well and improve your level, and once you reach the level you need –“ What did we buy? A Gameboy. Okay, they wanted a Gameboy, okay, we will buy it for them. And they passed and I bought the Gameboy. That’s how I started. (…) They tell me or I ask them, it’s something to motivate them a little. They say, “I want this.” “Okay, if you pass to the next grade and you do well at school, I’ll buy it for you.” I have tried to do that every year."
2.2.3. The Future of work
However, although all working class Latino/Hispanic immigrant parents articulated the discourses of homework, education, and entertainment at the moment of equipping their houses with new media devices, only the father of Gabriela mentioned the relation between technology and the future of work in the U.S society and economy. As Mr. Garcia explicated during the home interview, technology was very important for the long-term development and career pathway of Gabriela. He said,
"it’s very important. If you don’t have technology then you don’t have a job. And these days everything you do you have to do it through emails and the internet and websites. So she has to be, she has to have some knowledge in order to know how to survive. If she wants to go far."
Differences between the two parenting styles, therefore, were noticeable in the discourse that parents articulated about technology in relation to the future of work. Due to his "concerted cultivation" parenting style, middle class aspirations, social resources, and occupation (owned his own business and used a computer at work), Mr. Garcia was able to articulate a discourse about the future transformation of jobs that the other working class parents were not familiar with.
2.2. Networked Domestic Media Environments
As part of their process of assimilation to the U.S. the five Latino/Hispanic immigrant families of our study built domestic environments that had multiple new media devices and Internet connectivity. Although quality and number of devices varied across the different families, all of them had at least one desktop or laptop computer, a wi-fi Internet connection, several TV screens, and one videogame console. These immigrant families had joined the low-skilled working force, moved to big (an old) suburban houses in the north of Austin metropolitan area, and set up domestic media environments according to some of the standards (usually the lower with the exception of the Garcias) of a high tech hyper mediated society. To a certain extent, it could be said that immigrant parents made investments in new media goods for their homes in an effort to assimilate to the current U.S. working class and to participate in the growing new media mass market. By leveraging their earning capacity and building new media domestic environments, these five Latino/Hispanic immigrant families made their own versions of a safe, modern, and high tech twenty-first century American "dream home."
Furthermore, by building these new media domestic environments, parents also supported their children's interests in U.S. consumer culture and digital media as much as their resources allowed them to do. As the younger members of the family rapidly assimilated to the U.S. across the dimensions of language, school, and culture, their desire to participate in the host consumer culture grew. In order to meet their children needs and support their school activities, development at home, and, in general, their process of assimilation to the U.S., parents made investments in a range of new media goods and services. Thanks to the massification of computers, mobile phones, videogame consoles, portable multimedia devices, and the spread of internet connectivity, building a new media domestic environment was something that all of these working class Latino/Hispanic immigrant parents were capable of doing, even if it was at the most basic levels of entry and with a low quality. As the Table 1 shows, all the five families had new media domestic environments that were networked and, particularly, rich in screen-entertainment media. Although the quality of material access was low (except for the Garcia family), these media domestic environments offered youth a range of media choices where they could exercise their own agency, and develop new media practices and skills.
Family
Computers
Videogame Consoles
Mobile Multimedia Devices
Smart Phones
Musical Instruments
Cameras
TV
Audio
Internet
Garcia
4 Mac laptops
1 wii, 1 Xbox
2 iPod touch
4 iPhones 4S
1 piano, 1 flute
1 digital video, 2 digital photo
4 TV screens, 1 direct-broadcast satellite service, 1 DVD
1 HiFi Stereo
wi-fi DSL
Chapa
1 Dell Inspiron laptop, 1 broken laptop, 1 broken desktop
1 Nintendo NES, 1 Nintendo GameCube
1 iPod touch
5 Samsung Android
2 guitars (electric, acoustic)
1 broken analogue photo camera
3 TV screens, 1 direct-broadcast satellite service, 1 broken TV, 1 DVD, 1 VCR
1 Radio
wi-fi DSL
Aguirre
1 Dell Inspiron laptop
1 Wii
none
3 Samsung Android
none
none
2 TV screens, broadcast
1 HiFi Stereo
wi-fi DSL
Flores
1 Optiplex desktop
1 Wii, 1 Xbox
1 Nintentdo DS
1 Android
none
none
2 TV screens, 1 direct-broadcast satellite service, 2 DVDs
1 HiFi Stereo, 4 radios
wi-fi DSL
Martinez
1 Dell desktop
1 Wii, 1 Play Station, 1 Xbox
none
none
none
none
5 TV screens, 1 direct-broadcast satellite service, 4 DVDs, 1 DVR, 2 VCR
1 HiFi Stereo, 1 radio
wi-fi DSL
Table 1. Media Domestic Environment of the five Latino/Hispanic immigrant families
Not surprisingly, the differential quality of material access at home was determined by the resources that families had brought with them and gained while living in the U.S. Given the richer resources of Gabriela's parents, the Garcias' new media domestic environment had a higher quality in terms of connectivity, computer power, multiplicity of devices, and individual ownership. The four members of the Garcia family had personalized access to last generation Macbook laptops, multimedia software, iPhones, and wi-fi internet connection at home. In a clear sign of assimilation to the U.S. consumer culture and willingness to transition to the middle class, Mr. Garcia explained to us that his income allowed him to make a "nice living," buy "lots of stuff," and have a "happy family”. Regarding the decision to buy new laptops for each family member, he explained that,
"it’s easier when they [Gabriela and her sister] got their own laptops. They kind of asked and I got them. (...) It becomes handy. And it keeps everybody happy."
Four television sets, two videogame consoles (Wii, Xbox), two DVD players, an electric piano, and direct-broadcast satellite television service complemented the new media domestic environment of the Garcia family, providing a wide range of media choices for all the family members. Other digital tools such as photography and video cameras, and portable multimedia devices were also available in a more personalized manner at the Garcia's household. Gabriela, for instance, had access to an iPod touch, a flute, and two photography cameras (one compact Canon Powershot, and one SLR Canon Rebel) that Mr. Garcia has bought her in order to support her interests in photography and music.
In contrast, to the Garcias, the families of Inara, Sergio, Antonio, and Miguel, confronted more limitations at the moment of setting up their domestic environments. As a result of their fewer resources, these families experienced lower quality of material access to new media technology at their households. Home computers, for instance, were outdated, lacked multimedia software, had small screens (12-16") and were shared among several members of the family. In the Martinez household, for instance, Sergio had to share an old desktop computer (with a 16"screen monitor) with his mother, his sister, his two nieces (ages 12 and 14), and little nephew (age 8). In the Aguirre family, Inara shared an old Dell 15" laptop computer with her mother. In the Chapa family, Antonio shared a Dell 12" laptop computer with his younger brother (age 15) and his older sister (age 20). In the Flores family, Miguel shared an old Dell desktop computer (14" screen monitor) with his twin brother, that he described it once as a "16 years old crappy Optiplex." Although the other computers were probably not as old as the one that the Flores family had, they were more than six years old, run outdated versions of the Window operating system, and did not have multimedia software (with the exception of Antonio’s laptop)
Lower quality and quantity of material access, as Ellen Seiter has argued in "Practicing at Home: Computer, Pianos, and Cultural Capital," (2008) affects the development of "digital literacy skills that are robust and confident"(32). Old computers and few hours of practice limit the kinds of activities that youth can do as well as their disposition towards technology. As a result of low quality and quantity of material access, usage quality decreases and developing new media skills, both technical and sociocultural, becomes difficult. Even more important, low quality and quantity of access directly undermine the possibility of acquiring the disposition for using new media beyond casual and recreational modes. As Seiter has pointed out, there is "an underestimation of specific forms of cultural capital required to maintain the systems themselves and move beyond the casual, recreational uses of computers to those that might lead directly to well-paid employment." (29) Such challenge was confronted by youths such as Miguel, Sergio, and Antonio, whose interest in gaming and audiovisual production required high quality of material and usage access. Antonio, for instance, expressed his desire to have a better computer at home in the following way,
"I really want to get a Mac, because they’re faster, they’re -- what I’m interested in, I can do that on that and most PCs are really slow and you can’t really do most of the stuff I want to do."
Despite limited practice time, lack of computer power, and outdated new media devices, all these Latino/Hispanic immigrant youth still figured out ways to exercise their agency at the family context while using the digital tools and networks they had. For instance, taking advantage of the networking capabilities and computer power of videogame consoles, Inara, Miguel, and Sergio, became avid users of their Wii and Play Station consoles for streaming TV shows and movies from the Internet via Netflix, YouTube, and Hulu. Although such kind of new media practice was clearly oriented towards entertainment and cultural consumption, it was still important for participating as consumers in the U.S. culture. By interacting with the audiovisual content they retrieved using videogame consoles, these youth, found opportunities to not only practicing the English language within the home, but also familiarizing with the narratives and symbols of the U.S. youth culture.
The mobile disruption
Bigger disparities in material access to technology were noticeable when looking at the ownership of mobile phones. Not surprisingly, given the configuration of the Martinez family with a single working class mother, and numerous people living in the same household (3 adults, 4 children), resources were more scare. As a result, neither Sergio nor his Mother had access to cellphones. Likewise, the Flores family could not provide access to smart phones to their children, and only the father could afford having a mobile telephone. In contrast, Inara, Gabriela, and Antonio, had access to smartphones that were paid by an older family member. Mr. Aguirre and Mr. Garcia paid the cellphone bills of Inara and Gabriela respectively; Maria, the older sister of Antonio, paid for the mobile telephone of his brother.
Access to smart phones considerably expanded the range of media activities youth could develop at the context of home because these devices provided anytime/anywhere Internet connectivity, web browsers, audiovisual recording capabilities, text messaging tools, GPS navigation, and a range of applications for reproducing, creating and sharing content. Hence, having a smart phone meant more than accessing a simple communication tool. The mobile phone became like a portable entertainment and production center, a mini-computer for communication, sociality, and navigation.
However, the smart phone was not the only new media device that youth could use for multiple purposes and in a mobile (anytime/anywhere) fashion. There were other powerful mobile devices, such as the iPod and the Nintendo DS that had networking capabilities and could be used for connecting to the Internet and reproducing multimedia content (both from the network and from dedicated memory storage). For Miguel and Sergio, the two youths who did not have access to cellphones, these kind of multimedia mobile devices became a valuable resource they could use not only for entertainment (especially music and games), but also, for communication and sociality. For instance, Sergio used an iPod touch he permanently borrowed from Antonio, and was able to exchange text messages with his peers using an application he installed in the mobile device. Miguel also leveraged a multimedia mobile device for sociality as he used the browser of his Nintendo DS in order to access online social networking sites such as Facebook and send direct messages to his peers from his home.
2.2.1. Negotiating Public and Private Spaces within the Home.
Family members, according to their age, gender, and roles, assume different positions of power and negotiate the organization of the media domestic environment. In modern twentieth century homes (especially in the U.S and U.K.), as communication scholars have argued, this environment has been divided spatially in public and private spaces, structured in time according with the family rhythms and routines, and organized according to social class values and earning capacity (Seiter 1993; Livingstone and Bovill 2001; Livingstone 2002; Horst 2010). In the case of the five Latino/Hispanic families of our study, the spatial and temporal organization of the new media domestic environment revealed their trajectory of assimilation to the U.S. working class, the beliefs and aspirations that characterized their parenting styles, and the bicultural dynamics and acculturation gaps between parents and children. Although given the limitations of our study and data collection it is difficult to create a detailed map of the new media domestic environment, our data allows us to discuss some of the main characteristics of the temporal and spatial organization of this environment in the five Latino/Hispanic immigrant families. In particular, it allows us to analyze how these families negotiated the distribution of media in the "public space" of the living room and the "private space" of the teenager bedroom.
In all the five working class immigrant families cultural assimilation differences between parents and children situated the latter in a position of relative power in where they played roles as translators, learners, and experts in the U.S. culture. As a result, the building of the new media domestic environment, as well as its temporal and spatial organization, reflected the interests of both parents and children and the acculturation gaps between them. While parents negotiated the organization of the domestic media environment with a cultural frame characterized by the use of Spanish language, familismo (strong family orientation and cohesion), and a communal provision of media; youths used a frame marked by the use of the English language, individualization, and personalized media. Although at first glance, the process of parent-children negotiation seemed to locate the original culture in the public spaces of the house, and the host culture in the private spaces of youth bedrooms, the reality turned out to be more complicated. Given the networked affordances of the new media devices and the Internet connectivity of the households, the Latino/Hispanic and U.S. cultures coexisted in the public spaces and were juxtaposed by the different media practices that family members developed.
2.2.1.1. Personalized Environments and the Space of the Bedroom
For all the five immigrant youth of our study, the space of the bedroom was an important context of media use at their homes. It was a space for personal expression, leisure, rest, and media activity. Due to their busy school schedule (8am-4pm), and afterschool activities (4-6:30pm approximately), their activities in the bedroom tended to happen at night and early morning during the weekdays. On the weekends and school breaks, however, their activities in this space intensified. Despite sharing bedrooms with other members of the family (only Inara had a single bedroom), these youths carved out semi-private spaces in their bedrooms in where they could engage in new media practices away from the supervision of their parents, and have more control over their media schedule and usage time. In the semi-private space of their bedrooms, and according to the media devices they had available, youth had the opportunity to explore their interests in music, games, television and cinema, and also to connect to the Internet and to their peers via wi-fi networks. Given these youths' cultural and social interests, their bedrooms were mostly English-language oriented.
Although the bedrooms of Inara, Gabriela, Antonio, Miguel, and Sergio were different in size, furniture, decoration, and quantity and quality of new media devices, all of them had at least one TV screen, one videogame console with networking capabilities, and one mobile device (in the case of Sergio was borrowed). Hence, even in the lack of access to a computer within the bedroom, these youth could connect to the Internet via their videogame consoles or mobile devices and engage in a range of different activities including browsing the web, exchanging messages with peers, and reproducing of audiovisual content. However, given the design of the video game consoles and its controllers, the latter activity was the one preferred by youth when they used these devices to connect to the Internet. For instance, Miguel spent many hours in his bedroom, beyond the sleep time schedule fixed by their parents, watching U.S. TV shows and movies via Netflix and U.S. amateur videos via YouTube he could reproduce using a Wii and a small TV screen. As one of the photos (Image 1) that Miguel took in our collaborative ethnography exercise (mapping out daily uses of technology) illustrates, the set-up of this mini networked entertainment system (Wii-Tv screen-Internet connection) had several limitations for media production, writing, and reading. The mini-system was set-up inside the reduced space in the interior of a closet, on the top of a little chair, and with a small TV screen (12") and low quality TV speakers.

Image 1. Photograph of a Wii connected to a small TV screen in Miguel's bedroom.
Differences in quantity and quality of material and usage access were very noticeable in the configuration of the personalized new media environments within the bedroom and they were determined by the income of the parents. As the Table 2 reveals, Gabriela and Inara were the only youths who could regularly access a computer in their bedroom. The two of them, and also Antonio, had access to smart phones and relied on them for several of the activities they did at the semi-private space of their bedroom, and many times, from their bed. Miguel and Sergio, despite not having access to cellphones, did also experience some degree of mobility at the bedroom with the use of multimedia portable devices such as the Nintendo DS and the iPod.
Name
Computers
Videogame consoles
Mobile Multimedia Devices
Smart Phones
Musical Instruments
TV sets
Audio
Gabriela
1 Mac latops
none
1 iPod touch + headphones
1 iPhone S4 + earplugs
1 flute
1 TV screen
none
Inara
1 Dell Inspiron Laptop
1 Wii
none
1 Samsung Android + earplugs
none
1 TV screen
none
Antonio
none
1 Nintendo NES, 1 Nintendo GameCube
1 iPod touch + headphones
1 Samsung Android
2 guitars (electric, acoustic), 1 amplifier
2 TV screens, 1 DVD player
none
Miguel
none
1 Wii
1 Nintendo DS + headphones
none
none
1 Tv screen
1 alarm radio
Sergio
1 borrowed Mac laptop
1 Play Station, 1 Xbox
borrowed iPod touch + headphones
none
none
1 TV screen
1 boombox
Table 2. Personalized New Media Environments in the Bedroom
A common characteristic across all the five personalized new media environments was the pervasiveness of music. Although only Gabriela and Antonio, had access to musical instruments within their bedrooms, all of the five Latino/Hispanic immigrant youth were able to reproduce and amplify music in their bedroom and they usually juxtaposed this activity with other media practices. Audio reproduction and amplification inside the bedroom was possible using devices such as boomboxes, an alarm radio, TV speakers, mobile device speakers, amplifiers, and headphones. Gabriela, for instance, mentioned in one interview that she used to amplify music in her bedroom (and other spaces of the household as well) by using the internal speakers of her iPhone. She said,
"A: I use my phone a lot. I use is on A days or every morning to wake me up, to actually get me awake I put music on.  Q: Through speakers or with your ear buds?  A: Usually with speakers, but then I’ve been too lazy to. So, I just carry around my phone. My dad’s always making fun of me with that. It’s my own little boom box."
Having multiple new media devices at the bedroom space, however, did not necessary mean active engagement in new media practices. Low quality of material access directly affected motivation, usage, and skills. Some of the personalized new media environments of working class Latino/Hispanic youth were filled with new media that were never used because they were broken, because they did not have networking capabilities, or because they were old and no content was created for them by the industry. For instance, in the map of technologies in the house that Antonio drew during one of our collaborative ethnography exercises (Image 2), he identified seven different devices in his bedroom. However, one of them was listed as "broken" (a laptop), and two of them where videogame consoles from previous decades (NES 1980s, GameCube 2000s).

Image 2. Antonio's map of technologies in the house.
As I confirmed across several interviews as well as in my visit to his house, the broken and "old" new media devices were never used. However, they continued to be part of his bedroom and were piled over the top of a cabined that was filled with his clothes. Given the lack of resources of his family, he had not been able to get new videogame systems and had already lost his interest in playing games. As Antonio explained,
" Q: When did you stop playing?  A: When it stopped making games it was around -- that was -- in eighth grade they stopped selling those games. (…) And I couldn't find any more new games and I already beat the ones I had.  Q: So it's an old system?  A: Yeah.  Q: And you didn't want to have a new one?  A: I did, but we didn't have money, or I didn't have money to buy a new one, and I never actually got to buy one."
As this example reveals, in working class families with few resources, the rapid obsolescence of new media generates challenges for maintaining children and youth new media practices. As software and hardware become obsolete very fast, lacking the financial resources for updating to new systems, directly affect the new media usage and skills. Although children and youth could still have the motivation and continue their new media practice, the lack of quality of material access can undermine the engagement. Hence, although many new media devices could remain at the working class home, if they are old or broken (that is, if they have low quality), there is little chance that youth will be using them to pursue their new media interests and practices.
2.2.1.2. The Living Room as a Domestic Public Space
In contrast to the more personal space of youth bedrooms and their individualized temporalities and styles, the public space of the living room in all the five Latino/Hispanic immigrant households was organized according to the idea of communal family life. This idea was not only shaped by parents' original culture values (e.g. familismo), but also by their assimilation trajectories into the U.S., their parenting styles, and their social, cultural, and economic resources. A common characteristic of the living rooms of our five working class Latino/Hispanic families was that all of them had a big TV set, a DVD device, a high fi stereo, and wi-fi Internet connection. They were all spaces for media use with a heavy audiovisual orientation. Its layout with sofas and chairs that surrounded a central big central TV set was like a re-interpretation of the 20th century U.S. middle-class family ideal.
The living room was an open space inside the house were all members of the family could gather and interact with each other, engage in a range of new media activities, and speak and listening to both Spanish and English according to their different levels of acculturation. Although parents tended to have a greater position of power at the moment of organizing the domestic public space due to their earning capacity and childrearing roles; youth, especially as they aged, increased their power and were able to also influence the temporality and structure of the living room. For instance, while older youth such as Inara(19), Sergio (18) and Antonio (17) could engage in new media practices at the living room for longer periods of time and until late hours (even after their parents went to bed), Miguel (14) could only use the desktop computer located in the living room for two hours a day and had to be in his bedroom after 10pm.
Although the presence of a big TV screen in the living rooms could be interpreted as a sign of mediated communal family life, TV practices, as other scholars have pointed out (Livingston 2002; Horst 2008) had lost their communal meaning. They are no longer the powerful organizers of the rhythms of the family life as they used to be in the 20th century. At the year of our fieldwork only the Flores and the Chapa families continued to be engaged in TV viewing as a joint family practice. In these two families, parents and youths still were sitting together in the sofas and chairs of their living room in order to watch TV content. Given the little knowledge of the English language of some of the members of these families, the communal family practice involved viewing content in Spanish language. As Antonio explained, although he did not necessarily like the kind of content that his family watched together, he still enjoyed the activity because it "entertained" him. As he said,
"A: I’m usually -- I don’t like soap operas so I’ll sit there and watch them because they entertain me a bit.  Q: Like telenovelas?  A: Yeah. I don’t like them though. Q: What kind of telenovelas? Mexican?  A: Yeah (…) Telemundo or whatever other Spanish channels they have here."
Despite the lack of communal TV watching, families still could leverage the living room TV screen for joined media practices if they decided to play videogames. The Garcia family, for instance, as the one with richer resources, more technological savvy parents, and greater social mobility towards the middle class, played videogames together in the living room. This activity, however, had a more flexible temporality than the one that the TV medium offered with its broadcast schedule. Instead, videogame playing in the living room seemed to be a more casual and flexible activity in which members of the family decided to participate as they saw other members being engaged. As Gabriela explained, all the members of her family progressively developed a passion for playing together Super Mario Kart (using the Wii console, its controllers, and a large TV set) in the living room.
An interesting variation of the media environment of the living room was the location of the home computer in one of the edges of this public space. In three of the five working class Latino/Hispanic families, this kind of set up emerged as a pattern and seemed to be related to the “accomplishment of natural growth” parenting style, parents’ low levels of education and little knowledge of technology. Antonio, Miguel, and Sergio's parents decided to place the computer, either a desktop or a laptop, in the living room, as a practical solution for solving the tension created by their lack of understanding of computers and the Internet, and the sociocultural needs of their children. According to these parents, having the computer in the public and visible space of the living room, allowed them to "watch" the activities of their children and encourage safety. As the mother of Sergio explained, while showing me the location of a desktop computer on a little table in the border o the living room,
"A: The computer is there, and I think that they can’t be doing something bad, because the house is always like this.  Q: It’s visible.  A: Yes, it’s always there. If any of the girls is there, I’m in the kitchen, or sitting in the living room drinking some coffee or watching TV, and people come in and out."
Likewise, Ms. Flores referred to the safety of the living room. She explained that the location of the home computer in this public space allowed her and Mr. Flores "to watch what they [Miguel and his brother] are looking at (...) because you hear of so many things that happen (...) I think it’s safer to have it here in the living room." Although the availability of computers in the domestic public space did not necessary imply joint media practices, the visibility of this technology allowed parents to exercise a restrictive mediation with different degrees of intensity. For instance, by having the computer in a public space of the home the parents of Miguel could enforce, more easily, the computer usage rule and schedule they have set up (two hours of computer usage per day, never after 10pm). In contrast, the parents of Antonio, with perhaps a more "natural growth" approach did not enforce any restrictions on the use of computer. Antonio explained their approach to computer use in the following way,
"My parents don't really have that much rules. Overall, I can do whatever I want on the computer. They don't really restrict me to a specific time when I have to get off."
Mr. and Ms. Chapa even allowed Antonio, who was the family "tech-buff," to create his own unique computer set-up in the living room using different pieces of hardware and peripherals. As one of the photographs Antonio took in the collaborative ethnography exercise (Image 3) illustrates, in the set-up of his home computer he had been able to connect the mini Dell inspiron laptop to a bigger screen monitor (14"), had little speakers, and very important, a pair of studio headphones.

Image 3. Photograph of home computer set-up at Antonio's family living room.
Finally, the public space of the living room in all the five working class Latino/Hispanic families was also a space for mobility and connectivity. Thanks to the availability of wi-fi Internet connection in the living room and the networking capabilities of mobile devices, several new media goods that were "owned" by family members entered this public space with a regular frequency. Youths, particularly the ones with access to mobile phones, mentioned using their mobile devices in the living room constantly as an extension of their anytime/anywhere online activities. Antonio, for instance explained that at home he preferred to go on the internet using his phone because "It's just usually always in my pocket, so I'll just pull that out of my pocket and it's already there." Likewise, Gabriela mentioned her preference for using his iPhone anywhere at home in order to go online. She said, "It’s...it’s like you can have it anywhere. So if you don’t want to carry your laptop around, it’s just your phone’s easier." However, even youths who did not have access to cellphones, like Miguel, leveraged the Internet connectivity available in the living room for using networked mobile devices such as the Nintendo DS he co-owned with his twin brother, and an iPod he usually borrowed from a friend. A look at the map of technologies at the house Miguel drew, clearly shows how the "DS" device appeared in both of the sofas of the living room as a sign of juxtaposition with the other possible new media practices that happened at that space.

Image 4. Miguel's map of technologies at the house
As the multiplication of mobile devices increases, and more members of the family have access to them, the public space of the living room seems to welcome them by offering wireless Internet connectivity. As a result, more individualized media practices seem to be possible in what used to be a mainly a communal space. In the case of the five Latino/Hispanic families, such transformation of the living room seemed to have occurred without that much tension. Neither parents nor children mentioned having conflicts because their use of mobile devices at the living room. Contrary, such juxtaposition of activities and devices in the public space of the home seemed to be understood by the parents as a sign that the activities of their children with new media were safe.
2.3. New Media Practices and Skills.
Among all the variety of new media practices that Latino/Hispanic immigrant youths developed at the context of the home, I focus my analysis on the ones that were more relevant for advancing their assimilation to the U.S. I have grouped these new media practices in three different categories: homework, media consumption, and media production. As I will discuss, by developing these practices, youths exercised their own agency, and gained new media skills (e.g. distributed cognition, transmedia navigation) that helped them advance their assimilation process across multiple dimensions and with different paces.
2.3.1. Doing Homework in a Networked Way: Distributed Cognition.
Doing homework was a common practice all five Latino/Hispanic youths experienced at the context of their family. For this activity, youths used their home computers and Internet connections. Although homework load was not very heavy, and they could usually complete it inside the school hours (especially Miguel, Inara, Antonio and Sergio who were in the general track), all of these youths mentioned working in school assignments at home and using new media technologies for "getting homework done." In order to complete their homework they regularly used the Google search engine and browsed the World Wide Web, and sometimes watched online videos. While doing their homework in a networked way, all of them had the opportunity of developing the new media skill of "distributed cognition." That is, they were able to gain the ability to expand and augment their cognitive capacities. (Jenkins et al. 2006)
The "distributed cognition" skill they developed through their homework practice, however, was not very robust and tended to rely too much on the technical skill of searching the World Wide Web. For all of these youths doing homework at the family context meant interacting with the information available in the ever-expanding repository of the web. Their favorite tool for that interaction was the Google Search Engine. All of them were heavy users of it and had made it the default engine of their home computers and mobile devices. Gabriela, for instance mentioned, "if I need help on math I would go on Google... It helps me get the homework done." Similarly, Antonio said, "I usually just use Google and I’ll just go through it for whatever I need, I just get a little information of everything." As the following excerpt from an interview with Sergio reveals, using Google in his homework practice allowed him to complete his assignment and get good results.
"A: Google helped me out with a lot of homework.  Q: Really? Give me example.  A: Whenever I don’t know anything it’s Google. I really Google the question so it’ll help me out with questions. Google is my number one friend on the Internet. If it’s not on the first page of Google I’ll never find it.  Q: So how do you ask a question to Google?  A: I mainly just, I ask the question that is given to me. And if I can’t find it that way I’ll just reformat the question or find the key word in the question.  Q: Oh, so do you use, like, quotations for the question?  A: Yes.  Q: Oh, so you look literally for the question?  A: Literally for the question, yes.  Q: Really?  A: Sometimes some of the homework here at school is printed off the internet- (...)  Q: And do you feel like, I mean, when you did your homework using that, which was the result?  A: It was pretty good. Like, my grade wasn’t wrong. Like, the answer was correct.  Q: Oh, so you got it right? A: Yes."
However, as the previous passage reveals, the technical use of the Google tool was done in a basic level. Sergio's queries (and also the ones of the other five youths according to what they narrated in our interviews) did not involve customized search (e.g. Boolean operators, wildcards), and usually relied in entering to the search box just questions, keywords, and equations he directly copied from his school assignments. Given the "good" and fast results he was able to get from this practice, and the impressive power of the Google search engine PageRank algorithm for retrieving information from all over the web, it was not surprising that Sergio claimed that "If it’s not on the first page of Google I’ll never find it." Such statement shows the limitations of the "distribution cognition" skill he and the other Latino/Hispanic youth were developing with their networked homework practice. By relying to much on the searchabily affordance of the web, they tended to focus their homework practice in just the technical action of searching, and did not develop other social and cultural aspects of the "distribution cognition" skill such as "tapping social institutions and practices or remote experts whose knowledge may be useful in solving a particular problem" (Jenkins et al. 37).
Despite the ubiquitous presence of Google in the homework practice Latino/Hispanic youths developed at home, some of them also relied in other tools for augmenting their cognitive capacity. Using these tools, however, was also oriented towards over exercising the technical skill of searching. Antonio, for instance, used a website called Spark Notes in order to complete reading assignments. He said,"If I haven’t read a book for English, I’ll usually just go to Spark Notes and find a summary on there, which is very helpful most of the time." Inara, who was a visual oriented person, relied on YouTube for finding videos about books she needed to read as well as for preparing for tests. When she had to take the SAT test, she prepared herself at home watching online videos she found in YouTube. As she explained,
"it was the SAT exam, and I wanted to see something, because reading -- I'm not really good with the reading and doing it on my own kind of thing, I like to see it -- I like to visualize, so I, you know, searched SAT tutoring or something and it told me like how to remember stuff and how to do this quickly and do this first and then do this first, because it's easier and then if you don't get one question just let it go and go on to the next one and come back to it and then take the most greatest guess you can think of and then that's it and I’m just like, "Okay." And I made a good grade on it."
Doing homework in a networked way was useful for all the five youths because it allowed them to find information fast and exercise their agency at their family contexts. Independently of the parenting approaches of their families, and the tracks they were enrolled at school, leveraging the searchability affordance of the World Wide Web technology became useful for completing their school assignments and solving academic problems. However, with the exception of Gabriela, who was enrolled in the advanced track at Freeway High, and had more support at home due to the "concerted cultivation" style of her parents, doing homework in a networked way allowed all the other youths to compensate the lack of adult guidance they had at their homes and the "natural growth" parenting style of their families. Furthermore, this new media practice, matched the low expectations of the track they were enrolled in school. Not surprisingly, Miguel, Inara, Sergio and Antonio who were enrolled in the general track, and whose parents practiced the “natural growth” approach had developed an attitude towards educational achievement in which they just needed to pass. As Inara stated in one interview, "It's not a big deal as long as I'm passing then I'll be good." According to this attitude and school expectations, completing homework in a fast while augmenting their cognitive capacities did not require the development of information quality standards, judgment, and critical skills.
Nevertheless, the practice of doing homework in a networked way, and the "distribution cognition" skill, helped all of the five Latino/Hispanic immigrant youth to assimilate to the U.S. Evidence of that, is that all of them had advanced in the U.S. school system, had not dropped out, and three of them (Inara, Antonio, and Sergio) graduated from high school. Their educational attainment, even despite their low achievement in the school general track, was an indicator of their assimilation to the U.S. Participating in the schooling system of the host society, adapting to it, and navigating it, did advance their process of assimilation, especially at the cultural, educational, and linguistic dimensions. However, although being able to "pass" and graduate was definitely an important outcome of the homework practice and "distributed cognition" skill, opportunities for developing this practice and skill to a higher level were missing.

2.3.2. Media Consumption: Transmedia Navigation (levels of simple recognition and narrative logic)
All of the five working class Latino/Hispanic immigrant youth, independently of the resources and quality of their new media domestic environments, were able to engage in a range of media consumption activities at home. From music listening to videogame playing to movie watching to multimedia streaming, Inara, Gabriela, Antonio, Miguel, and Sergio, exercised their own agency in the context of their families, and, taking advantage of the affordances of new media tools, were able to interact with vast amounts of U.S. cultural content. While doing so, they were able to not only advance their process of assimilation, especially in the linguistic and cultural dimensions, but also developed the new media skill of transmedia navigation. This skill, as Jenkins et al. have explained, consists in "the ability to deal with the flow of stories and information across multiple modalities."(46)
In the context of their homes, these youths used their mobile devices, videogame consoles, home computers, and TVs, to connect to the new networked communication environment, and to hunter and gather cultural content from a variety of sources. According to their personal interests (as well as to the ones of their peers), youth assembled the pieces of information they collected, gave them meaning, and incorporated them as part of their identities. For instance, as music fans, all of them were able to experience their favorite tunes and follow the activities of their favorite artists across multiple modalities such as Internet radio, YouTube music videos, MP3 files, and Facebook feeds. For these working class Latino/Hispanic youths, music was experienced across media, particularly, going back and forth between aural and audiovisual modes. As Inara, explained, she usually combined listening to Pandora Internet radio and watching music videos in YouTube. She said,
"Pandora, of course, is not going to show it to me (...) so I'll go to YouTube and look the video up and just listen to it like that. So I think it is important, because that way I can -- if I'm craving to listen to something then I'll put that on (...) And you see everything and it's awesome."
By the same token, Gabriela also explained how she "listened" to music by going back and forth between playing songs with the iTunes application of her laptop and iPhone, and playing videos in YouTube. As she explicated, one of the reasons for going to YouTube was that she could access the content for free. She said,
"sometimes I can’t find the song that’s not on iTunes. Like, I don’t like buying songs on iTunes a lot because I think it’s a waste of money. And so I try looking for them online for free. But if I can’t find them then I just use YouTube."
Although the combination of aural and audiovisual modes in youth music popular culture was not unique to new media (e.g. MTV music videos had been around since 1981), the ability to hunter and gather (for free) music tunes, streams, and videos from a rich and diverse networked communication environment, and from the context of home, was something new to working class youths. This activity supported the development of the "transmedia navigation" skill. Particularly, as youths were able to identify and to follow the same music related content in its multiple modalities across different channels, they were able to gain the skill of "transmedia navigation" at the level of "simple recognition." (Jenkins et al. 48)
In relation to music consumption, the transmedia navigation skill helped all the five Latino/Hispanic immigrant youths rapidly assimilate to the diverse U.S. music culture and listen to English-language tunes from a variety of genres according to their interests and the ones of their peer group. Miguel, for instance, listened to death metal and scream (a subgenre of emo and post-hardcore); Antonio listened to dubstep and film soundtracks; and Sergio, Inara, and Gabriela developed an eclectic taste that included hip hop, indie rock, pop, techno, reggae and also latin music. Hence, especially for the youths with eclectic taste, the transmedia navigation skill fostered a sellective mode of acculturation in which they could, at the same time, assimilate to the U.S. culture, and still maintain their connection with their original one. For instance, according to Inara, music was very important in her life precisely because it allowed her to embrace a bicultural identity. In one interview, she clearly articulated her proud in being able to listen to music from both cultures and in both Spanish and English. She said,
"Music is very important in my life. It’s everywhere. Especially since I guess you could say I have two lives, an Hispanic life and also an American life. If I would be living in Mexico (...) I would just listen to nothing but Hispanic music, which is reggaeton, salsa, merengue, cumbias. (...) But now since I live here I can listen to anything. Techno, what else? Hip hop, rock, reggae. I listen to country music. I love country music."
One of the common U.S. cultural products that youth experienced across multiple platforms during our fieldwork was the blockbuster sci-fi adventure film The Hunter Games (2012). This movie was based on a three novel series written by Suzanne Collins in 2008, and it had also a soundtrack album that included several popular artists such as The Civil Wars, The Decemberists, and Arcade Fire. Following his passion for music, film, and storytelling, Antonio, interacted with the textual and aural modalities of The Hunter Games story from the context of his home. As he explained to me, he downloaded the three books from the Internet in ePub format and read them in his bedroom using his smart phone. He also downloaded one of the songs (MP3) of the soundtrack album made by the Canadian/American indie rock band Arcade Fire (the one called "Abraham's Daughter"). As he proudly explicated, he was able to "grab" the music tune days before the movie was even premiered. He said,
"I actually had it like a couple days -- two weeks before it actually came out on the movie in theaters.(...) They posted it on their website and they posted it on Facebook, so then I grabbed it from there."
Although Antonio had to go outside of his home in order to watch The Hunter Games movie, the activities he developed within the context of his home, clearly helped him to develop the transmedia skill, to express his agency as a media hunter and gather, and to understand how the same content was being translated across different modes of representation.
Likewise, for the youth who developed the transmedia navigation at the level of narrative logic, the context of home allowed them to interact with the flow of information across media and understand "the connections and complexity of a story being told through different media" (Jenkins et al. 48) This narrative logic level of transmedia navigation was especially noticeable among the youth who consumed manga and anime in English language. Inara, Miguel, and Sergio, for instance, mentioned they had had interactions with complex transmedia worlds such as Sailor Moon and Full Metal Alchemist, especially when they were younger, and mentioned they followed the stories not only through TV cartoons and DVD movies, but also through comic books.
Given the power of the entertainment industries to exploit media properties across a range of formats and channels, and the dispersion of these content across an expanding networked communication environment with low barriers to entry (at least regarding consumption), it was not difficult for working class Hispanic/Latino immigrant youth to gain transmedia navigation skills. As they gained that skill they were also able to advance their assimilation in the cultural and linguistic dimensions. Especially regarding the interaction with media content in audiovisual and textual modes, all the five immigrant youths of our study overwhelmingly preferred U.S. cultural products and in English language. Although some of them like Inara, Sergio, and Miguel were interested in anime and manga (a cultural product from Japan), their interaction with this content was made using English translation and subtitles. Hence, all of them actively practiced the language of the host country while being at the context of home even if the interactions with their parents were sometimes only in Spanish. Such kind of use of the two languages did not seem to create conflicts within the family dynamics or at least that was not reported in our interviews with youths and their parents. Perhaps due to the affordances of new devices for individualized consumption and networkability, youths were able to access the cultural content they wanted almost anytime they wanted, both in their bedrooms and living rooms, and in the language they preferred. They interacted with these content either using their personalized screens and headphones, or with the new media devices located in the public spaces of the house.
However, even if the audiovisual and textual consumption of media was done in English-language and in an individualized manner, the stories, characters, and symbols, were eventually juxtaposed with elements of the original parental culture. Although the limitations of our fieldwork and data do not allow me to reveal the multiple symbolic juxtapositions and mixes that could have emerged at the family context due to the active transmedia navigation of children and youth, there is some evidence in our interviews that this phenomenon actually happened. For instance, explaining her engagement with the Transformers franchise, Inara revealed not only a lifelong passion for interacting with this narrative world across audiovisual media formats, but also an active use of the symbols in her bedroom as an expression of his bicultural identity and creativity. As she explained,
"A:The Transformers cartoon, (...) that was by far my favorite show of all times. And then when it became a movie that’s the only fanatic craziness that I’ve gone through is Transformers one through three.  Q: Really?  A: Yeah. I’ll be like, “Transformers!” Every time I see something about Transformers I would scream. And then my friends are like, “What?” And then see it and be like, “Oh. Transformers.” And my friend also got me a poster so it’s hanging on my wall. And I won’t take it off. That’s the only thing that I have that is a poster and that nothing has to do with anything of my decorations. Because I have a giraffe painting. And I also have the Virgin Mary on one side. And then I have Transformers on the other. I can’t get enough of it."
2.3.3. Media production: Transmedia Navigation (level of rhetoric)
Besides being able to develop the skill of transmedia navigation at the levels of recognition and narrative logic, the five Latino/Hispanic youths were also able to hone this skill at the level of rhetoric. That is, they were able to "express an idea within a single medium or across the media spectrum" (Jenkins et al. 48). For instance, within the context of their families they created and exchanged text messages, status updates, and multimodal profiles leveraging the tools and networks they could access at home. Due to the bicultural and networked quality of their domestic environments, these activities involved communicating and socializing with both family members and with peers, in both Spanish and English. However, the characteristics of their families and their personal interests, created big differences in the kind of new media production working class Latino/Hispanic youths were able to do. While all of them created textual content and multimodal profiles for social network sites (e.g. Facebook) in a casual and friendship-driven way; only few developed a creative media production practice that was interest-driven and artistic at their family context.
Social, economic, cultural and technological resources available at home, parenting styles, and personal motivation determined youths' media production practices. Only Gabriela and Antonio, the youths who had access to higher quality computers, software, and musical instruments at their homes, developed a creative media production practice that involved more advanced uses of digital tools. Although their new media production work was not directly related to the musical instruments they had, their disposition to practice, experiment, and self-teach was different to the one of the other youth. Following their personal motivation, both Gabriela and Antonio, invested time and effort in trying to master a technical media skill and a professional digital tool that allowed them to express their ideas in a specific modality. For both of them, the context of the family gave them a space to exercise their agency, develop a creative identity, and make media products. On the one hand, Gabriela became engaged in photography and practiced taking and editing digital pictures with his two digital cameras (one compact and one SLR) and the Photoshop software of his Macbook laptop. On the other, Antonio became engaged in computer music production and practiced sequencing, layering, cutting and making music using the home computer, the FL Studio software (a digital audio workstation), and his headphones.
However, although both Gabriela and Antonio spent lots of time practicing with digital tools at their homes, and developed the rhetoric level of transmedia navigation through visual and aural modes of expression, the outcomes of their practices were different in terms of assimilation to the U.S. For Gabriela, it allowed her to advance in their trajectory of assimilation as she developed a career aspiration as a photographer (in one of our interviews she said, "I want to start my own business, like, for wedding photography"), circulated their creative media creations in a specialized online community (Flickr), and undertook photography work for the local business of her aunt. In contrast, for Antonio, the media production practice remained more solitary and his music compositions did not circulate beyond the context of home. As a result, although the practice of computer music production fostered Antonio’s interest in digital media and allowed him to "mess around" with software and express in an aural modality, it did not really helped him to advance his assimilation trajectory.
The different outcomes of the digital media production practice of Gabriela and Antonio, serve to illustrate how parenting styles, resources, and new media domestic environments shape the assimilation trajectories that Latino/Hispanic immigrant youth follow in the U.S. In particular, they reveal how the parenting styles and social, cultural, and economic resources of a family create possibilities for assimilating to different socioeconomic segments of the society and participating in digital culture with different degrees of power. In the case of Gabriela's family, the "concerted cultivation" style and semi-robust resources of her parents provided a system of support that gave her an advantage in their digital media production practice. As a result, she was able to maximize her participation in creative media production assimilating faster to the digital culture and higher socioeconomic segments. In her case, the transmedia navigation skill was not developed in isolation but had been supported by her family both financially (Mr. Garcia provided cameras, computer equipment, software, and specialized books) and socially. Not only had Mr. Garcia invested time with her going on photography trips around Austin metropolitan area, and money buying her professional equipment, but also other members of Gabriela’s extended family had encouraged and helped her to develop her talent and achieve in photography. Her uncle, for instance, who lived in San Francisco and was a young professional photographer visited her a couple of times, taught her informal lessons about lighting and composition, and provided her with several pictures Gabriela proudly hanged in her bedroom. Furthermore, Gabriela's aunt, who lived in the Austin metropolitan area and had a wedding cake business, gave her the opportunity to do photography work. As Gabriela explained, this opportunity allowed her to publish her photos in a portfolio that was shown to an audience. She said,
"I took pictures of her cakes, because she does that for weddings, and so, like, I helped her one her portfolio for her cakes, and so I’m, like, she made an album out of my pictures I took. Q: Wow. A: Yeah. Q: So she shows that to all her clients. A: Yeah. Q: That’s cool. Did you put your name on it? A: Yes. She put my name on it."
In contrast, the “accomplishment of natural growth” parenting style and fewer resources of the Chapa family had placed Antonio in a position of disadvantage. As a result, Antonio did not leverage his computer music production practice to fully participate in the digital culture beyond his living room. His participation in creative media production was solitary and characterized by the lack of sociocultural support. When talking about how he had developed his interest in computer music, Antonio could not even remember how he had started to use the computer for making beats. As he explained to me,
"I don’t really know how I got into the music side, composing. I kind of just, after a while it just kind of grew on me when I got my first music software. And I don’t even know how I got in it, all I know is I got it off the Internet and I started making music."
Although the quality of access at his home environment allowed him to find the digital tools he needed to start developing a creative media production, and actually had helped him find an interest, the lack of social, human, and cultural resources of his family placed him in a position where he could not figure out how to leverage his technical skills in a more social and economic way. For instance, he decided to not talk with his parents about his music production based on his belief that they could not helping him in any way. As Antonio explicated when I asked him about what his parents thought about the use of the home computer for making music,
"They've seen it a couple times but I don't think they actually know what it is, because they're from Mexico, they grew up with very little technology"
The lack of support he found at home, combined with Antonio's disengagement with school (he described himself as an "outcast") and low educational achievement, had contributed to an attitude towards sociocultural interactions in which he did not ask for help or tried to maximize his participation, even when it was done online. As a result, his media production practice remained very isolated at the context of his home, and minimally connected to niche online communities with similar interests. Although he had been able to find networked audiences/publics online that shared the computer music production interest, his interaction with them was limited to downloading cracked software (FL Studio and plug-ins), finding music in a variety of websites ("I found a lot of good artists in sites like SoundCloud, Beat Port, YouTube"), and watching video tutorials in YouTube. As his interaction with these online communities remained very minimal (he did not even feel the need of creating user accounts), he missed the opportunity to maximize his participation in digital culture and find social and human resources that could help him to develop his music production practice in a more social and cultural way. Hence, Antonio did not fully leverage the transmedia navigation skill he had developed at the level of rhetoric for advancing his assimilation process in the cultural and social dimensions.
3. Conclusions

Through this chapter I have tried to examine the complexity of the assimilation process of five working class Latino/Hispanic youths while focusing on the individual and structural factors that shaped family dynamics and parenting styles, and the agency they exercised at the family context. All these youths developed a kind of selective acculturation in which family dynamics were characterized by biculturalism, and where acculturation gaps between parents and youths did not generate major tensions. Further, according to the social, economic, cultural, and human resources they could access and mobilize at home, and the parenting styles of their families, these youths developed new media practices and skills that allowed them to advance their assimilation process to the U.S. Particularly, by developing the practices of homework, media consumption, and media consumption, and the new media skills of distributed cognition and transmedia navigation, all of the five youths advanced their process of assimilation in the cultural, linguistic, and educational dimensions.
However, not all youths advanced their assimilation trajectories equally. Disparities in resources and differences in parenting styles shaped not only the quality and quantity of material and usage access to technology but as well the dispositions and motivations that youth had towards the educational and sociocultural dimensions of the assimilation process. Although all the five families had been assimilating to the U.S. working class, only the one of Gabriela was trying to actively move upwardly and assimilate to the dominant middle class. In contrast to the other family contexts, Gabriela had access to not only a new media-rich domestic environment but also to several social and cultural resources that her parents cultivated and mobilized for her (“concerted cultivation” parenting style). Gabriela had a system of support at home that was more robust than the one of the other four working class Latino/Hispanic immigrant families, and as a result the outcomes of her new media practices and skills were different especially in relation to educational achievement and the ability to maximize participation in digital culture. Hence, although all of the five working class Latino/Hispanic immigrant youth developed new media practices and skills at the context of home, variations in the speed of assimilation across the cultural dimension was noticeable and it was determined by socioeconomic factors.

4. References

January 2015

2015-01-08T22:59:49Z

Lombanaphd:

== January 8 ==

I am currently preparing for start writing chapter 4, about the internet context, and the practices and skills that Latino/Immigrant youth develop as they interact within this space. A space that is interconnected and networked. A unique ecosystem that has been changing fast, and that at the moment of the fieldwork has become mainstream among youth.

Participatory culture, new media literacies, and informal learning,

the worlds which a group of university students constructed for themselves through their choices of online resources and practices.

bridging -- not between white and Latino populations, but between minority populations (hip hop) and between different global populations (anime, manga).

a more diverse, multicultural society, which does not simply depend on a unified dominant culture into which the immigrant population can be assimilated.

what role these cultural materials play -- in distinguishing youth from their parent's culture, in forging ties with other youths who come from different cultural backgrounds -- and the ways they do or do not aid assimilation in ways which are institutionally valued.

cultural forms within other minority communities

Rebecca Black discusses some of these bridge-building potentials in her book on adolescents and fan fiction online, seeing anime fandom as a space where Asian contributors may interact more fully with dominant groups which shared their same tastes and interests.

what these youth are culturally doing, as much as "bridging," especially in terms of visual and music cultures. I would love to explore deeply this concept and use it.

illuminate the complexity of the assimilation process of contemporary immigrant youth in the U.S, especially, as you notice, the incorporation process to a new country in ways that are not institutionally valued.

== january 19 ==

Key questions for the chapter about the internet:

* what do they do online in terms of content consumption, content production, participation, active involvement, civics, learning?
* what are the outcomes of their internet practices, activities, experiences?
* how do these latino/hispanic immigrant youth benefit from their digital media uses?
* how do these practices help them in their assimilation process? to which dimensions of assimilation are they useful?
* digital media does help them to improve their life chances? to achieve social mobility?
* how do their disadvantaged position as immigrants, low income, low educational attainment, shapes their new media practices? their internet practices?
* what are the internet processes and skills that helped them to assimilate?
* why they do contribute to communities, networks and online activities? what are their motivations?
* how much do they post? how much do they share ? outcomes related to participation.

These questions should also be addressed in the introduction and conclusion of the dissertation, especially in relation to how their skills, socioeconomic backgrounds, educational attainment, families, interests, peers influenced, digital inequalities.

The conclusion should address the lack of resources, scaffolding, even if they had the motivations for social mobility, creative careers.

== jan 23 ==

Continue organizing data and framework to chapter about the Internet. Still struggling with the shape it will have and its structure. The challenge is to keep it simple and avoid too much granularity given the amount of data. The skills developed by the participation in online activities or their experiences on the internet will be networking, negotiation, and play. However, those skills are not fully developed. I could even focus in just networking and negotiation and not address the gameplay. This will allow me to focus only on social media and few other sites.

In any case, it can be useful to describe how their participation remains at the level of observation and awareness, mostly, with some sporadic levels of engagement and action. Participation is fluid for them across the spaces they inhabit online, or better, the spaces that they visit.

Interestingly some of them are able to find many groups and interests, especially discovering music, movies, and tutorials, and liking them or subscribing to them. They can receive news from this groups, be aware of them, but they are not really engaged in the conversation. Remain as readers, not writers. Some of their groups are also mainly from school. They struggle, precisely, with interacting with other groups, with bridging their interests. That is precisely one of the limitations of their internet practice, they do travel different communities, but mostly like drifting, they dont stay, or remain anonymous, or decide to not fully engage. With the exception of some of the groups of the school in FB such as the CAP, the Drill Team, the AP world history, they do not really belong to other groups where they are active.

However, their network of friends, especially in the ones with a more diverse network of friends and groups, can lead to awareness of news, to engagement in certain issues, and to social participation. For instance, the people who took action on issues, eventually, were Sergio and Miguel. Eventually signed petitions and cared about the SOPA legislation.

The Tumblr experience of Gabriela remains like a unique experience that is personal and social, private and public, she follows people, re-tumblr, but does not comment. It is very observational and inspirational, but does not involve a dialogue. It is limited to liking, watching, and sharing, recirculating. Is that a public?

Can the subscriptions to Youtube channels, and the liking of FB pages be consider participation in groups? in publics? in audiences?

Do they connect across social groups? Maybe the best example is the one of Miguel, meeting people in the MMOOPG and then befriending them on FB. The other youth so not really do that successfully. Except perhaps for Inara in the Drill Team and the Sergio and Antonio at the CAP, although those connections are not very strong. But they do bridge across social groups.

Are they aware of how their connections empower them? How they helping them? It seems like they discover that in FB and that is why they decide to stay away from drama, block certain people. However, they do not seem aware of the importance of connections for developing their interests in some of their passions. They do not really take advantage of the affinity spaces online. Even if they do discover them, observe them, visit them, they do not fully become engage in them.

December

2014-12-11T16:08:23Z

Lombanaphd: Created page with "== 12/11/2014 == I finished the draft of chapter 2 last monday. It became longer than expected. And perhaps It will need to be shortened in order to keep a more balanced exte..."

== 12/11/2014 ==

I finished the draft of chapter 2 last monday. It became longer than expected. And perhaps It will need to be shortened in order to keep a more balanced extension in the dissertation. Interestingly although I though it will be one of the easier chapters to write it was difficult and overwhelming. However, I think the result of it is good, and will provide insight to the field. I could create some articiles form it if I wanted to focus in the traits of latino families and see how they are changing with digitial media, and with the assimilation to the U.S. All these families are assimilating. Some faster than others, but all of them seem to have been breaking the stereotipical characterization of the latino/hispanic families. Familism and marianism is not very noticeable, familism is weak given the individualization of media practices, machism is weak and parents are not as autoritative, respeto persists but has weaken.

Looking forward to the third chapter, the one on the internet, I am curious to see how this chapter will complement the other ones. The one about home, and the one about after school. So far we have seen youth agency at home, at after school. NExt step will be at the internet. At the worlds of the internet. Here I will need to describe how they imagine the web, and the world they visit there. PErhaps the best way to do that is by focusing in specific interactions they have online, with particular websites. All of them for instance use facebook. Inara is one of the heavy users of it. Miguel also. SErgio as well. There are interactions with specific websites among some of them. For instance, Gabriela uses Tumblr and Flickr. Antonio seems to drift among several websites without feeling aprt of aany community really. Sergio as well. It gets the content but does not participate that much.

So focusing in specific websites, as if they were worlds coudl be one way. Other way is to focus on the internet as a world itself. Although given the diversity of online spaces that argument could be week. Each website should have its own discourses, rules, tools. That is why maybe focusing in each site could be more productive for the analysis. Maybe the sites are : facebook, wikipedia, flickr and tumblr, 9gag, and youtube.

What skills? of course transmedia, and distributed cognition. And maybe a third one will be judgement. It will be interesing to see if some of them does collective intelligence.

How does the searchability affordance plays here?

How do these skills help them to assimilate? allow them to keep their peers? to read in english, to write in english.

Also, how about the other practices and tools such as email? chat? downloading?

After School Chapter

2014-11-20T19:34:12Z

Lombanaphd: Created page with "## 0. Introduction All of the Latino/Hispanic immigrant youths from this study actively participated in After School Programs (ASPs) that FHS provided. The after school conte..."

## 0. Introduction

All of the Latino/Hispanic immigrant youths from this study actively participated in After School Programs (ASPs) that FHS provided. The after school context, in all its variety of clubs and programs, was a vibrant space of sociocultural activities where many of the students, especially the ones in disadvantage positions, accessed resources they could cultivate and mobilize, and found opportunities they could grasp. Almost every afternoon, when classes were not being held, Gabriela, Inara, Miguel, Antonio and Sergio, stayed at the FHS building in order to participate in different ASPs. As students of FHS and during the time of our fieldwork, they joined, for free and according to their personal interests, multiple programs that had a variety of goals, focuses, and learning approaches. Following his interest in digital photography, Gabriela joined the Digital Media Club (DMC); as a passionate dancer and fashion enthusiast, Inara became a member of the Drill Team and co-founded the Fashion Club; based on his interest in cooking, videogames, and Japanese animation, Miguel joined the Culinary Arts Program, the DMC, and the Manga Club; passionate of the arts, music, and digital media, Antonio became a member of the Art Honnors Society (AHS), the DMC, and the Cinematic Arts Project (CAP); and Sergio, following his interest in public speaking and the digital media arts, joined the debate club, the DMC, the CAP, and the AHS. Although the participation in the variety of ASPs changed during the course of the academic year, going from intense engagement to periods of absence, all these Latino/Hispanic youth, with the exception of Gabriela, sustained a regular involvement in at least one of the programs through the whole academic year.

Given the frequency of its activities, strong commitment and sustained participation of most of its members, and, overall, availability of qualitative data (field notes from participant observation, and semi-structured interviews), I have focus my analysis of the after school context only in one of the ASPs that FHS provided: the Cinematic Arts Projct (CAP). Given the digital media orientation of this program, examining it allows me to address more directly the core problem of digital inequalities and the evolving contours of digital and participation gaps, and try to understand how the field of after school programming is dealing with it. Moreover, the analysis of the CAP, allows me to study, in detail and from the ground, the media practices of two Latino/Hispanic immigrant boys (Antonio and Sergio), and investigate how they are shaping their process of assimilation to the U.S. society.

This chapter is organized in three sections. In the first one I provide a background of the field of after school. I discuss its historical evolution and relationship with immigrant and low-income youth; review some of the recent literature on ASPs outcomes, learning approaches, and incorporation of digital technology; and situate the CAP as part of the digital media oriented ASPs in FHS. In the second section, I elaborate a case study of the participation of Antonio and Sergio in the CAP. I analyze how the goals, structure, tools, discourses, media practices, and situated activities of the CAP, created a unique figured world or community where Antonio and Sergio became active agents. Particularly, I examine how the participation in the CAP helped Antonio and Sergio to access several social, cultural, learning, economical, and technological resources they could eventually mobilize for advancing their process of assimilation. Finally, in the last section, I provide some conclusions that intend to connect the findings of this chapter with the overaching purpose of my disertation and reflect on how the outcomes of participating in the CAP and the media practices developed within this specific afterschool context, shaped the assimilation trajectories of Latino/Hispanic immigrant youth.

## 1. The After School Program Field

With a history that expands for more than a century, After School Programs (ASPs) have become one of the most important institutions in the U.S. society for children care, and youth development and well-being. The origins of ASPs can be traced back to the turn of the 19th century and to a context of rapid industrialization and urbanization that transformed the nature of work, and the everyday activities of young people and their families. The disappearance of children labor, rise of parental employment, the creation of universal and compulsory education, and the increasing availability of free/leisure time in the hours that followed school, created a need for ASPs. (Halpern 2002, Kleiber & Powell 2005, Mahoney et al. 2009, 2010) Focusing on safety, health, and child protection at their beginnings, in the 20th Century ASPs evolved into institutions that also helped to develop social and academic skills outside home and school, and away from the streets. Since the 1990s, interest in these programs has re-emerged and both private and public organizations have increasingly supported ASPs intitiatives contributing to their grow.

Assuming that young people needed protection and care during their unstructured time, the after school institution has generally been defined by its different constituencies as a service provider that supports processes of socialization, acculturation, and training. (Halpern 2002, Kleiber & Powell 2005, Mahoney et al. 2009, 2010) Although in its origins ASPs' objectives positioned young people as in need of care and, particularly immigrant and poor youths living in inner-city neighborhoods, as requiring social control, being in danger, and deviant, their goals have evolved to include education enrichment opportunities and youth development. (Halpern 2002, Finn 2001, Herr-Stephenson et al. 2011)

After school providers have articulated different rationales and objectives according to particular sources of public worriness, and to the societal agenda for low-income children at specific political, economic, and cultural contexts. (Kozol 2000, Halpern 2002) Such ambivalent identity has allowed ASPs, as Halpern argues, to be flexible, to react fast to specific youth needs, and to keep a moderate adult agenda. However, the lack of stable purpose, has made ASPs "unable to resist pressures to promise more than was commensurate with their means; and they have been especially unable to resist pressures to promise to compensate for the perceived limitations of other institutions." (Halpern 2002, 180)

In contemporary U.S. context of standarized testing and achievement inequalities, the pressure for ASPs has been put on the side of the academic outcomes. In order to meet federal achievement standards, reduce school drop out, and support youth that is considered at risk (particularly low-income and minorities), policymakers, educators, advocates, and researchers have made the case that ASPs "can partially compensate for the inequities that plague our nation’s schools and play a role in efforts to narrow gaps in achievement between more and less advantaged students." (Garner et al. 2009) As a result, public and private funds have increasingly been alocated in ASPs that serve minority and socioeconomically disadvantage communities that are characterized in the statistical data by their low-income and low-achievement.

However, minority youth participation in ASPs does not only depends on the well intentions of policies and service providers. For instance, a national study from 2006, revealed that only 12% of Latino/Hispanic youth join ASPs compared to 26% African Americans and 13% of White. (Wimer et al., 2006) Socioeconomically disadvantage youth confront barriers to participation that are related to multiple individual an structural factors. In their extensive review of ASP studies, Garner et al. grouped those barriers in three categories: (a) poor availability, or a shortage in the supply of after-school programs; (b) logistical barriers, or individual- and family-level barriers related to cost, transportation, scheduling, or other obligations (e.g., employment, taking care of younger siblings); and (c) preferences and attitudinal barriers, or a lack of interest in participating due either to negative attitudes about programs or preferences for other after-school activities. (Garner et al. 2009) Overcoming those barriers is a complex task that involves several institutions and requires understanding educational equity within broader structural inequalities. Considering that challenge, several scholars have criticized the current trend in ASPs that over emphasizes academic outcomes as an strategy to close the achievement gap. (Hull 2008, Garner et al. 2009, Halpern 1999)

####1.1. Outcomes and Learning Approches

Despite the pressures and expectations that historically have shaped the discourse and implementation of ASPs, their potential and positive outcomes continues to be recognized. Children and youth's afterschool time is considered an important part of young people's everyday lives. Research and evaluation studies from the last decade have confirmed that participation in these programs does make a difference for youth and generates not only academic, but also social, prevention, and health bennefits. (Little et al. 2008) Studies of New York City's DYCD's Out- of-School Time Initiative (Russell et al. 2006), the national 21st-Century Learning Centers(U.S. Department of Education 2003), and Los Angeles' BEST Program (Huang et al. 2005), revealed that ASPs lowered drop-out rates, fostered better attitudes toward school, and improved academic achievement (better performance, homework complation, and engagement in learning).

Researchers have documented positive social and developmental outcomes such as gaining communication and interpersonal skills, cultivating social relationships, and decreasing behavioral problems (lower levels of depression and anxiety) across several studies. In their examination of ASPs across the nation, for example, Durlak and Weissberg (2007) revealed that programs with strong focus on improving social and personal skills improved youth self-condifence and and self-esteem. Prevention bennefits continue to be one of the most important ourcomes of ASPs in the 21st century and researchers have confirmed that programs help to decrease delinquency and violent bahavior, avoid drug and alcohol use, and knowledge of safe sex. Goldschmidt et. al (2007) examination of LA's Best program across 24 schools revealed that this ASP had a positive impact on the reduction of juvenile crime. Finally, evaluators have also measure the health bennefits of participation in ASPs, partcularly the ones that focus on physical activity and well-being. A study of the Cooke Middle School After School Recreation Program in Philadelphia (Lauver 2002), for instance, found that that participation in the program contributed to promotion of healty lifestyles among students.

Several factors influence the success of after school programs in terms of learning, opportunities, and development. Researchers from the Harvard Family Research Project argued that sustained participation, quality programming, and strong partnerships are the key factors needed to maximize ASPs potential and impact. (Little et al. 2008) Based in an extensive review of ASPs studies, Little et al. found that programs with higher frequency of participation and sustained attendance increased positive outcomes. They also identified several features of quality programming such as physical and psycological safety, appropriate supervision and structure, well-prepared staff, and opportunities for autonomy and choice. Further, they also revealed that the impact of ASPs depends on strong partnerships with a variety of stakeholders, especially among the various institutions in which participants spend their day (schools, families, communities). Service providers need to conisider all these factors when defining the programs goals, structure, staff, management, participants and funding.

Moreover, researchers in the field of after school have categorized ASPs in relation to their approaches to learning. These categories are useful for analyzing the rich variety of programs and understanding broader discourses that surround their impelementation. Noam et al. (2003) have described three different approaches: extended, enriched, and intentional learning. ASPs that embrace an “extended learning” approach have a strong focus on academic outcomes. As a result, their objectives emphasize supporting and mentoring students in homework and acadedemic subjects, improving academic achievement, and reinforcing content standards. In contrast, the “enriched learning” programs have a more flexible structure that allows for the development of project based learning activities, and their goals are releated to supporting hands-on experience, exploration, and self-direction. This approach, as Herr-Stephenson et al. have noticed, supports "interest-driven" participation and emphasizes the agency of young people in their learning. Finally, the "intentional learning and programming" approach has an emphasis on non-academic skills and social abilities, and focuses on youth development and empowerment.

####1.2. Incorporation of Digital Media in ASPs

The increasing popularity of ASPs during the past decades has developed in paralel to the dawn of the digital era, the transition to a knowledge and information society, and the emergence of a networked communication environment. Child care and ASPs support, as well as issues of technological access and education, have gained public visitbility and been subject of political debates, presidential campaigns, and legislation. The Clinton administration, for instance, created the 21st-Century Community Learning Centers’ (21CCLCs) afterschool initiative in 1998 in order to support ASP around the county, serve students attending high-poverty and low-performing schools, and reinforce academic programming with additional services including technology education. Likewise, Bush administration’s No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) dedicated resources to improve children’s access to digital technology, and reauthorized 21st CCLC transferring the administration of the grants from the U.S. Department of Education to the State Education Agencies.

In a context of rapid transformations, discourses of equal access to technology and the future of work started to be embraced by afterschool service providers, policy makers, researchers, educators, philantropists, and youth advocates. As Herr-Stephenson et al. have stated, the discourses of the digital divide and workforce development, have become part of the struggle to provide technological infrastructure (hardware, software, and networking), and to support youth-driven sociocultural practices (participation, production, and cocreation). The latter, in particular, has been framed by various researchers, educators, and advocates, as supporting new literacies (e.g. information, visual, computer, new media, etc), fluencies (e.g.technological, network), and twentyfirst century skills (e.g. applied, noncognitive, soft, interdisciplinary).

Although the use of media technologies in ASPs can be traced back to the 1980s with the use of video cameras for creative expression and media education (Sefton-Green 2012), their incorporation was not guided by the sense of urgency that the discourses from the turn of the century created. Incorporation of digital tools and networks became a high-priority and pressing challenge for afterschool service providers. As they balanced the risks and bennefits of digital technology implementation, ASP providers articulated different approaches to learning matching particular pedagogies and resources. (Herr-Stephenson et al. 2011)

Learning approaches have shaped goals, structures, funding, participant relationships and media practices within ASPs. For instance, ASPs that take an "extended learning" approach have focused on improving academic achievement by meeting content standards like the ones created for the Partnership for the 21st Century Skills (e.g. information literacy, problem solving, creativity), and Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) education. These programs are usually well funded and mantain close relationships with the industry by jointly organizing technology-related competitions and activities. In contrast, "enriched learning" ASPs focus on supporting the exploration of students own interests without necessary relying on content standards. Initiatives such as Computer Clubhouses, and Boys and Girls Clubs of America (B&GCA) are examples of ASPs that support a range of activities in where students engage in multimedia production following their own passions, developing their own creative expressions, and "learning with and about digital technology". Finally, ASPs that embrace the "intentional learning" approach are usually youth media programs that "are intensively and exclusively focused on media production as a pathway of youth development" and "tend to encourage young people to view media creation as a political act." (Herr-Stephenson et al. 2011, 30) These programs are aligned with a longer tradition of media education that promotes critical literacy, supports a political agenda of social change and youth empowerment, and relies in mentorship and structured activities with variety of media production tools, both digital and analogue.

Since digital technology oriented ASPs are supposed to serve low-income and low-achievement youth, they should be producing some impact in the Latino/Hispanic youth population who is situated at the wrong sides of many divides, including the digital one. However, research and evalution studies that especifically look at Latino/Hispanic look participation in digital technology oriented ASPs remain scant. One of the few studies available, was conducted in 1999 during the piloting of Project Connect, an initiative founded by Microsoft and that took place in the form of technology centers embedded in fourteen B&GCA Clubs around the country. Henriquez and Ba reported on the positive impact of the Project Connect across all sites, including four clubs where Latinos/Hispanics were the majority (two in California, one in Texas, and other in Colorado). The researches concluded that the incorporation of technology in the Clubs helped to increase Latino/Hispanic membership and regular attendance, suported Internet and computer access, and created a learning and engaging environment that bennefited not only the participants but as well the whole local community. (Henriquez and Ba 2000, 34) As regard to learning, researchers concluded that the incorporation of technology within the Clubs helped students to gain "deeper understanding of how the Internet, multimedia tools, and technology can be used for research, design, and communication." (Henriquez and Ba 2000, 35) However, researchers noticed that the presence of technology also created several challenges such as the lack of qualified staff, technical assitance, financial sustainability, technology integration into other educational programs, and a systematic program evalutation. (Henriquez and Ba 2000, 35)

In perhaps the most detailed studied on the impact of digital ASPs on immigrant youth, Rebecca London, Manuel Pastor and Rachel Rosner, found out that the implementation of digital technology across six afterschool service providers in California helped to solve not only the problem of access to technology, but also to support immigrant youth development and acculturation processes. Based on case studies of six Community Technology Centers (CTC) that provided afterschool programming to Asian and Latino/Hispanic immigrant youth, researchers revealed that besides bridging the digital divide, what they called the "Information Technology (IT) framework," fostered the creation of a supportive and safe environment where immigrant and disadvantaged youth could "find a voice, a place, and a future" in the new country. The ASPs "created spaces for immigrant youth to connect with one another and with supportive adult mentors, to express themselves freely, and to be comfortable in compatible cultural settings." (London et al. 10) Further, researchers argued that these technology oriented ASPs supported the process of acculturation of immigrant youth "in their broader communities by providing leadership education and other means of empowerment." (London et al. 10) The importance of adult staff who understood and respected immigrant cultural heritage and their familial context was crucial for fascilitating the acculturation process and openning opportunities to valuable information and opportunities. Hence, besides being mentors in technology, ASPs staff also "acted as cultural, educational, and generational brokers" who could address the specific needs of immigrant youth and help to connect their "existing ethnic identities with their new American identities." (London et al. 11)

#### 1.3. Digital Media After School Programing at Freeway High School

After school programming was diverse and dynamic at Freeway High School (FHS). When classes were not being held, the school infrastructure was transformed into the vibrant space of ASPs' activities. From theater to culinary arts to debate to college preparation to digital media, ASPs offered opportunities to expand students' learning, socialization, and skill development during out-of-school time. Given the size of the school (almost 2000), the raccial/ethnic composition of the student population (88.2% were minorities), and the number of students who received free lunches (61.7% were economically disadvantaged), FHS embraced afterschool programming as one of its major services. Although economic funding was scarce and only few programs were supported by state/federal grants (Texas ACE/21st CCLC), FHS supported the creation of ASPs (especially Clubs) and provided spaces were students could meet and engage in actitivites under the supervision of an adult (usually a teacher that served as sponsor).

FHS also supported the incorporation of digital technology by ASPs. Despite banning student's use of mobile and digital devices, blocking social network sites inside computer labs and classrooms, and struggling with budget cuts, FHS offered two digital media oriented ASPs were students could access computers, the Internet, and audiovisual production gear: the Digital Media Club (DMC) and the Cinematic Arts Project (CAP). These two programs embraced the dual discourse of the digital divide and workforce development, were not academically oriented, and had many low-income Latino/Hispanic youth as participants. With the exemption of Inara, all the subjects of our study participated in the digital oriented ASPs, although with different degrees of commitment and engagement. Although these programs were closely related to each other and shared some members and sponsors, they had big differences regarding their structure, goals, and approaches to learning.

##### The Digital Media Club (DMC)

Founded in 2009 by a group of junior students interested in digital media, the video technology teacher (Mr. Lopez) and the Videogame desing teacher (Mr. Warren), the DMC was youth-driven, student centered, and run by students (had a president, vicepresident, historian and tresurer). It offered a wide range of unstructured activities that included playing videogames, messing around with professional software, browsing the Internet, and producing multimedia. Because the DMC supported hands-own projects, experimentation, and the intensive engagement of students with subjects of their own interest, it could be said that it had an "enriched learning" approach. Thanks to the popularity of the club during its first year (more than fifty FHS students participated regularly) and the active mobilization of social, technical, cultural, and human resources done by the adult supervisors, the DMC obtained a Texas ACE/21st CCLC grant in 2010 that provided transportation (buses) and snacks, and payed the teachers for the afterschool time they spect at their classrooms (the payment was only for 2 days a week).

The activities of the DMC splitted across two spaces: Mr. Lopez' and Mr. Warren classroom/computer labs. Both settings were equipped with late-model iMac desktops neatly lined up around the edges of the rooms, around 30 in total for each room. All of the computers had Internet connectivity and a wide array of software installed on them - Final Cut Pro, iMovie, Garageband, Celtx, Photoshop, Illustrator. Three days a week, from 4pm to 6pm approximately, the two spaces remained open to members of the DMC as well as to other FHS students interested in accesing computers and the Internet. Members of the club, however, had also access to other media production tools such as video/photography cameras, midi keyboards, microphones, drawing tablets, and laptops.

Each of the spaces where the DMC expanded its activities attracted different kinds of students according to their interests and the elective classes they were taking at school. While students interested in videogame play and design, such as Miguel, used to hang out in Mr. Warren's computer lab, students passionate of film, music, photography and videography, like Gabriela, Antonio and Sergio, prefered to spend their time in Mr. Lopez' classroom. Given the loose structure and opennes of the DMC, attendance varied from week to week and was neither consistant nor mandatory. However, during the year of our fieldwork the DMC seemed to gradually lost student attendance due the fact that the teacher supervisors and student members, included Antonio and Sergio, got involved in other projects and could not dedicate time to plan especial events for the club as they did in previous years.

##### The Cinematic Arts Project (CAP)

The CAP was precisely one of the projects that emerged from the DMC and that evolved into a unique and independent program leveraging some of the physical, social, technological, cultural, and human resources that members of the DMC had been cultivating. Originally created in 2010 as a collaboration between Mr. Lopez and the two directors of a small local ﬁlm postproduction company, the CAP was a joint enterprise that intended to teach the art of ﬁlmmaking and digital storytelling to high school students. In contrast to the DMC, the CAP was a structured program and it was run by adults and recent FHS alumni. It was organized according to the traditional ﬁlm industry processes of pre-production, production, and post-production, studio hierarchies, and had clear goals and deadlines such as completing several short ﬁlms and the creation of a complete multimedia website. Given its focus on media production, goals, and the activities that participants developed, the CAP embraced an "intentional learning" approach. The CAP mision, as stated in its website, was "to educate, empower, develop, and celebrate the next generation of emerging artists," to help high school students "to be productive citizens, creative individuals and active participants in shaping our communities in the 21st century." In order to achieve that, the CAP was "dedicated to teaching the art of cinematic digital storytelling and digital media production to young people."

Due to the recognition that the CAP acquired among the local community during its ﬁrst year, it grew very fast in its scope and goals. At the time of our ﬁeldwork in 2011-2012, and just one year after its foundation, the CAP had turned into a non-proﬁt organization, had several sponsors from the local business, and included students not only from FHS but also from two other high schools from the district (scaled up from a group of eleven students to a group of forty students). Participants worked in ﬁve diﬀerent teams (Narrative, Making-of, Webisodes, Publicity, and Documentary) and their tasks were organized according to the hierarchies and work flow of a professional film studio. The CAP had especialized departments (e.g. Production Management, Sound, Art, Costume & Wardrobe, Hair & Makeup, etc.) and especific roles for each student (e.g. director, manager, camera operator, grip, cinematorgrapher, etc.). All the CAP teams were supervised by adult executive directors (three high school teachers and two professional ﬁlm producers) and mentored by ﬁve FHS alumni who had previously worked in the CAP during its ﬁrst year of existence.

From November 2011 to April 2012, CAP participants met regularly at Mr. Lopez' computer lab. Although sometimes, especially during the production process, the activities moved to other locations for shooting scenes or for presenting the work in public, most of the time, Mr. Lopez' classroom served as the everyday headquarters for the project. Paradoxically, during the six months of CAP activities at the time of our fieldwork, the DMC was gradually marginilized from the space of Mr. Lopez' lab as many of its members, including the student president (Sergio) and vice-president (Antonio), and one of the teacher supervisors (Mr. Lopez), focused all their attention in the hard work that the CAP required. Although like Gabriela and Miguel, Antonio and Sergio were part of the DMC, they decided to focus all their afterschool activities on the CAP as soon as this program started. Due to the way in which the CAP was structured, its location, and the amount of time that it demanded from its participants, abandoning the responsibilities with the DMC was accepted among its members, and some of them, like Antonio, even said that the DMC had slowly disappeared.

## 2. Latino/Hispanic Youth Agency in a Digital Media Production World

Participation in the CAP was trasnformational for Antonio and Sergio, two Latino/Hispanic boys with low-income and low educational attainment working class families, who despite their disconnection with formal schooling found in an ASP, one of the strongest connections to the U.S society. The CAP offered to them a safe, creative, and positive space where they could develop their interest in digital media production, engage in media practices, and articulate a filmmaking learning identity. It provided them with a community they could join, help to build, and proudly and publicly feel part of it. Moreover, the CAP give them access to social, economic, technologial, and cultural resources they could use for navigating their process of assimilation. However, although in the short term and during their participation in the program the outcomes were for the most part positive with their assimilation trajectories moving upward in terms of aspirations, connections, and opportunities; in the medium term the bennefits seemed to fade out as Antonio and Sergio graduated from high school and could not continue having access to the system of support that the CAP gave them.

###2.1. Entering the World of the Cinematic Arts Project

The framework of "ﬁgured worlds" elaborated by Holland et al. (1998) is useful for analyzing the experiences that Antonio and Sergio had as participants of the CAP and their relationship with the processes of assimilation. I argue that the CAP can be understood as a "ﬁgured world" formed through social and situated activities. This world was historically situated, socially enacted, and culturally constructed. It was a collectivity where members "ﬁgured out" who they were in relation to each other and through a set of practices. (Holland et al. 1998; Urrieta 2007) At the CAP after school program, students came together to construct joint meanings and leveraged technological, social, and cultural resources. Within this "ﬁgured world," Antonio and Sergio reinvented themselves as ﬁlmmakers, found opportunities to connect with their school and the local community, and developed media practices and skills that allowed them to participate in social, cultural, and economic domains they had not explored before. In other worlds, the CAP allowed them to advance in their assimilation process.

By analizing the CAP as "figured world" I also intend to address the relationship between assimilation and learning identities, and highlight the learning outcomes of participating in ASPs. Learning and identity are strongly related. As much as learning is a process of becoming (Wenger 1998), so is identity an act of self-making. (Holland et al. 1998; McCarthey and Moje 2002; Urrieta 2007) Both, identity and learning are produced in practice through life experiences. When people participate in activities within particular contexts or "ﬁgured worlds" they engage in both a learning process and an identity work. (Holland et al. 1998; McCarthey & Moje, 2002; Urrieta 2007) Hence, by developing shared practices, establishing relationships with others, and enacting performances of the self, people construct their selves as learners. However, because identity and learning are historical phenomena, their processes are also embedded in both a collective past ("history-in-system") and a personal subjective history ("history-in-person"). (Holland et al. 1998; Urrieta 2007) When people enter "ﬁgured worlds" they bring with them a personal subjective history of social life experiences and conceptual understandings that establish diﬀerent possibilities of engagement.

In my analysis I understand the learning identities of Antonio and Sergio as both performances and narratives situated in the "ﬁgured world" of the CAP. On the one hand, I analyze the enactments of the self that these boys developed as they engaged in shared practices and played diﬀerent roles. On the other, I examine how they narrated their activities in the CAP, and told stories about themselves and their social interactions with peers, mentors, and the local community.

###2.2. Space, Tools, and Discourses.

The activities and resources of the CAP where localized in the speciﬁc physical space of a FHS computer lab supervised and designed by Mr. Lopez. Although sometimes, especially during the production process, the practices of the CAP moved to other locations for shooting scenes or for presenting the work in public, most of the time, Mr. Lopez' computer lab served as the everyday headquarters for the project. It was in this particular space inside FHS major building, and during the speciﬁc time of after-school hours, where the "ﬁgured world" of the CAP was recreated by the social engagement and shared activities of the participants.

Mr. Lopez, a third generation Mexican American from Houston, bilingual, and with a strong sensibility towards the Chicano activist movement and the creative arts, had assembled during his 5 years at FHS a space not only rich in computer and video technology tools, but also in Latino/Hispanic cultural artifacts. All the walls were decorated with iconography rich in Mexican and Latin-American symbols such as posters of Zoo Suits, Chicano art, the Mexican ﬂag, and images of cultural heroes such as Frida Kahlo, Che Guevara, and the farm workers activist Cesar Chavez. As regard to technology, the lab was equipped with 24 I-Mac desktop computers organized in three rows next to the walls. The computers ran the latest OS-X operating system, were connected to high speed Internet, had web cams, internal microphones, headphones, and several media production software applications such as I-Movie, Garage Band, Key Note, Adobe Suite (Photoshop, Illustrator, After Eﬀects), Final Cut Pro, and Celtix. The layout of the desktop computers left a clear wall for screen projections, as well as an open space in the middle of the room were movable and circular tables were available and could be used for group meetings. The lab also had an equipment room with lighting kits, green screens, tripods, microphones, boom poles, sound recorders, midi keyboards, headphones, laptops, and several HD video and DSLR photography cameras. Furthermore, and speciﬁcally for the activities of the CAP, the lab was upgraded with more professional ﬁlmmaking gear donated by a local media company such as a dolly, a jib, and a fake rig.

Besides designing the space of the computer lab as a supportive and safe environment for Latino/Hispanic youths, Mr. Lopez played a central role in setting up the discourse and practices at the "ﬁgured world" of the CAP. He made availabe "positional frames" (Greeno 2009) that entailed active roles for students in their learning. Using the frames of project-based learning (PBL) and filmmaking, Mr. Lopez positioned students as active learners, creative media producers, and authors. On the one hand, the PBL frame was based in a pedagogy that was situated, experiential and social, inspired bt learning by doing, and constructivism. The PBL frame empowered students to learn through experience and media production activities, and fostered peer-learning, collaboration, and entreprenuership. On the other, the filmmaking frame was shaped by the discourse of professionalism and workforce preparation and positioned CAP participants as possesing technical expertise, being capable of finishing a range of media products, and assuming responsibilities. The "filmmaking" frame entailed active roles for students in their learning and positioned them as having authority and obligations as if they were professionals. Each department or team had students assuming diverse roles that went from directors to camera operators to editors, allowing them to learn and practice particular skills, and to exercise different degrees of agency according to their responsibilities.

Finally, it is important to mention that Mr. Lopez was invested in building "caring relationships" with his students and the participants of the CAP, in particular the Latino/Hispanic ones. (Valenzuela 1999) He valued the cultural resources that minority students brought to the after school program, especially the Spanish language and the popular Mexican and Chicano heritage. Instead of "subtracting" the minority students cultural and social resources, Mr. Lopez supported and enhanced them by valuing their Latin-American ethnic background, traditions, and their Mexicanidad. (Valenzuela 1999) He acted as a "cultural broker" (Cooper, Denner and Lopez 1999) for Antonio and Sergio, and other Latino/Hispanic students and minorities, helping them to feel safe at after-school and in the broader school community; opening pathways to learning and earning experiences beyond the classroom; and supporting their process of assimilation to the U.S. while respecting and valueing their ethnic heritage.

###2.3. Motivation and Empowerment (motivation access)

Motivated by their interest in digital media, the success and publicity of the first CAP iteration in (2010-2011), and their enrolment in Mr. Lopez video technology class, Antonio and Sergio entered the CAP with great enthusiasm in their senior year (2011-2012). Both had been in general low-track during Middle and High School, and had become low-academic achievers that knew how to "do school" by passing standardized tests and completing homework very fast during school time. Antonio and Sergio were also passionate about arts, computers, and digital media, and deeply invested in self-teaching and messing around with technology. Because they did not have that much material and usage access to technology at home, the school's computer labs and audiovisual production gear were very valued by them. Across several interviews they mentioned being "fortunate" and "grateful" for having this kind of accesses. In contrast to the allienation and boredom they experienced in the core curriculum classes, they were able to connect to the school via technology elective clases and ASPs (e.g. arts honor society, debate, DMC). Inside the CAP, and empowered by positional frames and diverse accesses (motivation, material, usage, and skills), they became some of the most active participants, showed up regularly, took responsibilities, played different roles, gained new media skills, and shaped their assimilation trajectories in a positive way.

The dynamic linkage between the filmmaking and PBL frames was very important for Antonio and Sergio, because it positioned them as competent media makers capable of using digital software, operating professional video gear, and authoring multimedia content, as well as having some understanding the different phases of the filmmaking process and the division of labor in professional film studios. Further, this layering of frames offered to these working class Latino/Hispanic students several goals that were bigger than the ones they encountered in the general track curriculum classes they took at FHS. In contrast to the low expectations, test work, and passive roles of schooling, filmmaking-PBL frames positioned them as active hands-on learners and media makers with clear objectives and deliverables. For instance, in their particular roles, Antonio and Sergio had to complete certain taks and collaborate in finishing and publishing multimodal media texts. Antonio, for instance, authored three different short videos (approx 3 minutes long) in where he described the activities of all the participants of the project during different production phases. Likewise, Sergio, as the main camera operator of the short narrative film, had to complete and intense shooting schedule for several weeks and was responsible of capturing all the footage according to a precise shot list.

The filmmaking positional frame helped to organize the social relationships, tools, and learning activities of the participants according to the film industry processes of pre-production, production, and post-production. Using this frame, adult supervisors, mentors, and students, confronted the challenge of finishing up several videos and creating a complete multimedia website, and established a tight schedule of deliverables, online publishing, and public exhibitions. Students worked in five different teams (Narrative, Making-of, Webisodes, Publicity, and Documentary) and their tasks were organized according to a film industry division of labor. The "filmmaking" frame entailed active roles for students in their learning and positioned them as having authority and obligations as if they were professionals. Each department or team had students assuming diverse roles that went from directors to camera operators to editors, allowing them to learn and practice particular skills, and to exercise different degrees of agency according to their responsibilities. Due to the size and the structure of the CAP all student members had to apply to speciﬁc roles or positions in one of the ﬁve teams. The application, as Sergio explained, consisted of a written form and an interview where students explained their previous experiences, answered questions regarding problem solving, and stated their reasons and motivations for playing speciﬁc roles. After evaluating the applications and conducting the interviews, the CAP mentors and supervisors took executive decisions and assigned positions. Since the ten FHS students who participated in the CAP had already taken elective classes with Mr. Lopez they had an adavantage over the other thirty students who came from the other two high schools, and felt confortable using the filmmaking frame for playing powerful roles in the different teams.

###2.4. Media Practices and Skills.

The media practices and skills developed at the CAP can be grouped in two categories according to their orientation: technical and sociocultural. By engaging themselves in these practices, Antonio and Sergio not only became some of the most active participants in the CAP but also had the opportunity of participating in other societal realms and advance their assimilation trajectories. Although those opportunities were unsustainable for longer periods of time, the fact that they happened at least during the CAP, can still be considered a positive outcome. However, the difficulty to make opportunities sustainable beyond the duration of an afterschool program reveals some of the paradoxes that the incorporation of digital media carries across formal and informal learning institutions and the challenges of balancing all forms of access to technology (motivation, material, usage, and skills).

####2.4.1. Technical Skills and the Importance of Material and Usage access.

Given the "intentional learning" approach of the CAP, hands-on media production and technical skill acquisition was at the core of most of the situated activities developed at this ASP. This approach tended to focus too much on the digital tools, the personal artistic expression, and an industrial conception of "filmmaking" that was hierarchical and very aesthetical and technical oriented. As a result, the majority of participants focused on gaining technical skills in order to collaborate and deliver the media artifacts that each of their teams needed and did not spend that much time interacting with the broader networked communication environment or analyzing media texts. From photographing to sound recording to video editing, participants engaged in media practices that required technical expertise, and were able to master them thanks to the acces to digital tools and the frequency of meaningful production activities within the CAP. For low income students such as Antonio and Sergio, that kind of material and usage access to media production gear and computer power was crucial. It not only allowed them to develop technical expertise but also to articulate their learning idenitites as filmmakers, exercise their creative agency, and connect to local institutions and communities (in particular the school and some small creative industry players).

Inside the CAP the levels of technical expertise were not evenly distributed among the participants. Although the media practices developed during the pre- and production phases such as audiovisual recording, lighting, and photographing, had lower barriers to entry and were mastered in short periods of time by the students, the practices of post-production such as editing and sound mixing required more advanced technical skills, knowledge of software, and storytelling abilities. These latter practices also required more solitary time in front of a computer watching, cutting, and organizing lots of audiovisual material. Among all the participants of the CAP, FHS students, such as Antonio and Sergio, who had already taken classes with Mr. Lopez, had a technical advantage compared to the students from the other two high schools because they were already familiar with the video production gear and computer software. Based on this advangate, CAP executive directors and mentors positioned FHS students in roles that required more responsibility and autonomy, and as a result, gave them more power.

###### Being a Camera Operator

In the figured world of the CAP, and according to the filmmaking frame and ethos of "professionalism", being camera operator required an advanced technical expertise, it had clear goals, it was structured, professional, and artistic. Technical expertise varied according to the media texts that each team had to produce. Working on the short narrative team required the most advanced camera operator. This team had to deliver the emblematic product of the CAP: a short fiction film that was going to be submitted to an international film festival. The short film, or digital video to be more accurate, was supposed to have a high aesthetic quality and be representative of the level of professionalism of CAP participants. Although Sergio wanted to be the director of the short film, he took the challenge of playing the role of camera operator and became very passionate about it, developing technical expertise and close relationships with the peers from his team, especially with the cinematographer, a Mexican student who had participated in the CAP the previous year and had cultivated the filmmaker learning idenity for several years.

As a member of the short narrative team Sergio had to prepare himself both technically and physically, and he had also to practice camera work not only during after-school but also at home. According to Sergio, it was one of his peers, the cinematographer of his team, the one who taught him what to practice and how to learn.
“
>Q: What was the preparation for this position?  A: Mainly Javier told me what to do to practice. He told me to take the camera home, learn the settings of the camera, learn how to set it up, how to find everything in case something goes wrong, and he also told me to lift weights -- because when you’re holding the camera -- we did a lot of moving shots -- to not have too many shake shots.

Access to a professional tool (an HD video camera) for extended periods of time and across settings extended the technology usage that Sergio had, and as a consequence, his ability to gain expertise. Although Sergio had already had experiences of video recording by taking elective classes in FHS, and had learned how to focus, frame, and set-up the white balance, the cameras that he had used before were little and not as sophisticated as the Panasonic AVCCAM HD Handheld Camcorder he had to operate within the CAP. The complexity of the tool also required a more advanced technical knowledge of all the settings. Learning, for Sergio required a lot of hours of practice, and that was his main responsibility during the preproduction phase.

Sergio's camera operation practice expanded beyond the space and time of the CAP in afterschool, and also involved lots of hours of practice at home. The fact that Sergio had to borrow the camera equipment home in order to be able to master the operation of a technology tool reveals how issues of access to technology and usage at home are crucial for learning. According to Sergio, it was precisely when he borrowed the camera and practiced at home, that he was able to learn. He said,

“When I would learn with the camera I had to take it home, practice filming little things in low lighting, and then messing around with the iris and F-stop and trying to make it so it would look better, because last year’s problem with the film was it was too dark, so we’re trying to fix that this year. So it wasn’t as bad this year.”

After a successful production phase in where he was able to shoot everything according to the schedule and solved several technical problems working closely with the cinematographer, Sergio felt he had acquired an expert level in camera operation and, although he wanted to become a filmmaker, did not take another position in the CAP. Instead of engaging himself in a new practice during post-production, Sergio's activity in the CAP became a more social oriented experience of hanging out with peers, with sporadic collaborations with particular teams that needed help. However, leveraging his camera operation technical skills he was able to participate in other media production projects that emerged outside the CAP and FHS. Thanks to the networking efforts of Mr. Lopez and the visibility of the CAP in the local community, opportunities for working in small video production jobs started to emerge out of school, and Sergio, as well as some of his closest peers, did not hesitate in taking them. Confident of his technical expertise, Sergio found two temporary jobs as a camera operator in the local creative industries (one in a well known Latino/Hispanic Television Studio and other in an independent digital studio who produced websisodes), and was able to not only translate his media skills into income, but also transpose the CAP filmmaking and PBL frames to other realms for short periods of time.

###### Editing Digital Video

To become skillful in video-editing software (e.g. Final Cut Pro), and learn how to ensemble a narrative with moving images it is necessary to have at least access to computer power and lots of hours of usage and practice. In his role of editor of the webisodes, Antonio, confronted the challenge of the video editing practice and narrated it as a kind of learning process that was difficult and unpleasant at the begining, and later became more playful and fun. Gaining video-editing skills became a sort of badge of honor inside the CAP because only very few were able to do this practice. Moreover, mastering this technical practice was also crucial for authoring audiovisual media texts, articulating a filmmaker learning identity, and developing a unique voice.

Acquiring video-editing skills was challenging for Antonio given the high responsibility he had been assigned as the editor of the webisodes. Although initially he had applied to be camera operator, the supervisors and mentors gave him the double task of being both camer-man and editor. As Antonio explained in one of our interviews, the knowledge that he had of the editing practice was little when the CAP started and he had to catch up and learn fast in order to complete the webisodes. He said,

>"this is like the first time I'm actually editing this much, because last year I learned how to use it (Final Cut Pro software) and that's all I really did with it -- learned. But this year I'm actually applying it to a lot of videos I'm doing. (...) It makes me hate editing even more, but I know it's a crucial part of post-production, so it's helping me out. (...) I'm learning a lot."

As Antonio spent more time engaged with video-editing, he gradually honed his technical skill, and his feelings toward this media practice transitioned from hate to fun. This transition reveals a crucial aspect of the learning process he experienced at the CAP, and is the importance of practice and usage. As Ellen Seiter has pointed out, "when large amounts of time 'practicing' are invested, the computer user is rewarded by the achievement of a kind of automaticity of many levels of competence." (Seiter 2008, p.33) In order to meaningfully "play around" with video editing Antonio needed to experience several hours of practice using the Final Cut software, watching, cutting, and pasting digital video footage. It was only after Antonio had completed two webisodes that he was able to had "fun" in the third video he created, and exercised his creative agency in a more playful way. When I asked what was his favorite webisode, he said

>"A: I think the third one, because I had more fun with it.  Q: Why?  A: Just because they told me to have more fun with it because they were kind of getting boring, so I was like, "Hmm, what can I actually do?" And I was just playing around with it. Q: And it worked?  A: Yeah.”

Antonio's mastering of the video-editing practice positioned him as a central agent inside the CAP, and strenghtened his filmmaker identity and artistic confidence. After overcoming the challenging of the editing and shooting the webisodes, he felt confortable with playing and improvising different roles within the CAP figured world. Moreover, he also felt confident on transposing the filmmaking and PBL frames into other social realms given the oppportunities to do so. During the CAP post-production phase, for instance, he found a temporary job as an editor of a live music show in one of the Latino/Hispanic television studios. Thanks to his video-editing skills, as well as to the social resources mobilized by Mr. Lopez who acted as a broker for his students, Antonio was able to connect to the local creative community, and to translate his technical skills into earning. By taking this opportunity, as well as another job as a camera operator, he was also able to continue developing his filmmaker learning identity and to making connections, at least temporary, with adults and creative industry professionals from the broader Austin community.

####2.4.2. Sociocultural Skills in a New Networked Media Environment

Although all the media practices within the CAP were sociocultural and situated in a social and cultural world, I have separated the ones that are heavily focused on technical skill acquisition, from the ones that are more oriented towards social interactions and connected to a broader digital and networked cultural environment. These sociocultural media practices still rely on technical expertise, but instead of focusing that much in personal artistic expression and individualized skills, they place more weight on the interactions with broader communities, the connection to new knowledge cultures, and the circulation of content in a networked communication environment. As Jenkins et. al (2006) have argued, the social skills and cultural competencies that emerge from participating in a new media communication environment, require "new ways of processing culture and interacting with the world around us." (21) Those emergent sociocultural skills, also conceptualized as "new media literacies" (Jenkins et al. 2006b), are necessary to find opportunities and participate in twentyfirst century culture, society, and economy.

Although the program had great potential to fostering digitally mediated sociocultural practices, developing new media literacies in the CAP was challenging and uneven. On the one hand, the hierarchical structure and division of labor of the CAP assigned to only one team (Publicity) most of the responsibility of interacting with the networked environment. Although eventually most of the CAP participants produced some kind of multimodal content that was published online or interacted in conversations in a dedicated Facebook group, only few students, mentors, and supervisors, were regularly interacting with the networked environment and gaining new media sociocultural skills. On the other, the CAP filmmaking frame and ethos of professionalism imposed constraints to the young filmmakers, mentors, and executive directors, that limited them to freely connect with emergent creative communities and cultures. Overemphasizing the high artistic quality of filmmaking, and imitating the twenty century film industry division of labor and studio structures, increased the barriers of participation in a digital and new media culture where the boundaries between amateurism and professionalism are being blurred. As a consequence, the degree of connectivity and networking of the CAP members remained limited to the local and profesional creative community. Although in the short term, such limited connectivity was very useful for leveraging social and economic resources, in the long term, CAP participants and alumni struggled with following a creative career path.

#### Transmedia Navigation

In his double role of camera operator and editor of the Webisodes team, Antonio was one of the few students who could participate in activities that supported the acquisition of new media literacy skills. Particularly, by editing and shooting three videos for the web he was able to gain expertise in what Jenkins et al. call "transmedia navigation." In the case of Antonio, "transmedia navigation" was especifically related to telling story across multiple media and "read and write across all available forms of expression" (Jenkins et al. 46) By actively participating in the construction of a coherent and multimodal story about the CAP using multiple new media texts and several media channels, Antonio was able to experience for the first time in his life, the online publishing and circulation of media texts he had helped to create. The webisodes he made, were part of a bigger transmedia story that expanded both offline and online, and that included public screenings of two documentary-style short films about the CAP everyday activities (one produced by mentors and other produced by students) and one short narrative film, a complete multimodal website, several online photo galleries in Flickr, three webisodes in Vimeo, a dedicated blog in Tumblr, and a micro-blog in Twitter.

In order to contribute to the transmedia story of the CAP, Antonio had to become very aware and self-reﬂective of the all the practices, discourses, tools, and teams. The three webisodes that he edited became multimodal texts that were intended to portray the everyday activtities of the CAP to a broader audience and became pieces of a bigger story that expanded across several media platforms. These videos showed diﬀerent members of the CAP working together and performing various activities, and had the specific function of explaining to a broader audience the diﬀerent production phases of the CAP. As Antonio explained in one of our interviews, the stories that he had told with the webisodes focused on the everyday actitivities of the CAP. He said,

> "A: I had to edit and shoot clips where the public, like family or donors or people that just want to know about the CAP -- instead of reading they can actually watch a video on what we're doing and actually help us get more money. "

Antonio structured three micro narratives about the different production phases and told concise stories about the CAP activities positioning he and his peers as young filmmakers. He recorded the activities as a camera operator, acted as a narrrator reading a script he wrote, and selected and sequenced the footage. A look at the third webisode illustrates how the learning process of creating webisodes that were part of a bigger transmedia story helped Antonio to develop his own voice and gain narrative skills. The one minute video is a montage of moving images that show all the diﬀerent CAP teams engaged in diﬀerent practices and working not only on the space of Mr. Lopez' computer lab but also in the halls of FHS, and in outdoors locations. As the images pass with a rapid pace, we hear the voice of Antonio describing the various media practices that members of the CAP developed. The excerpt bellow is a transcription of a section of the video where Antonio narrates the pre-production phase.
“
> "The past few months have been dedicated to prepare everything for this day. We
have gone through script writing, storyboarding, auditions, set-
preparation, and read-throughs. All to make filming goes smooth. Everyone is
excited and ready to jump right in and hit the ground rolling as production begins
this saturday and last all through this month of January."

However, despite his participation in the webisodes and his later collaboration the making-of video as an editor, Antonio did not find nor make opportunities to continue telling transmedia stories leveraging the networked media environment. Although he seemed to have developed the "transmedia navigation" sociocultural skill within CAP, this practice faded out very fast as the CAP entered the post-production phase. Neither in the temporary jobs he got outside of school, nor in some of the independent media projects he eventually made with his peers, he was able to engage in transmedia storytelling. This fact, reveals one of the most problematic aspects of the CAP organization and division of labor: the centralization of online interactions in one single team, and to be more precisely, in one single person: Mike, a FHS alumnae that became one of the most active mentors. As the supervisor of the publcity team, Mike was in charge of publishing all the online content, setting up all the social media accounts, and designing and managing the CAP website. Hence, although Antonio had the opportunity to create multimodal narrative pieces that were part of a bigger transmedia story, and understood a little bit of the process of multiple platform dissemination, he depended in somebody else in order to circulate the media artifats he created.

### Networking

Networking using digital media tools and platforms was another of the mediated sociocultural skills or new media literacies that some participants of the CAP were able to gain. For a program that was based in a school that banned the use of mobile and digital devices, and blocked social network sites inside computer labs and classrooms, it was quite innovative to foster a range of networking media practices among its participants. Interacting in a unique Faceboook group, blogging, desiging a website, and circulating the CAP media artifacts through social media platforms, enhanced the networking skills among some students, particularly the ones who were in the publicity team, but also others like Sergio and Antonio who participated in networking-related activities.

Although the networking skill involves several media practices such as searching for, synthesizing, and disseminating information, in the CAP, it was mostly about the latter. As Jenkins et al. have explained, this aspect of networking "implies the ability to effectively tap social networks to disperse one's own ideas and media product" and learning "how to be heard by large audiences" (51) Disseminating information was a crucial skill for the CAP because it allowed its members to circulate their media productions, reach out to other audiences and publics, and especially connect to sponsors who could help the project finnancially. Although the CAP was able to use the Texas ACE/21st CCLC grant that the DMC had gotten in 2010, the funding was not enough for paying for all the adult supervisors (5) and mentors(5), and for financing a transatlantic trip to a prestigious film festival that a small group of students did. Hence, disseminating the CAP media products among potential donors and targetting local business and small creative industries, was part of the objectives that students had. The fact that the CAP website had one section showcasing the donnors, and another section dedicated to explain in detail the different levels of sponsorship that supporters could do, reveals the strong finnancial orientation of the networking sociocultural practices that members of the CAP developed.

For Latino/Hispanic youth such as Antonio and Sergio who had not published content online beyond mainstream Social Networking Sites like Facebook and Myspace, the practice of creating a unique website, circulating audiovisual texts in streaming platforms, and reaching out a broader audience was certainly positive and formative. Even though they were not directly involved in the process of uploading files or setting up accounts, they felt good about creating specific multimodal content for the web (eg. webisodes by Antonio, a blog entry by Sergio) and having diverse kinds of CAP media producitons available online. They proudly shared this content with peers and family. Antonio, for instance, explained how he enjoyed showing the CAP website to others. He said,

>"it feels good for people to see my work (...) I've showed it to many people, because when I'm in the computer lab or have my laptop at school, I'll pull up the website and show them the trailer, because we already have the trailer out, or I'll show them some photos that we took on set, and for pre-production."

In another interview, Antonio told me that for the first time in his life he was being able to search for his and the CAP names in Google and find an extended list of links to the different media channels and multimodal content they had produced. To get their name "out there" in the Internet was narrated by Antonio as something "really cool." As he explained,

“It's a good way to get our name out there, because I remember searching up CAP when we barely started, and there was nothing. You had to type in the URL to actually get the website. But now you can get like news -- our actual webpage, Flickr -- all of these directly on Google, and it's really cool.”

The CAP website gave Antonio and Sergio a public visibility that they had not experienced before and the opportunity of articulating their filmmaker learning identities in public. One of the website sections introduced all the CAP participants with short biographies, black and white portraits, and, for the ones who had published content online before, links to their online portfolios and multimedia works. Each participant wrote their own profiles using a third person point of view that was supposed to match the ethos of "professionalism" characteristic of the CAP. Sergio, for instance, wrote:

>"Martinez has always held more of an interest in directing, but he never left out the real magic in producing a movie. (...) He worked on projects with Mike Davis and Antonio Chapa (...) He has always been inspired not by the physical prize that is given to him, but rather the experience and knowledge he gains. He plans on applying to USC's School of Cinematic Arts. (...)"

Likewise, Antonio wrote:

>"Chapa has shown great interest in music and digital art within the last few years of high school, but is beginning to show a passion for film making. He has worked on countless projects alongside Sergio Martinez, such as (...) He was inspired to join the Cinematic Arts Project by the opportunity to work with his friends, but also to meet new people to work with and to expand his network portfolio. Medina’s personal goal is to gain experience and applying it for future use, and possibly to apply for college."

The public profiles that these two Latino/Hispanic boys wrote for the website reveal an effort to disseminate personal information about projects, motivations, and future goals, that not only position them as experienced members of the CAP but also as active learners interested in pursuing filmmaking careers. The profiles were almost as digital business cards they could use when presenting themselves to others. Interestingly, these public personal narratives also revealed several positive outcomes of the networking sociocultural practice in relation to the assimilation process such as self-confidence, connections to the local community, English language knowledge, desire to achieve in their craft, and even some sort of college orientation.

Overall, it could be said that Antonio and Sergio had a good opportunity to start developing the digital networking sociocultural skill with the activities that the CAP developed online . Both as a collectivity and individually, they bennefited from the CAP networking practices. Based on the the number of supporters that were listed on the website at the moment of doing the major public screening (52 sponsors that included private and public organizations, local businesses, media companies, and individuals), on the media production job opportunities that emerged during the CAP post-production phase, on the invitations to present in technology conferences, and the awards that some members of the team received (Mr. Lopez won an outstanding youth media entrepreneurship award), it could be said that the networking efforts were succesful while the duration of the CAP. As a result, Antonio and Sergio were able to experience, at least during the months that they were involved in the CAP, some of the possibilities digital networking can generate, and the social and economic resources that can be mobilized with this new media sociocultural practice.

###2.5. Exiting the Cinematic Arts Project and Finishing High School: Confronting Structural Social Inequalities.

During the CAP post-production phase, after almost four months of intense media production activities, technical skill acquisition, and development of new media sociocultural practices, some members of the different teams started to grasp opportunities to learn, earn, and participate in media production worlds outside school. Thanks to the public visibility of the CAP, the increasing number of sponsors (including several local creative industry players), and the brokering efforts of Mr. Lopez, opportunities to participate in temporary and project based media work with local organizations and even between peers as independent producters started to pop up. As soon as those opportunities became available, Antonio and Sergio were some of the first students who took them, leveraging the social, cultural, and technological resources of the CAP (e.g. using profesional production gear from Mr. Lopez' lab for jobs out of school). For instance, they got temporary jobs in a Latino/Hispanic television studio as camera operators (Antonio and Sergio) and editor (Antonio) of a live music show that focused on Tex-Mex local bands. Both of them also worked for an international educational web video series about zoology and did camera operation for a couple of episodes that were shot near Austin. Furthermore, the two of them were able to collaborate with their closest CAP peers, during one weekend, in the making of an independent short video that ended being accepted into a prestigious international ﬁlm festival. By taking these opportunities they were able to bring their ﬁlmmaking practices, skills, and frames to other contexts, and translate them into earning capacity, learning opportunity, and social prestige.

However, media production opportunities became scare for Antonio and Sergio as they exited the CAP figured world and finished highschool. Although their filmmaker learning identities, social, technical, human, and cultural resources expanded during the months that the CAP was runing, they were not sustainable in the long term. Unfortunately, similar to the CAP itself, which could not sustain at the same big scale after 2012, Antonio and Sergio's resources became precarious after the termination of the school year and high school graduation. As Antonio, and Sergio exited the ﬁgured world of the CAP, and decided to break their connections with the afterschool world, their personal and subjective histories (history-in-person) became determinant for ﬁnding career opportunities and participating in different social domains. Very soon they were situated in a position of power that was fragile compared to the one that they had within the CAP figured world. Although both of them wanted to pursue ﬁlmmaking and creative careers, they confronted the challlenge of not having accesss to the resources and supports that could help them to continue that pathway.

With a history of average academic performance in the general track at FHS, and with working-class and low academic attainment immigrant families, Antonio and Sergio remained ambiguous about continuing their formal education and had not idea about how to get a job in media production. On the one hand, their families did not have the resources to help them to connect into a post-secondary education trajectory or into a creative industry job. None of the members of their immigrant families had gone to college and they struggled with ﬁnancial hardship while working in low skill jobs. On the other, neither the general track education they had received in FHS nor the CAP had prepared them to continue formal education after high school or how to apply to creative industry jobs. Despite all the positive outcomes of the CAP, the "intentional learning" approach, ethos of "professionalism," and filmmaking and PBL frames were too focused on the short term and the deliverable of media artifacts. Within the figured world of the CAP, a broader understanding of the media production job market and changing creative economy was something that was never addressed. For instance, even the temporary job opportunities that some students grasped did not required complete applications but were negotiated in an informal way. Moreover, and equally determinant, was the fact that the filmmaker learning identities of Antonio and Sergio were still very early in their development. For both of them, becoming filmmakers was something that emerged until their last year in high school while they participated in the CAP and became very engaged in the shared practices of the figured world.

Given such personal subjective histories, "ﬁguring out" a creative career outside the CAP was diﬃcult. As Antonio explained in a follow-up interview months after graduation, he couldn't translate what he learned at the CAP into economic opportunity after graduating from high school. He said,
“
> “I can't find a job. I'm calling Target, Walmart, stuff like that. I don't want to work at Walmart though. I don't want to work in fast food either. (…) I don't have any other job experience, except for video editing, and the only thing that really counts out of that is the communication part, for any other job. So, for me it's kind of hard, since I don't have previous job experience.”

After exiting the "ﬁgured world" of the CAP and finishing high school, Antonio and Sergio confronted the harsh reality of deep occupational, educational, and digital inequalities in the U.S and a very competitive and fast paced economy. In their position of disadvantage as working-class minority youth with low-educational attainment, they struggled with the lack of access to social, cultural, economic and technological resources. In the absence of supports, and lack of knowlegdge about the broader economic and social system, they had to deal with the impossibility of translating their technical and new media sociocultural skills into future opportunities. Suddenly, after their a great year of filmmaking, and having obtained a high school diploma, they realized that what they did not have all the skills and experience to continue participating in media production worlds. Their creative career trajectories seemed to be broken at that point and the powerful agency that they had developed inside the "ﬁgured world" of the CAP faded out very fast. Although they were able to enter a community college one semester after graduation, they remained ambiguous about the usefulness of formal education and had stopped making videos given the lack of access to professional video production gear.

##3. Conclusion: Confronting Paradoxes. Connected but disconnected. Segmented digital assimilation?

After school programming continues to be relevant for minority, low-income, and immigrant youth in the 21st century. ASPs are still important because they provide support and access to social, cultural, economic, human, and technological resources that are scant in disadvantage communities. In the case of Antonio and Sergio, the two Latino/Hispanic immigrant boys that participated in the CAP, afterschool programming had positive outcomes not only in their assimilation trajectories but also in their development. It allowed them to cultivate social relationships, develop a filmmaker learning identity, improve their self-confidence, gain communication skills, and feel part of a community and a media production figured world. Because this community was situated within FHS, being part of it also fostered a connection with the public school social institution. Evidence of that is that both Antonio and Sergio graduated from high school (an achievement that moved upward their assimilation trajectory, distancing them from the low academic attainmnet of his parents). Moreover, the CAP opened some opportunities of participation in the economy (e.g. temporary media production jobs) and in culture (e.g. Internet, local film culture), and very importantly, it provided multiple digital media accesses.

Because access to digital technology across its motivational, material, usage, and skill dimensions can help to bridge some of the divides that social inequalities are creating it is crucial that ASPs incorporate digital media in their programming. However, the way in which this incorporation is made matters. Afterschool service providers not only need to address the multiple dimensions of access but also have to balance them in a productive and generative way. In the case of the CAP, although all the dimensions of access to digital media were available at the program, not all of them were supported with the same strength. Although motivational, material, and usage access appeared to be well developed, the complex dimension of skills, was not very robust. Due to the "intentional learning" approach of the CAP, and particularly its filmmaking frame and ethos of "professionalism," the program placed too much weight on specific technical abilities and overlooked the importance of developing new media sociocultural skills. As a result, CAP participants like Antonio and Sergio were able to hone their skills in the operation of video production gear and computer software, but only briefly, and frequently with the mediation of an adult mentor or a supervisor, were able to develop new media literacies or sociocultural competencies.

Insufficient development of new media sociocultural skills did not help Antonio and Sergio for confronting the harsh realities of a rapid changing economy and deepening social structural inequalities. Once they lost the connection to the figured world of the CAP, their skills turned out very weak and they did not feel confident on using their media practices strategically in order to pursue a creative media career. This deficiency, however, cannot be blamed only on the afterschool service providers but needs to be understood in relation to a broader unequal social context, and to the subjective histories that Antonio and Sergio (e.g. their life-long learning and assimilation trajectories). Although it is true that the CAP could have supported the acquisition of new media sociocultural practices in a more consistent and horizontal way, the responsibility of doing so needs to also be distributed among other institutions such as formal schooling and home. For Latino/Hispanic youth that have been positioned in general curriculum tracks, and come from immigrant families with low-income and low educational attainmnet, participating in digital media oriented ASPs for one year in high school is not enough for developing the complex set of skills that are required for participating across multiple social realms. Developing these new media sociocultural skills needs to thought in an ecological way in where multiple institutions need to be commited to support their acquisition. In the case of the CAP, this program gave Antonio and Sergio, for few months, the opportunity to experience some of the power of networks and allowed them to exercise their creative agency in a figured world of media production they imagined and enacted. While participating in this world, it seemed like their assimilation trajectories moved upwardly very fast, finding connections to local economic and social institutions. However, the lack of sustainability of that participation after high school graduation, made their assimilation trajectories move to a lower position, that although it was not the one of their parents, did not offer many possibilities for continueing digital media creative careers.

The broken trajectory that Antonio and Sergio faced after high school graduation and after exiting the CAP, reveals the harsh reality of the evolving digital, educational, participation, and occupational divides in the U.S. Even the ASPs with the best intentions canot solve the paradoxical nature of rapid sociotechnical change and the discourses that try to level the playing field by providing access to new ditial media (e.g. digital divide, preparation for future workforce). In a society where structural inequalities determine the access to economic and future opportunity, disadvantage youth, such as the ones from Latino/Hispanic low-income immigrant communities, have to confront the challenge of bridging many gaps with evolving contours. From digital to participation to educational gaps, the problem of "leveling the playing field" continues to be one of the biggest issues for policy makers, educators, urban planners, and scholars. There is an urgent need for creating an infrastructure that supports the continuity of the creative career trajectories of non-dominant youth passionate of digital media tools and networks. The fact that despite having provided important opportunities during the school year, the CAP was not enough for supporting Antonio and Sergio's creative trajectory highlights the diﬃculty that Latino/Hispanic low-income youth encounter when they try to convert their media skills into social prestige and earning capacity. Without a more equal and continuous access to social, technological, and ﬁnancial resources, this segment of the youth population will continue to struggle ﬁnding connections to opportunity even if they have developed some new media skills.

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Figured Worlds

2014-11-18T05:07:57Z

Lombanaphd: /* Theory of Figured Worlds */

= Theory of Figured Worlds =

* a theory from psychological, cultural, and social anthropology
* practice and discourse
* a "ﬁgured world" formed through social and situated activities
* historically situated, socially enacted, and culturally constructed.
* construct joint meanings and leverage technological, social, and cultural resources.
* produced in practice through life experiences.
* social experience and activity
* participate in activities within particular contexts or "ﬁgured worlds"
* both performances and narratives situated in the "ﬁgured world"
* by developing shared practices, establishing relationships with others, and enacting performances of the self, people construct their selves as learners.
* embedded in both a collective past ("history-in-system") and a personal subjective history ("history-in-person")
* shaped by social, cultural, economic factors.
* enactments of the self as people engage in shared practices and play diﬀerent roles.
* how they narrated their activities in the "figured world", and told stories about themselves and their social interactions with other family members.
* ways in which the people engage or do not engage in the social and educational practices of particular contexts and how they view themselves and view others.
* A dialogic self that authors and tries to make sense of the world : agency.
* particular figured worlds are available in specific contexts
* complex ways in which people, youth, children, and adults, experience and perform their identities and respond to the sociocultural practices in particular contexts.
* socially and culturally constructed realm
* possibility of exploring alternative figured identities that challenge, alleviate and transform the constraints that positional identities often seem to impose on people.
* Figured worlds are not static.
* participants and roles.
* identities in figured worlds.

The framework of "figured worlds" developed by Dorothy Holland, William Lachicotte Jr., Debra Skinner, and Carole Cain (1998) can be used in the analysis of the assimilation process, new media practices, and identity construction of Latino/Hispanic youth. Social contexts such as the home, an after school program, and the Social Network Sites (SNS), can be understood as a "figured worlds" formed through social and situated activities. These worlds are historically situated, socially enacted, and culturally constructed. They are collectivities where members "figured out" who they are in relation to each other and through a set of practices. (Holland et al. 1998; Urrieta 2007) Within each "figured world" Latino/Hispanic youth reinvent themselves by enacting different identities and engaging in sociocultural practices.

Identities are acts of self-making. (Holland et al. 1998; McCarthey and Moje 2002; Urrieta 2007) They are produced in practice through life experiences. When people participate in activities within particular contexts or "figured worlds" they engage in identity work. (Holland et al. 1998; McCarthey & Moje, 2002; Urrieta 2007) Hence, by developing shared practices, establishing relationships with others, and enacting performances of the self, young Hispanic/Latino(a)s actively construct their selves. However, because identities are historical phenomena, their construction processes are also embedded in both a collective past ("history-in-system") and a personal subjective history ("history-in-person"). (Holland et al. 1998; Urrieta 2007) The "history-in-system" as Mexican immigrants and position of disadvantage as a non-dominant minority, together with the subjective "history-in-person" (socioeconomic background, educational attainment, generational status, peer groups, etc.) shape the identity construction work and the participation across contexts of the Latino/Hispanic immigrant youth from Mexican origin. When these youngsters enter the "figured worlds" they bring with them a personal subjective history of social life experiences and particular conceptual understandings that establish different possibilities of engagement and participation.

In my dissertation project I understand the multiple identities of immigrant Latino/Hispanic youth as both performances and narratives situated in and across three "figured worlds" (home, an after school program, and the Internet). I intend to analyze the enactments of the self that each of boy and girl developed as they engaged in shared practices and played different roles across contexts. In order to do that, I will analyze how these Latino/Hispanic youths narrated their activities, and told stories about themselves and their social interactions with family members, peers, mentors, and Internet users. Furthermore, I will also take into account their collective past as immigrants from Mexico ("history-in-system") and their individual and subjective "history-in-person" (socioeconomic background, educational attainment, generational status, etc.).

== Applied to the analysis of the Home ==

Analysis of the figured worlds that are narrated inside the home. Figured worlds available within the house. Or just one complex figured world?

Just one could be better for analytical terms. However, each world would be different for the different families.

Figured worlds colliding: the one of the parents, the one of the youth, the one of home ethnic culture, the one of American modern culture, the one of working class and the one of middle class, the one of immigration, the one of becoming assimilated, the one of peers, the one of schooling.

Figured world as parenting styles. Figured worlds as youth engagement with music, with the computer, with games, with entertainment, with cultural consumption, with american pop culture.

Do they conform just one figured world? The world of each home? family? A parodoxical world? A contradictory world?
Do the two worlds remain separated within the home? How do they navigate the two worlds inside the home?

The world of the immigrant home and family: is splitted bicultural. Splited between individualized practices and communal practices. Traditional and American. American and middle class, and consuming world: this world is the one that is more appealing to youth. IT is also the world of digital media. The world of media devices networked media landscape within the home.

Figured worlds of the parents vary: working class approach for raising children: natural growth, middle class approach: concerted cultivation. The same with the Mexican traditional family, and the Modern American family.

Parental figured worlds will create certain media environments and regulations. Children will interact within this figured worlds. Assume positions. Play their roles. Do their homework. Work hard.

Figured worlds set up in a relationship between parents, youth, tools, and discourses. Assimilation, American popular culture, education, notions of free time, play, work.

Figured worlds of youth: gaming, music, homework, films and television, entertainment, leisure and free time, work, play.

The discourses, practices, tools of the figured world of the immigrant family are not only set up by the parents. It is a more porous world, because the tools are connected to other worlds, and also because the world of the host society, the culture, economy, and other discourses are also welcomed, are part of the immigrant world.

This is why the immigrant homes are complex, contradictory, splitted, divided, and uneven. Relations of power change. Practices are not homogenous. Roles can change easily.

Maybe havign just one figured world of the immigrant home could be enough. This world could be related to the process of acculturation described by immigration theorists as: consonant, selective, or disonant. Depending of the kind of figured world the believes will collide or not. As well as the different degrees of assimilation of the members of the family.

Agency within the home. What are the kind of activities these youth do. How do they imagine themselves as part of a figured world: the world of music production, the world of music consumption, the worlds of gaming, the world of television and film, the worlds of homework, the world of homework and internet research.

Are all the members of the family part of the figured world.

Immigrant home family worlds in the 21st Century. LAtino/Hispanic immigrant family in the digital edge.

== Applied to the analysis of the After School Program ==

I have decided to use the framework of "ﬁgured worlds" elaborated by Holland et al. (1998) in my analysis of the experiences, learning, and identity construction that the members of the CAP developed. I argue that the CAP can be understood as a "ﬁgured world" formed through social and situated activities. This world was historically situated, socially enacted, and culturally constructed. It was a collectivity where members "ﬁgured out" who they were in relation to each other and through a set of practices. (Holland et al. 1998; Urrieta 2007) At the CAP after school program, students came together to construct joint meanings and leveraged technological, social, and cultural resources. Within this "ﬁgured world" youth reinvented themselves as ﬁlmmakers.

Learning and identity are strongly related. As much as learning is a process of becoming (Wenger 1998), so is identity an act of self-making. (Holland et al. 1998; McCarthey and Moje 2002; Urrieta 2007) Both, identity and learning are produced in practice through life experiences. The theory of "ﬁgured worlds" is aligned with the situated perspective on learning which understands it as a social experience and activity. (Lave and Wenger 1991) When people participate in activities within particular contexts or "ﬁgured worlds" they engage in both a learning process and an identity work. (Holland et al. 1998; McCarthey & Moje, 2002; Urrieta 2007) Hence, by developing shared practices, establishing relationships with others, and enacting performances of the self, people construct their selves as learners. However, because identity and learning are historical phenomena, their processes are also embedded in both a collective past ("history-in-system") and a personal subjective history ("history-in-person"). (Holland et al. 1998; Urrieta 2007) When people enter "ﬁgured worlds" they bring with them a personal subjective history of social life experiences and conceptual understandings that establish diﬀerent possibilities of engagement.

In my analysis I understand the learning identities of two Latino/Hispanic boys from Mexican origin as both performances and narratives situated in the "ﬁgured world" of the CAP. On the one hand, I analyze the enactments of the self that these boys developed as they engaged in shared practices and played diﬀerent roles. On the other, I analyze how they narrated their activities in the CAP, and told stories about themselves and their social interactions with peers, mentors, and the local community. Furthermore, I review brieﬂy the individual and subjective "history-in-person" of each of them highlighting their family socioeconomic backgrounds, educational attainment, generational status, and the formal schooling tracks they were in. However, before discussing the learning and identity processes of these three Latino/Hispanic boys, I provide a brief analysis of the space, tools, and discourse that characterized the CAP and how they were initially set up by Mr. Lopez, the FHS video technology teacher and one of the co-founders of the after school program.

== Applied to the analysis of the Internet ==

The figured worlds of the internet are mostly readable for these youth. Except the one of FB. The other sites are not imagined as changeable, re-writable, remixable. Even if they are aware of some of that potential.

Different practices according to different worlds: the world of google and the search practice. The world of FB is the one of peers, it is not searchable, but it is a world to share. The world of youtube as the world of music and audiovisual content. The world of netflix as a database and library of television and film content. The world of pandora. The world of 9gag. The worlds of Perfect World and Minecraft. Several worlds.

= JP Gee on Figured Worlds as a tool for Discourse Analysis ==

"Figured worlds are narratives and images that different social and cultural groups of people use to make sense of the world. They function as simplified models of how things work when they are ‘‘normal’’ and ‘‘natural’’ from the perspective of a particular social and cultural group. They are meant to help people get on with the business of living and communicating without having to reflect explicitly on everything before acting."

"We use words based, as well, on stories, theories, or models in our minds about what is ‘‘normal’’ or ‘‘typical.’’"

"typical stories"

"This is good for getting things done, but sometimes bad in the ways in which such typical stories can marginalize people and things that are not taken as ‘‘normal’’ or ‘‘typical’’ in the story." 169

"What counts as a typical story for people differs by their social and culture groups." 169 >>> accept a typical story like this...

"simplified theories of the world"

"are meant to help people go on about the business of life when one is not allowed the time to think through and research everything before acting."169-170

"help scientist (people) cope, without having to deal with the full complexity of the world all at once."

"These typical stories have been given many different names. They have been called ‘‘folk theories,’’ ‘‘frames,’’ ‘‘scenarios,’’ ‘‘scripts,’’ ‘‘mental models,’’ ‘‘cultural models,’’ ‘‘Discourse models,’’ and ‘‘figured worlds,’’ and each of these terms has its own nuances. Such typical stories are stored in our heads (and we will see in a moment that they are not always only in our heads) in the form of images, metaphors, and narratives." 170

"A figured world is a picture of a simplified world that captures what is taken to be typical or normal."170

"What is taken to be typical or normal, as we have said, varies by context and by people’s social and cultural group"

Place

2014-11-16T19:04:11Z

Lombanaphd:

Place matters a lot. The spatial variable is key for understanding inequalities. For this research project place matters in virtual and real terms, online and offline. The way in which Latino/Hispanic youth will move across both virtual and real space matters for understanding their assimilation, their inclusion, their social and geographic mobility.

== Austin ==

=== Geography of Hispanics ===
(from http://www.austintexas.gov/page/top-ten-demographic-trends-austin-texas)

Maps of Hispanic household concentrations from Census 2000 reveal the emergence of three overwhelmingly Hispanic population centers in Austin: lower east Austin (which also serves as the political bedrock of Austin’s Hispanic community), greater Dove Springs, and the St. Johns area. Dove Springs shifted from being about 45% Hispanic in 1990 to almost 80% by 2000. St. Johns went from being 35% to 70%--this radical transition is clearly evident on the streets of St. Johns, a neighborhood that once hosted one of Austin’s oldest African American communities. Please see Hispanic Population 2000 map.

The import of this trend is this: at the same time that ethnic minority populations are moving into the middle-class and are more capable than ever to live anywhere they choose, there are parts of the city where ethnic concentration is greatly increasing. However, it is lower-income minority households that are most likely to participate in the clustering phenomenon.

1. No majority

The City of Austin has now crossed the threshold of becoming a Majority-Minority city. Put another way, no ethnic or demographic group exists as a majority of the city’s population. The city’s Anglo share of total population has dropped below 50% (which probably occurred sometime during 2005) and will stay there for the foreseeable future. Please see Ethnicity Shares History graph.

It’s not that there hasn’t been absolute growth in the total number of Anglo households in Austin but rather it’s because the growth of other ethnic groups has outpaced the growth of Anglo households. For example, the growth rate of Latino and Asian households far exceeds the growth of Anglo households in Austin.

2. Decreasing families-with-children share in the urban core

The share of all households within the city’s urban core made-up of families-with-children is slowly declining. In 1970, the urban core’s families-with-children share was just above 32%, Census 2000 puts the figure at not quite 14%. Moreover, with only a few neighborhood exceptions, the urban core is also becoming almost devoid of married-with-children households, please see Concentrations of Married with Children map.

4. Hispanic share of total population

Will it ever surpass the Anglo share? Maybe not, but they’ll be close to each other in a short 25 years. You just can’t say enough about how strong Hispanic growth has been. The city’s Hispanic share in 1990 was under 23%, the Census 2000 figure was almost 31%, and this share of total is probably around 35% today.

Importantly, the city’s stream of incoming Hispanic households is socio-economically diverse. Middle-class Hispanic households have migrated to Austin from other parts of the state and the country for high-tech and trade sector jobs while international immigrant Hispanic and Latino households have come here for construction and service sector jobs. Among other effects on the total population, the huge influx of Hispanic families into Austin, with higher-than-average household sizes and more children per household, has acted to dampen the increase in the city’s median age, keeping Austin one of the youngest cities in the country. Moreover, were it not for Hispanic families moving into the urban core, the city’s falling families-with-children share would have had a much steeper descent.

== Poor Urban and Suburban Settings ==
limited economic opportunities, ethnic tensions, low performing and toxic schools, little community engagement.

Immigrant Latino Family

2014-11-15T22:45:20Z

Lombanaphd:

According to socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds families must develop different strategies and dynamics for raising children.

In the case of immigrant families, the challenges are more complicated since they have to negotiate influences of culture and environment and as well incorporate their family history and ethnic cultural values, beliefs, and practices.

Media practices play a big role in the process of negotiation and family dynamics. Media could be used in many ways, with different purposes. How do latino youth families use new media? How does media usage shape the assimilation process? How does media is related to expectations, aspiration, and goals? Which dimension of the assimilation process is fostered by media practices?

= Immigrant Family =

The family is crucial in the process of assimilation and immigration. Immigrants have shared values such as hard work and optimism about the future. Even immigrants from different ethnicities share these values. They have optimism and achievement orientation but that could be limited according to their socioeconomic status, environment, etc. (Suarez-Orozco M. 2005, Falicov 1998, Rumbaut 1996)

Structure of support is built over time.

* Acculturation requires gaining social and cultural skills and work habits.
"mantaining a sense of belonging and social cohesion with their immigrant roots is equally important. (...) When immigrant children lose their expressive culture, social coehesion is weakened, parental authoricy is undermined, and interpersonal relations suffer." (17)

* Hard work and optimism about the future: reasons of immigration and strategy. "Their most fundamental motivation is to find better life, and they tend to view hard work as essential to this. That many immigrants do the impossible jobs native workers refuse to consider is an indication of just how hard they are willing to work." (Suarez-Orozco M. 2005)

Challenges, goals, mobility.

Family stress processes and parenting practices.

Brokering practices.

Marginality and disadvantage.

Lower status of immigrant. Lower position in society.

New media consumption: computer, internet, mobile.

What is the role of immigrants parents as guides and regulators regarding new media uses? youth participation in new media environment, practices?

Limited previous experiences with new media, with digital technologies. Sometimes with very limited literacies even in their own language.

Rules, regulations, managament, rewards.

How does new media use and environment at home create a particular kind of assimilation pathway? a particular kind of acculturation? Not the media alone but the uses of it, the parenting styles.

The world of the home. Position of power of parents, and position of power of children. PRactices, discourses, tools. IT is also a world, and a very important one for immigrant families given their language, culture, food, etc.

New media practices and skills. How are they distributed at home? What kind of skills? searching? consumption? Playing? Who has the skills? How do they use them for assimilating?

Is the internet an alien world for the parents? an American world? Did they know they could connect with families in mexico? did they take advantage of that?

Media incorporation shaped by class? culture? education? family identity? family reputation?

Do they use new media for personal, familial, and socially meaningful ends? For persanal yes, not that much for familial and social.

PAtterns of cultural consumption.

Acculturation as a family process, rather than as merely an individual psychological phenomenon.

==== Segmented Assimilation and Acculturation ====

Assimilation to specific segments of the US society.

Different acculturation styles and parent-children relationships, are thought to be related to different assimilation trajectories: Consonant, selective and dissonant. The latter involved moving downward and becoming marginalized.

Parent-youth differential acculturation has been studied by immigration scholars.

== Acculturation ==

In a broader sense includes participation across many realms. Researchers have measured quantitatively as the gaining of linguistic skills, job skills, participation in political process. Qualitative measures such as values, worldviews, interpersonal relationships have also been analyzed.

Assimilation to what?

= Latino/Hispanic family =

It has been studied in the US by psycologists, sociologists, educators, and learning scientists.

Extensive literature on Latino parental control and youth development, has focused on the cultural aspects of latino parenting, especially in goals such as: familismo (familism), respeto (respect), and educación (moral education).

In the MExican culture, as well as in other Latino American cultures, the family system is an integral part of the person's sense of self. Family ties are strong.

The study of Hispanic/Latino families in the USA, and specifically, of Mexican American homes has been the topic of a prolific scholarly research since the 1980s. Sociologists, economists, anthropologists, educators, and geographers have been studying the hispanic/latino domestic sphere in order to understand processes of acculturation, migration, labor, social mobility, population grow, and educational attainment. A common theme that crosses all this research work is the one of inequality. Social scientists agree that the Hispanic/Latino families, and its members are protagonists of major gaps existing in the USA society. According to their sociodemographic characteristics lag behind non-Hispanic/Latinos. For instance, according to the official government data from 1990 and 2000, Hispanics/Latinos, and particularly Mexicans, have the lowest educational attainment (lowest high school completion rate) (Chapa, J., & de la Rosa, B. (2004)).

It is precisely in the field of schooling and education where most social scientists have tried to understand the inequalities that affect Hispanic/Latino families. The poor attendance records, low test scores, high drop-out rates, and small numbers going on to post secondary education, are signs of the disadvantage of Hispanic/Latinos compared to other groups. Some scholars have pointed out that an important cause of this attainment gap is the disconnection between parents and the USA school system. That is Hispanic/Latino families have different conceptualizations of parent and school responsibilities than the middle-class Anglos (Valdes 1996, Delgado- Gaitan 1990, Visquez et al. 1994). Other scholars have pointed out that Hispanic/Latinos regularly face inside USA schools racism and the burdens of being working class and speaking a minority language (Foley, 1990; Vasquez et al., 1994; Suirez-Orozco and Suirez-Orozco, 1995; Romo and Falbo, 1996; and ValdCs, 1996). Hence, schooling and education are paradoxically understood as places where inequalities are reproduced.

== characteristics of hispanic/latino families ==

* Importance of Education
* Language
* Personal Space
* Time Orientation
* Familism
* Bien/Mal Educado
* Collectivism
* Simpatia
* Respeto

==== Familism ====

The analysis of these there families is useful for understanding what some scholars have called "familism." That is the series of attitudes, behaviors, and family structure influencing the lives of Hispanic/Latinos (Cooley, 2001; Parra-Cardona, Bulock, Imig, Villarruel, & Gold, 2006). The strong sense of family orientation, obligation, and cohesion is something that has been associated with the disconnection between the USA schooling system and the Hispanic/Latino families. Familism has been understood as an obstacle to acculturation progresses and as a limitation to educational attainment (Cortes 1995). An important question we would like to answer, is how a notion of connected learning can actually work for Hispanic/Latino families. How can connected learning address multiculturalism and bilingualism?

= Analysis and Findings =

* Social class backgrounds frame and transform individual actions and process of assimilation.

* American culture individualism renders invisible the key role of institutions. System is not fair, and not neutral.

* Inequality is shaping the future, opportunities, and pathways since early age.

* injustices inherent in our existing socio-economic arrangements

* upward mobility? downward?

* Material and social inequalities that shape immigrant youth live in the U.S

* second generation advantage? for some yes, as in the case of Gabriela and Inara.

* the problem of inequality and the disparities in wealth and access.

* Discrepancies in access to economic, social, cultural, material, human resources.

* new media continue to contribute to produciton and reproduction of class, gender, racial
ineqaliities in U.S.

= References =

Marín, G. & Marín, B. V. O. (1991). Research with Hispanic populations. Applied Social Research Methods Series, Vol. 23. London: Sage Publications

Family Dynamics

2014-11-12T14:38:18Z

Lombanaphd: /* American Family and Class Dynamics */

== American Family and Class Dynamics ==

Scholars have study how social class, socioeconomic status, and class positioning influence family dynamics and parenting styles, including how their approaches to media use, media at home, consumption, and placement; as well as their approaches to schooling and their school-home relationships.

==== Lareu (2003) ====

* ethnography on schools and homes. Focuses on relationships home-schools, and education.
* two parenting styles, concerted cultivation and the accomplishment of natural growth.

* division of the classes in America: into middle and working or poor. Only two classes. Two distinct socio-cultural groups.
* Socio-cultural: family income and assets, as well as parenting styles, how they view and carry responsibilities. Reflects parents education, occupation, and aspirations for children.
* divides American families into social classes not by income solely, but by income in combination with the educational level and occupation of the parents, as well as by where and how the families live.
* parental education and occupation as much as income in identifying a family’s class. Educational competence
* “cultural capital” is accumulated and passed on within families: The bourgeois
* consider the educational level of the parents, their occupation, their assets.
* cultural capital: set of attitudes, values and expectations that children absorb in childhood and carry with them into adulthood.
* assets or resources: investment on children: time, money, media.
* Transmission of differential advantages to children: dominant set of cultural repertoires.

* two types of child rearing, “concerted cultivation” or “the accomplishment of natural growth.”

* '''working class parenting style''': it is assumed that schools and teachers are there to educate children, with minimal input from parents. little participation of parents. Are expected to grow up naturally, without the constant monitoring and periodic intervention of parents. Working class children are sent out into the world without much mentorship. Emphasizes informality. Hands-off approach: kids will develop naturally as they navigate the world. Give children autonomy, value respect for authority, let their children navigate their own relationships with peers and other worlds.

* '''middle class parenting style''': hectic, obligations of homework, extracurricular activities (sports, music, theater and church). Structured activities. Calendar. Management of time. Guidance and enriching experiences. Belief that parents responsibility involves developing their children through extracurricular activities.

* Middle-class children learn a sense of “entitlement.” (104-105)

"Middle-class parents who comply with current professional standards and engage in a pattern of concerted cultivation deliberately try to stimulate their children’s development and foster their cognitive and social skills. … For working-class and poor families, sustaining children’s natural growth is viewed as an accomplishment." (5)

“these different philosophies and approaches to child rearing … appear to lead to the transmission of differential advantages to children (5).”

"sense of entitlement characteristic of the middle class. They acted as though they had a right to pursue their own individual preferences and to actively manage interactions in institutional settings…. The working class and poor children, by contrast, showed an emerging sense of constraint in their interactions in institutional settings. They were less likely to try to customize interactions to suit their own preferences." (6)

==== Seiter (1993) ====

* studies parenting styles and children's media culture. Class, aspiration, and education.
* study of children's television programming and commercials, magazine toy ads, toys, and toy stores,
* children media and family life in the U.S.
* values and attitudes toward particular forms of media consumption and participation: relationships between kids, parents and media industries.
* middle class and working class parenting styles regarding media uses: values through toys and media that children should use, play, consume.
* parenting styles in consumer culture.
* watching Saturday cartoons isn't a passive activity but a tool by which even the very young decode and learn about their culture, and develop creative imagination as well
* sexist and racist view of the world that children's TV presents
* discusses of toy-based television programs and of class biases with respect to toys and media.
* histories of toy advertising and parenting.
* consumer culture provides images and themes for a shared culture among children. Children could create new, unanticipated meanings, even to rebel against parental culture.
* "buying and using commodities as the means to a solution, rather than real social change" (134)

==== Seiter (2008)====

* "Privileged role of early domestic learning in gaining the "right" skills, the kind of competence that seems to come naturally and is therefore of higher status than what is learned at an institution such as public school. (29)
* Bourgeois furniture: the piano and its onderful effects on a childes life at home. Commercial messages. Stenway advertisements.
* "enthusiasm for how mere association with computers will lift children intellectually and magically increase their potential value as adults." 29
* "underestimation of specific forms of cultural capital required to maintain the systems themselves and '''move beyond the casual, recreational uses of computers''' to those that might lead directly to well-paid employment." 29
* miraculous benefits of digital learning: expected to overcome entrenched educational inequalities.
* obstacles to ownership related to family income. Copmuter, peripherals, software. etting up and maintaining software. Updates.
* "Procuring the device itslef is the smalles -an in many ways the easiest- part of access provison, keeping up with the accelerating rate of planned obsolecence of computer products" 31
* larger families: fighting over the machine.
* "Privacy on which much youth-oriented play with computers relies is harder to come by when there are fewer roooms and more people in them. " 31
* Computer as a medium that is not as easy to share, as other media such as tv, game consoles, dvd players.
* Old computers are frustrating."Kids of all classes recognize an old computer when they see one. 31
* Planned obsolescence is the guidign principle of the new tech industries. Costs of constant upgrading is challenging for working class families.
* Disparities in income and home ownership follow racial lines.
* "New media was introduced into a world where the gap between the middle-class and poort families was very wide in terms of income and access to educational opportunity and sadly, new technology has exacerbated these gaps in the everyday lives of children." (31-32)
* Certain activities require newest machines: certain games, new software, video editing... Multimedia authorship: video, audio, gaming application.
* "IF you want to develop digital literacy skills that are robust and confident, continually updated equipment is requred." 32
* "multimedia creation is highly inaccessible to the masses" 32
* hardware, software and bandwith necessary to create the newest forms of multimedia will always be more expensive. 32
* "working-class children have little chance of enjoying the kind of computer and internet access that is residential and high speed, the kind that facilitates music downloading, online gaming and instant messaging." 32.
* necessity for children for having a computer.
* Smart technologies will not be targeted at households where English is not the first language.
* Downscale markets: left to the mass marketers of toys and junk food and popular music. On the Internet: dispariety across class lines: quality and quantity of access: differences between mass market for the poor and premium content for the rich: cutting-edge hardware, educational software, online courses.
* Cultural capital: knowledge, tastes, preferences: totality of individual learning, both formal and informal. Social circumstances. Patterns of cultural consumption and expression.
* Learning is time consuming: practicing. Early age advantage.
* association of youth with digital media.
* "Digital media culture... appeal to kids as new and cutting-edge, and promise an appealing shortcut to success that bypasses traditional academic and cultural hierarchies. This lack of certainty of what is worthwhile is endemic in the digital realm because of tis relative newness. " 35
* "Interest in gaming is not sufficient to either enable broader academic success or learn ho to program. (...) some skills -however indicative of intelligence and mastery- never convert into economic gain at a predicatble rate." 35 Arbitrariness of systems of distinction.
* "educational benefits do not flow automatically from internet access." 36
* Web browsing : wandered off-topic.
* importance of reading skills": internet requires higher levels of reading skills than textbooks. 36
* the advantage of domestic access
* digital literacy has an origin in the middle-class home. Bourgeois relation to knowledge of music and art. More familiar relationships to the arts, where they are also performed.
* learning programming and how to write software are advanced skills.
* Networking online requires as a basis the capacity to know othere with at least the minimal amounts of economic and cultural capital necessary to participate in digital communications. 39
* Operation of social distinctions. Status distinctions.
* Social class, ethnicity, and language interact with gender expectations in determining who likes to use computers. 41
* interrogating the persistance of the home technology divide.

==== Alters (2004) ====

* shift in American parenting style during the last 40 years: parents are uneasy about how to raise children in light of societal changes, dangers, etc. This is pretty much middle class family.
* "reflexive parenting" : parents feel aware and accountable to themselves and the society at large regarding decisions they make in domestic sphere.
* sense of responsibilitiy.
* rules as part of the family project of building a family identity.

==== Horst (2010) ====

* Parents motivations and belies about parenting, as well as personal histories and interest in media: are reflected in parents attitudes toward new media.
* New media becomes meaningful to many families: "represent an investment in their child's future, one that they hope will ensure their children success in education, work, and income generation." (150)
* Parents could use new media as motivators and rewards.
* examines parenting strategies surrounding new media and the structuring and regulation of family life in the home and through new media.
* parents and young people transform, negotiatie, and create a sense of family identity through new media. (151)
* " Home and family environments reflect the values, morals, and aspirations of families as well as beliefs about the importance and effects of new media for learning and communication." (151)
* approaches to managing new media at home are shaped by class. Parenting styles of Larau also apply to how new media is at home.
* examines how "different discourses and parental approaches become embedded in the strategies parents employ to regulate and maintain control over media and media uses among the family." (154)
* Public and private media spaces at home: Size of the home, family members. Structure time and schedule.
** Public: family computer rooms : communal media use
** Private: bedrooms: individual media use: More solitary , more peer-oriented, more "media-rich" more individualized practices in bedroom (Livingstone and Bovill 2001)
*Media Time: temporal rhythms of the family and the household: intertwined with the organization of domestic space.
** spending time together: gaming as site of family togetherness. Shared interest in an activity. Watching television. making new media. Brokerism and translation work. Computer can mediates across generation. Computer and itnernet tasks. AS a way to make family together. Helping out in the computer.
** transnational families: various forms of media sharing, online conversationala media, video conferencing. Transnational digital communication.
** leverage new media in everyday life interactions.
* Routines and rhythms (structuring media time: rules. Monitoring and regulating youth media engagement)
** disruptions to school and family life: regulation, rules: parents setting up times of new media use.
** external controls: software.
** mothers tend to be the one who maintains temporal rhythms of the household
* Growing up children: judgement. Allowing teenagers to exercise judgement: letting them choose games, giving them a mobile phone.
** mobile smart phone: coordinate activities, rides home. Safety.
** punishment: restictions on media use
* going online at home: parents anxieties about distractions, uses of the web.
** working class parents and low-income: educational pursuits of the computer and the internet. Homework.

= References =

Alters (2004) The family in US history and culture. In Media, home, and family / Stewart M. Hoover, Lynn Schofield Clark, and Diane F. Alters with Joseph G. Champ and Lee Hood. New York : Routledge.

Alters and Schofield Clark (2004) Introduction. In Media, home, and family.

Lareu (2003) Unequal childhoods : class, race, and family life. Berkeley : University of California Press.

Lareau (1989) Home advantage : social class and parental intervention in elementary education. New York: Falmer Press.

Seiter (2008) Practicing at Home: Computers, Pianos, and Cutlural Capital.

Seiter (1993) Sold separately : children and parents in consumer culture. New Brunswick, N.J. : Rutgers University Press

Home Media Environment

2014-11-12T07:09:57Z

Lombanaphd:

Home and family are important context for understanding Latino/Hispanic youth new media practices and their process of assimilation. It is a crucial context especially because immigrant families and homes are at the center of the assimilation process. Youth spend lots of time inside the home, engaging with new media. These homes and families have also embraced the use of new media, have created media environments inside the home, have made it part of their home and their family life according to the resources they have and their interests.
* it is an important structuring context for new media engagement.
* home and family environment reflects values, morals, aspirations, assimilation strategies of the families, as well as parenting styles.
* family dynamics structure uses of new media: restrictions, regulations, aspirations. Who defines that depends on familial relationships. Power status. As well as assimilation strategies.
* domestic ecology
* rule making and rule negotiation.
* the temporal, spatial and social relations in the family live, parents and children everyday lifes.
* material artefacts (technology/media devices), social activities (practices) and institutional arrangements (rules) : create the context of the home.

== Sonia Livingstone, Young People and New Media ==

* Domestic media have become part of the infrastructure of family life (67)
* Penetration of media throughout the home as establishing a certain set of expectations, practices, and uses, and hindering others. (68)
* Supports daily tasks or practices. Part of the everyday life inside the home.
* Shifts in domestic, educational, and work-related infrastructure.
* Status of infrastructure is when is invisible in supporting daily tasks or practices. It becomes fully domesticated. Metaphor of transparency is useful to know when a technology becomes part of the domestic infrastructure.
* Media at home as part of the structure of the home, part of the domestic infrastructure. (74)

==== Domestic Television Set ====

It is embedded in the sociality of daily life, invisible supporting a variety of daily activities, including homework, family time, meal time and bedtime, and with a scope which extends to tan increasing variety of daily practices. Familiarity with television content and habits is indeed expected (...) (68)

Status as a consumer durable and as source of mediated content: embodies standards and expectations related to what it means to be youth, children : knowledge of culture, construction of social identities, fandom, world views, future ambitions.

Habits of use have foundations in previous media such as radio, film, the press.

==== Computer and Internet ====

* presence is highly salient. Not fully domesticated.
* it has not yet become embedded in the social structures of family life. (69)
* the signs are already there that the computer will become part of the domestic infrastructure, changing the home in the process. (69)
* process of learning to use computer is a significant difficult part of domestic life.

Home Computer

2014-11-11T21:52:31Z

Lombanaphd: /* Home Computer */

In the 1970s and 1980s, the computer starts to be a consumer product in the USA. Americans with enough money to buy microcomputer kits and electronics can create small systems in their homes. The size of these computers is very small compared to the previous generation of big frame computers from USA universities and government agencies. Computer and electronic technology, after almost 20 years of having been funded and subsidized by the American government for scientific research, has arrived to a state where it is affordable and suitable for the middle class home.

In parallel with the changes in prize and size during the 1970s, computer technology also experiments a change in its meaning. In order to enter the American home and become a personal consumer product, computers start to acquire new meanings in relation to the existing cultural practices and values that are already in place. In general, the American society and culture from where computer technology grows and develops, has strong consumer, scientific, and democratic values; has a transcontinental automobile and telephone communication systems; and has a mass media system composed of television, film, radio, and publishing industries. The growing of computer technology and its acquisition of meaning is a negotiation and a struggle with the ideologies and technologies that already exist in the USA.

'''Meaning of the PC'''

Since computer technology can take different forms, connect to different devices, appeal to different sensibilities, and serve different functions, the meaning that is attached to the computer tends to be ambiguous. Computers are sort of ambiguous machines. They are open to having several possible meanings, uses, and interpretations. Trying to figure out what is the computer for in the 1970s and 1980s becomes the central task not only of the manufacturers and advertisers of software and hardware, but also of the users of the new technology. This sort of collective search of meaning is the beginning of a participatory computer culture that will grow with the diffusion of the computer technology.

In popular computer magazines from this period of time such as BYTE and Creative Computing, it is common to encounter a variety of visual and textual advertising for microcomputer kits, peripherals, electronics, and software. These ads attach meanings of fun, business, education, entertainment, freedom, intelligence, and control to the new technology. For instance, there is a magazine add for The Challenger, a personal computer from Ohio Scientific, that has in its title the words “Educator, Entertainer, Accountant.” Besides providing paragraphs that describe these three different roles, the add has an introduction that says “a ‘friendly’ computer with hundreds of personal uses, via a huge software library of programs for a broad range of personal, home, educational, business use.” In the lower part of the page, bellow the textual description, there is a photograph that shows three adult characters (a female teacher, a male magician, and a male accountant) behind a desk where the microcomputer stands out.

Children become a central figure in the search of meaning for the personal/home computers. Unlike other technological and communication systems, where children have remained passive (e.g. driving automobiles) they assume an central role within computer culture and start to be showcased as active users of microcomputers since the 1970s. The interaction of children and computers becomes meaningful to middle class parents that are willing to afford the costs of the new technology. It is meaningful, because it meets the values and ideals of children education, fun, entertainment, and pleasure that are already placed in the American society and in the hegemonic children media culture. The microcomputer starts to acquire the meaning of a toy that not only entertains but it is also educational, allowing kids to create, learn, and play.

'''Genres of software'''
The meanings that are attached to the computer in relation to children can be appreciated very well when we look at the specific software that is designed for kids. In Engineering Play: A Cultural History of Children Software (2009), Mimi Ito has identified three different genres of software: entertainment, academic, and construction. Each of these genres grew out from existing educational approaches and media culture genres of participation. The meaning of the entertainment genre is tied to “open-ended play that is characteristic of family-friendly entertainment;” the academic is “based in a primarily behaviorist frame that focuses on the transmission of school-centered content;” and the construction “is tied to constructivist and constructionist educational approaches that stress authoring and media production as a vehicle of learning.”(3)

Children software provides an interface for giving meaning to the personal computer. In the production and marketing of software, the cultural values and practices of the existing American children culture are translated into the new technology. This process of translation is specially evident in the software that belongs to the entertainment and academic genres. For instance, entertainment software such as video games recreates existing characters and narratives that belong to the world of children television, literature, and comic books. Although the academic genre is also influenced by the fantasy-based and commercial children culture, it incorporates the school-based educational content such as mathematics, geography, and history.

The '''middle class American parents that value fun, pleasure, play, and education, find meaningful having a computer at home that children can use.''' Since middle class children do not work, they have leisure time they can invest in playing and learning with a computer. '''Middle class children’s principal activity is to learn and the computer at home is the ultimate toy for facilitating that process.''' The computer acquires the meaning of a tool that can not only entertain children, but also educate them, allowing them to express in new ways. In contrast to other toys that already existed in the market, computer technology provides the novelty of real-time interaction, children-machine symbiosis, and the promise of an augmentation of the children intellectual process. The children-computer symbiosis empowers children with agency and authorial capabilities that usually were reserved to adults.

'''Children computer culture'''

As Paper explains in the article “Computers and Computer Cultures” that appeared in the Creative Computing magazine (March, 1981), “when a child learns to program, the process of learning is transformed. It becomes more active and self directed.” (82) For Papert, children are active when using a computer, and they use it as an object to think with. As he points out, “in teaching the computer how to think, children embark in an exploration about how they themselves think.” (82)

Papert has an optimist vision of the coupling of the children and the computer. In a paper called Redefining Childhood: The Computer Presence as an Experiment in Developmental Psychology (1980), he explains how computer can change the patterns of intellectual development and how the diffusion of personal computers is a “giant experiment in developmental psychology carried out on a social scale.” According to him, in this experiment, “what is at issue is the nature of childhood and its role in the construction of the adult.” The notions of what children can do and what they cannot do change when they cooperate with the computer. The children-computer symbiosis empowers little children and allows them to access knowledge that before was available only to adults. In a paragraph that could have sound pretty utopian in 1980, Papert explains that “the combination of personal computers, high density video storage and high bandwidth communication channels will make it possible for every child to have access to much more and much more varied knowledge than the most expert scholars do now.”

It is worth noticing how Papert frames the diffusion of computer technology as a giant experiment in developmental psychology and learning, and how he places children at the center of the experiment. For him, children are protagonists of the social transformation that can happen when humans cooperate with computers. This vision of childhood will gain resonance in American popular children culture and would be embraced by the producers of the software that belong to the construction genre. Papert himself will be one of the leaders in the development of this genre with the LOGO programming language.

As the children-computer symbiosis start to be showcased in the computer culture, children begin to be recognized as authors, tinkers, creators, builders, and masters. The software from the construction genre facilitates this empowering process by diversifying the kind of creations that children are able to make. From computer graphics, to textual processors, to simulators, the construction software allows children to explore their creativity, and practice their thinking. Interestingly, the increasing recognition of children agency and creativity in the production of cultural objects goes in parallel with the development of a more participatory and democratic popular culture.

'''Conclusion'''
In conclusion, children have a central role in the diffusion of computer technology in American society. Their learning and educational needs, as well as their ability to play and have fun with the new technology, provide reasons for bringing the computer home. Those reasons resonate with the consumer and bourgeois values of middle class parents that are able to afford the costs of the new commodity. The three different genres of children’s software (academic, entertainment, and construction) are an interface for providing meaning to the computer technology. Each genre reveals the influence of traditional educational approaches, children media culture, and the constructivist learning theory. In the production and marketing of software, the cultural values and practices of the existing American children culture and ideals and visions of scientific research are translated into the new technology.

The diffusion of the pc/home computer goes alone with a process of reinvention of childhood and learning. While computer technology acquires new meanings in relationship to children such as a tool for creation, entertainment, and education; childhood and learning are also redefined. On the one hand, children are imagined as empowered masters of technology, capable of control, authorship, and agency. On the other, learning is re-invented as an interactive process where children cooperate with the computer for thinking, problem solving, and media making. As Seymour Paper wrote in 1980 the diffusion of computers into the life of a society, turns out to be a giant experiment in developmental psychology. In such experiment, children become protagonists of socio-cultural change.

== References ==

Ensmenger, Nathan. The Computer Boys Take Over : Computers, Programmers, and the Politics of Technical Expertise. MIT Press, 2010.

Ito, Mizuko. Engineering Play: A Cultural History of Children’s Software. MIT Press. 2009.

Licklider, J. C. R . Man-Computer Symbiosis. IRE Transactions on Human Factors in Electronics, volume HFE-1, pages 4-11, March 1960 http://groups.csail.mit.edu/medg/people/psz/Licklider.html

Campbell-Kelly, Martin and William Aspray. Computer : A History of the Information Machine. Basic Books, 1996.

Paper, Symour. “Computers and Computer Cultures.” Creative Computing. MArch,1981.

Paper, Symour.”The Gears of My Childhood” Forward to Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas. Basic Books. 1980
http://www.papert.org/articles/GearsOfMyChildhood.html [Retrieved 4/12/2011]

Paper, Symour.”Redefining Childhood: The Computer Presence as an Experiment in
Developmental Psychology.” Paper delivered at the 8th World Computer Congress. 1980 http://www.papert.org/articles/RedefiningChildhood.html [Retrieved 4/12/2011]

Paper, Symour.”An Evaluative Study of Modern Technology in Education.” MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory Memo No. 371. 1976. http://www.papert.org/articles/AnEvaluativeStudyofModernTechnology.html [Retrieved
4/12/2011]

“Some Poetic and Social Criteria for Education Design.” Appendix to a Proposal to the National Science Foundation. 1976.http://www.papert.org/articles/SomePoeticAndSocialCriteriaForEducationDesign.html
[Retrieved 4/12/2011]

Rosnner, Richard. “It’s More Fun than Crayons.” BYTE. November, 1976.

Turkle, Sherry. The Second Self Computers and the Human Spirit, Twentieth Anniversary Edition. MIT PRess. 2006.

Home and family

2014-11-11T19:32:06Z

Lombanaphd:

The context of home and family is very important for understanding the process of assimilation. Immigration is a family affair. How do new media practices at home shape the assimilation trajectory? How do immigrant youth use new media at home? How does that use help them and their families to assimilate?

* [[Home Media Environment]]
* [[Home Computer]]
* [[Family Dynamics]]

Focus on the practices at home, both individual and communal:
* Parental practices: rules, control, monitoring, access, buying
* Communal: joint consumption
* Individual: individual consumption

However, also address how those practices are shaped by:

* imaginaries: how do parents imagine their children’s future progression, learning, educational. (all of the parents think the computer helps with education, with homework, with school work.)

* discourses: what is expected of parents, what institutions expect. What kind of messages from school, from the media, from the church and community organizations are receiving the parents?

* constraints: how and why do parents differ in their approaches including culture, class, capital etc

Purchasing, acquiring new media technologies is for many of the immigrant families part of the process of assimilation. Certain technologies, such as the computer, are associated with educational goals they have for their children, the expectations and aspirations. New media can be seen as an investment in youth futures according to the institutional discourses that surround certain technologies such as computer and the internet.

Certain kind of new media technologies are directly associated with the assimilation process and to the the future of children in education and workforce. Others are more related to entertainment. However, even TV is seen as a tool for assimilation since it allows to become familiar with culture, to learn languages. In Texas and the US, TV and radio also allow to have access to content in Spanish and from MExico.

=== Home ===

Is the home a figured world? how can we describe, contextualize this sociocultural context?
* the temporal, spatial and social relations in the family live, parents and children everyday lifes.
* material artefacts (technology/media devices), social activities (practices) and institutional arrangements (rules) : create the context of the home.
* different conceptions of home.
* increasingly individualised society, late modern societies become more indivudalised.
* conceptions of home
** ‘households’ in terms of economic self-sufficiency
** social stratification and inequality across households.
** family

* everyday life at home
* parents economic and cultural resources
* history of media at home

November

2014-11-07T08:33:22Z

Lombanaphd:

==11/7/2014==
Temporary nature of immigrant journeys.
Moving, displacing. Entering and exiting worlds without setting in.
But with great capacity for imagining themselves in new worlds, of assuming identities. Of assimilating.

Assimilating fast to the digital world but to a segment that is in the bottom, to the consumer segment.

The tools that immigrant use for navigating their journey, their voyage, their assimilation trajectories.

Tools at home, at afterschool, and at the Internet. Differetn worlds with tools for imagining, for doing activities, for engaging in media practices and developing skills.

== 11/8/2014 ==

Think about the initial conditions from where hispanic/latino youth start their assimilation.
The home gives us clues about those initial conditions. The family position. Also gives us clues about the longer journey, longer trajectory that the immigrants are having, their strategies.
Chapter 2, can be organized around the different kinds of acculturation of the families and how that is related to strategies of assimilation, parental-children relationships, and media practices.
Communal media practices, individual media practices, computer use, mobile phones.
Describe the trajectory of assimilation of the whole family. How youth becomes the leading user of digital media, and how that could help in the assimilation process, or not. Little use of technology in terms of civics, politics, economic participation. Lots of use in terms of culture, education, consumerism.
Computer is associated with school, with education, with learning.

Why do their parents buy them tools, digital devices, internet connections, mobile phones?
What are their reasons?
How do they position youth inside the house? as learners?

What kind of values are developed inside the house?
how are they related to media consumption? uses?

Geography. Location of the homes in the north of the city, in the fringe of the city. Close to the suburbs. This families have moved to the suburb in search of better opportunities, better high schools. These neighborhoods are considered to be safer than other zones such as Dove Springs that has become a hispanic/latino enclave in the south of the city.

Sense of place is not really felt by these families. Youth does not even know the names of their neighborhoods, the do no go to parks. They are somehow isolated, as the school itself from the rest of the city.

Need some data about austin, its neighborhoods, the latino population.

== 11/9/2014 ==

In the chapter about home, it is necessary to talk as well as how they identify themselves. Talk in this chapter about ethnic idenity, origins. The journey of the immigrants. The different locations in Mexico where they come from, what the bring. And if they have moved in the the U.S. as well.

Talk about their relationships with Mexico. Transnationals or not.

Talk about how youth self identify, if so, as latino, hispanic, mexican american, etc. This should not be a whole section in the chapter, but it needs to be addressed. Perhaps when the parents origin are introduced. Or when talking about the family strategies. Or when talking about relationships and dynamics. How do youth see connected to their parents.

== 11/11/2014 ==

How does assimilation works in multiple directions?
how does networked technology allows to this kind of multipathway? or this kind of entropy? or this kind of disorientation?

Immigrant youth with technology, experiencing crossing new worlds, also experiencing disorientation.

Social mobility, compared to their parents, but struggling to make their dreams as creatives. Constraints of class, socioeconomic status
limiting their opportunities.

Bridging to other minorities is minimal. They are also not even bridging to other latinos online, beyond their use of facebook. However, girls are listening to latino/hispanic music. Boys do not. There is a gendeer bias in the embracing of the latino/hispanic identity.

== 14/11/2014 ==

topic of randomness emerges well in some internet practices. especially SErgio give scoherent explanation of how it works. Antonio also mentions part of it.

Drifting online, finding weird things, pleasure on interacting with the web in this way, like a sort of entertainment, not really a focused search, very little judgmental skills, information drifters, navigate without settling, very temporary interaction with the web, and mostly as readers/consumers/players, not that much explorartion of the potential.

The topic of randomness emerged again in the information seeking interview. Youtube basic searching capabilities and suggestion algorithm illustrated very well how amusing and weird the Internet could be for Alfredo. He said,

“I search a political video, and two hours later I’m watching a panda sneezing gas.”

According to him, this is called the “Youtube Complexion.” He explained to me that a user searches up something very serious on Youtube and hours later, as you click through links that are suggested by the platform, the user arrives to videos of random things such as animals doing funny things. Although he doesn’t know how this happens he knows people calls it the “Youtube complexion.” He said,

“You always go off-topic when you are in Youtube, you can’t stay on the same topic.”

== 15/11/2014 ==

Self identification as latino or mexican or ethnic, could be included in chapter 2, when those self identification involve the narration of domestic life.

Domestic life, as a figured world for these youth, is interesting because it is a sort of split world between individualized and familial communal practices. The space of the house is very important especially the bedroom and the public areas of living room and kitchen.

The world is both narrated by parents and by youth. Different positions of power in the home, however, youth are powerful and drive technology use. They are mostly independent in that realm.

The home is busy.

Familismo could be addressed as one of the parental strategies to do activities together, stay together, take care of each other, especially in the domestic realm. Not that much in the school.

Also, there is a potential to address the power of the mutlicultural hybrid and bicultural environment of the households. There is not that much conflict. Although there are many generational gaps and cultural gaps within.

== 16/11/2014 ==

U.S. society is not a uniform coherent system. It is segmented, diverse, becomeing more and more multiracial, multicultural. Complicates our understanding of assimilation. Assimilation to what? Even the model of segmented assimilation can become complicated when we look at the process in places without ethnic enclave, more diversity, and especially in a networked media environment and hyper media domestic environments. Digital technology is also altering the process of assimilation and speeding up certain dimension of the assimilation process.

== 22/11/2014 ==

Some ideas for the conclusions and introduction:

This study develops a deeper understanding of how Latino/Hispanic youth are using their new media (e.g game consoles, smartphones and computers) across three different context. Findings can help advocates like schools, paretns, and community organizations develop meaningful programs for the communities they reach.

Anoher idea that I would like to develop in the chapter on the Internet is about randomness and the sensation of drifting thorugh the internet without arriving to any port, without statying in a pulbic and participating, without finding a meaningful forum.