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Youth Engagement in New Media Cultures: Insights from the Digital Youth Project

Explore how young people hang out, mess around, and geek out online, using new media tools for socialization, learning, and creative expression. Discover the impact of digital interactions on identity formation, peer relationships, and cultural participation.

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Youth Engagement in New Media Cultures: Insights from the Digital Youth Project

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  1. MacArthur Foundation Report: Digital Youth Project (2008) “Living and Learning with New Media”

  2. Tools • Questionnaires, surveys, interviews (800+) • Diaries (28) • Observations and content analyses of online sites (5000+ hours)

  3. Findings • Hanging out • “most youths use online networks to extend friendships and interests” • Messing around • “youth engage in peer-based, self-directed learning online” • Geeking out • Some “geek out and dive into a topic or talent”

  4. Hanging Out • Communication is typically with people in their offline lives • Communication can be with peers who share niche interests • Members of the youth culture use new media to define themselves in relation to their peers (identity) • New media are integrated into youth culture, which itself is integrated with commercial popular cultural products valued by young people

  5. Topics are likely to be music, gaming, film, television, fashion. . . . • Participation is also in social networks like MySpace and Facebook and IM • Friending occurs in a public manner and involves digital housekeeping (adding to and deleting from the list)

  6. This is “always on” communication: “posting status updates--how they are faring in their relationships, their social lives, and other everyday activities--that can be viewd by the broader networked public of their peers”

  7. Adults do not play an important role in Hanging Out • Parent/adult participation is thought to be “creepy,” “disrespectful,” or “controlling” • Parents tend to view Hanging Out as a “waste of time”

  8. Messing Around • Interest is raised--leading to searching for information, experimentation with gaming, producing digital media projects • There is social exchange about technology--networks, computer clubs. . . . • Creating and maintaining a MySpace profile • Engaging with a blog • Creating an avatar for Second Life, • Fiction writing

  9. “Messing Around with media is embedded in social contexts where friends and a broader peer group share a media-related interest and social focus”

  10. Geeking Out • Intense commitment /engagement • Assess to networks of expertise--specialized communities for exchange of work and ideas • Media products appear on such sites as YouTube, Life Journal and Deviant Art, where the creator can get critiques and comments

  11. “Aspiring creators do not need to look exclusively to professional and commercial works for models of how to pursue their craft. Young people can begin by modeling more accessible and amateur forms of creative production”

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