By Megan Finn, PhD Candidate, School of Information, UC Berkeley

In conceptualizing the media and information ecologies in the lives of University of California, Berkeley freshmen, classical adoption and diffusion models proved inadequate. Rather than being characterized by a few individuals who diffuse knowledge to others in a somewhat linear fashion, many students' pattern of technology adoption signaled situations where various people were at times influential in different ever-evolving social networks. I use the term techne-mentor to help to describe this pattern of information and knowledge diffusion. The term “technology” is generally thought to be partially derived from the Greek word, techne, which means craftsmanship. Mentor is a figure in the Odyssey who advised both Odysseus and Telemachus, and is the source of the modern use of the word, mentor. Techne-mentor refers to a role that someone plays in aiding an individual or group with adopting or supporting some aspect of technology use in a specific context, but being techne-mentor is not a permanent role. The idea of the techne-mentor is useful for expanding conversations about adoption patterns to one of informal learning in social networks.

On April 23, at Stanford, we will be giving our first major public presentation of the outcomes of our research. We are near the end of three years of ethnographic work on 22 different case studies of youth engagement with new media. The MacArthur Foundation and Common Sense Media are organizing the evening event (4:30-8:30pm).

It will include talks and poster presentations from four of our team members: Heather Horst, Dilan Mahendran, danah boyd, and Mimi Ito. There will also be a panel or respondents including Tim O'Reilly of O'Reilly Media, Deborah Stipek, dean of the Stanford School of Education, Linda Burch of Common Sense Media, and Kenny Miller from MTV Networks. There will also be an opportunity to talk to all of the other researchers on the project and learn more about the various case studies. You can prepare for both small talk and big talk by reading some of our stories.

The event is public and you can see program details and register to attend this event (By April 18) at: www.eventsatcommonsensemedia.org

I spent some time at an afterschool media-technology program and one of the things I became curious about was how the kids there, all from lower income areas from San Francisco, learned to create their MySpace pages. Customzing a profile typically involves copying and pasting chunks of HTML and CSS code from other sites.[1]

Some of the code they are cutting/copying and pasting is code to make the profile look sleek or garish. Some of the code links to media, such as videos, of content found elsewhere, such as YouTube. At the program, I had a several chances to watch how kids quickly navigated web pages, found content they wanted, found the code, and stick it back on their own or their friends’ MySpace pages. one of the teenagers told me that getting videos on his MySpace page is easy: “It’s just cut and copy… cut and copy.” I guess the pasting wasn’t the important part here!

The above warning appears on the front page of a popular pro-anorexia internet discussion group, Hard Core Anorexic (1). On this site and countless others, women separated by geography, age and lifestyle log in to share their struggles, goals, triumphs and failures in living a "pro-ana" lifestyle. Anorexia, long the staple of after-school specials and public service announcements, may have fallen off the national radar screen, edged out by public panic about obesity. Nevertheless with increasing access to new media, those with (or claiming to have) eating disorders have congregated outside of hospitals and clinics, crafting a thriving pro-eating disorder community on the internet. While some of those with eating disorders seek and develop recovery oriented spaces online, others, such as the members of Hard Core Anorexic, specifically cultivate "pro-ana" communities. As a result there is a thriving online subculture characterized by specific symbols, rituals and the identity of the "wannarexic." Together with Dr. Natalie Boero, I've been examining 15 pro-eating disorder online discussion groups, with about 35,000 members, the vast majority of whom identify as female.

Previously, on the Digital Youth Project website… [Read the first part of this story]

On February 15 2006, Dennis McCauley published a short entry on his website, “GamePolitics.com”, eloquently titled “Rockstar’s Legal Gangs Beats Down Online Art Installation”. McCauley linked the aforementioned article written by Knutsen (2006a) describing Dave Beck’s case (here erroneously referred to as “Dave Berg”), and added a few personal comments. In order to foster the readers’ contributions, McCauley did not explicitly stated his position on the matter. His strategy proved successful. It did not take long for the first comment to materialize.

“In the absence of aesthetic value, the history of art is just an enormous storehouse of works whose chronologic sequence carries no meaning.
And conversely: it is only within the context of an art’s historical evolution that aesthetic value can be seen” (Milan Kundera, 2005: 5)

Level 1: Haynes and Barbie dolls
In 1987, American film director Todd Haynes ignited a controversy when he released Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story. Using Barbie dolls instead of real actors, Haynes reconstructed the life of Karen Carpenter, the pop vocalist of the band The Carpenters. To detail the girl’s physical deterioration caused by anorexia (note 1), the director finely whittled away at the face and arms of the “Karen” Barbie doll. The movie takes places in various locales, such as recording studios, restaurants, the Carpenter’s residence in Downey, California and Karen’s apartment in Century City: all the sets were designed properly scaled to the dolls. Shortly after its release, Superstar became a minor art–house hit. However, the film was hastily withdrawn from circulation because Haynes lost a lawsuit filed by Karen’s brother and musical collaborator, Richard Carpenter.

I had just finished giving a talk about youth culture to a room full of professionals who worked in the retail industry when a woman raised her hand to tell me a story. It was homecoming season and her daughter Mary was going to go to homecoming for the first time. What fascinated this mother was that her daughter's approach to shopping was completely different than her own.

Using Google and a variety of online shopping sites, Mary researched dresses online, getting a sense for what styles she liked and reading information about what was considered stylish that year. Next, Mary and her friends went to the local department store as a small group, toting along their digital cameras (even though they're banned). They tried on the dresses, taking pictures of each other in the ones that fit. Upon returning home, Mary uploaded the photos to her Facebook and asked her broader group of friends to comment on which they liked the best. Based on this feedback, she decided which dress to purchase, but didn't tell anyone because she wanted her choice to be a surprise. Rather than returning to the store, Mary purchased the same dress online at a cheaper price based on the information on the tag that she had written down when she initially saw the dress. She went for the cheaper option because her mother had given her a set budget for homecoming shopping; this allowed her to spend the rest on accessories.

What kind of environment is YouTube for children? The answers to that question are often complex and contradictory. They vary across the children, parents, and teachers we have interviewed as part of our study on Digital Youth. Although some children have reported harassment problems and distress due to harsh criticism and mean comments, others have reported making important connections to other people for help with making videos, and forming social and emotional ties with mentors, peers, and YouTube stars. Some people have experienced both hostility and meaningful social connection when participating on the site. One way to understand different dimensions of participation is to attend YouTube meet-ups that provide opportunities for "YouTubers" to make social connections with other participants on the site.

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.

Since the publication of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone nearly 10 years ago, fans of the series have adopted a variety of technologies for sharing writing, facilitating discussion, creating artwork and computer graphics, and producing audio and video. One such practice is podcasting, which became an important part of the fandom around August 2005.

Podcasting itself is a relatively young practice; most accounts, note its emergence in 2004. The word “podcast” is made from “iPod” and “broadcast;” however, the name is a bit misleading. Podcasts do not require an iPod to produce or listen; podcasts are also not broadcasts in the sense that they do not reach a wide audience. The Pew Internet and American Life Project has estimated that 11% of American adults own an iPod or other MP3 player; of that 11%, 29% of users have downloaded podcasts. According to their calculations, this amounts to approximately 6 million people who have downloaded and listened to a podcast at least one time.