Mimi Ito - Weblog

We are nearing the end of three years of ethnographic work on the digital youth project that I have been helping lead together with Peter Lyman, Michael Carter, and Barrie Thorne. The project has involved a team of over 20 ethnographers, and we have conducted 22 different case studies of youth engagement with new media. These have ranged from studies of specific online sites such as YouTube and MySpace, to studies that focus on a particular neighborhood of afterschool program, to studies of interest-driven groups such as anime fans and hip hop creators. It has been quite a journey, learning from a diverse range of kids and learning from each other on how to work together in developing new forms of ethnographic knowledge and collaboration.

Although we are still a few months shy of wrapping up our analysis and writings, we will be doing our first major public presentation of our work on April 23, at Stanford University The event is organized by our funding organization, the MacArthur Foundation, together with Common Sense Media. We will have poster sessions featuring all of our case studies, and talks by danah boyd, Heather Horst, Dilan Mahendran, and myself. We also have a distinguished panel of respondents: Dale Dougherty editor of MAKE, Deborah Stipek, the Dean of the Stanford School of Education, Linda Burch from Common Sense Media, and Kenny Miller from MTV Networks. Julia Stasch and Connie Yowell from the MacArthur Foundation will also be presenting at the event.

You can find program details and the registration form at the Common Sense Media site.

The event will be webcast by Global Kids.

Since the Annenberg Center closed in August, my email had been forwarding to my new addy at the School of Cinematic Arts, but it looks like those days are over. My apologies if you got bounce backs on my annenberg.edu address in the past week or two. My other addresses should be functional. I guess the Center is officially gone, sniff.

I'm a bit late to blog this, but a few weeks ago the MacArthur Foundation did an official announcement of a new book series on Digital Media and Learning being published by MIT Press. They also announced a new journal, The International Journal of Learning and Media. Both the journal and the book series are part of the MacArthur Foundation's initiative on digital media and learning that I have been involved in for many years now with our digital youth project. For these publication efforts I get to play multiple roles: advisory board for the book series, author in the book series, and part of the editorial board of the journal. We are hoping that this series and journal will be a way of focusing and showcasing the work in the field. My own article in the book The Ecology of Games, edited by Katie Salen is here. All of the content of the book series are being made available in traditional print formats as well as online for free download.

We are moving into the analysis and writing phase on our digital youth project. Here is a short essay reporting on some of my research with anime fans.

One important dimension of our research is to develop an understanding of the diversity in ways that different youth engage with digital media, and what some of the factors are that lie behind this diversity. While broad demographic indicators such as national context, socioeconomic status, gender, age, or race have been analyzed as sources of diversity in digital media adoption, we still have very limited understanding of the specific practices, social contexts, and cultural identifications that inflect digital media use in different ways. For example, while we may know the general demographics and numbers of US teens who have decided to participate in an online site such as MySpace, we know little about why particular youth decide to opt in or out of participation, and what the variables are—personal, social, cultural—that factor into these decisions as part of an unfolding life history. Why is it that some youth decide to participate in some online sites rather than others? How do social categories in youth culture such as “geeks,” “jocks,” and “cool kids” inflect participation online? How do specific hobbies, interests, and friendships factor into young people’s decisions of where to go online? As the palette of options for online participation continues to expand, it is critical that we look at the relation between the diversity in youth culture and the diversity in online engagement. The “participation gap” as Jenkins (2006) has suggested, is not simply about haves and have-nots in relation to universal resource, but about intentional decisions people make between different but equally engaged forms of online participation.

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Registration is now open for 24/7: A DIY Video Summit!

Over a year of planning and organizing has resulted in what I think is a fabulous program. Big thanks goes to our curators who have put together the video programs, and our panel organizers. Special thanks to Charlene, Mariko, and Becky and Chris for all their work in getting the web and PR materials together. It is super exciting to finally be able to officially announce the event and start to welcome attendees.

Spaces will fill up quickly for the academic program and the workshops. The hands-on workshops, where you can get practical tips on DIY video making and distribution have a very limited number of slots, so please register early if you are interested in those.

The video screenings are all free and open to the public, so for those, you just need to show up at the event.

This event has really shaped up to be something well beyond my wildest expectations. It has been hugely challenging but rewarding to coordinate a very diverse group of curators, speakers, workshop leaders, and industry participants to get together for this. It's very important to us that word gets out to a wide range of people who have a stake in DIY, Internet and viral video, so please help us spread the word. This is meant to be an occasion for people to have conversations across the boundaries that usually separate different creative communities, technology developers, policy makers, and academics.

Registration information is here.

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