The Final Proposal
0.Introduction and Presentation of the Problem
1.Chapter I. Literature Review
A. Segmented Assimilation B. Historical Context: The U.S. demographic shift and the Latino/Hispanic population B. New Media and Digital Inequalities D. Digital Youth and Latino/Hispanic Youth New Media Practices E. Skills and New Media Literacies C. Figured Worlds and Multiple Identities
2.Chapter II. Data and Methods A. Qualitative Methods 1. Ethnography B. Qualitative Data 1. Narrative 1.1.Semi-structured Interviews: Protocols. 1.2. Focus Groups 3. Texts, Still Images, Videos, and Sounds Data 3.1. Media at home maps 3.2. Social media journals 3.3. SNSs Status updates 3.4. Photos 3.5. Youth-made videos 3.6. Music videos and songs 3.7. Visual memes 3. Data Analysis 5.1. Content Analysis 5.2. Computer Assisted/Aided Qualitative Data Analysis Software B. Quantitative Data
3.Chapter III. Home: Family Relationships and Home Media Environment.
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, education, and identity. Hence, researching the home context is crucial for understanding how the interaction between individual and structural factors can determine different trajectories of assimilation, various forms of acculturation, and particular repertoires of new media practices. In this chapter I analyze the home context of five Latino/Hispanic youths and develop a series of short case studies that provide a panorama of the diversity of home media environments, parenting styles, youth identities, and media and cultural brokering activities. A critical part of my analysis focuses on trying to understand how immigrant youth actively negotiate, within their homes and through their engagement with digital media, the tensions between parental ethnic culture and U.S. culture. More specifically, I try to understand how these boys and girls navigate the tension between “familism” (strong family interconnection), one of the major Latino/Hispanic cultural values, and the individualization and privatization of lifestyles in contemporary U.S. culture. What kind of acculturation (consonant, dissonant, or selective) did characterize the family relationships and how did new media practices shape that process? How did the cultural, social, human and economic resources of the family determine the repertoires of new media practices and skills developed at home? How did Latino/Hispanic immigrant youth narrate those media practices? Which practices were narrated as familial or communal? Which ones were described as individual or private? How were the new media practices within home shaped by gender differences? What kinds of cultural and ethnic traits did the identities constructed within home have?
4.Chapter IV. After School: Digital Media Extracurricular Activities and the Cinematic Arts Project.
Activities out-of-school have become very important in the learning ecologies of children and youth in the U.S. During the last decade, after school programs have proliferated in public schools and community organizations with a great variety of goals, structures, and outcomes. Especially for low-income and minority youth, these kind of programs have become crucial for expanding their access to technology, enrichment opportunities, and narrowing education inequalities. In this Chapter I elaborate a case study of two Latino/Hispanic immigrant boys (Antonio and Sergio) who participated in the FHS digital media oriented after-school space and joined its main programs, the Digital Media Club and the Cinematic Arts Project. Drawing on the analysis of participant observation fieldnotes, semi-structured interviews, and youth-made media texts, I elaborate an analysis of how Antonio and Sergio constructed identities as filmmakers, musicians, and creative artists, and developed several new media literacy skills. Furthermore, I analyze how these Latino/Hispanic boys shared understandings of learning, and struggled to find opportunities where they could continue their creative arts trajectories. How did new media tools and networks accessed within the after school context facilitate Latino/Hispanic immigrant youth access to resources and opportunities that help them to assimilate to the U.S? What kinds of new media literacies did they develop within this context and how did they help them to navigate their assimilation trajectories?
5.Chapter V. The Networked Virtual Space: Interactions across Interconnected Online Contexts
As Latino/Hispanic immigrant youth are increasingly accessing in an everyday basis digital tools and networks, they are spending more time on virtual spaces, communicating and socializing with other humans and machines, and searching, creating, circulating, and consuming different kinds of multimodal content and information. In the current networked communication environment, immigrant youth who have access to Internet connectivity can enter and exit online contexts where they find opportunities to participate across various realms, in diverse ways, and with different degrees of engagement. From music listening to visual meme creation, from familial communication to civic organization, from game play to information seeking, the potential for participating across several societal realms has expanded considerably. Although the conditions and structures of participation vary across the different virtual contexts, Social Network Sites (SNS), search engines, massively multiplayer online game, online forums, and audiovisual archives, all offer opportunities for engaging in new media practices. Assuming the networked virtual space as made up of multiple interconnected contexts, in this Chapter I elaborate short five case studies on the new media practices and identities that each of the study participants developed within this complex space. How did differential kinds of accesses (motivational, material, skills, and usage) affect immigrant participation online? How did immigrant youth narrate their activities within the spaces that conform the networked virtual context? What were the identities that immigrant youth construct within and across online-networked space? What were the cultural and ethnic traits of those identities? How did the networked virtual space facilitate Latino/Hispanic immigrant youth access to resources and opportunities that shaped their assimilation to the U.S? How did they navigate the complex web of online spaces? and what kinds of new media practices and skills did they develop as they entered/exited multiple interconnected virtual contexts?
6.Chapter VI. Conclusion
