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177
rather than considering the role of institutions in providing learning experiences
conducive to the development of new media literacies. At the same time that
technological skills and NML are framed as essential skills and as needing to be
developed outside of schools, a competing discourse about online dangers places
additional responsibility on parents to supervise and regulate technology use—not
just to control learning, but to keep their children safe. The home computer is thus
constructed as a necessary danger for children’s success in the future.
As this chapter has illustrated, access is complicated and embedded in a
network of social structures. The technological determinism implicit in early digital
divide discourse has been, in part, addressed by new attention to the context of use as
well as the social and human resources necessary for technology use. The
participation gap continues this work of considering contextual factors within the
context of new media.
While shift from hard technological determinism is, by and large, a positive
change, it has brought with it a declaration that participatory culture is antithetical to
schools. Whereas the digital divide was thought to be fixable by wiring schools, the
participation gap is thought to require more resources and different resources, most
of which schools are not prepared to provide. Part of the challenge of participatory
culture for schools is related to the longstanding division between schools and
commercial culture (as I have discussed in chapter 2). Another part of the conflict is
related to the way kids are constructed as consumer citizens within participatory
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 182 |
| Contributing entity | University of Southern California |
| Repository email | cisadmin@lib.usc.edu |
| Full text | 177 rather than considering the role of institutions in providing learning experiences conducive to the development of new media literacies. At the same time that technological skills and NML are framed as essential skills and as needing to be developed outside of schools, a competing discourse about online dangers places additional responsibility on parents to supervise and regulate technology use—not just to control learning, but to keep their children safe. The home computer is thus constructed as a necessary danger for children’s success in the future. As this chapter has illustrated, access is complicated and embedded in a network of social structures. The technological determinism implicit in early digital divide discourse has been, in part, addressed by new attention to the context of use as well as the social and human resources necessary for technology use. The participation gap continues this work of considering contextual factors within the context of new media. While shift from hard technological determinism is, by and large, a positive change, it has brought with it a declaration that participatory culture is antithetical to schools. Whereas the digital divide was thought to be fixable by wiring schools, the participation gap is thought to require more resources and different resources, most of which schools are not prepared to provide. Part of the challenge of participatory culture for schools is related to the longstanding division between schools and commercial culture (as I have discussed in chapter 2). Another part of the conflict is related to the way kids are constructed as consumer citizens within participatory |
