Difference between revisions of "Digital Youth"

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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, that 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)
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Digital media, youth, networks, and participatory culture, constitute a complex topic that has been studied and theorized by researchers from different disciplines such as information science, anthropology, sociology, communication, law, media and literacy studies. One of the core questions that researchers have tried to answer is how the development and adoption of digital media has transformed society, culture, economy, and learning. More specifically, they have been interested in understanding how young people experiences the changes, how it adapts, and how it develops new kind of sociocultural practices. Therefore, young people are understood as having creative agency. Youth is an active participant in culture, society, and economy, and in the transformations that are taken place.
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In order to disentangle the complexity of the topic we can group some of the researchers and studies in three different perspectives:
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* Networked
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* Participatory
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* Digital lifestyles
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Each of these perspectives has an emphasis in particular key issues, challenges and trends. The networked perspective has an emphasis on the interconnection between young people, media, machines, and machines, media, and young people, and how that has changed the society, culture, and economy. From this perspective networks are understood as the dominant cultural and organization logic that structure contemporary world, particularly, the one of postindustrial societies. From this perspective the key issues are publics, many-to-many and peer-to-peer modes of communication and production, information and knowledge.
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The participatory perspective focuses on the sociocultural practices that young people is doing with digital media, their engagement with popular culture, and the communities of expertise that they are joining. Key issues are genres of participation, amateur media production, fan cultures, remix, new media literacies, learning, and participation gap.
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The Digital lifestyles perspective focuses on online everyday practices, connectivity, mobility, and uses of social media by young people. This perspective has an emphasis in empirical studies. Key issues are information seeking behavior; characteristics of the social networks (strong/weak ties), identity and taste, and individualization.  
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* [[Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out (2010)]]
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* [[Young People and Mew Media (2002)]]
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* [[Digital Natives]]
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* [[Networked youth]]
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* [[Youth and Participation]]
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* [[Youth and digital life styles]]
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=== Unanswered Questions ===
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After reviewing part of the literature on the topic of digital media, youth, networks, and participatory culture, there are several questions that remain unsolved. Most of them are related to the inequalities that exist. Even if digital media and networks offer a more open, decentralized, and fluid world, not everybody is participating in equal conditions. One of the most important unresolved questions are related to the participation gap. If the digital gap was easier to close in some countries by wiring classrooms and giving computers for children, the participation gap involves the development of literacies that are not learned in traditional formal ways. Therefore, one of the questions that remain unanswered is What are the strategies for closing the participatory gap? What are the steps for closing that gap? Although new kinds of literacies (digital, new media, design, etc) have been identified, they are not easy to implement in formal educational contexts. If the participation gap is related to the lack of participation in communities of interests and in networked publics that are not the familiar ones of the school, how can formal education connect to them? Even more important, how can education implement a participatory culture pedagogy in a formal context where test-based practices or core curricula are dominant?
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In relation to inequalities, there is also an issue in the architecture of the networked environment and culture that is not totally addressed. The fact that the network is not equally distributed has consequences for the development of the systems in where youth people participate. The majority of researchers have ignored the political economy of social media. For instance, the ownership of SNS is barely looked by researchers and as well they tend to ignore the social engineering that has been made by the programmers
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Although digital networked media are definitely transforming our lives, and peer-to-peer production and many-to-many communication are certainly more democratic, there is still little evidence about how the distribution of power has changed. Are society and culture becoming more democratic? Is youth participating more? Have young people become empowered and are more active publicly? They are very visible through digital media. Truth. However, how are they really gaining political power? How are they organizing themselves to produce social change?
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Finally, there is also a lack of quantitative data on how structural determinants such as race, gender, and socioeconomic status, are related to participation in networked culture and to the development of new literacies.

Latest revision as of 11:10, 20 January 2015

Digital media, youth, networks, and participatory culture, constitute a complex topic that has been studied and theorized by researchers from different disciplines such as information science, anthropology, sociology, communication, law, media and literacy studies. One of the core questions that researchers have tried to answer is how the development and adoption of digital media has transformed society, culture, economy, and learning. More specifically, they have been interested in understanding how young people experiences the changes, how it adapts, and how it develops new kind of sociocultural practices. Therefore, young people are understood as having creative agency. Youth is an active participant in culture, society, and economy, and in the transformations that are taken place.

In order to disentangle the complexity of the topic we can group some of the researchers and studies in three different perspectives:

  • Networked
  • Participatory
  • Digital lifestyles

Each of these perspectives has an emphasis in particular key issues, challenges and trends. The networked perspective has an emphasis on the interconnection between young people, media, machines, and machines, media, and young people, and how that has changed the society, culture, and economy. From this perspective networks are understood as the dominant cultural and organization logic that structure contemporary world, particularly, the one of postindustrial societies. From this perspective the key issues are publics, many-to-many and peer-to-peer modes of communication and production, information and knowledge.

The participatory perspective focuses on the sociocultural practices that young people is doing with digital media, their engagement with popular culture, and the communities of expertise that they are joining. Key issues are genres of participation, amateur media production, fan cultures, remix, new media literacies, learning, and participation gap.

The Digital lifestyles perspective focuses on online everyday practices, connectivity, mobility, and uses of social media by young people. This perspective has an emphasis in empirical studies. Key issues are information seeking behavior; characteristics of the social networks (strong/weak ties), identity and taste, and individualization.



Unanswered Questions

After reviewing part of the literature on the topic of digital media, youth, networks, and participatory culture, there are several questions that remain unsolved. Most of them are related to the inequalities that exist. Even if digital media and networks offer a more open, decentralized, and fluid world, not everybody is participating in equal conditions. One of the most important unresolved questions are related to the participation gap. If the digital gap was easier to close in some countries by wiring classrooms and giving computers for children, the participation gap involves the development of literacies that are not learned in traditional formal ways. Therefore, one of the questions that remain unanswered is What are the strategies for closing the participatory gap? What are the steps for closing that gap? Although new kinds of literacies (digital, new media, design, etc) have been identified, they are not easy to implement in formal educational contexts. If the participation gap is related to the lack of participation in communities of interests and in networked publics that are not the familiar ones of the school, how can formal education connect to them? Even more important, how can education implement a participatory culture pedagogy in a formal context where test-based practices or core curricula are dominant?

In relation to inequalities, there is also an issue in the architecture of the networked environment and culture that is not totally addressed. The fact that the network is not equally distributed has consequences for the development of the systems in where youth people participate. The majority of researchers have ignored the political economy of social media. For instance, the ownership of SNS is barely looked by researchers and as well they tend to ignore the social engineering that has been made by the programmers

Although digital networked media are definitely transforming our lives, and peer-to-peer production and many-to-many communication are certainly more democratic, there is still little evidence about how the distribution of power has changed. Are society and culture becoming more democratic? Is youth participating more? Have young people become empowered and are more active publicly? They are very visible through digital media. Truth. However, how are they really gaining political power? How are they organizing themselves to produce social change?

Finally, there is also a lack of quantitative data on how structural determinants such as race, gender, and socioeconomic status, are related to participation in networked culture and to the development of new literacies.