Table of Contents

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Imagine the thesis as a series of independent papers that complement each other and cohere as a single piece.

0. Introduction

An overarching thesis and an ongoing train of thought: Looking at participation as something that is fluid, and that it happens across different realms : family, afterschool, online SNSs, searching.

Practices and new media literacies : circulation, production, searching, curating.

Complexity of the digital divide. Digital inequalities. Looking at this inequalities across realms.

Hispanic/Latino youth in the USA, growing up with digital media. Yes but in the margins. Unprivileged youth.


0.1. Design and methods (ethnography)

Qualitative research methods have
 the
 strengths
 to
 better
 assess
 context,
 process,
 and
 socio‐cultural
 meaning
 (Denzin,
 1970)
 that
 underlie
 human
 behavior.



0.2. The setting and participants. A community. A group of students. Most of them involved in the after school programs and the digital media and game design classes. This study focusses only on the hispani/latino students that participated in the bigger study.

The field work was done in a high school, primarely, the research also included home visits and interviews with parents. Observations of after school programs and semi-structured interviews with participants.

Although the fieldwork was done in a high school, mainly, the fields and arenas that are analyzed are the home, the afterschool, the search engine, and SNSs.


The big social field of out-of-school. Across several micro settings. 0.3. Theoretical framework and core themes

  • Participation
  • Latino/hispanic : the specific segment of the population.
  • Youth and digital media: youth and technological change.
  • Media Practices and Literacies : this could also be explained as addressing the relationship between language, literacy and sociocultural practices.
  • Networked culture and media environment: digital devices, the internet, the web 2.0.

1. Hispanic/Latino families : home media environments and teenage brokers.

Youth as media savvy, the brokers of digital media, cultural and social capitals. Comparative case study of 5 families. Looking here to the basic literacies of youth and their families. The most basic literacy of reading and writing in a second language as well as the use of digital literacies. The strong position of the children in these families as brokers in some cases. Bilingual, some times biliterate, and their familiarity with digital technologies. Articulating the identity of media and tech savvy.

This chapter will also serve as an introduction to the background of the participants and the social positions of their families.

This chapter also describes the technology environments at home and mobile. Rich description of the domestic sphere and the kinds of access that the youngsters have.

2. Digital video : a community of practice in afterschool (Production)

Acquisition of social and cultural capitals. Emphasis on visual literacy, appropriation, performance, navigation, communication skills, transmedia navigation. Articulating identities as filmmakers and artists.


3. Search Engine : interacting with the World Wide Web. (Searching)

Information retrieval, synthesis, the internet as a fixed thing. Information quality. Emphasis on information literacy, judgement, transmedia navigation. Articulating identities as digital natives, researchers, gamers, musicians, filmmakers.

Searching for homework, taste, problem solving, learning. How do they search? What do they do with what they find? This kind of information literacy is very important since is both an act of reading and writing, in a dynamic and interactive system. How do they imagine such system?

What is the kind of information latino/hispanic youth seek online? What are the questions they ask? What do the expect to encounter? How do they approach to this information? What do they do with what they find? How do they imagine the internet?

The literacy practice of searching the web using a web engine. When do they use the search engine? How do they use it? Rely on the search engine too much. what is the quality online research?

Googling a "doing" research.

From desktops at home an school, and from mobile. I focus mainly on the searches that are performed in not-school settings.

4. SNSs and Web 2.0 (Social Media) platforms : FB and YouTube (Circulation and curating)

Entertainment, learning, and searching. Precarious networked publics or semi-publics? Or interacting with networking publics from the margins? Especially focused on music culture. The convergence of music and video culture in YouTube and in FB. New subcultural practices, eclecticism, hipsterism. Availability of so much music. Emphasize on remix, appropriation, transmedia navigation, performance, media literacies. Articulating identities as music lovers, alternative life styles, indy rockers. Music oriented identities, gamers, internet culture geeks.

Something interesting that happens in this setting, in the realm of the WEB 2.0. platforms, is that the practice of circulating and curating, integrates several platforms. It is not one alone. FB for instance could be seen as scrapbook where different pieces and materials from other websites are pasted, arranged, collected. Youtube, as a jukebox is also central for many practices of listening as well as for circulating and embedding videos.

This chapter reveals the complexity of literacies. Their multiplicity in action. And the diversity of identities. Some good examples are Sergio and internet culture, especially meme based culture. Several students and music and youtube. The brothers and videogame websites and online MOGS.

5. Conclusions.

Participation is fluid across the several societal fields that latino/hispanic youth transit. Societal fields or arenas are various social and institutional arenas in which youth perform media practices, develop literacies, express and reproduce their dispositions. In the fields, in a Bourdeunian sense, young people also compete for the distribution of cultural, social, and human capital. A field could be a network, structure or a set of relationships which may be intellectual, religious, educational, cultural, etc.

Identity is also fluid, a contested ongoing social process.

Attention to literacies, as social practices, and to a plurality of languages, communication practices. Languages as part of complex social practices.

capture something of the complex relationship between broader social structures and individual agency, ideology and identity, norms and interactions.

Latino/Hispanic youth experience power differently depending which field they are in at a given moment. All the fields analyzed in this dissertation (family, peer group/afterschool, online search and the Internet as a repository of information -the web-, and the SNSs) are interrelated and influence each other.

There is a potential for more democratic and participatory society. Even at the margins, the disadvantaged youth exercise agency and power at certain moments of time, in more maximalist and minimal forms according to the field where they are. They are already connected but they are not empowered equally.


Visual culture grows and is stronger among this population.


Lack of literacy skills and disconnection with school are critical.

Complexity of the digital divide.

Social position of latino/hispani youth influence their participation. The position changes across settings, across fields, arenas or realms.

The study reveals the diversity of the digital youth experience and everyday life. Segmentation and positionaliy matters even inside the whole group of hispanic/latino youth.


The development of literacies is influenced by social, human, and cultural capitals. Social, human, and cultural resources affect the sociocultural practices of literacies. Participation in social and cultural discourses, and as well gaining social and cultural resources.


The recognition of multiliteracies as a complex network of connected ltieracies, as well of participation, has implication for educational practice.


Multimodality and multiliteracies and new media, digital media, networked media. Multiple modes, languages, forms.

Limitation of literacies when they are not used interrelated, connected. When the social world is reduced and the conditions are not equal, literacies are not enough for participation. That is why cultural and social capitals are also needed. Opportunities for participation are there, but not only the literacies are needed but also appropriate position for participation.

Social and cultural capital influence literacy practice.


Understand informal and semi-formal learning context where literacies are used, acquired, and developed. Take account on the variations of meaning and status of different literacy skills.