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42
and Drotner call attention to various other structures and institutions that shape kids’
lives—in particular education, identity, and marketing. Current discourse about kids,
media, and technology tends to overlook the everyday impact of media use, instead
positioning kids within a binary of victims of technology or savvy users. This binary
makes it seem like kids are either using high-end technology at every turn, or are
threatened by the presence of media in their lives. In addition, the construction of
kids as victims or technical wizards tends to look at media and technology use in a
vacuum, ignoring the influences of essential structures such as family, school, and
the media and technology industries themselves on kids’ consumption and use of
media. As David Buckingham has written, this is a false binary that is quite
problematic in thinking about kids and technology. Kids’ relationships with media
are much more complex and dynamic than either of these categories expresses.23
Popular culture and issues of taste and class
Concerns about kids’ participation as consumers can be understood in
relation to assumptions about popular culture more generally. Popular culture
occupies a denigrated position in our cultural hierarchy, and prior to the work of the
British cultural studies movement in the mid 20th century, the products of popular
culture were, by and large, dismissed as having no aesthetic or symbolic meaning.
The location of culture as part of everyday experience, rather than in products of the
elite class was a major factor in the founding of British cultural studies. Raymond
Williams is generally credited with redefining culture as the lived experiences of
Object Description
| Title | Kids as cultural producers: consumption, literacy, and participation |
| Author | Stephenson, Rebecca Herr |
| Author email | rherr@usc.edu; bhs@hri.uci.edu |
| Degree | Doctor of Philosophy |
| Document type | Dissertation |
| Degree program | Communication |
| School | Annenberg School for Communication |
| Date defended/completed | 2008-08-25 |
| Date submitted | 2008 |
| Restricted until | Unrestricted |
| Date published | 2008-10-17 |
| Advisor (committee chair) | Banet-Weiser, Sarah |
| Advisor (committee member) |
Gross, Larry Seiter, Ellen |
| Abstract | This dissertation looks closely at the practice of digital media production within a group of special education students and their teachers. Using ethnographic methods of extended participant observation and semi-structured interviews with students, teachers, and parents, along with textual analysis of students' media projects, this work examines the types of learning that emerge from making media at school and the ways in which that learning relates to media and technology use in everyday life. Over the course of one school year (2005-2006), the students who are the focus of this dissertation undertook eight different multimedia production projects, ranging from designing PowerPoint presentations to digital video production and stop-motion animation. Through media production, the students found opportunities to practice traditional and digital literacy skills as well as to explore issues of identity and self-expression.; This dissertation provides empirical support for recommendations made by several media literacy scholars to include media production as part of critical media literacy curricula and contributes a unique case study -- one situated in special education -- to a growing body of work on digital literacy. Three interdisciplinary themes--consumption, literacy, and participation -- are used to organize the description and analysis of the students' media production activities. These themes connect the specific production that took place in the classroom to larger discourses about youth, media, technology, education, and access, working to complicate existing constructions of young people as either helpless victims of manipulative media or naturally savvy media and technology users. Instead, this research emphasizes that the relationships kids have with media and technology are complex, dynamic, intrinsically linked to their identities as consumers and participants in society. Media literacy is thus theorized as a tool for understanding and controlling consumption, participation, and the construction of young people as both current and future citizens. |
| Keyword | media literacy; media production; special education; middle school; digital media |
| Geographic subject (city or populated place) | Los Angeles |
| Coverage date | 2005/2006 |
| Language | English |
| Part of collection | University of Southern California dissertations and theses |
| Publisher (of the original version) | University of Southern California |
| Place of publication (of the original version) | Los Angeles, California |
| Publisher (of the digital version) | University of Southern California. Libraries |
| Provenance | Electronically uploaded by the author |
| Type | texts |
| Legacy record ID | usctheses-m1674 |
| Contributing entity | University of Southern California |
| Rights | Stephenson, Rebecca Herr |
| Repository name | Libraries, University of Southern California |
| Repository address | Los Angeles, California |
| Repository email | cisadmin@lib.usc.edu |
| Filename | etd-Stephenson-2393 |
| Archival file | uscthesesreloadpub_Volume29/etd-Stephenson-2393.pdf |
Description
| Title | Page 47 |
| Contributing entity | University of Southern California |
| Repository email | cisadmin@lib.usc.edu |
| Full text | 42 and Drotner call attention to various other structures and institutions that shape kids’ lives—in particular education, identity, and marketing. Current discourse about kids, media, and technology tends to overlook the everyday impact of media use, instead positioning kids within a binary of victims of technology or savvy users. This binary makes it seem like kids are either using high-end technology at every turn, or are threatened by the presence of media in their lives. In addition, the construction of kids as victims or technical wizards tends to look at media and technology use in a vacuum, ignoring the influences of essential structures such as family, school, and the media and technology industries themselves on kids’ consumption and use of media. As David Buckingham has written, this is a false binary that is quite problematic in thinking about kids and technology. Kids’ relationships with media are much more complex and dynamic than either of these categories expresses.23 Popular culture and issues of taste and class Concerns about kids’ participation as consumers can be understood in relation to assumptions about popular culture more generally. Popular culture occupies a denigrated position in our cultural hierarchy, and prior to the work of the British cultural studies movement in the mid 20th century, the products of popular culture were, by and large, dismissed as having no aesthetic or symbolic meaning. The location of culture as part of everyday experience, rather than in products of the elite class was a major factor in the founding of British cultural studies. Raymond Williams is generally credited with redefining culture as the lived experiences of |
