Worried About the Wrong Things

by Jacqueline Ryan Vickery

  Q:

  Oh, you tried posting photos on Tumblr?

  Antonio:

  I tried it, and then, I couldn’t keep up with it, it was just … I didn’t have any followers, or anything else, so I just, like, “No, not going to post a picture, that’s too much for me.”

  Q:

  What? Why?

  Antonio:

  I don’t really know why. Even on Instagram, if I post something, I have my Instagram connected to Tumblr, and Twitter. All you have to do is create a little border on the photo, but no, I can’t do it … . It’s just not me. I don’t like doing it for some reason.

  As the interview continued, Antonio said he had tried following a few photography blogs on Tumblr, but he did not have the time to keep up with them. When asked if he had ever left comments or engaged with anyone on Tumblr, he said he hadn’t. In response to the question “Why?” he replied “I don't know. On any of my social medias, I don't even comment, because I'm barely on them anyway, so any time I do, it's just usually [private] messaging [to friends].” Although he expressed interest in online communities, it was hard for Antonio to invest the time required to find followers to build a network and community; thus he got frustrated and decided not to participate on Tumblr.

  During the interview, Antonio appeared to be surprised by his own answers. He struggled to find an explanation for his lack of participation. He settled for “It’s just not me,” which can be interpreted within many different explanations that are similar to other teens in the media clubs, such as Gabriela’s comment that sharing her photography online was “just weird.” Antonio did not have consistent quality access to the Internet and relied on school and the club as his primary means for getting online and creating media. The time in the club was primarily devoted to working on projects (i.e., producing and editing media), rather than maintaining personal profiles on social network sites. Additionally, although no one in his family had gone to college (his mother quit school around the fourth grade to take care of her family after her own mother passed away and his father dropped out around the seventh grade to get a job), his parents encouraged him to try to go to college. His parents cared about his grades and required him to pass all his classes in order to participate in after-school activities. Antonio’s older sister had planned to go to college, but never did. His parents had aspirations that Antonio might be the first to continue his education and get a middle-class job (his father worked construction and his mother was a janitor). In addition to the media club, Antonio was also an active member of the art club and was a skilled artist. He spent a lot of time on homework, and what free time he had left was devoted to media and creative projects. When we think about the time constraints many working-class young people face, combined with limited access to social media, it begins to make a bit more sense that they are not as likely to be active participants in networked publics. Working-class students, who were strapped for time, did not expect the benefits of intentional online visibility to outweigh the sacrifices required by their other commitments.

  Network Literacy

  That Antonio had no followers on Tumblr is understandable. If you have recently created a new social media account or can think back to when you first signed up for a new social network site, you might recall the initial learning curve and difficulty in finding appropriate and valuable audiences and networks. It takes time and work to cultivate what Rheingold (2012) calls a “personal learning network.” A personal learning network is comprised of valuable followers and connections who learn together by providing feedback, support, and interactions between novices and experts alike. Rheingold (2012, p. 122) sees this as an important part of literacy: “Making connections is a learnable skill that is amply rewarded by networked publics.” Learning how to engage within networked publics as part of a participatory culture is a literacy that must be learned and constantly practiced. If you were to analyze the profile and network of an active vlogger on YouTube, or a well-connected Tumblr blogger, or a Twitter user with many followers and interactions, you would notice that the individuals exhibit a fine-tuned understanding and execution of network literacy.

  Rheingold’s (2012) approach to literacy—what he refers to as being “net smart”—is particularly productive because of its strong emphasis on the social aspects of digital literacy. He goes so far as to claim that the very value and power of participatory media are due to the active participation of so many people, and he makes a strong case that we need to learn how to tap into networks for the purposes of collective intelligence, collaborative action, and the formation of valuable communities. In accordance with other media literacy scholars (Gutierrez, Morales, and Martinez 2009; Ito et al. 2010), Rheingold demonstrates how these skills are not merely individualized, but are inherently social and must be learned in concert with others online. Connecting literacies back to equity, he asserts that “Net smarts are not just vital to getting ahead; you need this knowledge to keep from falling behind” (2012, p. 25). Participatory cultures necessitate the development of literacies that are intimately entwined with social skills that must be learned in practice by interacting with others.

  Like other social skills, network literacies are always evolving, in flux, and open to interpretation; they are localized and contextualized in ways that must be experienced, learned, and re-learned. Miles (2007, p. 30) describes the social value of developing network literacy as “linking to what other people have written and inviting comments from others, it means understanding a kind of writing that is a social, collaborative process rather than an act of an individual in solitary. It means learning how to write with an awareness that anyone may read it: your mother, a future employer or the person whose work you’re writing about.” Miles’ definition provides an explanation as to why an underdeveloped understanding of networks precluded some students (e.g., Antonio) from participating in online communities. The public aspects of online participation make participation in networked publics challenging, but also make it beneficial. Rheingold (2012) offers a poignant summation: “In the world of digitally networked publics, online participation—if you know how to do it—can translate into real power.”

  At Freeway High, students’ lack of participation in online spaces limited their capacity to fully participate as peers and to join in the collaborative spaces afforded via networked publics. Javier, Sergio, Antonio, and Gabriela viewed media production not just as a mere hobby, but as a pathway to college and/or a career (see chapter 7); thus, it was important that they also develop a capacity to network online. Yet developing the literacies necessary to participate extend beyond professional goals. As Lee Rainie writes (2010, p. 3), “participation itself in the online world creates a distinct sense of belonging and empowerment in users.” Schools should play a more active role in helping young people—particularly those from historically marginalized and disempowered populations—develop the confidence and skills necessary to participate online. In theory, formal education provides opportunities for upward mobility and should contribute to the eradication of inequities; however, in practice this does not always play out. When the opportunities for marginalized and disadvantaged students are already limited outside of school, the impact of social disadvantages at school are amplified. As Jenkins, Ford, and Green argue (2013, p. 194) , “Insofar as participation within networked publics becomes a source of discursive and persuasive power—and insofar as the capacities to meaningfully participate online are linked to educational and economic opportunities—then the struggle over the right to participation is linked to core issues of social justice and equality.” The risk of invisibility—that is, the lack of visible and intentional online participation—has detrimental effects on the equity of opportunities and demands critical attention from educators, policy makers, and scholars.

  Schools such as Freeway High would be better equipped to invest in the development of students’ network literacy practices if they did not block students’ and teachers’ access to onlin
e social network sites such as Facebook, Tumblr, and YouTube. At Freeway, fear-driven understandings of risk blocked opportunities for students and teachers to work together to responsibly manage online reputations, build professional portfolios, acquire social and economic capital, and to network with other amateur and professional media makers. To be clear, some students were doing this, but typically they were students who had higher-quality Internet/computer access at home and more unstructured free time to spend online. This just further iterates the ways media ecologies are not created equal. Instead, restrictive harm-driven policies limited students’ ability to develop the skills and competencies required to build social networks and acquire social capital.

  The school could have facilitated network literacy through the creation of a class blog, Tumblr, website, YouTube channel, or portfolio that could have allowed students to network and share their projects collaboratively—with a collective class identity—rather than as individuals. Teachers would have been able to monitor the site and to help students navigate the risks. An additional benefit to collectively maintained online identities would have been dividing up the labor and the time necessary for maintaining students’ profiles, finding and responding to an audience, and engaging with the larger community. In other words, the cost (time, labor, skills) and benefits would have been simultaneously divided and amplified.

  Conclusion: Conditions for Networked Participation

  Networking and sharing online are digital literacies that highlight the extent to which learning is not an individualized process that transpires in isolation but rather is always embedded within particular cultural systems and relationships. “The most important outcome of these debates,” Burgess and Green write (2009, p. 72), “should be to understand that new media literacy is not a property of individuals—something a given human agent either possesses or lacks—but a system that both enables and shapes participation … . The questions of how this system is shaped and who has access to it represent the key political questions of new media literacy.” I hope this chapter has highlighted the potential benefits as well as the limitations of informal learning environments to alleviate participation gaps.

  To address the question posed at the beginning of the chapter concerning the necessary conditions that facilitate the development of participatory literacies: It is clear that students need adult guidance in learning how to fully participate online. They also need educational structures that explicitly dedicate time to crafting online identities that will help them find spaces that are supportive of their amateur works. Adult validation and the support of appropriate literacies can empower young people to confidently navigate networked publics in safe ways. This requires both adults and students to intentionally value amateur identities and the risks inherent in the learning process. It also means that digital media education, whether informal or part of curriculum, needs to invest time to explicitly help students safely network and share their own media content online. These steps will equip students with the literacies, time, and dispositions necessary for meaningful and safe online visibility.

  In addition, it is crucial that we counter negative harm-driven expectations of visibility with positive opportunity-driven expectations. Conversations of visibility have to expand beyond privacy and protection, to include perspectives that will help young people think intentionally about the benefits of deliberate visibility. The students mentioned in this chapter revealed the extent to which they expected harm as a result of sharing their creative media projects online. Few had actually experienced harm, but the risk and expectation of harm precluded some from even trying to learn how to network and share their creative media in networked publics. We must balance fearful and negative discourses of visibility with beneficial understandings of intentional visibility. Schools need to play a more active role in empowering marginalized young people to embrace the benefits of intentionally crafting positive online identities and networks.

  Society should worry about the risk of invisibility rather than only the potential harms of visibility. Invisibility has consequences on two levels. On an individual level, young people who are trying to forge pathways to creative careers miss out on opportunities to forge professional online identities and to tap into beneficial online networks. On a collective level, when working-class youth and youth of color remain invisible, we all miss out on seeing their stories, experiences, and creativity. Both of these consequence carry with them the risk of reproducing a status quo of inequity. Digital literacies are not a luxury, but are a fundamental component of 21st-century education and participation, and I worry about structures that inhibit young people’s capacity to participate in networked publics. Young people today have a unique opportunity to represent themselves in ways that are counter to the often negative mediated representations of youth. Schools can and should take more active approaches to facilitating and supporting the development of networked literacies so that marginalized students can safely participate and share in online participatory spaces. Educational approaches to digital literacy must balance harm-driven expectations with the opportunities afforded young people in today’s digital world.

  Notes

  1. For a further explanation of how participatory culture and commercial culture work in tandem, see Wesch 2008.

  2. Founded in 2000, DeviantArt is an online community that showcases various forms of user-made artwork and provides a platform for artists to discuss and critique work. It also includes resources such as tutorials, journals, and portfolios. As of 2013, the site had more than 25 million users and more than 246 million submissions.

  3. E! (the Entertainment Network) and BET (the Black Entertainment Network) both feature celebrity news and gossip, red-carpet events, celebrity interviews, and talk shows.

  4. The rapper Drake was popular with students at Freeway at the time of the study.

  5. On the hybrid economies that emerge in participatory cultures between bottom-up amateur media makers and top-down corporate commercial media cultures, see Jenkins, Ford, and Green 2013.

  6. Throughout this chapter I intentionally avoid referring to their creative media content and projects as “work.” This is a deliberate strategy intended to resist market-driven approaches and values to young people’s media production.

  7. Here I intentionally make an exception and use the word “work,” rather than “projects,” “productions,” or “creative media content,” to draw attention to the labor involved in media creations.

  6

  Visible Privacy: Norms, Preferences, and Strategies

  Everyone keeps their Tumblr private, usually because they post, like, actually what they’re going through or what they feel. Nobody really wants the people from our school to know, because then that’s how rumors start. That’s how things get out of hand, so I think that’s why we keep it really private.

  Gabriela (16 years old, Mexican-American)

  Remember when MySpace was the most popular social network site? Teens spent countless hours communicating with friends, decorating their profile pages, listening to music, taking quizzes, and hanging out on the site. A few years later we saw a migration away from MySpace and onto Facebook (boyd 2011; Watkins 2009). Out with the old,, “crowded,” hyper-personal, and even “creepy” and “trashy” nature of MySpace, they said! Bring on the “clean,” “educated,” and “mature” nature of Facebook (Watkins 2009). This migration—perhaps an even exodus, as boyd (2011) called it—gained momentum around 2008. MySpace still existed, but its popularity had dwindled; now Facebook was where it was at. A few years later, we begin to see a move away from Facebook toward Tumblr, Instagram, and Snapchat. It is estimated that 3 million teens left Facebook between 2011 and 2014, when there was a 25 percent decline in Facebook among members of the 13–17-year-old demographic group (Saul 2014). What accounts for these changes in young peoples’ preferences? Why does one site lose its appeal? Is this merely an example of teens’ flighty preferences changing constantly to keep u
p with trends, or is there something else going on? More importantly, what do these changes reveal about young people’s negotiations of visibility and expectations of privacy?

  If we look at the migration from MySpace to Facebook, we see that this decision was not necessarily about the technical affordances of the spaces. In fact, Facebook afforded fewer customizable options than MySpace and imposed greater limitations on what teens could do on the site. MySpace had a similar feel to its predecessor, the blog. Like blogs, MySpace allowed and encouraged young people to personalize their pages with unique images, songs, videos, and other media. Alternatively, Facebook imposed a static format that offered few customizable options; for the most part, everyone’s pages looked the same. For that reason, the move probably was not a result of an upgraded interface or options; it probably can be better accounted for by looking at the networks of users.

  Young people (like adults) are drawn to social media platforms not because of what they necessarily allow users to do, but rather because of whom they can connect with via the platforms. The simple explanation is that teens abandoned MySpace for Facebook because that’s where their friends were going. A deeper analysis reveals that perceptions of the two sites (more specifically, perceptions of who was using the two sites) were embedded in broader understandings of racial and ethnic identities. The exclusive nature of Facebook served to keep certain “undesirable” people out of the network. Watkins (2009) compares Facebook to a gated neighborhood that only the “right” people can enter. In the early days of Facebook, setting up an account required a college email address, which created a sense of exclusivity. In contrast to MySpace, most Facebook users were white and/or middle-class. Watkins notes that the ethnically diverse demographic of users on MySpace contributed to its perception as “crowded,” “trashy,” “creepy,” and “uneducated” (ibid.). Watkins recognized that young people were using such language less to describe the site itself than to describe the perception of the kinds of people who were likely to still use the site—minority, non-college-educated, and/or low-income individuals. The site became a stand-in for describing and delineating ethnic identities. As boyd (2011) puts it, MySpace had become a “digital ghetto.”