Literacies
Literacy is a theme that runs throughout the entire book and is discussed in detail in chapters 3–5. Although I make distinctions between different literacies, in all instances I use the term literacies to refer to different aspects of media literacy. Broadly speaking, media literacy has been defined as “the ability to access, analyze, evaluate, and communicate messages in a wide variety of forms” (Hobbs 1998, p. 16). Drawing from other media scholars, I also use the term to refer to the ability to produce media texts (Jenkins 2006; Buckingham 2003). In other words, media literacy is not just about critical consumption of media content; it also involves the capacity to produce mediated texts and to confidently and safely navigate mediated spaces.
Youth
Youth is a fluid social construction often used to describe a range of demographic categories. Because my research is conducted in a high school and the participants in this study are between the ages of 14 and 19, when I refer to youth I mean people of high school age, young people, and teens. I generally avoid describing participants as children or kids; however, I preserve the language of the scholarship I reference. At times I use the broader term child or adolescent when writing about discourses of childhood and youth, but I do not use either of those terms when directly referring to the participants in this study. I do, however, use child when discussing a familial context, such as when describing parental relationships. Regardless of age, parents’ offspring tend to be referred to as children even into adulthood; thus I use child within the context of parental relationships. I use the term minor within a legal context to refer to citizens under the age of 18, whom the US government defines as minors.
Structure of the Book
Each chapter addresses different spaces, discourses, and institutions that shape expectations, mobilize narratives of risk, and regulate opportunities. The chapters are divided into two parts. Those in the first part primarily address how discourses of risk regulate and control technology; I include quotes from participants to support my analysis, but the overall focus is on how discourses are mobilized and enacted. The chapters in the second part focus on how harm-driven expectations affect the everyday lived practices of teens and focuses more overtly on how teens and schools negotiate policies, regulations, and understandings of risk, as well as the consequences of such practices. Each chapter addresses the dualistic relationship between particular harm-driven expectations and opportunities. Within each chapter, I contextualize how different aspects of society construct both technology and youth, attempt to regulate both youth and technology, and what the intended and unintended consequences are in terms of young people’s experiences and opportunities. I also call for more productive, nuanced, and equitable approaches to regulating teens’ digital media practices and spaces.
Chapters 1–4 all address the relationship between risk, teens, and regulation. Chapter 1 explores the relationship between technology and social change as a way to analyze moral panics; it also historicizes fears and anxieties related to youth and technology in order to provide context for understanding contemporary discourses of risk. Chapter 2 traces how moral panics and adult anxieties related to young people’s online engagement shape public perceptions of risk, and how public concerns affect public policies. The policies largely focus on three risks: pornography, predators, and peers. Additionally, chapter 2 demonstrates the ways that federal, state, and local policies construct youth (and specifically girls) as passive subjects at risk rather than agents capable of managing online risks. In it I demonstrate how harm-driven expectations—largely perpetuated via fear-inducing news and popular media—lead to overly restrictive policies that limit young people’s opportunities and fail to help young people safely navigate risk.
Chapters 3 and 4 continue to analyze regulations, but more specifically focus on the policies and curriculum at Freeway High. Chapter 3 analyzes the harm-driven expectations that are used to justify blocking students’ access to digital content at school. The rules are aimed at minimizing the risks of (1) inappropriate online (sexual) content and (2) misinformation and information overload. I demonstrate how such restrictive policies miss an opportunity to help students develop critical digital literacies, as well as opportunities to think critically about the commercialization of the web and to participate in digital activism. Chapter 4 shifts the focus to the school’s policies that prohibit students from using mobile devices at school. The policies derive from harm-driven expectations of distraction and stress. I demonstrate how competing discourses of (adult) control and (student) trust lead to frustrations and missed opportunities to help students develop healthy boundaries and social norms. Chapter 4 also examines students’ expectations of boredom and considers how opportunity-driven expectations of mobile media can enhance learning rather than detract from it.
By extensively examining teens’ lived practices, expectations, and experiences at school and online, the next three chapters shift the focus away from critiques of harm-driven expectations and instead draw attention to opportunity-driven expectations and the effects of regulations. Chapter 5 debunks the expectation that young people innately possess digital media skills and literacies. I go into greater detail about participation gaps and the literacies young people need in order to fully take part in networked publics. That chapter relies on students’ experiences to understand the barriers that prevent some of them from sharing their creative media productions in online networked spaces. As will be argued, discourses of risk have taught young people to expect harm online; instead high schools ought to empower students to safely network online, create professional online identities, and share their work in peer-supported online networks. The chapter makes a case for helping students develop three specific digital literacies: nuanced understandings of intellectual property rights, social literacy, and network literacy.
Following up on the theme of sharing that was discussed in the previous chapter, in chapter 6 the locus of opportunity moves beyond the school setting to explore participants’ own expectations of social and peer privacy and how they navigate the everyday risks of socializing via mobile and social media. This chapter considers how commercial platforms, largely regulated by the market, often undermine teens’ own expectations of visibility, and thus exacerbate privacy risks. I also examine the challenges of negotiating multiple social contexts online and discuss participants’ agentive strategies for maintaining social privacy.
Chapter 7 also draws from students’ experiences in order to examine what connections are necessary for helping students achieve their goals. I highlight the stories of four students as a way of connecting risk and expectations to future opportunities. That chapter is situated within the connected learning model of education (Ito et al. 2013) and demonstrates how different nodes of students’ learning ecologies—academic, peer, home, adults, interests, and extracurricular—support or hinder opportunities. It considers the broader context of students’ online participation, goals, and expectations and how each can alleviate or contribute to inequalities.
In the conclusion, I revisit the role digital media can play in structuring opportunities for youth and articulate what I believe we should be worried about: inequities related to regulation, access, control, participation, visibility, and opportunity. With today’s technologies, teens have the power to take an active role in helping to create and mold learning environments, their local cultures, and social norms. With the right tools and support, schools can equip and empower students to contribute to knowledge formation and discovery. It is my hope that this research identifies a need for schools, policy makers, and institutions to rethink their role in shaping teens’ media and learning ecologies. I demonstrate that opportunity-driven expectations can guide and regulate young people in ways that balance protection and agency.
It is my intent that the nuanced complexity of the three stories at the beginning of the book will be made increasingly evident through a multifaceted examination of the relationship between youth
, technology, and expectations of risk and opportunity. There is no monolithic narrative of youth and digital media because the relationships are inherently fraught with contradictions. Young people can simultaneously be agentive and victimized, educated and misinformed, risk takers and safe. Technology can be simultaneously beneficial and harmful, private and public, a threat and a tool of protection, an opportunity and a risk. It is crucial that we investigate how unequal expectations and discourses of risk shape experiences for the most vulnerable populations within society in an effort to both protect young people and create more equitable opportunities for them.
Notes
1. The story continued with the creation of a fake blog called “Megan Had It Coming.” The blog turned out to be a hoax authored by trolls. See Vickery 2008 for more information.
2. Pseudonyms are used to protect the privacy of all the participants in this book.
3. Minecraft is a popular computer game that allows players to build three-dimensional constructions out of blocks. Within the game players can explore, gather resources, and engage in combat with other players. The game has different modes (e.g., survival, creative, adventure, and spectacular) and involves many different characters, worlds, and quests. Players can also generate their own content and create maps for other players to download.
4. This is known as cultivation theory. It states that “massive exposure to television’s reconstructed realities can result in perceptions of reality very different from what they might be if viewers watched less television” (Cohen and Weimann 2000, p. 99). For more information about the origins of cultivation theory, see Gerbner and Gross 1976.
5. Season 10, episode 6, November 11, 2008.
6. See appendix B for a fuller discussion of how risk is theorized.
7. This can be due to restricted access, to supervision and surveillance that discourages messing around, play, or to learning via experimentation, as well as to an increased focus on completing tasks (paying bills, looking for jobs, reading local news, etc.), rather than leisurely activities (Jenkins et al. 2006). There are also cultural variables, such as research that has found that libraries are often male-centric spaces in which women may not feel comfortable (Straubhaar et al. 2012).
8. Such as the incompatibility between Flash media and the iPhone.
9. For more on participatory cultures, see chapter 5 and Jenkins et al. 2009.
10. See appendix A for further explanation of the methodologies and analysis.
11. The Principal Investigator of the Digital Edge project is S. Craig Watkins. I was a member of the research team that conducted the ethnographic research. Our team spanned three disciplines—media studies, sociology, and information studies—and was made up of myself, Andres Lombana Bermudez, Alexander Cho, Jennifer Noble, Vivian Shaw, and Adam Williams III, all of whom were at the University of Texas at Austin at the time of data collection. Broadly speaking, the goal of the project is to more fully understand teens’ media ecologies and the informal and formal learning environments in which they engage and interact. The project focused on families, students, and a high school facing significant social, familial, financial, and educational instabilities and challenges, thus it addresses issues of digital and educational equity. While risks were a peripheral aspect of The Digital Edge project, my unique contribution specifically focuses on the role of risk and other regulatory constraints in structuring teens’ digital media practices and opportunities. This project was supported and funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation as part of the collaborative Connected Learning Research Network (CLRN), an interdisciplinary and international research network “dedicated to understanding the opportunities and risks afforded by today’s changing media ecology, as well as building new learning environments that support effective learning and education equity” (Connected Learning Research Network 2012).
12. Hanna, Rohm, and Crittenden (2011, p. 271) go so far as to refer to Web 1.0 as a “passive model.” In discussing Web 2.0, they emphasize how traditional media brands can capitalize on the participation of “consumers” rather than as users or citizens.
13. Ellison and boyd explain (and I concur) that “‘social network sites’ is more accurate than ‘social networks’ (which is a sociological term of one’s social relationships), ‘social networking’ (which evokes a practice of actively seeking connections and also happens offline), ‘online social networks’ (one’s online connections more generally) or ‘social networking sites (which emphasized connecting to new people)” (2013, p. 158). They emphasize the “role of the network (as a noun) as opposed to the practice of networking (as a verb)” (ibid., p. 159).
14. Nextdoor is a website and app that allows neighbors to privately connect online for the purpose of discussing and sharing information pertinent to their neighborhood.
I
Risk
1
Historical Fears: Teens, Technology, and Anxiety
Risk anxiety, engendered by the desire to keep children safe, frequently has negative consequences for children themselves, serving potentially to curtail children’s activities in ways which may restrict their autonomy and their opportunities to develop the necessary skills to cope with the world.
Stevi Jackson and Sue Scott (1999, p. 103)
Youth are now viewed as either consumers, on the one hand, or as troubling, reckless, and dangerous persons, on the other.
Henry A. Giroux (2009, p. 3)
When technologies are first developed and incorporated into society we begin anticipating their beneficial uses, but also speculating about the potential negative effects. Within the history of mass media, each new communication technology is typically praised for its potential democratic effects and ability to solve world problems, but also feared for how it will negatively disrupt social order.1 When these two reactions run to the extreme they fall into camps that can be either described as utopic or dystopic rhetoric, ultimately the responses are two sides of the same coin: they are both unrealistic and ungrounded reactions to new technology. Both views assign too much agency to technology by assuming technology alone has an inherent ability to drive social change; such an approach views technology as having pre-determined and inevitable effects on society, whether positive or negative (Mackay and Gillespie 1992; Stallings 1990). Technology and media scholars refer to this approach that assigns agency to technology as technological determinism.
Instead of presuming that technology affects society in a unilateral and unavoidable manner, a more nuanced approach seeks to understand the symbiotic relationship between technology and social change; this approach is referred to as the social shaping of technology. This view acknowledges that technologies are designed by humans with certain intentions and purposes, but are also open to interpretive flexibility (i.e., technology can be used in unintentional ways) and have unintended and often unforeseeable consequences (Lievrouw 2006; Mackay and Gillespie 1992). Social shaping considers how the uses and effects of technology are contextually situated and are regulated in different ways, in different spaces, and by different social variables. In other words, it is not technology itself that determines uses, effects, and change, but rather the social shaping approach argues that individuals and collective society are the regulators of technology and can choose to design and use technology to drive either positive or negative social changes.
However, while individuals have the power to manage uses and effects, they do not do so wholly autonomously. Other social factors—as well as the affordances and constraints of the technology itself—mediate possibilities (Hutchby 2001; Lievrouw 2006). For example, a paperback novel enables me to easily highlight and write notes in the margins, but a digital book that connects to a larger database affords me the opportunity to also easily view the highlights and notes from other readers—something the paperback version is unable to do. Yet on the other hand, I can easily lend the paperback version to my mother when I am finished with it, whereas the digital version is locke
d within a proprietary system that makes it much more difficult for me to share it with my mother who does not own the same digital reader as I do. This simple example illustrates the technical affordances and constraints of various media technologies and formats.
Beyond the technical affordances and limitations, we regulate the effects and uses of technology in other ways as well, such as copyright laws that prohibit the illegal copying and distribution of a paperback novel. While copy machines make such uses possible, laws prohibit the practice in order to try to control the undesirable effects that unrestricted copying would have on the marketplace. Social regulations are indicative of collective attempts to not only control media technology, but also to minimize or manage the perceived risks and harms associated with the use of technology. Individuals exercise agency over preferred uses of technology, but we do so within the constraints and structures of social regulations.
Worried About the Wrong Things Page 5