Worried About the Wrong Things
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Policy Analysis
In addition to participant data, I also conducted analyses of federal, state, and school policies. I traced the history of federal policies regulating Internet use in an American context and conducted a discursive analysis of the ways risk has been mobilized via federal policies that are related to the Internet and youth. I was primarily looking at how digital media and youth have been discursively constructed within policies. As part of my analysis, I considered the relationship between policies and digital literacies. Digital literacies are essential for combating and avoiding risky situations and encounters online (Livingstone, Haddon, Görzig, Ólafsson, et al. 2011). Therefore, in addition to federal policies I also analyzed Freeway High’s Informational Technology (IT) policies and curriculum guidelines. I specifically focused on the ways Freeway High’s policies and curriculum enable or inhibit students’ and teachers’ development of digital literacies. Freeway High’s policy and curriculum analysis comes from reading the school district’s policies, which included justifications for procedures and rules. Additionally, I drew from field notes based on conversations with Mr. Lopez and Mr. Warren. They informed my analysis since both teachers were in contact with members of the school board. Conversations with the teachers helped to contextualize the school’s attitudes, understanding, and justification for its technology policies.
Digital Media Communication
In order to gain a more nuanced understanding of how participants utilized and engaged with digital technologies, they shared content from their personal digital communication with individual members of the team. For example, they walked team members through different aspects of their Facebook, such as their profiles and privacy settings. This allowed participants a chance to show what they liked and disliked about a particular site, how they used it, and with whom they communicated. It also allowed an opportunity to observe the language and aesthetic choices participants used on social media sites, as well as how they and their peers used different media and spaces. The communication and data shared during these sessions helped to situate technology and media within a broader context of participants’ social and educational lives. It also provided insight into how participants interacted in such spaces and was used to generate more perceptive interview questions—in this way the method was an iterative process in which interviews, observations, and textual analysis were used to inform future protocols and interviews.
Taking a cue from collaborative ethnographic practices (Foley 2002) participants also generated data they shared with individual team members. For example, in order to show us other aspects of their lives participants took photos of their home, social, school, and work lives using a disposable camera that we provided for them. After we had the film developed, participants shared their photos and explained more about why they took the photos. They were also asked to keep a journal about their media use. This was not as successful as had hoped (in retrospect it was discovered that it felt too much like homework, so they were not enthusiastic about the project), but for those participants who did keep journals the accounts provided more insight into their media attitudes and use and provided a jumping off point for future interviews.
Coding and Analysis
With the permission of the students and their guardians, all of the semi-structured (and some of our unstructured) one-on-one interviews were recorded using small audio recorders. The recorders were about three inches long and were not obtrusive (could easily be placed on the other side of the table or even on an empty chair out of sight); we believe the presence of the recorders did not inhibit students’ candidness or comfort disclosing information during recorded sessions. We did not find many discrepancies between what was said “on record” and what was said during non-recorded sessions; in other words, we do not have reason to believe the presence of the recorder significantly changed the nature of the interviews. Informal conversations were also recorded when hanging out in the after-school clubs (always with the consent of students). The team met regularly to share field notes, which were also stored and shared via a secure and private online site. Additionally, recorded interviews were conducted with mentors in the after-school clubs, as well as with the teachers, Mr. Lopez and Mr. Warren. The team used a professional transcription service to have all of the recorded interviews transcribed (this included interviews with participants, focus groups, teachers, and parents or guardians). With the exception of three parent interviews, which were conducted in Spanish, all of the interviews were transcribed in English.
To analyze transcripts and field notes, the team used an open access, cross platform application called Dedoose, which is designed for analyzing qualitative and multi-method research. All transcripts were uploaded to Dedoose, then excerpts were created and coded according to a code tree the research team collaboratively developed. The coding process was iterative and required a lot of tweaking as the project continued. The codes rendered data searchable and also allowed for easier identification of trends. Dedoose made it possible to search literally thousands of pages of transcripts in order to analyze data related to particular topics of interest for this book. Some of the codes that were used to pull data for this project included: risk, social network sites, mobile phones, peer networks, school, home life, media production, literacy, socio-economic status, and privacy.
Grounded Theory Approach
I analyzed data gathered from participants (i.e., interviews) in conjunction with my field notes, which were based on observations that were conducted in the formal learning environment, the after-school clubs, and participants’ homes. The analysis is also greatly indebted to the invaluable input of the Digital Edge team. We met regularly to discuss findings and theories, which have intricately worked their way into my analysis in this book. Additionally, I want to acknowledge that what we as researchers call data, are really our constructions of other people’s constructions of reality (Geertz 1973). Thus I hope that by including what Clifford Geertz refers to as “thick descriptions,” I have provided context and depth for my analysis. I have largely employed a grounded theory approach to analysis insofar as the trends, hypotheses, and findings emerged over the course of the eight-month study and were used to develop theories. This is in contrast to approaches that initially develop and test hypotheses, which are determined before the research is conducted. Charmaz (2006, p. 2) writes: “Stated simply, grounded theory methods consist of systematic, yet flexible guidelines for collecting and analyzing qualitative data to construct theories ‘grounded’ in the data themselves. … Data form the foundation of our theory and our analysis of these data generates the concepts we construct.” As was mentioned, ethnography is an iterative process in which hypotheses must be constantly revisited and refined. For that reason, my analysis involved reading, coding, and analyzing initial interviews and field notes and then identifying emergent themes and trends. From there I often went back to participants—and other members of the research team—to “test” the hypotheses, that is, to check that what I thought I had identified matched the participants’ (and other researchers’) perspectives.
Grounded theory as a method emerged from Barney Glaser and Anselm Strauss (1967), two sociologists who studied dying patients in hospitals. My method of analysis draws from the Glaser and Strauss insofar as I engaged in simultaneous data collection and analysis, constructed analytical codes and categories for data (that were not derived from preconceived deduced hypotheses), and the majority of my literature review developed alongside and after analysis. As a team, our analysis relied on early coding of transcripts and field notes in order to inform questions. Because my overall emphasis is on risk as a social construct, throughout the entire process I employed discursive analysis to understand how risks were mobilized and enacted via policies and schools, as well as the ways participants negotiated and resisted risk (discourses).
In order to get at these large questions of risk, I drew from Yin (2009) in that I started with small questions based on eme
rging themes and codes and then gathered data which addressed those questions. From there I repeated the process in order to develop broader questions which were the focus of each chapter. The analysis is presented from a theory-building approach (ibid.) in which each chapter contributes to a part of the theoretical argument being made about risk, regulation, teens, and digital media.
Validity
I spent approximately an hour a week with these young people on a one-to-one basis, consequently I developed a highly personal, and at times intimate, relationship them. One criticism of qualitative interviewing as a method, especially with young people, is the concern that they will want to please the researchers, that is, that they will answer questions how they think the researcher wants them to answer (Mitchell 2002). I would like to note that I do not have reason to believe this was the case with the participants in this study. During our time together they were open and at times chose to make themselves vulnerable. This was true of the teens I worked with, and the teens that worked with other members of the research team. They often shared information beyond what was asked or expected; they did not always present themselves in the best light, but rather appeared candid and honest in interviews.
Furthermore, I have reason to believe that participants confirmed the trustworthiness of their relationships with me. Gabriela explicitly told me: “I don’t usually like talking about myself, adults just say ‘Oh, how are you?’ and I don’t know what to say. But with you it’s different. I like specific questions, and it’s fun to talk to you.” Similarly, Jasmine once said: “I don’t trust most adults; well I don’t mean you, of course.” During weeks when we were unable to meet, the students were often the ones to text me and ask when we could meet again. They were respectful of my time as I strived to be of theirs. At the end of the study participants remarked how much they had enjoyed our meetings and asked to stay in touch with me. I share this as evidence of the intimate and trusted relationship I developed with participants, which I hope bears credence to the validity of my data and analysis.
Lastly, one of the challenging, yet dynamic aspects of ethnography is the degree to which everything is always evolving. During my time with these young people they experienced many changes, including breakups, new living situations, moves, new jobs, changes in access to technology, and changes in aspirations and career paths. Within ethnography there is a tendency to want to create a linear narrative around participants’ identities and experiences—but again, the data here is really a collection of ever evolving stories that participants shared over time. As a disclaimer, I want to note that their lives were constantly changing, along with how they constructed their identities. I have tried to provide context when necessary so as to provide a clearer and more nuanced picture of their lives, identities, and experiences.
Appendix B: Theorizing Risk
In this book I am less concerned with identifying, quantifying, and calculating the risks young people encounter online, but rather my focus is on how risks and anxieties are constructed and mobilized within society; thus it is important that I explain what is meant by the concept risk. The notion of risk is used to describe a lot of different behaviors, practices, and situations from the mundane to the serious. If you start to pay attention you realize how often we interject concepts of risk into our everyday lives to the extent that they often fade into the background. For example, we may leave for work early on a rainy day because traffic will be slow and we do not want to “risk being late,” we may drive slower because we do not want to “risk getting into an accident,” and of course we all wear seatbelts to “reduce our risk of injury” in the event we do get into an accident. This simple example demonstrates how our lives are regulated through an awareness of risk as well as the different nodes which contribute to regulation: self-regulation based on experiences (e.g., leaving early so we are not late), expert opinions and data (e.g., statistical data demonstrates rain increases the likelihood of a car accident), and institutional enforcement through laws and policies (e.g., the state requires drivers to wear a seatbelt). For that reason, the meaning and the regulation of risk must be historically and contextually situated.
The meaning of the word “risk” has changed throughout history. Most commentators link the concept of risk with pre-modern maritime ventures related to dangers associated with sea voyages. “At that time,” according to Luhmann (1993, p. 226), “risk designated the possibility of an objective danger, an act of God, a force majeure, a tempest or other peril of the sea that could not be imputed to wrongful conduct.” In this way risk was considered to be something beyond human control and therefore outside of human blame or responsibility. However, changes in meanings of risk accompany the emergence of modernity towards the end of the seventeenth century and gaining momentum in the eighteenth century.
Modernist notions of risk are often associated with models of insurance based on probabilities and chance in which risks can be “good” (i.e., gain) or bad” (i.e., loss) (Douglas 1992). However, by the end of the twentieth century notions of risk as neutral—that is, with the potential for good and bad outcomes—tend to be lost. According to Lupton (1999, p. 8), “Risk is now generally used to relate only to negative or undesirable outcomes, not positive outcomes. … In everyday lay people’s language, risk tends to be used to refer almost exclusively to a threat, hazard, danger or harm.” Lupton goes on to note that probability is less important in colloquial uses of risk. In fact we tend to conflate notions of risk and uncertainty and employ notions of risk to describe unfortunate events even when the probability of harm is not likely or even estimable. Lupton and others (Short 1984; Douglas 1985, Skolbekken 1995) suggest the proliferation of risk in expert discourses has contributed to an increased awareness and adaption of risk in society.
What society determines is a risk and what, where, and who gets labeled as “risky” have significant implications for how we think about identity, ourselves, others, institutions, and governments. For the purpose of this book it is important to consider how technology and youth are constructed as risk and of what consequence. There are different epistemological and theoretical approaches to studying and conceptualizing risk. On one end of the epistemological continuum is the cognitive scientific perspective commonly found in fields such as engineering, statistics, psychology, and economics. This approach views risks as objectively identifiable threats or hazards that can be measured independently of social and cultural processes (Bradbury 1989). Researchers taking up this approach ask key questions such as “what risks exist and how should we manage them?” While they acknowledge risks sometimes get distorted or biased through social frameworks (often blaming lay people’s biased or misunderstood perception), this approach fails to ask how risks get constructed in the first place. (Lupton 1999).
Sociocultural Approaches
A sociocultural perspective of risk emphasizes what is omitted from a cognitive scientific approach: the social and cultural contexts in which risk is understood and negotiated. This approach has been adopted in disciplines such as cultural anthropology, philosophy, sociology, and technology studies. Within the sociocultural perspective there are (at least) three primary approaches: cultural/symbolic, “risk society,” and governmentality theorists who draw from Foucault’s theories. The first two, cultural/symbolic and “risk society,” are associated with a weak constructionist perspective which recognizes risk as an objective hazard or threat that is inevitably mediated through social and cultural processes (and can never be known in isolation from these processes). The cultural/symbolic approach (largely influenced by the work of the anthropologist Mary Douglas) focuses on how notions of risk delineate boundaries between self and Other. Important questions include “Why are some dangers selected as risks and others are not? How does risk operate as a symbolic boundary measure?” and “What is the situated context of risk?” (Lupton 1999, p. 35).
Also drawing from the weak constructionist perspective is the “risk society” approach associated
with the sociologists Anthony Giddens (1991) and Ulrich Beck (1992), who build on Marxist critical theory. Beck (p. 21) defines risk as “a systematic way of dealing with hazards and insecurities induced and introduced by modernization itself.” He continues: “In the risk society the unknown and unintended consequences come to be a dominant force in history and society. They can be changed, magnified, dramatized or minimized within knowledge, and to that extent they are particularly open to social definition and construction.” This approach has been taken up by media scholars and sociologists studying youth, the Internet, and risks. For example, in her influential book Children and the Internet, Sonia Livingstone (2009) applies three aspects of the risk society—the identification, intensification, and individualization of risk—to studying the relationship between media, policy, children, and the Internet.
The Governmentality Approach
A third approach, and the one I largely draw from to structure my research, applies Foucault’s (1991) perspective of governmentality to notions of risk. Research employing this perspective argues that what we understand to be a risk is always already historically, socially, and politically constructed. According to Lupton (1999, p. 114), Foucauldian perspectives focus on “the ways in which the discourses, strategies, practices and institutions around a phenomenon such as risk serve to bring it into being, to construct it as a phenomenon. It is argued that it is only through these discourses, strategies, practices and institutions that we come to know risk.” Thus the key question is not what risk is or how it is identified and measured, but rather how is risk constructed in a particular context and at a particular historical moment?