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cars, which was Gabriel’s next action. When he crashed the car he was driving,
before I could ask him what happened when a player crashes a car, he jumped out of
the car and entered a string of keystrokes from memory. This cheat instantly restored
the car to perfect condition.
I asked Gabriel how he learned the codes he had memorized and where he
got the list of new codes. He told me that he obtained the codes from older kids who
live in his apartment complex and his older (high-school age) cousins. When I asked
him if he thought using the codes is cheating, he seemed confused and said no.
Despite calling them “cheat codes,” it appeared that Gabriel did not understand that
this type of play is subversive and would be considered by some other players to be
inappropriate. Perhaps he had never played a game without having cheat codes
because of his social network of older kids who scaffold his gameplay by sharing the
codes with him. If Gabriel’s friends agree that cheat codes are a normal part of
gameplay, it makes sense that he would not have viewed them as problematic or
subversive. Using cheat codes is not necessarily an example of literacy in and of
itself. What is significant about the cheat codes in Gabriel’s play is that they are an
embedded and social practice of participation.
Later in my observation of Gabriel and Ernesto, Gabriel offered to show me
his favorite in-game car. When I agreed, he took off (in a different car) to the street
where he said his favorite car was usually parked. I was expecting him to show me a
sports car or low rider (he had told me in the past that when he turns 16 he is going
to buy a low rider); instead, he hopped into a woody station wagon. When I asked
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 91 |
| Contributing entity | University of Southern California |
| Repository email | cisadmin@lib.usc.edu |
| Full text | 86 cars, which was Gabriel’s next action. When he crashed the car he was driving, before I could ask him what happened when a player crashes a car, he jumped out of the car and entered a string of keystrokes from memory. This cheat instantly restored the car to perfect condition. I asked Gabriel how he learned the codes he had memorized and where he got the list of new codes. He told me that he obtained the codes from older kids who live in his apartment complex and his older (high-school age) cousins. When I asked him if he thought using the codes is cheating, he seemed confused and said no. Despite calling them “cheat codes,” it appeared that Gabriel did not understand that this type of play is subversive and would be considered by some other players to be inappropriate. Perhaps he had never played a game without having cheat codes because of his social network of older kids who scaffold his gameplay by sharing the codes with him. If Gabriel’s friends agree that cheat codes are a normal part of gameplay, it makes sense that he would not have viewed them as problematic or subversive. Using cheat codes is not necessarily an example of literacy in and of itself. What is significant about the cheat codes in Gabriel’s play is that they are an embedded and social practice of participation. Later in my observation of Gabriel and Ernesto, Gabriel offered to show me his favorite in-game car. When I agreed, he took off (in a different car) to the street where he said his favorite car was usually parked. I was expecting him to show me a sports car or low rider (he had told me in the past that when he turns 16 he is going to buy a low rider); instead, he hopped into a woody station wagon. When I asked |
