The Creative YouTubers
YOUNG &
CREATIVE
Somewhere around 300-400 hours of video is uploaded
every minute on the immensely popular platform of YouTube. In this section, authors present examples of videoblogging, otherwise known as vlogging, a common feature
among viewers. Some vloggers have become world famous
through their presence on the screen, some of them are still
mostly known among their friends and family.
Digital Technologies
Empowering Children in Everyday Life
Ilana Eleá &
Lothar Mikos (eds.)
The International
Clearinghouse on Children,
Youth and Media, at
A UNESCO INItIAtIvE 1997
Nordicom
University of Gothenburg
Box 713
In 1997, the Nordic Information Centre for Media and
SE 405 30 GÖTEBORG, Sweden
Communication Research (Nordicom), University of Gothenburg,
Web site:
Sweden, began establishment of the International Clearinghouse
www.nordicom.gu.se/clearinghouse
on Children, Youth and Media. The overall point of departure for
Director: Ingela Wadbring
the Clearinghouse’s efforts with respect to children, youth and
information co-orDinator:
media is the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Catharina Bucht
The aim of the Clearinghouse is to increase awareness and
Tel: +46 31 786 49 53
knowledge about children, youth and media, thereby providing
Fax: +46 31 786 46 55
catharina.bucht@nordicom.gu.se
a basis for relevant policy-making, contributing to a constructive
public debate, and enhancing children’s and young people’s media
literacy and media competence. Moreover, it is hoped that the
The Clearinghouse
Clearinghouse’s work will stimulate further research on children,
is loCaTed aT nordiCom
youth and media.
Nordicom is an organ of
The
International
Clearinghouse
on Children,
andisMedia
Somewhere
around
300-400
hours ofYouth
video
uploadedco-operation between the Nordic
informs various groups of users – researchers, policy-makers,
every minute on the immensely popular platform of You-countries – Denmark, Finland, Iceland,
media professionals, voluntary organisations, teachers, students
Norway and Sweden. The overriding goal
In individuals
this section,
authors present examples of video-and purpose is to make the media and
and Tube.
interested
– about
The Creative YouTubers
communication efforts undertaken in the
blogging, otherwise known as vlogging, a common featureNordic
countries known, both throughout
• research on children, young people and media, with
among viewers. Some vloggers have become world famousand far beyond our part of the world.
special attention to media violence,
Nordicom uses a variety of chan-nels
through their presence on the screen, some of them are still– newsletters, journals, books, databases
– to reach researchers, students, decisionknown
amongregarding
their friends
family.
•mostly
research
and practices
mediaand
education
and
makers, media practitioners, journalists,
children’s/young people’s participation in the media,
and
teachers and interested members of the
general public.
Nordicom works to establish and
•
measures, activities and research concerning children’s
and young people’s media environment.
strengthen links between the Nordic
research community and colleagues in
all parts of the world, both by means of
unilateral lows and by linking individ-
Fundamental to the work of the Clearinghouse is the creation
of a global network. The Clearinghouse publishes a yearbook
and reports. Several bibliographies and a worldwide register
of organisations concerned with children and media have
been compiled. This and other information is available on the
Clearinghouse’s web site:
ual researchers, research groups and
www.nordicom.gu.se/clearinghouse
Council of Ministers.
institutions.
Nordicom also documents media trends
in the Nordic countries. The joint Nordic
information addresses users in Europe
and further aield. The production of
comparative media statistics forms the
core of this service.
Nordicom is funded by the Nordic
YOUNG & CREATIVE
YOUNG &
CREATIVE
Digital Technologies
Empowering Children in Everyday Life
Ilana Eleá and Lothar Mikos (Eds.)
Young & Creative
Digital Technologies Empowering Children in Everyday Life
Ilana Eleá and Lothar Mikos (Eds.)
© Editorial matters and selections, the editors; articles, individual
contributors; Nordicom 2017.
ISBN 978-91-87957-85-7 (print)
ISBN 978-91-87957-86-4 (pdf)
he publication is also available as open access at www.nordicom.gu.se
Published by:
he International Clearinghouse on Children, Youth and Media
Nordicom
University of Gothenburg
Box 713
SE 405 30 GÖTEBORG
Sweden
Images reprinted with permission from copyrightholder
Cover photo: Johan Strindberg / Bildhuset / TT
Cover by: Per Nilsson
Printed by: Ale Tryckteam AB, Bohus, Sweden, 2017
25
CONTENT
Preface
7
Introduction
Young and Creative. Digital Technologies Empowering Children in Everyday Life
9
ON CREATIVITY
1 The Rhetorics of Creativity
Shakuntala Banaji
17
2 Creativity on YouTube. Considering New Media and the Impulses of the Learner
Danah Henriksen, Megan Hoelting
31
3 The Class: Living and Learning in the Digital Age: Interview with Sonia Livingstone
43
THE CREATIVE YOUTUBERS
4 How YouTube Developed into a Successful Platform for User-Generated Content
Margaret Holland
53
5 Top Girls on YouTube. Identity, Participation, and Consumption
Lidia Marôpo, Inês Vitorino Sampaio, Nut Pereira de Miranda
65
6 The YouTube Channel RAK TV. A Narrative Interview with Rachel Cócaro, 14 Years Old
Paulo Guimarães, Maria Inês de C. Delorme
77
EXPRESSIONS OF CREATIVITY AMONG CHILDREN AND YOUTH
7 “Exclusively for Keitai”. Literary Creativity of Japanese Media Youths
Kyounghwa Yonnie Kim
8 A Shared Literary Experience. Youth Reading, Creativity and Virtual Performances
Alejandra Ravettino Destefanis
91
103
9 Internet Mukbang (Foodcasting) in South Korea
Seok-Kyeong Hong, Sojeong Park
111
10 “Transmedia Storytelling as a Narrative Expansion”: Interview with Carlos Scolari
125
11 Conversations on Creativity and Communication
Carmilla Floyd
131
COLLECTING AND SHARING CREATIVITY
12 “My Portfolio Helps My Making”. Motivations and Mechanisms for Documenting Creative Projects
Anna Keune, Naomi Thompson, Kylie Peppler, Stephanie Chang
145
13 Pockets of Freedom, but Mostly Constraints. Emerging trends in children’s DIY media platforms
Deborah A. Fields, Sara M. Grimes
159
14 Peer Teaching and Learning. A Case of Two Five-year-olds as Minecrat Creators
Sara Sintonen, Maj-Britt Kentz, Lasse Lipponen
173
15 “Children Love to be Hilariously Silly and Dead-Serious Alike”: Interview with Margret Albers 185
TRAINING TEACHERS TO SPARK YOUNG PEOPLE’S CREATIVITY
16 AMORES. Discovering a Love for Literature through Digital Collaboration and Creativity
Geof Walton, Mark Childs, Janet Hetherington, Gordana Jugo
193
17 Bringing Maker Literacies to Early Childhood Education
Jill Scott, Karen Wohlwend
209
18 Meeting Change with Creativity: Interview with Kirsten Drotner
221
Preface
oday´s digital technology provides opportunities to create and reach
out to a wide range of users. Diferent platforms, in particular online
platforms, has enabled anyone with access to the tools not only to be a
consumer of media content, but also a producer. his opportunity is
something many young people have grasped in order to express themselves and to share their own creativity.
All books published by the International Clearinghouse on Children,
Youth and Media aim to shed light on diferent themes concerning
children, youth and media, hopefully raising knowledge and awareness
on current aspects of young people’s media use and consumption and
hopefully serve as inspiration to further research and exploration.
he point of departure for the Clearinghouse’s eforts is the UN
Convention on the Rights of the Child, among other stating the child’s
right to freedom of expression. hus, a publication on creativity with
digital media where this freedom can be exercised is well within the
aim of the Clearinghouse. And considering the vast popularity among
young people to watch, share and ind inspiration in peer produced
content we found it highly relevant to address this theme.
We are deeply grateful to the editors of this book, Ilana Eleá and
Lothar Mikos, who have managed to gather a diversity of examples
from scholars and practitioners in how young people’s creativity can
be expressed in diferent ways and in diferent parts of the world.
T
Göteborg, December 2017
Catharina Bucht
Information co-ordinator
Ingela Wadbring
Director, Nordicom
7
Introduction
Young and Creative
Creativity in Everyday Practices
he 21st century saw the rise of digital media technologies which
have inluenced nearly every aspect of our lives. Digital media is
part of the everyday life of many children and young people, as they use
digital technologies to communicate, consume, learn, interact, and to
create. his book, Young and Creative – Digital Technologies Empowering
Children in Everyday Life, aims to identify a variety of examples where
children and youths have been active and creative by using their own
initiative, and by being driven by intrinsic motivation, personal interests,
and peer relations. How to theorise, display, and initiate creativity is also
included in the book.
We want to examine the opportunities of digital technologies for
the creative processes of children and young people. Access to digital
technology and its growing convergence (Jenkins, 2006a; Jenkins et al.,
2009) has allowed young people to experience active roles as cultural
producers. Participation becomes a keyword when “consumers take
media into their own hands” (Jenkins, 2006b:132).
Since in participation culture people are seen both as consumers and
producers, Young and Creative presents cases of children and young
people being actively involved when creating, sharing, and responding
to media. But what are they doing when they engage with media as DIY
(Do-It-Yourself) creators and producers? A diversity of content-creating platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, DeviantArt, Faniction.
net, Tumblr, Figment, Wordpress, and Scratch can be seen as “ainity
spaces” (Lammers, Curwood & Magniico, 2012), which are digital
and informal spheres where there is a passion for creating and sharing.
T
9
Eleá, Ilana and Mikos, Lothar (2017) Introduction – Young and Creative. Creativity
in Everyday Practices in Ilana Eleá and
Lothar Mikos (Eds.) Young & Creative.
Digital Technologies Empowering Children
in Everyday Life. Gothenburg: Nordicom
Introduction – Young and Creative
In order to explore young people’s ainity spaces and new literacies
or transmedia literacies and creativity, (see the interview with Carlos
Scolari in this book), Young and Creative primarily, but not exclusively,
focuses on what children and young people are doing in out-of-school
or out-of-institutional spaces, showing how they are engaging in participatory and collaborative social contexts. he reader will also ind
examples of creative experiences in the classroom, from daycare to
elementary school and international projects and festivals.
The tone and sections of the book
he 18 articles in Young and Creative are divided into ive sections. he
irst section, On creativity, opens with an article written by Shakuntala
Banaji and ofers a conceptualisation of creativity. Her rhetorical approach navigates questions such as “does creativity reside in everyday
aspects of human life or is it something special?”, inviting the reader
to analyse youth practices with digital media through historical and
theoretical lenses. Danah Henriksen and Megan Hoelting´s article
focuses on the creative aspects of YouTube and the impulses of the
learner that YouTube as a channel allows. he interview with Sonia
Livingstone touches upon issues that are important to relect on: YouTube’s popularity does not imply homogeneity in meaning or use. In
her research project ‘he Class’ carried out with Julian Seton-Green,
they observed that among 28 teens in a class in the UK, 28 diferent
patterns of use were found, and only six were used to upload contents.
However, YouTube is the favourite online destination for many
children around the world. he second section of Young and Creative
is titled he Creative YouTubers and Margaret Holland´s article further
investigates common factors shared by YouTube celebrities, describing
the behind the scenes of the phenomenon of user-generated content.
Two other texts consider Brazilian children as actors. Lidia Marôpo,
Inês Vitorino Sampaio, and Nut Pereira de Miranda focus on colours
to analyse the success of young female YouTubers in the country. Paulo
Guimarães and Maria Inês de C. Delorme further contribute by shedding light on the details of Rachel, a 14 year old YouTuber, who talks
about her practices, fears, and dreams.
In the section Expressions of creativity among children and youth, we
present Kyounghwa Yonnie Kim’s research on the possibility of writing
10
Introduction – Young and Creative
novels on mobile phones. he genre of keitai novels is also presented in
this book. Literature also appears in another title of Young and Creative
where Alejandra Ravettino Destefani´s article informs us that young
people are using the YouTube platform to create videos, and share
their passion about ictional books, incentivising new readers to get
involved with stories.
We believe that it is fundamental to be curious and aware of the
stories that children and young people are sharing on social media.
Seok-Kyeong Hong and Sojeong Park’s article on the mukbang phenomenon, in South Korea, can serve perhaps as an unusual example.
The interview with Carlos Scolari centres around the concepts of
transmedia storytelling and its place within informal learnings spaces
such as YouTube, social media and blogs, which bring forwards what
he calls a narrative expansion.
Carmilla Floyd, a journalist with experience in interviewing children
around the globe, was challenged to have an open online dialogue with
young Instagram users from Sweden, China, South Africa, USA, and
Vietnam. he photos that these young people took and shared while
reading their motivations and aspirations are published here.
Collecting and sharing creativity is a section that focuses on different platforms facilitating creative communication, the sharing of
knowledge and giving opportunity to exercise freedom of expression.
It includes peer-teaching and learning among two ive-year olds. In
order to shed light on new possibilities for teaching and learning, local
examples using e-portfolios (see Anna Keune, Naomi hompson, Kylie
Peppler & Stephanie Chang’s article); DIY media platforms (Deborah
A. Fields & Sara M. Grimes’ article); and Minecrat (Sara Sintonen,
Maj-Britt Kentz & Lasse Liponen’s article), give us some innovative
ideas. he interview with Margret Albers highlights the main scenes
from a German Children’s Media Festival, where children have been
producing ilms (and more recently television programmes) for competition since 1996.
Children and young people are immersed in digital spaces, experiencing their creativity online, feeling driven to learn and share more
of their ideas, but what can schools learn from their stories, YouTube
videos, and e-artefacts? In the inal section, Training teachers to spark
young people’s creativity, readers can ind information about how the
11
Introduction – Young and Creative
European project AMORES (Geof Walton, Mark Childs, Janet Hetherington & Gordana Jugo’s article) suggests ways to ill in the gaps between
children’s media use and school. It is an international aim invested
in teacher training and joint initiatives to increase involvement with
reading literacies. Play, toy hacking, and ilmmaking in early literacy
is explored in Jill Scott and Karen Wohlwend’s article, where stages of
character development, storyboarding and ilming, video editing and
sharing, are included in a ive-year study on literacy play. An interview
with Kirsten Drotner closes the book with a strong appeal: how may
we guide children’s freedom to express themselves online? “We need
to turn the tables”, she says.
Some final words
he articles and examples in this book indicate an interesting fact: even
though digital technologies have a global appeal, the creative activities
of children and young people are deeply rooted in their social and
cultural environment and show cultural specialties.
Young and Creative is a mix of research articles, interviews, and
case studies with contributions from Asia, Europe, North America,
and South America. he target audience of this book is students, professionals, and researchers working in the ield of education, communication, children and youth studies, new literacy studies and media
and information literacy.
We would like to thank Ingela Wadbring and Catharina Bucht
for the fruitful ideas and Per Nilsson for the creative book cover and
graphic art.
Stockholm and Potsdam
Ilana Eleá and Lothar Mikos
References
Jenkins, H, (2006a). Fans, bloggers, and gamers: Exploring participatory culture. New
York: New York University Press.
Jenkins, H. (2006b). Convergence culture: When old and new media collide. New York:
NYU Press.
12
Introduction – Young and Creative
Jenkins, H., Purushotma, R., Weigel, M., Clinton, K., & Robison, A. J. (2009). Confronting the challenges of participatory culture: Media education for the 21st century.
Cambridge: MIT Press.
Lammers, J. C., Curwood, J. S., & Magniico, A. M. (2012). Toward an ainity space
methodology: Considerations for literacy research. English Teaching: Practice and
Critique, 11 (2), 44–58.
Ilana Eleá, PhD in Education by PUC-Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, is former scientific
coordinator at The International Clearinghouse on Children, Youth and Media,
Nordicom, Sweden.
Lothar Mikos, Professor of Television Studies, Department of Media Studies, Filmuniversität Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF, Potsdam, Germany, and Honorary Professsor at University of International Business and Economy, Beijing, China, l.mikos@
filmuniversitaet.de
13
On Creativity
he irst section of this anthology revolves around discussions on what creativity is. he reader will meet diferent
rhetorics of creativity, what is written and said about it,
and how new media technology can meet the impulses
of learning and thus enable youth (and others) in creative
expressions.
1
The Rhetorics of Creativity
Shakuntala Banaji
his article introduces understandings of creativity in relation to social
relations, play and pedagogy in policy and practice: where these
understandings come from in terms of their theoretical heritage, what
functions they serve, how they are used, and in whose interest. he focus
is on discourses about creativity circulating in the public domain. he
aim here is not to investigate creativity itself, but rather what is written
and said about it. Creativity is thus presented as something constructed
through discourse and how we might choose to locate ourselves in relation
to claims being made about it. In the critical review of literature from
which this article originates (Banaji & Burn, 2006), the rhetorics of creativity are given names which broadly correspond to the main theoretical
underpinnings or the ideological beliefs of those who deploy them. hus,
the rhetorics referred to in this article are as follows:
T
• Creative Genius
• Democratic Creativity and Cultural Re/Production
• Ubiquitous Creativity
• Creativity for Social Good
• Creativity as Economic Imperative
• Play and Creativity
• Creativity and Cognition
• he Creative Afordances of Technology
• he Creative Classroom and Creative Arts and Political Challenge
17
Banaji, Shakuntala (2017). The Rhetorics
of Creativity in Ilana Eleá and Lothar
Mikos (Eds.) Young & Creative. Digital Technologies Empowering Children in Everyday
Life. Gothenburg: Nordicom
Shakuntala Banaji
he rhetorics have complex histories; in the following sections, brief
indications of these histories are sketched. Following these historical
descriptions, the rhetorics are traced through in academic and policy
discourses.
he discussion of individual rhetorics raises a series of questions
that cut across and connect several rhetorics to each other. For instance,
two questions running through the rhetorics of Genius, Democratic
and Ubiquitous creativity are: Does creativity reside in everyday aspects
of human life or is it something special? And what are the diferences
between ‘cultural learning’ and ‘creative learning’? Similarly, the issue
of whether there is, in fact, any diference between ‘good’ and ‘creative’
pedagogy is the focus of attention in a number of the rhetorics. Writing
on creativity in education distinguishes between creative teaching and
creative learning, but oten fails to establish precisely how such processes and the practices they entail difer from ‘good’ or ‘efective’ teaching
and ‘engaged’ or ‘enthusiastic’ learning. So, is there good teaching that
is not creative? Meanwhile, the questions of how signiicant play and
individual socialization are remain central to several rhetorics.
Creativity: Unique or democratic?
he rhetoric which could be said to have the oldest provenance and to
have remained resilient, albeit in more subtle guises, within educational
pedagogies in the 20th and 21st centuries is that of Creative Genius. his
romantic and post-romantic rhetoric (Simonton, 1999; Scruton 2000)
dismisses modernity and popular culture as vulgar, and argues for
creativity as a special quality of a few highly educated and disciplined
individuals (who possess genius) and of a few cultural products. In
this rhetoric, culture is deined by a particular discourse about aesthetic judgment and value, manners, civilization and the attempt to
establish literary, artistic and musical canons. It can be traced back
through certain phases of the Romantic period to aspects of European
Enlightenment thought. Perhaps the most inluential Enlightenment
deinition of genius is in Kant’s Critique of Judgment, which presents
it as the ‘mental aptitude’ necessary for the production of ine art, a
capacity characterized by originality, and opposed to imitation. Frequently, for its proponents, ‘novelty’ is viewed as a negative – almost
dangerous – attribute when proposed by those who do not possess the
18
The Rhetorics of Creativity
requisite skill and inspiration to maintain a link with what is regarded
as the best in the past.
Signiicantly for the rhetorics Play and Creativity and he Creative
Classroom, some commentators write as if there are two diferent ‘categories’ of creativity, which have been dubbed, variously, ‘high’ and ‘common’ (Cropley, 2001), or ‘historical’ and ‘psychological’ (Boden, 1990)
(or ‘special’ and ‘everyday’). he former comprises the work and powers
of those who are considered ‘geniuses’, and is pursued via studies of the
work and lives of ‘great’ creative individuals (Csikszentmihalyi, 1997)
and regarded as ‘absolute’, while the latter is far less well deined but
clearly relative and can be fostered, increased and measured. he latter
can also, broadly, be split into two traditions: one grounded in culture
or subculture and the other based on notions of ‘possibility thinking’
and dubbed ‘little-c’ creativity (Crat, 1999) in ordinary situations.
he rhetoric of Democratic Creativity and Cultural Re/Production
provides an explicitly anti-elitist conceptualization of creativity. Most
familiar in the academic discipline of Cultural Studies, it sees everyday cultural practices in relation to the cultural politics of identity
construction, focusing particularly on the meanings made from and
with popular cultural products. his rhetoric provides a theory derived
from the Gramscian perspective on youth subcultures developed by the
Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies. It constitutes
practices of cultural consumption (especially of ilms, magazines, fashion and popular music) as forms of production through activities such
as music sampling, subcultural clothing and fan activity (Cunningham,
1998), and thus belongs to an inluential strand of cultural studies
which attributes considerable creative agency to those social groups
traditionally perceived as audiences and consumers or even as excluded
from creative work by virtue of their social status (Willis, 1990).
Similarly egalitarian, but without the basis in cultural politics, is the
rhetoric of Ubiquitous Creativity. Here, creativity does not only entail
the consumption and production of artistic products, whether popular
or elite, but involves a skill in terms of responding to the demands of
everyday life. In this discourse, being more creative involves having
the flexibility to respond to problems and changes in the modern
world and in one’s personal life (Crat 1999, 2003). While much of
the writing in this rhetoric is targeted at early years’ education with
19
Shakuntala Banaji
the aim of giving young children the ability to deal relexively and
ethically with problems encountered during learning and family life,
examples used to illustrate ‘everyday creativity’ include attempts by
working-class individuals or immigrants to ind jobs against the odds
without becoming discouraged. his too is a highly resilient strand in
commentaries on this subject and has a strong appeal for educators
(Jefrey 2005; Cohen 2000).
Clearly for those even nominally in favour of retaining a particular
link between creativity and the arts and culture (Negus & Pickering,
2004), who see creativity as something ‘special’ (or indeed who see it
as being about challenge and social critique rather than conformity
to rules), this approach raises the question: Is this view of creativity
as an ability to be lexible in meeting the demands of life incompatible
with the notion of creativity as something that adds a special quality
to life? It seems that there remain tensions between activities, ideas
and creations that are dubbed ‘creative’ in particular social contexts or
historical moments and those that are rejected for fear of their playful,
disruptive or anarchic potential.
Creative socialization and ‘successful’ societies?
he rhetoric of Creativity for Social Good is characterized by its emphasis
on the importance for educational policy of the arts as tools for personal
empowerment and ultimately for social regeneration (Robinson et al.
1999). It stresses the integration of communities and individuals who
have become ‘socially excluded’ (for example by virtue of race, location
or poverty) and generally invokes educational and, tangentially, economic concerns as the basis for generating policy interest in creativity.
his rhetoric emerges largely from contemporary social democratic
discourses of inclusion and multiculturalism. In this view, a further
rationale for encouraging creativity in education focuses on the social
and personal development of young people in communities and other
social settings. In this view, ‘creative and cultural programmes’ are seen
to be twofold mechanisms of social cohesion, ‘powerful ways of revitalising the sense of community in a school and engaging the whole school
with the wider community’ (Ibid, 26). Although Robinson’s NACCCE1
committee team accept that exceptionally gited creative individuals do
exist, their report favours a ‘democratic’ deinition of creativity over an
20
The Rhetorics of Creativity
‘elite’ one: ‘Imaginative activity fashioned so as to produce outcomes
that are both original and of value’ (1999: 29). Here, culture and other
cultures are things to be ‘dealt with’ and ‘understood’. While this somewhat reductive view has been criticised (Marshall, 2001; Buckingham
& Jones, 2001), it has a broad appeal amongst those who see creativity
as a tool in the project of engineering a strong national society.
In an allied rhetoric much in evidence since dot.coms came on the
scene and in an era of lexible digital labour, Creativity as Economic Imperative, the future of a competitive national economy is seen to depend
on the knowledge, lexibility, personal responsibility and problem-solving skills of workers and their managers (Scholtz & Livingstone, 2005).
hese are, apparently, fostered and encouraged by creative methods in
business, education and industry (Seltzer & Bentley, 1999). here is a
particular focus here on the contribution of the ‘creative industries’,
although the argument is oten applied to the commercial world. Again,
this rhetoric annexes the concept of creativity in the service of a neoliberal economic programme and discourse (Landry, 2000). Instead
of being about imagination or the motivation to learn and create, the
imperative here is the requirement to assist the modern national capitalist economy in its quest for global expansion. But, realistically, we
must ask questions about the variety of arenas and domains in which
those who buy into this ‘new’ vision of creativity would be allowed to
function. Would time for the playful testing of ideas be built into the
working days of ‘knowledge workers’? Or perhaps they would have
to accommodate such necessary but peripheral business in their own
personal time by giving up leisure. In what way might diferent skills
lead to creative production? It seems unlikely that the mere acquisition
of skills would be suicient as a contribution to a greater collective or
corporate endeavour. Clearly, while the newly lexible workforce – or
student body – might be encouraged to manage themselves and their
departments or sections, their control over the overall structures and
practices of their organizations might remain as limited as ever (Pope,
2005). A inal problem that arises with the use of the term creativity in
this context is a deinitional one. As with the generalized application
of creativity to all teaching and learning in all subjects, the danger is
that it simply becomes a more glamorous and appealing synonym for
‘efectiveness’, thereby losing its distinctive sense.
21
Shakuntala Banaji
Serious or playful stuf?
he rhetoric of Creativity and Cognition can be seen as incorporating
two quite diferent traditions. One includes theories of multiple intelligences (Gardner, 1993) and the development of models to document
and increase people’s problem-solving capacity (for instance, Osborn-Parnes 1941 CPS model) as well as explorations of the potential
of artiicial intelligence (Boden, 1990). his latter work attempts to
demonstrate the links made during, and the conditions for, creative
thought and production. he emphasis of all strands in this tradition
is on the internal production of creativity by the mind, rather than on
external contexts and cultures. he other tradition consists of more
intra-cognitive and culturally situated notions of creative learning
expounded by Vygotsky (1994), who asserts that ‘If a person “cannot
do something that is not directly motivated by an actual situation”
then they are neither free nor using imagination or creativity’ (1994:
267). he importance attributed to ‘freedom’ of thought and action
and to non-goal-orientated playful activity in Vygotsky’s writing about
adolescent learning remains controversial in educational or work
environments, where the ability to plan a project and execute it, solve
a problem, or pass a test are markers of efectiveness. More lexible
indicators of creativity, such as the various ‘intelligences’ described by
Gardner, have been used on occasion in a positive manner to soten
the harshness of traditional literacy and numeracy-based academic
assessment. Sadly, however, Vygotsky’s far more critical and unusual
theorizing has been largely ignored.
A persistent strand in writing about creativity, the rhetoric of Play
and Creativity turns on the notion that childhood play models, and
perhaps scafolds, adult problem-solving and creative thought. It explores the functions of play in relation to both creative production and
cultural consumption. Some cognitivist approaches to play do share
the emphasis of the ‘Creative Classroom’ rhetoric on the importance
of divergent thinking. Sandra Russ (2003), for instance, argues that
the ways in which children use language, toys, roleplay and objects
to represent diferent things in play are habitual ways of practising
divergent thinking skills.
But not all those who champion play do so in ways that are conducive to the freedom of thought, creative action, or divergent and critical
22
The Rhetorics of Creativity
thinking. Dixon and Webber (2007) point to links between adults’
nostalgia for a remembered context of play in their own childhoods
and emerging, ingrained and oten naturalized social rhetorics about
play in modern children’s lives. Taking to task those who mourn the
‘death’ of an era when play was outdoors, safe, free and unmediated,
they note that ‘[i]n response to both panic and nostalgia, adults are
increasingly organizing and regulating their children’s play’ (2007: 25).
his discussion can be seen to mirror discourses that have emerged with
regard to creativity, technology and (new) media. Cordes and Miller, for
instance, assert that ‘a heavy diet of ready-made computer images and
programmed toys appear to stunt imaginative thinking’ (2000: 4). But
the fact that certain commentators, possibly with nostalgic memories
of socially privileged childhoods and an exaggerated paranoia about
‘modern’ media, might overstate the case against digital playtime does
not mean that all technology-based play and learning are either harmful
or necessarily beneicial to children’s creativity.
A digital ‘creativity pill’ or a damaging potion?
If creativity is not inherent in human mental powers and is, in fact, social
and situational, then technological developments may well be linked to
advances in the creativity of individual users. he rhetoric constructed
around he Creative Afordances of Technology covers a range of positions, from those who applaud all technology as inherently creative
to those who welcome it cautiously and see creativity as residing in an
as yet under-theorized relationship between users and applications.
But it is worth asking how democratic notions of creativity are linked
to technological change in this rhetoric. Is the use of technology itself
inherently creative? And how do concerns raised by opponents of new
technology afect arguments about creative production?
For Avril Loveless (2002), thanks to a complex set of features of ICT
(provisionality, interactivity, capacity, range, speed and automatic functions), digital technologies open up new and authentic ways of being
creative ‘in ways which have not been as accessible or immediate without new technologies’ (2002: 2). Loveless (1999) argues that technology,
which is being used in schools in varieties of ways, can enhance creative
learning, but only if children’s expectations and teachers’ anxieties are
handled sensitively. Challenging those who champion digital technol23
Shakuntala Banaji
ogies as inherently creative, Scanlon et al. (2005) and Seiter (2005) also
note that many computer programmes designed to increase children’s
knowledge and skills are not in the least bit creative, relying on rote
learning, repetition and drill exercises. hus, they argue that digital
technology can – but does not necessarily – support the expression
and development of creativity. In a society where technology is not
equally available to all, children may well be enthusiastic and conident
users of digital technologies when ofered the opportunities for playful
production, but they are still divided by inequalities of access outside
school and across the school system. Ultimately, the social contexts of
the use of digital technology may help or hinder its creative potential.
Evaluation, learning and pedagogy
Pertinently for those interested in creativity and communication,
placing itself squarely at the heart of educational practice, he Creative Classroom rhetoric investigates questions about the connections
between knowledge, skills, literacy, teaching and learning, and the
place creativity occupies in an increasingly regulated and monitored
curriculum (cf. Beetlestone 1998; Starko 2005; Jefrey 2005). his rhetoric locates itself in pragmatic accounts of ‘the crat of the classroom’,
rather than in academic theories of mind or culture. Creative learning
is interactive, incorporating discussion, social context, sensitivity to
others, the acquisition and improvement of literacy skills; it is contextual, and has a sense of purpose and thus cannot be based around small
units of testable knowledge; however, it can also be thematic and highly
speciic, as it oten arises out of stories or close observation, which
engage the imagination and the emotions as well as learners’ curiosity
about concepts and situations. he Creative Classroom rhetoric is
consistent in identifying holistic teaching and learning – which link
playful processes to diferent types and domains of knowledge and
methods of communication – as more compatible with and conducive
to creative thought and production than the increasingly splintered,
decontextualized, top-down and monitored content and skills which
are favoured as being academically ‘efective’.
here is, however, a tension in this work between what could be
broadly deined as a rather romantic wish to view creativity as something that enhances the human soul and helps young people blossom,
24
The Rhetorics of Creativity
and the need to give practical advice to trainee teachers, thus itting
them for the fairly chaotic but restricted milieu they will soon enter.
At points this tension is productive, or at the very least practical, in the
sense that it prevents the educational perspective on creativity from
sidestepping issues, such as assessment and time management, that are
of very real signiicance for practitioners in both formal educational and
more unorthodox settings. Many educators have to walk a tightrope
between institutional constraints and the fragility of their constructed
‘creative’ environment. However, at times the tension also appears to
lead to contradiction or even paradox: risk-taking is to be encouraged,
but it is also to be kept within easily controllable bounds; time is required for playful engagement with ideas and materials, but this time
has stringent external parameters in terms of the school day. Work by
Banaji, Cranmer & Perotta (2013) provides evidence that interventions
by governments in education have created a culture of vocationalization,
standardization and competition which is a barrier to creative pedagogy,
playful exploration and creative work in the classroom. While it is clear
that a number of students continue to work in imaginative and divergent
ways, and that some teachers still encourage them to do so by valuing
playful or subversive discussion and creative production with new or
traditional technologies, the literature on creativity in contemporary
classroom settings suggest that this is despite, rather than because of,
most current education policies.
Although not considered in detail here, in response to such institutional realities, and setting a challenge to aspects of foregoing
rhetorics, Creative Arts and Political Challenge sees art and participation in creative education as necessarily politically challenging, and
potentially transformative of the consciousness of those who engage
in it. It describes the processes of institutional pressure that militate
against positive and challenging experiences of creativity by young
people, regardless of the eforts of teachers and practitioners (homson,
Hall & Russell, 2006). In previous work on this topic (Banaji & Burn,
2006; Banaji & Burn, 2007) this rhetoric is pursued further, with an
emphasis on the questions it raises about creative partnerships, social
contexts and political or philosophical presuppositions. If one wishes
to retain the idea of cultural creativity as having an oppositional rather
than a merely socializing force, it is important not to lose sight of the
25
Shakuntala Banaji
ways in which broader inlections of discourses of creativity relate to
the micro-politics of particular social settings. he very luidity and
confusion in talk about creativity in the classroom can mean that the
term is used as window dressing to appease educators who are interested
in child-centred learning, without actually being incorporated into the
substantive work of the classroom.
Conclusion
In discussions of creativity, it is crucial that we understand and respond
to the relationship between the cultural politics of talk about creativity
or play and a wider politics. While there is evidence from numerous
studies (Balshaw, 2004; Starko, 2005) that creative ways of teaching
and learning, and creative projects in the arts, humanities and the
sciences, ofer a wider range of learners a more enjoyable, lexible and
independent experience of education than some traditional methods,
there is no evidence that simply giving young people or workers brief
opportunities for creative play or work substantially alters social inequalities, exclusions and injustices. Creativity is not a substitute for
social justice. here is a complex, and not always clearly identiiable,
cultural politics behind many rhetorics of creativity, as there is behind
educational rhetorics and the rhetorics of play. his is the case not only
within discourses which explicitly address questions about power, and
about whose culture is seen as legitimate and whose is not; it is also
the case in discourses where constructions of power remain implicit,
such as those which celebrate ‘high art’ as ‘civilizing’ and child art as
being about an ‘expression of the soul’, or which see the development
of workers’ creativity as being ‘for the good of the national economy’
and the constant testing and attribution of levels of ability to children
as a way of raising ‘standards’. Some discourses explicitly legitimize
certain forms of cultural expression and certain goals, and implicitly
delegitimize others. Increasingly, such discourses aid gatekeepers
within educational institutions by stigmatizing particular pedagogies
and parenting choices. Talk about creativity is, then, always political,
even when it appears not to be.
Shakuntala Banaji, Dr, Media and Communications, London School of Economics
and Political Science, United Kingdom, s.banaji@lse.ac.uk
26
The Rhetorics of Creativity
Note
1.
National Advisory Committee on Creative and Cultural Education, UK.
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Banaji, Shakuntala & Burn, Andrew (2007). Creativity through rhetorical lens: implications for schooling, literacy and media education, (pp.62-70) in Cremin, Teresa;
Comber, Barbara & Wolf, Shelby (eds.) Literacy, vol.41 (2). Oxford: Blackwell
Publishing.
Banaji, Shakuntala; Cranmer, Sue & Perrotta, Carlo (2013). What’s stopping us? Barriers
to creativity and innovation in schooling across Europe, (pp.450-463), in homas,
Kerry & Chan, Janet (eds.) Handbook of Research on Creativity. Cheltenham:
Edward Elgar Publishing.
Balshaw, Maria. (2004). Risking creativity: building the creative context. Support for
Learning, 19(2): 71-76.
Beetlestone, Florence (1998). Creative Children, Imaginative Teaching. Buckingham:
Open University Press.
Boden, Margaret (1990). he Creative Mind: Myths and Mechanisms. London: Weidenfeld
and Nicolson.
Buckingham, David & Jones, Ken (2001). New Labour’s cultural turn: some tensions
in contemporary educational and cultural policy. Journal of Educational Policy
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Cohen, Gene (2000). he Creative Age: awakening human potential in the second half of
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Colleen, Cordes & Miller, Edward (2000).Fool’s gold: A critical look at computers in
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7th July, 2007].
Crat, Anna (1999).Teaching Creativity: Philosophy and Practice. London and New York:
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Crat, Anna (2003). Creative hinking in the Early Years of Education. Early Years,
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Csikszentmihalyi, Mihály (1997). Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and
Invention: New York: Harper Perennial.
Acknowledgements
In formulating the rhetorics that appear here and in tracing their lineage, I am
grateful for the substantial contributions and critiques of Andrew Burn and
David Buckingham. I also thank Creative Partnerships for the opportunity to
research and write the literature review from which this article arises, and the
Arts Council for the permission to reproduce sections of that literature review.
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Cunningham, H. (1998) Digital Culture – the View from the Dance Floor, (pp.128-148)
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Loveless, Avril (1999). A digital big breakfast: the Glebe School Project, (pp.32-41)
in Seton-Green, Julian (ed.) Young People, Creativity and New Technologies: the
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Negus, Keith & Pickering, Michael (2004). Creativity, Communication and Cultural Value.
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Pope, Rob (2005). Creativity: heory, History, Practice. London and New York, Routledge: QCA.
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Russ, Sandra (2003). Play and Creativity: developmental issues. Scandinavian Journal of
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Scanlon, Margaret; Buckingham, David & Burn, Andrew (2005). Motivating Maths:
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Starko, Alane (2005). Creativity in the Classroom: Schools of Curious Delight. London:
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Vygotsky, Lev [1994(1931)]. Imagination and Creativity in the Adolescent (pp.266-288)
in Van Der Veer, Rene & Valsiner, Jaan (eds.). he Vygotsky Reader. Oxford UK
and Cambridge USA: Blackwell.
Willis, Paul (1990). Common Culture. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.
29
2
Creativity on YouTube
Considering New Media and the Impulses of the Learner
Danah Henriksen & Megan Hoelting
n today’s globalized media, a new type of individual has emerged as
a celebrity. Such individuals work creatively with a range of media,
oten converging on one particular platform: YouTube. One of the oldest
examples of this type of celebrity is Smosh1, a duo, Anthony Padilla and
Ian Hecox, who established their comedic channel in 2005, which went
on to generate a number of spin-ofs. he two young millionaires represent a wave of creative artists who are lexible and aware of the creative
power of this medium.
Smosh began in 2005; today, there are more examples of YouTube
stars and popular channels than most traditional media can keep up
with. For example, Joey Gracefa2 is just such an adaptable YouTube
star. His early creative work on his YouTube channel garnered him a
large multimedia contract and a place in the arena of popular culture.
Spawned by his success in YouTube media, he has found opportunities
to collaborate with other artists, write for a web series, and bring his
ideas into multiple arenas. Most recently, Gracefa made headlines with
his memoir, In Real Life: My Journey to a Pixelated World, in which he
came out as homosexual.
This announcement is revolutionary compared to coming-out
announcements from more traditional stars, such as Ellen DeGeneres, Lance Bass, Clay Aiken, and Adam Lambert – who all provided
exclusive interviews in traditional media. hough this new medium,
I
31
Henriksen, Danah & Hoelting, Megan
(2017). Creativity on YouTube. Considering
New Media and the Impulses of the Learner in Ilana Eleá and Lothar Mikos (Eds.)
Young & Creative. Digital Technologies
Empowering Children in Everyday Life.
Gothenburg: Nordicom
Danah Henriksen & Megan Hoelting
Image 1. The Smosh duo
Image 2. Joey Gracefa on his book cover
Gracefa had the creative power to use YouTube to decide how he
wanted to communicate and share with others. his is just one example
of a phenomenon in which youths are gaining creative power in new
media, to exercise their voices, create and share content, and participate
in creative communities globally.
New technologies have opened up such possibilities for young
creative artists, like Gracefa, to showcase their talents and ideas online. YouTube has been the prime example and source of the global
phenomenon of video creation and sharing. Accelerating technological
growth has caused our society to reconsider how we work, think, and
act (Mishra, Koehler, & Henriksen, 2011; Mokyr, Vickers, & Ziebarth,
2015), and we ind ourselves in a world where knowledge, entertainment, and content can be created, communicated, and obtained more
quickly and easily than ever (Zhao, 2012). New digital tools, from
smartphones to free online image, audio, or video editors (such as the
YouTube Video Editor, WeVideo, Audacity, or Pixlr), have put new
media technology for content creation and sharing in the hands of more
32
Creativity on YouTube
people than ever – particularly young people. With the power of these
tools, society has seen a rise in what has been termed “content creation.”
his means that anyone, with the right tools, has the ability to create
video or audio content and share it via avenues like YouTube (Burgess
& Green, 2013). he growth and magnitude of the medium, across a
range of video content, topics, and genres, is rooted in what new media
allow people to do – create, communicate, collaborate and share – in
powerful and global ways (Lange, 2007; Haridakis & Hanson, 2009).
In this article, we suggest that the afordances of YouTube have put
signiicant creativity in the hands of more youths than ever. his has
revolutionized how systems of creativity operate, and has allowed for
the phenomenon of YouTube stars. Avenues like YouTube allow people
to sidestep traditional gatekeepers within a ield, to become successful
content creators, sharing their work directly with an audience. his has
implications for society, culture, and education in the opportunities it
ofers to create and share.
We suggest that this connects with Dewey’s (1943) and Bruce &
Levin’s (1997) framework for viewing media and technology as a
way to address “the four impulses” of the learner. As described by
Dewey, these impulses are: to inquire, to communicate, to construct,
and to express (Dewey, 1943; Bruce & Levin, 1997). New media ofer
afordances for creating and sharing, which opens up possibilities to
explore all these learning impulses. he culturally pervasive popularity
of YouTube and other new media may lie in the way they address these
needs and impulses. As educational contexts seek to meet the creative
needs of youth, we suggest revisiting the educational foundations of
Dewey – in speaking to these four impulses as a framework for educational technology. But irst, we consider how new media like YouTube
reveal a change in systems of creativity, with greater participation by
students and youth.
The changing landscape of content creators
YouTube has remodeled how culture, art, and knowledge emerge in
the online medium (Snickars & Vonderau, 2009). It is one of the more
impactful global phenomena that media and culture have experienced.
YouTube statistics note that the platform has over a billion users –
about a third of all people on the Internet. Daily, hundreds of millions
33
Danah Henriksen & Megan Hoelting
of hours of YouTube videos are watched, generating billions of views.
Beyond this, YouTube has local versions in over 88 countries, with more
than 76 diferent navigational languages (covering 95% of the Internet
population) (YouTube Press Statistics, n.d.).
Across the medium there are examples of people enjoying tremendous success and popularity (i.e. “YouTube stars”) in genres ranging
across comedy, music, the arts, science, fashion, makeup and beauty,
general interest, and countless specialized topics (Henriksen, Hoelting,
& the Deep-Play Research Group, 2016). he majority of major YouTube artists predominantly describe themselves as “content creators.”
his term deines these artists not simply as entertainers or informers,
but rather as creators of ideas, of actions, of content (Susarla, Oh &
Tan, 2012).
We propose that the artists who ind great success on YouTube are
becoming a new form of expert. hese experts are content creators who
can now bypass the standard gatekeepers of genres before distributing
their work. Bereiter & Scardamalia’s (1993) deinition of expertise notes
that it is not only determined by knowledge or tenure in an area, but by
how the knowledge is adapted to unique contexts and new challenges.
here are still experts in traditional domains that may pose valid questions about these new creative displays, and communities of practice
still have gatekeepers to success. However, emerging and popular artists
on YouTube are reframing their domain and its context of how creative
systems operate and the communities that participate in them.
In a recent study (conducted in 2014 and replicated in 2015), researchers asked youths aged 13–18 to compare the inluence and popularity of YouTube stars to that of mainstream traditional stars (Dredge,
2016). hey found that YouTube stars such as Smosh, the Fine Bros,
KSI and Ryan Higa were considered more inluential than mainstream
celebrities like Paul Walker, Jennifer Lawrence, Katy Perry and Bruno
Mars. his represents a transformation in youth culture, whereby more
young people have the tools and access to produce content, and even
more youths globally can ind, connect, and communicate about it. In
the past, the tools and platforms for such creation and connection did
not exist in ways that would allow such youth participation, but their
recent advent is generating a shit in creative systems.
34
Creativity on YouTube
New media redefines systems of creativity
Csikszentmihalyi (1997) discusses how in traditional systems, creativity
emerges from a dynamic interaction between the individual, the domain, and the ield. In this, individuals (or groups/teams) make creative
works, ideas, art, or discoveries. Creativity is also impacted at the level
of the domain, or an area of speciic knowledge (e.g. mathematics,
biology, physics, art, law, and more), where people use domain ideas,
information, tools and symbols to create new works. hen, through the
ield, creative works may be shared with an audience or disseminated.
he ield involves people who act as gatekeepers to decide what is important and what will be distributed into broader culture or disciplines.
he ield has typically relected the communal organization of “experts,”
in communities of practice – people with the knowledge and clout to
decide what would be shared to inluence the domain, socially and
culturally (Csikszentmihalyi, 1997). Who the gatekeepers are depends
on context. It might entail a Nobel Prize committee, journal editors or
reviewers, music or movie industry executives, Olympic judges, and so
on (Henriksen Hoelting, & the Deep-Play Research Group, 2016). In
the past, the ield was the only entity that determined which creative
works would be shared for social and cultural impact (Sawyer, 2006).
his model is visualized in the image shown below.
Figure 1.
Csikszentmihalyi’s model of traditional creativity systems
35
Danah Henriksen & Megan Hoelting
Examples like Smosh and Joey Gracefa are not anomalies in new
media (Berg, 2015). They represent a fast growing phenomenon,
in which individuals can use new media to sidestep the traditional
gatekeepers of creativity (the ield), and propel themselves to creative
success. In altering this gatekeeping aspect of creative systems, new
media allow for creation and sharing in powerful ways, and youths
have been among the irst to recognize and harness these capabilities
(Harlan, Bruce, & Lupton, 2012). Video, audio, and other creative media
tools have afordances that allow a young audience to explore, create,
and share. We suggest that these impulses for exploration, creation and
sharing are human and innate. hey have always been present, but now
there are avenues to pursue them and participate through media as a
means of creativity.
Understanding new media through a Deweyan lens
Foundational ideas described by Dewey (1943) may inform what
motivates young people to learn with media. hese foundations are
visible in the social phenomenon of YouTube as a means of creating and
sharing work. he future of education may be well served to consider
this framework as a lens for creative teaching and learning with media.
Dewey (1943) identiied a natural basis for learning as the greatest
educational resource or psychological reserve that society might tap
into. his includes what he described as the four natural impulses of
the child. hese innate, or natural, interests revolve around following
the impulses of learners: 1) to inquire (to ask and explore questions, or
to ind things out); 2) to communicate (to connect and share ideas with
others, to communicate and enter into the social world); 3) to construct
(to build or make things); and 4) to express (to engage in personal expression of one’s self, feelings, and ideas). Dewey asserted that education
should build curricula around these instinctive impulses rather than
separating learning into the traditional disciplines. From a Deweyan
perspective, the greatest imperative for education is to nurture these
impulses, building a trajectory for lifelong learning.
hese four impulses may clue us in to motivations underlying the
phenomenon of how YouTube and new media are shaping our world.
Consider what new creative media allow youths to do, as they engage
with video, images, sound, text, and more, through technologies that
36
Creativity on YouTube
indulge these four impulses. he afordances ofered by the YouTube
platform, and other media for creation and sharing, suggest that new
technologies may be motivational and exciting based on how they allow
people to inquire, communicate, construct, and express.
Twenty years ago, as digital technologies were on the cusp of
becoming more widespread in society and schools, Bruce & Levin
(1997) proposed using Dewey’s framework of the four impulses to
view media for learning. hey argued that most approaches to educational technology, like schooling, were organized around traditional
perspectives. Instead of a technology-tool-centered focus, they suggested that education consider the kinds of motivations, interests, and
inspirations that media could allow people to engage with. hey noted
that classifying educational technologies by how they allow for Dewey’s
(1943) natural learning impulses may be a productive and exciting
approach to learning.
When Bruce & Levin (1997) proposed this idea 20 years ago, the
available technologies were more limited in power, capabilities, and
afordances than today. Yet the core constructs of Dewey’s foundations
contained strength and value for thinking about media. Despite these
strengths, however, many schools in many contexts (both then and now)
operate with a more tool-centered focus rather than building learning
around media as a venue for inquiry, communication, construction,
and expression. We suggest that 21st-century education might consider
how the YouTube phenomenon has swept up the interests of youth, as
both producers and consumers of content. his may ofer a model of
thinking about how classrooms could focus less on the rigid boundaries
of traditional curricula and subjects, and instead work with media to
stimulate and develop inquiry, communication, construction, and expression. In this, students and teachers can view themselves as creative
individuals and creators of content.
Exploiting the potential for creative education
he popularity of YouTube may lie in what it allows people to do, in the
power to create and also connect to the larger world. YouTube ofers
ways to inquire (to ask questions and create or ind videos that explore
ideas in the world around us); to communicate (to hear and share ideas
from others, through the viewing and sharing of content); to construct
37
Danah Henriksen & Megan Hoelting
(to build or make content, in ways that let people participate, rather
than accepting prepackaged content); and to express (to share our
own views, feelings, or identity). We do not suggest that everything
on YouTube is important or useful content, as this is clearly not the
case. But it is important to consider how it allows for a new creative
reality among young people. It is a motivational approach to media that
inspires youths to join and explore, create, and share – via the prospect
of engaging their natural impulses to inquire, communicate, construct,
and express. his takeaway is a powerful one for education, in terms
of classroom content and new media for creativity.
Since its inception, YouTube has been a site for artists to upload
their original or remixed works. he balance between consumers and
producers initially leaned heavily toward consumers (YouTube Press
Statistics, n.d.); however, while the site still has more consumers than
producers, the ratio is becoming increasingly more balanced. his has
two possible interpretations: more creators are discovering the site; or
consumers are realizing their creative potential and adding their own
content to the site. In either (or both) cases, it signiies a shit in how
people are interacting with media. We are entering the age of the creative
consumer, one who is hungry for new media but also capable of creating
their own when they ind the status quo lacking. his has repercussions
for the potential of youths to participate in creative communities, and
for diverse voices that have been lost in the past. Noticing gaps in
representation can become a catalyst for creation (Kaitlyn Alexander
interview, Piccoli, 2015), and an opportunity to connect youths to the
wider world and a greater diversity of voice.
Furthermore, content creators are not conined to one form of media; they feel comfortable enough in their expertise to make creative
attempts with other modalities or a range of topics and subjects. he
“content” these creators distribute is not limited by mode or discipline.
For example, some of the most popular content creators (Grace Helbig,
Mamrie Hart, Tyler Oakley, etc.) have expanded their artistry to other
platforms, which oten necessitates a new mode of communication. In
a classroom, such a perspective would alter the rigid structure of course
content. To encourage students to become boundary-crossing content
creators, we might readjust our worldview to one that “demands new
pedagogical structures that respect nonconformity and the urge to
38
Creativity on YouTube
explore for the sake of exploration, to value risk-taking and learning
from failure and error” (de Oliveira et al., 2015, p. 20).
Image 3. The elements of content
creation
What might learning in schools look like if education ofered more
constructivist opportunities, through new media, for students to try
their hand at being “content creators” of their own learning? Many are
already engaging in this informally, outside the school context; so, we
ask, how might education consider the “content creator” model for
learning in schools? here are also implications involved in asking
what it might mean for teachers to view themselves as content creators,
given the autonomy and lexibility to creatively design opportunities
and environments for their students. What if we organized teaching and
learning not around the typical structures of schooling, but rather in
opportunities to use media for inquiry, communication, construction,
and expression? We do not ofer immediate answers to such questions,
but as digital technologies and 21st-century learning move forward, it
may be time for education to seriously consider them.
We have noted that creative systems are evolving, based on YouTube
and other new media, to allow for greater creative participation in
certain contexts and genres. People oten operate online as either consumers or producers of content, and there are now more producers than
in the past – certainly among youth. It is also interesting to note that
more educational channels are arriving on the scene, such as Minute
Physics and ASAP Science (Welbourne & Grant, 2015). his suggests
39
Danah Henriksen & Megan Hoelting
that content creation can intersect with big ideas and school content,
in ways that can be compelling for teaching and learning.
We have proposed ideas and questions for consideration, suggesting
that the YouTube model of a content creator might be valuable for teaching and learning in the classroom. We have noted that Dewey (1943)
and Bruce & Levin (1997) established ideas about media as a way to
connect with the four impulses of the learner, which seems prevalent
for the world we live in and for education broadly. Currently, these are
still ideas and questions; but in noting them, we point to their potential for youth creativity in school settings. As most of the questions in
this new arena may not be fully known or articulated yet, we propose
that the ield consider these emergent issues and bring them into the
broader discourse. All of this points to the overarching issue of how
the power of new media for creation can be harnessed to promote a
creative and expansive mindset in students. Perhaps appropriately for
the shiting terrain of new media, we conclude with more questions
than answers – ofering these as emergent and vital possibilities and
considerations for creativity and education.
Notes
1.
2.
https://www.youtube.com/smosh
https://www.youtube.com/JoeyGracefa
References
Berg, Madeline (2015). he World’s Top-earning YouTube Stars 2015. Forbes, 18 November 2015 [online]. Available at http://www3.forbes.com/business/the-worlds-topearning-youtube-stars-2015/. [Accessed 19 November 2015].
Bereiter, Carl & Scardamalia, Marlene (1993). Surpassing Ourselves: An Inquiry into the
Nature and Implications of Expertise. Chicago, IL: Open Court.
Bruce, Chip Bertram, & Levin, James (1997). Educational technology: Media for inquiry,
communication, construction, and expression. Journal of Educational Computing
Research, 17(1): 79-102.
Burgess, Jean & Green, Joshua (2013). YouTube: Online Video and Participatory Culture.
Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
Danah Henriksen, Assistant Professor, Division of Educational Leadership and Innovation, Arizona State University, United States, danah.henriksen@asu.edu
Megan C. Hoelting, Doctoral Student, Learning, Literacies, and Technologies, Arizona
State University, United States of America, megan.hoelting@asu.edu
40
Creativity on YouTube
Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly (1988). he Flow Experience and its Signiicance for Human
Psychology. New York, NY: Harper and Row.
Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly (1997). Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention.
New York, NY: HarperPerennial.
de Oliveira, Janaina Minelli; Henriksen, Danah; Castañeda, Linda; Marimon, Marta; Barberà, Elena; Monereo, Carles; Coll, Cesar; Mahiri, Jabari, & Mishra, Punya (2015).
he educational landscape of the digital age: Communication practices pushing
(us) forward. RUSC. Universities and Knowledge Society Journal, 12(2): 14-29.
Dewey, John (1943). he child and the curriculum and the school and society. Chicago,
IL: University of Chicago Press.
Dredge, Stuart (2016, February, 3). Why are YouTube Starts So Popular? he Guardian.
Available at https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/feb/03/why-youtube-stars-popular-zoella. [Accessed 24 September 2016]
Gracefa, Joey (2015). In Real Life: My Journey to a Pixelated World. New York: Simon
& Schuster.
Haridakis, Paul, & Hanson, Gary (2009). Social Interaction and Co-viewing with YouTube: Blending Mass Communication Reception and Social Connection. Journal
of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 53(2): 317-335.
Harlan, Mary Ann; Bruce, Christine, & Lupton, Mandy (2012). Teen Content Creators:
Experiences of Using Information to Learn. Library Trends, 60(3): 569-587.
Henriksen, Danah; Hoelting, Megan, & the Deep-Play Research Group (2016). A Systems
View of Creativity in a YouTube World. Tech Trends, 60(2): 102-106.
Lange, Patricia. (2007). Publicly Private and Privately Public: Social Networking on
YouTube. Journal of Computer‐Mediated Communication, 13(1): 361-380.
Mokyr, Joel; Vickers, Chris, & Ziebarth, Nicholas (2015). he history of technological
anxiety and the future of economic growth: Is this time diferent? he Journal of
Economic Perspectives, 29(3): 31-50.
Mishra, Punya, Koehler, Matthew, & Henriksen, Danah (2011). he 7 Transdisciplinary
Habits of Mind: Extending the TPACK Framework towards 21st century Learning.
Educational Technology, 51(2): 22-28.
Sawyer, R. Keith (2006). Educating for innovation. hinking Skills and Creativity, 1(1):
41-48.
Susarla, Anjana; Oh, Jeong-Ha, & Tan, Yong (2012). Social Networks and the Difusion
of User-Generated Content: Evidence from YouTube. Information Systems Research,
23(1): 23-41.
Snickars, Pelle & Vonderau, Patrick (Eds.) (2009). he YouTube Reader. Stockholm:
National Library of Sweden.
Welbourne, Dustin & Grant, Will (2015). Science Communication on YouTube: Factors
that Afect Channel and Video Popularity. Public Understanding of Science, (6):
706-18.
YouTube Press Statistics (n.d.). In YouTube.[online]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.
com/yt/press/statistics.html. [Accessed 24 September, 2016].
Zhao, Yong (2012). World Class Learners: Educating Creative and Entrepreneurial Students. Corwin Press.
41
3
The Class: Living and
Learning in the Digital Age
Interview with Sonia Livingstone
S
onia Livingstone is Professor of Social Psychology in the Department
of Media and Communications at London School of Economics. Taking
a comparative, critical and contextualised approach, Sonia’s research asks
why and how the changing conditions of mediation are reshaping everyday
practices and possibilities for action, identity and communication rights. Her
empirical work examines the opportunities and risks aforded by digital and
online technologies, including for children and young people at home and
school, for developments in media and digital literacies, and for audiences,
publics and the public sphere more generally, with a recent focus on children’s rights in the digital age. She leads the project, Preparing for a Digital
Future, which follows the recently-completed project, The Class, both part of
the MacArthur Foundation-funded Connected Learning Research Network.
She directed the 33-country network, EU Kids Online, funded by the EC’s
Better Internet for Kids programme, with impacts in the UK and Europe.1
You and Julian Seton-Green recently launched the book The Class:
Living and Learning in the Digital Age. Could you tell us about the
project?
Our book is about a class of 13- to 14-year-olds at an ordinary urban
secondary school in London. his is a famously tricky age for parents
and teachers, and for young people themselves. We were curious
about what young people want, how they see the world, and how they
ind a path through the opportunities and constraints they face. Our
43
The Class: Living and Learning in the
Digital Age. Interview with Sonia Livingstone in Ilana Eleá and Lothar Mikos (Eds.)
Young & Creative. Digital Technologies
Empowering Children in Everyday Life.
Gothenburg: Nordicom
Interview with Sonia Livingstone
media [are becoming] more digital, convergent, commercialised and
intensely networked, but is it useful to take a step further and describe
our lives as ‘digital lives’ – as in the now-commonplace terms ‘digital
parenting’…‘digital natives’…‘digital learning’ or ‘digital creativity’?
We did not expect simple answers, but rather we hoped to provoke
a contemplation of the uncertainties and ambiguities associated with
the evolving interrelations between technological and social change.
And while we certainly did not assume that teenagers’ lives today bear
no relation to those of previous generations, we did want to explore
the ways they think about and try to manage socio-technical change,
including how they cope with the personal risks associated with changes
oten beyond their control.
When researching The Class, you said the most important thing was
to focus on ordinary rather than exceptional uses of media among
13-year-olds. Did you find that they do explore creativity through
learning, creating and sharing, and can you give some examples?
Our work is part of the MacArthur Foundation-funded Connected
Learning Research Network, where we were inspired by the possibility
that ‘connected learning taps the opportunities provided by digital media
to more easily link home, school, community and peer contexts of learning;
support peer and intergenerational connections based on shared interests;
and create more connections with nondominant youth, drawing from
capacities of diverse communities’ (Ito et al., 2013). But, having heard
from our colleagues about the adventurous achievements of pioneering
young people forging exceptional pathways to creativity, we decided
instead to inquire into the experiences of an ordinary class of children
from a fairly typical London suburb. Could we identify what makes
some stand out while others do not? Could we, even, pinpoint some
advice for parents, teachers and policy makers to support more young
people in harnessing digital media for creative and civic purposes?
I’ll answer your question by focusing on how the class used YouTube,
now the most popular app among UK teenagers. Its popularity doesn’t
imply homogeneity in meaning or use, however, for the 28 teens in the
class revealed 28 diferent patterns of use. But only six of them had
ever uploaded anything, raising important questions about how young
people’s digital interests can be supported and sustained.
44
The Class: Living and Learning in the Digital Age
Could you give us some examples?
Abby and Salma, for instance, had spent a happy day setting up a
YouTube channel and posting 8-10 episodes of ‘he Abby and Salma
Show’ before retreating in mortiication when their history teacher
got wind of their eforts and showed everyone. Megan had a period of
making videos and uploading them to YouTube too, describing herself as ‘obsessed’ with searching YouTube, going to meet-ups and so
forth. But for her, too, this had become embarrassing, and she turned
her attention to a private exploration of identity in Tumblr. Nick was
more persistent, having paired up with a friend with editing skills to
make videos of his Xbox game play and upload them as tutorials for
others. Giselle, perhaps the most creative girl in the class, had created
her own YouTube channel for stop-frame animation – like the others,
she collaborated with a friend in this creative practice, gaining several
hundred views before she, too, gave it up.
What is the price for young learners if schools do not incorporate
youth self-expression and creativity in their curriculum spaces and
practices?
As these examples show, youthful creativity in the class beneited little
from the input of teachers or, indeed, parents. Both tend to dismiss
these creative activities as kids wasting their time watching silly videos about people falling of walls or cute kittens. his is partly because
even the most attentive parents spend relatively little time with their
children online, instead watching at a distance with half an eye on the
time, worrying about homework or exercise, or judging the quality of
the results rather than asking if their child is progressing in a creative
or critical direction.
As you can see, I see huge missed opportunities here. Parents have
invested considerable sums in equipping their home with digital technology but they invest rather less time in sharing the experience with
their child so as to scafold their learning in productive directions.
Meanwhile, teachers are pressured to deliver the curriculum within
the walls of the school but are oten sceptical about children’s chances
of interest-driven, self-managed learning at home.
As I said, 28 children make for 28 stories, so our conclusions must be
nuanced. Joel was something of a sad case. In an unusually forthcoming
45
Interview with Sonia Livingstone
Image 1. Parents have equipped
their home with digital technology
interview for this shy and seemingly unhappy boy on the edge of the
social scene, he talked with enthusiasm about using YouTube tutorials
combined with music-making sotware and mixing decks to record his
own music on the computer. And yet the interview unravelled when
I pushed a little further – for it turned out that such activities were
not practically possible at home (or indeed in the rather standardised
music technology lessons I witnessed at school). Rather, his account
was aspirational; these are
things he has heard about
and hopes to follow up in
the future.
While Joel seems to be
missing out on opportunities he would relish, Alice
represents a contrary case.
She didn’t really bother
with YouTube much – but
it would be wrong to characterise her as apathetic or
uncreative. For Alice turned
out to be incredibly active in
her local community – with
babysitting, Girl Guides,
community events – and
she also did singing, trampolining, netball and ice-skating out of school, and arts and crats,
DIY and photography at home. Is it really necessary, one wonders, for
a 13-year-old girl to also get creative in uploading stuf to YouTube for
society to celebrate her achievements?
Meanwhile, Gideon was something of a paradox. At school, and
online, he stood right at the centre of the social network – the boy who
cracked jokes, played football and computer games with the boys, had
twice as many friends on Facebook as anyone else. Yet at home, when
we got to know him better, he was quieter, revealing some past diiculties requiring ‘anger management’ classes and, now, a quiet reliance on
the succour of his immediate family. Interestingly, his use of YouTube
was fairly edgy – ‘America’s hardest prisons’, ‘Angry Scottish guy kicks
46
The Class: Living and Learning in the Digital Age
and snatches’, ‘Jamaican gangs.’ Perhaps he was working through some
residual anger? Or perhaps he was gathering the material to impress
his classmates the next day to maintain his edgy reputation?
Even when they are creative online, it’s hard to be sure if this brings
long-term beneits. In an interview with Giselle a few years later, I discovered that she is, indeed, pursuing an artistic career. Was the early
experimentation with YouTube a valuable stepping stone? Perhaps,
though this was surely outweighed by the signiicant help she received
throughout her childhood from her professionally artistic parents.
his diversity depends on home resources – inancial, parental,
cultural – and on each young person’s particular bent and interests.
On the one hand, several of these stories invite the question: with
more support, could the kids have taken their creative irst steps much
further, gaining vital skills for the digital age? On the other hand, their
stories invite the observation that, given everything else that’s going
on in their lives, engaging with YouTube may not be their top priority.
If you could send a message to parents and teachers about children’s and youth’s media creative production based in a ‘bedroom
culture’ what would you say? What do they need to be aware of
and/or inspired by?
he Class shows that, while parents and teachers oten have young
people’s best interests at heart, they do not always agree on what these
best interests are, leaving young people let down by the broken pathways
ofered to them yet not sustained across home and school. Meanwhile,
young people are trying to ind their own way, not necessarily seeing
eye to eye with their parents or teachers and even avoiding beneicial
opportunities so as to maintain ‘positive disconnections’ — oline and
online spaces to pursue their own meanings and experiences away from
the gaze of parents and teachers.
Given the inevitable tensions between children and adults about the
values and practices, oten based on the fact that children and young
people focus on the here-and-now while parents and teachers tend
to interpret everything through the lens of ‘the future’ – and a highly
competitive future at that (future ‘success’, ‘keeping up’, ‘getting ahead’)
– what message would I ofer?
47
Interview with Sonia Livingstone
A year with 28 young people was, irst and foremost, heartening
as an experience of youthful optimism, enthusiasm and, for the most
part, resilience. But the same year with their parents was more chequered – sometimes airming but oten anxious, with anxieties centring
disproportionately on digital media rather than the many other things
parents have to worry about (quality of relationships, inancial security,
health, community tensions, their children’s growing independence,
etc.). Of course, in reality, parents worried about all these things, but
the very fact that these endemic concerns are, somehow, crystallised
by the digital, with the digital acting as a lightning rod for so many
parental uncertainties means that, ironically, parents ind it diicult to
support the potential beneits of digital media.
For teachers, under ever greater pressure in our competitive and
standardised school systems, it is the promise of digital media for alternative, non-standardised activities, and for collaborative rather than
individually-assessed outcomes, blurring the boundary between home
and school, that appears so challenging. As a result, they too struggle
to support children’s creative digital activities.
My message should, by now, be obvious. Attribute problems where
they rightfully occur and don’t target the media as an easy object of
blame. Ask children what they enjoy about digital media and ind ways
to help them deepen and develop their skills. Judge their activities by
the child’s level of enthusiasm and sense of progressing rather than with
an adult or competitive eye to the outcomes. And, last, recognise that
digital media represent an opportunity for many children to explore
private emotions and interests in a world that is increasingly surveilled
and constrained by anxious adults. So maybe just leave them be.
Note
1.
http://www.lse.ac.uk/media%40lse/WhosWho/AcademicStaf/SoniaLivingstone.
aspx
References
Ito, Mizuko, Gutiérrez, Kris, Livingstone, Sonia, Penuel, Bill, Rhodes, Jean, Salen, Katie,
Schor, Juliet, Seton-Green, Julian, & Watkins, Craig. (2013). Connected Learning:
An agenda for research and design. Irvine, CA: Digital Media and Learning Research
Hub. Available at dmlhub.net/wp-content/uploads/iles/Connected_Learning_report.pdf
48
The Class: Living and Learning in the Digital Age
Livingstone, Sonia & Seton-Green, Julian (2016) he Class: Living and Learning in
the Digital Age. New York: New York University Press. Available at nyupress.
org/books/9781479824243/; read for free online at connectedyouth.nyupress.
org/book/9781479824243/; watch the launch event at www.lse.ac.uk/media@lse/
events/CYDF-Book.aspx
For more about Sonia, see www.sonialivingstone.net, follow her on
Twitter @Livingstone_S and read her blog posts at blogs.lse.ac.uk/
parenting4digitalfuture
49
The Creative YouTubers
Somewhere around 300-400 hours of video is uploaded
every minute on the immensely popular platform of YouTube. In this section, authors present examples of videoblogging, otherwise known as vlogging, a common feature
among viewers. Some vloggers have become world famous
through their presence on the screen, some of them are still
mostly known among their friends and family.
4
How YouTube Developed
into a Successful Platform
for User-Generated Content
Margaret Holland
n October 2, 2010, Felix Kjellberg uploaded a 2-minute YouTube
video of himself speaking on camera while playing a video game.
Today, Kjellberg, better known by his YouTube alias, “PewDiePie,”1 uploads to an online audience of over 40 million subscribers.
At just 24, Kjellberg has developed his online persona into a brand
name that pulls in an estimated $4 million in ad sales a year (Kain,
2014). Kjellberg is not alone. An astonishing number of individuals have
made YouTube their career. With consistent viewing from cable’s most
sought-ater age demographic, ages 18 to 49, YouTubers like Kjellberg
have formed a virtual yet powerful relationship with their viewers (Luscombe, 2015). User participation helps in creating the stability of loyal
audiences. he wide variety of content makes YouTube a place where
just about anyone can ind a video that interests them, whether they are
looking for Kjellberg’s gaming commentary or a makeup routine. Of
the 3.2 billion people who have Internet access, more than one billion
are accessing YouTube videos (Luscombe, 2015). Founded in 2005
as a platform where amateur users could upload their videos online,
YouTube has established itself as a part of the entertainment industry.
Since its development, YouTube has transformed from a video-sharing site into a career opportunity for content creators. In this article
O
53
Margaret Holland (2017) How YouTube
Developed into a Successful Platform
for User-Generated Content in Ilana Eleá
and Lothar Mikos (Eds.) Young & Creative.
Digital Technologies Empowering Children
in Everyday Life. Gothenburg: Nordicom
Margaret Holland
three inluential YouTubers’ channels – Felix Kjellberg (PewDiePie)
from Sweden, Zoe Sugg (Zoella)2 from England, and Grace Helbig (itsgrace)3 from America –were studied. he author tried to identify what
makes a YouTube channel successful through examining the qualities
of three YouTubers who represent one of the site’s most popular content
categories.
Literature review
YouTube started as a site to distribute user-generated content and
later has developed into a platform where an individual can turn their
personal brand into a career.
Before analysing the rise and success of Felix Kjellberg, Zoe Sugg,
and Grace Helbig, it is important to understand how YouTube has
grown as a content-sharing platform. Founded by Chad Hurley, Steven
Chen, and Jawed Karim, YouTube launched with little fanfare in June
2005. As Burgess and Green (2009:I) explain:
YouTube was one of a number of competing services aiming to
remove the technical barriers to the widespread sharing of video
online. he website provided a very simple, integrated interface
within which users could upload, publish, and view streaming videos
without high levels of technical knowledge.
YouTube was comparable to other video start-ups at the time until
Google acquired the site for $1.65 billion in October 2006 (Burgess &
Green, 2009:I). he site has steadily gained popularity, and since 2008 it
has consistently been in the top ten most visited sites globally (Morreale,
2014). Almost a decade later it is the world’s third most popular online
destination with availability in 61 languages and a million advertisers
(Luscombe, 2015).
Since being purchased by Google, YouTube has evolved from a site
where amateur and ad-free videos were posted to an online destination consumed by commercialised videos. But there is another side
according to Morreale (2014:114), “Its tagline ‘Broadcast Yourself ’
invites ordinary users to take an active part in creating the material they
consume. At the same time, less obvious is that YouTube is a business
whose purpose is to generate proit”. About this institutionalisation of
YouTube, Kim (2012:56) wrote:
54
How YouTube Developed into a Successful Platform for User-Generated Content
If the pre-Google era of YouTube is characterized by amateur-produced videos in an ad-free environment, the post-Google purchase
stage is characterized by professionally generated videos in an
ad-friendly environment. Because of YouTube’s popularity, industries
have shown a deep interest in monetizing it.
his interest in monetising content has allowed channels that started
as a hobby to develop into a source of income for content creators.
Lavaveshkul (2012:378) describes this development from hobby to
job: , “heir beginnings were simple and they produced their videos
from beginning to end: they wrote the script (if there was one), acted,
did the camera work (otentimes using an inexpensive camera on a
tripod), and did the post production”. To a viewer, the lack of a script
or set made the experience of watching a YouTube video more relatable. Kjellberg further elaborated on this experience in an interview
when he said:
Unlike many professionally produced shows, I think I’ve established a
much closer contact with my viewers, breaking the wall between the
viewer and what’s behind the screen ... What I and other YouTubers
do is a very diferent thing ... My fans care in a diferent way about
what they are watching (Grundberg & Hansegard, 2014).
Sugg also recognised the importance of creating an environment relatable to viewers when she explained:
You want to make it a cozy environment and put in your own personal touches. I just sit on the edge of my bed because for me your
bed is the coziest place to be, and you want people watching to feel
as comfortable as you are ilming (Tan, 2015: 98).
Sugg’s and Kjellberg’s approach to YouTube has helped them attract not
only brands that want to work with them, but also loyal viewership.
YouTube has more American viewers between the ages 18-49 than
any cable network, helping increase its revenue by an estimated $1 billion over the last year (Luscombe, 2015). YouTubers have the attention
advertisers and cable networks desire, as explained by Burling (2015:22):
“book publishers are starting to pay more attention to a form of expression that has exploded over the past decade: ictional web series and
vlogging, or video blogging, found mostly on YouTube. Why? hat’s
55
Margaret Holland
where the kids are”. YouTube is now the ultimate destination for kids
logging on to the Internet. Luscombe (2015:72) points out, mentioning
an anecdote: “Variety asked a bunch of teens to choose their favorite
stars among 20 names, the top ive were all from YouTube”.
With consistent views from a critical mass of audience, YouTube
has created an opportunity for the average person to build his or her
personal brand. According to Kozinets and Cerone (2014:21): “Social
branding has been creating grassroots ‘micro-celebrities’ with increasing frequency. For personal branders, being storytellers who are capable,
yet fascinating and even fantastic is a sound strategy”. he inluence of
a YouTuber’s personal brand is demonstrated through the success of
brands collaborating with content creators.
Method
In this study the author points at particular elements within the videos
of three prominent YouTubers and the structure of their channels. he
YouTubers were selected based on Lavaveshkul’s (2012) study, which
analysed the top 10 most subscribed to YouTube channels of 2012. hese
10 channels could be divided into three categories of gaming, comedy,
or how-to. he current study selected one channel from each category
based on their popularity on YouTube. he three YouTubers were Felix
Kjellberg (gaming), Grace Helbig (comedy), and Zoe Sugg (how-to).
For the study the author developed questions, based on the studies of
Lavaveshkul (2012) and Biel and Gatica-Perez (2011). Some answers were
found by examining the videos of the three YouTubers on November 9
and 10, 2015. Others were found from Social Blade, a statistics website
that tracks growth across social media platforms including YouTube
(“Track YouTube”, 2015).
The channel´s common characteristics:
Layout, location, upload schedule and profit
he current author analysed the layout of the three YouTubers’ landing
pages. Both Sugg and Kjellberg featured logos on their channel. Helbig
instead displayed her uploading schedule and a slogan stating, “What a
Charming Idiot” on her banner. Only Kjellberg displayed advertising on
the landing page of his channel. For example, his banner advertised his
book, his Book Loves You, which was released in October 2015. Instead
56
How YouTube Developed into a Successful Platform for User-Generated Content
of a commercial playing, a banner advertisement was displayed at the
bottom of Kjellberg’s video. Sugg and Helbig displayed an advertisement
in their most recent videos before the clip began.
At the time of examination the three YouTubers shared similarities, like
their ilming location, which is primarily inside their homes. Sugg sat
at the end of her bed while Helbig and Kjellberg usually sat at a desk.
Kjellberg (gaming), Sugg (how-to), and Helbig (comedy) represented
diferent categories, and all three YouTubers talked about objects within
their videos. Kjellberg made commentary while playing a video game.
Sugg’s content involved baking, hauling items from a store, or talking
about her favourite items throughout the month. Helbig used objects
the least among the three, but she posted a variety of comedic reviews
or how-to videos. Each YouTuber linked their various social media
sites to the landing page of their YouTube channel.
hey all began posting content more than ive years ago. Kjellberg,
Sugg, and Helbig each has their own individual uploading schedule.
Kjellberg uploads content most oten, with at least one daily video.
he three YouTubers earn income through advertisements placed
on their videos, brand deals, and additional projects that generated
proit. Data collected about their subscribers, overall channel views,
views per month and estimated yearly income as of October 2015 was
outlined in the following diagramme.
YouTubers outside their channels
Following their fame the three YouTubers have also appeared in TVshows, magazines and even been portrayed in wax at Madame Tussauds
in London (Sugg). Outside of her channel, Sugg has launched a cosmetic
product range and written two novels, Girl Online and Girl Online: On
Table 1.
Some characteristics of three influential YouTubers
YouTuber
Subscribers
Channel Views
Kjellberg
Views per Month
Estimated
Yearly Income
40,315,481
10,341,904,335
29.6 million
Sugg
9,458,481
586,711,156
22.95 million
$64.6k-$1M
Helbig
2,781,292
156,687,601
7.51 million
$22.6K – $361.1K
Source: SocialBlade.com and YouTube.com on November 15, 2015
57
$1M-$16.5M
Margaret Holland
Tour. She has appeared on TV-shows and the cover of Seventeen Magazine. In 2013 and 2014 Sugg won “Best British Vlogger” at the Radio 1
Teen Awards among several other awards.
In addition to uploading YouTube videos, Helbig host a podcast, and
has appeared in TV-shows, commercials as well as published books.
Kjellberg has also involved in outside projects such as releasing a book
and a video game.
Discussion
YouTube’s transformation from video sharing to profitability
All three YouTubers began posting videos over ive years ago. Helbig
began posting content in October 2006, just one year ater the site was
developed and around the same time Google purchased YouTube.
According to Kim (2012:57):
Since being purchased by Google, YouTube has adopted a new
e-commerce model; it puts banner ads in videos or in YouTube pages
and shares the revenue with the copyright holders of the videos. he
basic idea of selling banner advertisements is to play commercials
during the streaming of videos.
All three featured advertisements in their videos. Over the past decade,
YouTube has become a launching pad for careers (Luscombe, 2015).
Based on the videos watched throughout this study, Kjellberg, Sugg,
and Helbig all mention that they use their videos as a source of income.
At the time of examination (November 9-10, 2015) Kjellberg was
the most subscribed user on YouTube, with over 40 million subscribers
and 10 billion overall views on his channel (“Track YouTube”, 2015).
His videos generated more views than the world’s population, which
was then a little over seven billion (“Worldometers”, 2015). According
to Grundberg, “he 24-year-old Mr. Kjellberg, who created PewDiePie
ive years ago, had parlayed his persona into a brand name that pulls
in the equivalent of $4 million in ad sales a year, most of it pure profit” (2014). As reported by Business Insider, most YouTubers get paid
through advertisements, previews, and sponsored videos. Side projects,
such as book deals, also add to their income (Kosof, 2015). Kjellberg,
Helbig, and Sugg all had advertisements display throughout their videos
in addition to book deals. Sugg’s book, Girl Online, “broke the record
58
How YouTube Developed into a Successful Platform for User-Generated Content
for highest irst-week sales for a debut author in the U.K., selling 78,109
copies-besting J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter titles and E.L. James’ Fity
Shades of Grey” (Burling, 2015:24). What began as a place for Sugg,
Helbig, and Kjellberg to upload videos as a hobby is now their career.
Appeal to viewers
It is presumably the YouTubers’ authencity that appeal to their viewers.
Strangelove (2010:113) explain, “here is no one authoritative YouTube
identity, but there is one dominant YouTube community-the community
of amateur videographers. heir numbers will most likely always exceed
those of participating celebrities and media corporations”. Each YouTuber
analysed in this study began as an everyday person posting videos online,
ilmed inside their homes, having conversations with a camera through
vlogging (video blogging). In keeping with Burgess and Green (2009:54):
he vlog reminds us of the residual character of interpersonal faceto-face communication ... it is a form whose persistent direct address
to the viewer inherently invites feedback ... Traditional media content
doesn’t explicitly invite conversational and inter-creative participation.
According to Sörman, founder of a YouTuber network in Sweden,
“PewDiePie is like a cool friend you have and subscribing to him is
almost like Skyping with him-that’s why viewers are such dedicated
fans” (Grundberg & Hansegard, 2014).
All three link their other social media accounts to their YouTube
channel to interact with viewers. Kjellberg’s fans, or “bros” as he calls
them, are engaged because he takes the time to talk about them in videos
or answer their questions (Kosof, 2015). Helbig and Sugg do the same
and create an online community for their fans. Strangelove (2010:105)
explains, “Participation in online groups leads to a psychological sense
of community. People can be deeply engaged in online communities …
On YouTube we ind groups of individuals who interact around shared
interests”. Sugg’s advice for creating content on YouTube is “to be yourself and have fun. If you’re not having fun, no one is going to have fun
watching your videos” (Tan, 2015:98). Creating an enjoyable, personable
environment distinguishes these YouTubers. hey are being themselves
and establishing an environment where the viewer feels as though they
are listening to their friend. Within this environment viewers are able
to engage with an online community that enjoys similar content.
59
Margaret Holland
Qualities of successful YouTubers
On the qualities that these three inluential YouTubers share, the study
found the following: Helbig, Sugg, and Kjellberg invited viewers into
their personal space by ilming in their homes. According to Biel and
Gatica-Perez, “Although conversational vlogging is obviously not exclusive of YouTube, the forms of social engagement inherent in vlogging
are key features that distinguish YouTube as a platform for creativity
and participation around video, rather than just a repository and distribution system” (Biel & Gatica-Perez, 2011). his allows for diverse
content within each YouTuber’s category. Each YouTuber in this study
used two elements, background music and objects, throughout their
videos. Instrumental background music was speciic to each YouTuber
and helped to move along the dialogue. Although objects varied for each
YouTuber, all three were talking about something speciic in their videos.
he videos uploaded by each YouTuber in this study varied in length;
however, the average video length did not exceed 20 minutes. Although
Sugg’s content is about twice as long as Helbig’s and Kjellberg’s, it is
still signiicantly shorter than a traditional 30-minute television programme. According to Kim (2012:53), “YouTube has come to represent
what video on the web looks like: short, mostly humorous, and easily
accessible”. Uploading schedules for each YouTuber varied; however,
each individual posts at least once a week. Each YouTuber has developed their own schedule so their viewers know when to expect content.
heir viewers consist of a younger demographic, as “YouTube is the
ultimate destination for kids logging on the Internet. It pretty much
owns kids’ eyeballs at this point. One of its core demographics is 8 to
17 years old” (Luscombe, 2015).
Personal branding through traditional media
Regarding YouTubers’ reliance on traditional media, this study found
their personal brand became even more inluential by collaborating
with traditional media. Helbig’s YouTube channel included segments
from her television show, he Grace Helbig Show. A traditional network
broadcasting her show (E! Entertainment) utilised user-generated
content to gain younger viewers.
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How YouTube Developed into a Successful Platform for User-Generated Content
Although YouTube draws in more viewers, traditional media is not
going anywhere. According to Strangelove (2010:168-169):
Amateur video’s proliferation of quick thrills and brief clips also feeds
into an attention-deicit generation ... Fragmentation in itself does
not spell doom for television. In the end, even though contemporary
audience is highly fragmented, it is still watching commercially
produced entertainment.
YouTubers are not trying to end professionally generated media with
their user-generated content. Sugg, Helbig, and Kjellberg are not exclusive to YouTube. hey are on television, winning Teen Choice Awards,
and each have a published book. To build their personal brand and
audience, they have taken advantage of traditional media in addition
to their YouTube channel.
Summary
In conclusion, YouTube has evolved from a website where users simply upload content to a platform where an individual can build their
career. An analysis of popular YouTubers explains why viewers ind
videos from Helbig, Sugg, and Kjellberg entertaining. Regardless of
their category, they all shared similar video elements. YouTube is the
world’s third most popular online destination because viewers, especially those of a younger demographic, can relate to the authenticity
of user-generated content. Once established, in addition to their own
content, popular YouTubers are utilising traditional media to build their
personal brand. hey can be found on bookshelves, on the television
screen, and even in a wax museum.
With jobs that rely on viewers, it is easy to question the longevity
of online careers. YouTube has transformed in 10 years from a site
where content was shared to a place where user-generated content
thrives. According to Luscombe (2015:75), “Not only must the company contend with youth-savvy tech irms – your Snapchats, your
Spotifys, your Vines – but established media companies are onto the
fact that kids are just future users”. As their young viewers grow older,
Margaret Holland, Undergraduate Student, Communications, Elon University,
United States, Mholland8@elon.edu
61
Margaret Holland
each YouTuber is faced with the problem of appealing to older loyal
fans while still attracting new viewers. Strangelove (2010:107) explain,
“Above all, what the moment of YouTube highlights is the uncertainty
surrounding the future of participatory culture, and the complexity
arising from the intersection of various changing and competing ideas
about what digital media are, or could be, for”.
Notes
1.
2.
3.
https://www.youtube.com/user/PewDiePie
https://www.youtube.com/user/zoella280390
https://www.youtube.com/user/graciehinabox
References
Biel, Joan-Isaac & Gatica-Perez, Daniel (2010, May). VlogSense: Conversational Behavior
and Social Attention in YouTube. ACM Transactions on. Multimedia Computing,
Communications and Applications. 2(3), 1-20.
Burgess, Jean & Green, Joshua (2009). YouTube: Online Video and Participatory Culture.
Cambridge, England: Polity. I-54.
Burling, Alexis (2015). Book Publishing Comes to YouTube. Publishers Weekly, 262(7),
22-26.
Grundberg, Sven & Hansegard, Jens (2014). YouTube’s Biggest Draw Plays Games,
Earns $4 Million a Year. he Wall Street Journal, 16 June 2014 [online]. Available
at <http://www.wsj.com/articles/youtube-star-plays- videogames-earns-4-million-a-year-1402939896> [Accessed 10 November 2015].
Helbig, Grace (2014). Grace’s Guide: he Art of Pretending to Be a Grown-Up. New York:
Touchstone.
Helbig, Grace (2016). Grace & Style: he Art of Pretending You Have It. New York:
Touchstone.
Kain, Erik (2014). YouTuber ‘PewDiePie’ is Making $4 Million a Year. Forbes, 18 June
2014 [online]. Available at <http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2014/06/18/
youtuber-pewdiepie-is-making-4-million-a-year>. [Accessed 10 November 2015].
Kim, Jin (2012). he Institutionalization of YouTube: From User-Generated Content to
Professionally Generated Content. Media, Culture & Society 34(1), 53-67.
Kosoff, Maya (2015). Meet the YouTube Millionaires: These are the Highest-Paid
YouTube Stars of 2015. Business Insider, 15 October 2015. Available at <http://
Acknowledgement
An earlier version of this article was originally published in the Spring 2016 issue
of the Elon Journal of Undergraduate Research in Communications.
he author would like to extend thanks to Kenn Gaither, associate professor
and associate dean at Elon University, for his constant guidance throughout this
process, without which this article could not have been written. he author also
thanks the School of Communications and the many reviewers who have helped
revise this article.
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How YouTube Developed into a Successful Platform for User-Generated Content
www.businessinsider.com/youtube-stars-who-make- the-most-money-2015-10>.
[Accessed 10 November 2015].
Kozinets, Robert & Cerone, Stefano (2014). Between the Suit and the Selie: Executives’
Lessons on the Social “Micro-Celebrity”. GFK Marketing Intelligence Review 6(2), 21.
Lavaveshkul, Liz (2012). How to Achieve 15 Minutes (or more) of Fame hrough YouTube. Jornal of International Commercial Law and Technology, 7, 370.
Luscombe, Belinda (2015). You Tube’s View Master. Time, 186(9/10), 70-75.
Morreale, Joanne (2014). From Homemade to Store Bought: Annoying Orange and
the Professionalization of YouTube. Journal of Consumer Culture 14(1), 113-128.
NBC (2015). How Grace Helbig’s Mom Scared Her Straight as a Child. [online]. Available
at <http://www.nbc.com/the-tonight-show/video/how-grace-helbigs-mom-scaredher-straight- as-a-child/2855128>. [Accessed 10 November 2015].
PewDiePie (2015). his Book Loves You. London: Penguin Books.
Social Blade (2015). Social Blade YouTube Stats. [online]. Available at <http://socialblade.
com>. [Accessed 11 November 2015].
Stedman, Alex (2015). YouTube Star Grace Helbig’s Talk show gets Series Order from E!
Variety, 5 January 2015 [online]. Available at <http://variety.com/2015/digital/news/
youtube-star-grace-helbigs-talk-show- gets-series-order-from-e-1201392834/>.
[Accessed 14 November 2015].
Strangelove, Michael (2010). Watching YouTube Extraordinary Videos by Ordinary People.
Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Sugg, Zoe (2014). Girl Online. London: Penguin Books.
Sugg, Zoe (2015). Girl Online: On Tour. New York: Keywords Press/Atria.
Tan, Michelle (2015, October 1). Girl Of-Line. Seventeen Magazine, 94-98.
he Great Comic Relief Bake Of. BBC, 22 February 2015 [online]. Available at http://
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b053h69. [Accessed 15 November 2015].
Worldometers (2015). Real Time World Statistics. [online]. Available at <http://www.
worldometers.info>. [Accessed 15 November 2015].
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Margaret Holland
Appendix
Coding Sheet General information
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Name of YouTuber:
Date Retrieved:
Location while Filming:
Does the person have a logo?
Is there advertising on the page?
Questions
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
64
What is their most popular video?
What is their total subscriber amount on the day the information is retrieved?
When did they begin posting videos?
How do they describe themselves in their ‘about’ section?
What is the total amount of channel views?
What is the total view per month as of October 2015?
What other forms of social media do they promote on their landing page?
What is the overall “theme” of their channel?
How many videos do they have uploaded?
What are their estimated yearly earnings?
Does this person have an uploading schedule?
Based on their last 10 videos, what is the average length of one of their videos?
What are some of their brand deals or projects outside of their channel?
5
Top Girls on YouTube
Identity, Participation, and Consumption
Lidia Marôpo, Inês Vitorino Sampaio & Nut Pereira de Miranda
el Cerer (8 years old), Juliana Baltar (9 years old), Manoela Antelo
(10 years old) and Júlia Silva (11 years old)1 are prominent representatives of a phenomenon that has recently become widespread in the
Brazilian context as well as internationally: child YouTube stars. Besides
the fact that they author original content, these girls share characteristics
that distinguish them from millions of other “video author” children
(Yarosh et al., 2016) on YouTube – the second most visited website in
the world ater Google (Alexa, 2016). he four girls have their own YouTube channels, are very popular among peers, challenge the boundaries
between amateurishness and professionalism, and make a proit from
the videos they star in.
In December 2016, Júlia and Manoela exceeded a million subscribers
to their YouTube channels, while Juliana had more than two million
and Bel nearly three million. hey became popular by posting similar
content in which marketing communication is oten present – toys
and children’s product reviews, unboxing, challenges among peers and
adults, and web series. Today, they are also the most popular among
hundreds of YouTuber girls who have attained public recognition.
he four of them are seen as celebrities in Brazil, attract thousands of
fans at meetings organized by sponsor companies, and appear on lists
(disclosed by the media) of the most inluential children in the nation.
B
65
Marôpo, Lidia; Vitorino Sampaio, Inês &
de Miranda, Nut Pereira (2017). Top Girls
on YouTube. Identity, Participation, and
Consumption in Ilana Eleá and Lothar
Mikos (Eds.) Young & Creative. Digital Technologies Empowering Children in Everyday
Life. Gothenburg: Nordicom
Lidia Marôpo, Inês Vitorino Sampaio & Nut Pereira de Miranda
What kinds of content do these children author and share on YouTube? What are the speciic characteristics of their online performances?
What are their similarities and diferences? What identities do they reproduce and/or re-signify about what it means to be a child and a girl? In
what ways is marketing communication present in their YouTube videos?
Taking into account the fast expansion of the Internet as a “space”
for children to “learn, participate, play and socialise” (Livingstone &
Bulger, 2014), we will discuss these questions based on an exploratory
study. he corpus analyzed consists of the channels maintained by
the four YouTuber girls with higher numbers of subscribers in Brazil,
considering only those aged under 12, according to data available on
YouTube in 2016. Forty-eight videos posted in 2016 were selected,
chosen through the method of random sampling, in alternate weeks.
Observation of their formats and content was employed. Among these
videos, the four most viewed from each YouTuber in each trimester
– which totals 16 videos – was examined in more detail. he analysis
focused on the following aspects: formats, themes, performances,
communication strategies (types, forms of address, interactivity, etc.)
and modes of participation.
Children on YouTube: Uses and participation
In 2015, eight in ten children and adolescents (aged 9 to 17) were
Internet users in Brazil (CGI, 2016). On average, they were connected
4 hours and 59 minutes a day during the course of a week, an amount
that surpasses the time spent watching television (Secom, 2015). On
YouTube, speciically, the engagement of children and teenagers is
highly signiicant, as either authors or audiences. he results from a
survey conducted by the American investment bank Piper Jafray in
2016 with more than ten thousand teenagers in the US indicate that
teens spend more time watching YouTube videos than cable television
(Ferreras, 2016). Another recent survey on YouTube’s young Brazilian
audience (aged 0 to 12) shows that, among the 230 channels analyzed in
the survey, the majority of views are of YouTube’s own videos – 44,266
billion versus 7.898 billion views of YouTube channels originating in
television programming (Silva, 2016).
hese channels were classiied into seven categories indicating the
types of content consumed (and authored) by children on YouTube: Mi66
Top Girls on YouTube
necrat and others (games and vlogs of games); TV (from broadcast and
cable television); Non-TV (created for YouTube); Unboxing (children or
adults opening boxes or toys’ wrapping papers); Teen YouTubers (people
over 12 years of age); Child YouTubers (0-12 years old); and Educational.
Minecrat and others is the most popular category with 52 per cent of
total views, whereas Child YouTubers was the second most popular, but
had more audience growth between 2015 and 2016 (564 per cent) – the
irst in this category being Unboxing, with 975 per cent growth.
In this context of intense connectivity (Mascheroni & Ólafsson,
2014), answering questions like “who am I?”, “what could I be?”, “who do
I want to be?” is strongly inluenced by media pervasiveness (Woodward,
1997:14). he digital media, especially social networking sites, is seen as
a powerful tool for the youngest to express themselves, to interact, and
to negotiate collective and individual identities (Drotner, 1992; Buckingham, 2008; Buckingham & Willett, 2006; Livingstone & Bulger, 2014).
From this perspective, the YouTuber girls’ channels may be seen as a
means of self-representation and dissemination of their points of view,
ideas and creativity in the public space. Conducting ethnographic research on the uses of YouTube by children and teenagers (aged 10-18) in
America, Lange (2014:68) noted several ways that girls participate in the
production of videos for this platform. Video blogging, sketch comedy,
lip-synching, personal event videos, and hanging-out-at-home videos
are the most popular. he participants in the study discussed numerous
themes, such as relections about their school, challenges they face, music,
pets, and so forth. For the author, video-blogs promote the expression of
girls’ voices, and oten allow the disclosure of issues relevant for their lives.
On the other hand, Dantas and Godoy (2016:98) assert that in some
cases, children’s channels might be considered a (semi) professional
activity conditioned to the marketing interests of the brands that sponsor them. From this perspective, they raise problematic issues for the
young video authors, such as exploitation of child labor. he activity,
according to Dantas and Godoy (2016:98), “demands a schedule of
appointments, a duty to be regular with their video-posting, an obligation to disclose the products received from the brands, among other
responsibilities”. Furthermore, it might expose the child audience to
improper marketing content and stimulate consumerism, among other
problems (Postman, 1994).
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Lidia Marôpo, Inês Vitorino Sampaio & Nut Pereira de Miranda
Rebekah Willett (2008) asserts that children and teenagers are not being encouraged to exercise self-expression; rather, they are constructing
identities aligned with a consumer culture. Nonetheless, she recognizes
that children and teenagers play an active role in their engagement with
the Internet, even in such an intense commercial context. he author
then launches a challenge: to analyze the online content authored by
children, taking into account the power and inluence of the market,
but without neglecting children’s agency. Willet (2008:53) brings in the
concept of “bricolage”, from Lévi-Strauss, to analyze how child YouTubers use varied resources while transforming and re-contextualizing
diferent cultural products to create a new self-image or identity.
he child YouTubers have their own “channels” on YouTube, similar
to an online proile on other social networking sites, containing a list
of subscribers, information such as the number of “thumbs up” and
“thumbs down” they have received, and statistics on views. Some of
them reach signiicant popularity as video authors by broadcasting
information about their identities, crafting videos with appealing
content, and publicly and intensively promoting and disseminating
their videos (Lange, 2008).
According to Félix (2016: 02), “being a YouTuber is more than
simply sitting in front of a camera once a week to record a 15-minute
video with apparently improvised content”. his task, according to the
author, demands strategies such as inding a target audience, mastering
technological tools to monitor competitors, interpreting Google Trends
to identify keywords to describe the video and facilitate its delivery
to the target audience, and possessing skills in the production and
post-production of audiovisual language. Besides interacting with the
audience on YouTube and other social media, their investment also
includes participating in oline activities, such as book-launching
parties and advertising campaign events. he YouTubers’ strategies
also include knowing which mechanisms generate more advertising
revenue. he channels’ owners must join the YouTube Partner Program
and sign a contract that enables brand advertisement on their videos
and thus the monetization of their content.
Omar Ricón (as cited in Félix 2016:02) highlights six common YouTuber strategies for achieving popularity: Narrative – talking directly
to the camera, aiming to break the formality of television; Aesthetic –
68
Top Girls on YouTube
using irony, cynicism, and irreverence to make people laugh; Language
– using slang, seeking grotesque and emotional appeal through swear
words; Youthfulness - taking youths’ attitudes and manners seriously,
which are also the basis for their comments on life; Pop savvy – their
references are rooted on pop music, best-sellers and fast food; and Adult
world – regarding it as corrupt and inept (politicians), incompetent
(parents), or outdated (teachers). he youths use their witty humor as
a tactic to express disappointment with adults.
In her ethnographic study, Lange (2014:16) deines YouTube as a
“personally expressive media”, i.e., “any mediated artifact or set of media
that enables a creator to communicate aspects of the self ”. According to
her, regular YouTube video authors perform technical ailiations while
showing through words or actions their beliefs, values or practices, which
connect them with particular technical-cultural groups. In this sense
they form communities of practice, which include routines, conventions,
and shared histories. he researcher also highlights the diverse interests between child YouTubers, who have diferent “mediated centers of
gravity” (Lange, 2014:41); i.e., their preferences manifest themselves in
visible inclinations to certain content, abilities and media tools.
Although she criticizes the lack of transparency in YouTube’s advertising policy, Lange (2014: 134) maintains that commercialization
is not incompatible with either genuine family afection – present
in many YouTube videos – or learning processes among those who
author content. In her research, children and young adults assert that
they have developed technical knowledge for making videos and have
improved their self-conidence and capability for self-presentation to
a wider audience. On the other hand, some of them reveal feelings of
social exclusion due to the time they dedicate to the activity, which
distances them from their peers.
Top girls on YouTube:
Identity negotiations in the network
We can look at the four girls under analysis as a “community of practice”
(Lange, 2014) that shares numerous common features. Bel, Juliana,
Manoela and Júlia maintain their YouTube channel pages on a regular
basis, posting videos daily (Bel), three times a week (Júlia) or once a
week (Manoela and Juliana). All of them are present on various social
69
Lidia Marôpo, Inês Vitorino Sampaio & Nut Pereira de Miranda
networking sites (Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and/or Twitter),
which they use intensively to promote not only their YouTube channels
but also their activities in many oline spaces such as meetings with
fans, book-launching events, and television programs.
he YouTubers’ performances on the Internet show a careful management of their public images. he opening logos in their YouTube
videos and the proile pictures on their social media sites indicate an
attentive production aimed at creating a visual identity. Júlia Silva’s page
on Facebook, for instance, is managed by an advertising agency, which
is also responsible for the social media sites of numerous Brazilian
television and Internet celebrities.
he popularity of these four YouTuber girls on the Internet also
means visibility in traditional media. All of them have been interviewed
on news programs and participated in other popular television programs. his legitimates their roles as opinion makers among their peers.
heir families receive revenue from the ads broadcasted on YouTube.
Moreover, the girls earn toys and other products merchandised in the
videos, not to mention the indirect gains through trips and hotel stays.
In this sense, we call attention to the considerable time the girls dedicate
to YouTuber activities and the demands related to the popularity they
have achieved and want to promote.
he analysis demonstrates a limited variety of formats in the videos
made by the four YouTubers, which include “vlogs”, “iction”, “commercial”, “challenges” and “tutorials”. Among these, the most common
and with the most views is “iction”. his is comprised of “web series”,
in many cases revealing creativity in improvised scenarios and stories
(such videos are apparently elaborated by the YouTubers themselves,
except for Bel, who explicitly has her mother’s help). On the other
hand, some of the videos give rise to a questioning of gender or social
class stereotypes, as well as ways of dealing with environmental issues.
he “challenges” are another popular format among the YouTubers.
Manoela Antelo and her Uncle Bibi (Luan Novit, also a YouTuber), for
example, propose to each other mutual challenges which may include
dancing in the street, taking selies with strangers, eating a garlic clove,
or performing kick-ups with a ball. he competition seems to be less
important than having fun. he games appear to reproduce television
formats without including any intellectual challenge.
70
Top Girls on YouTube
Shopping, reviews or unboxing toys, included in the “commercial”
category, are also popular formats among the YouTubers. Here, the
marketing communication appears in explicit ways.
In “tutorial” videos, the YouTubers give instructions for building
toys or playing games, whereas in the “vlog” format they record different life experiences, either alone or with friends and family, such as
hanging out or taking trips. References to brands are also common in
the aforementioned two formats.
he concept of “community of practice” (Lange, 2014) is also useful
for describing the similarities between their online performances. All
four girls have a role model with whom they regularly perform – mother
(Bel), sister (Juliana), uncle (Manoela), and father (Júlia); they all use
particular forms of greetings (e.g. “hello everyone”) and farewells (e.g.
“strawberry/chocolate sweet little kisses”) to communicate with the
audience; they continuously ask for the public’s approval and attention
(by asking for “thumbs up” and subscriptions); and they use their own
home spaces as scenarios for most of their videos.
We can also identify the adaptation of some of the strategies mentioned earlier (Rincón cited in Félix, 2016:02) that the YouTubers use to
become popular. he four girls talk directly to the camera and, sometimes, make use of irony and irreverence to provoke laughter; in some
cases, they appeal to the grotesque (especially in ictional content or
challenges); they cultivate pop-culture savvy (with references to music
and celebrities); and they are attentive to peers’ attitudes and behaviors.
However, if we think of YouTube as a “personally expressive media”
(Lange, 2014), through a more careful analysis of the girls’ performances
we can identify diferent forms of communication that reveal diverse
“mediated centers of gravity” (Lange, 2014: 41).
Bel is the youngest and the one who shows the least autonomy, almost always appearing accompanied by her mother, Fran Cerer. Fran,
for the most part, assumes the protagonist role in the videos, performing, playing, and guiding her daughter in a cooperative manner, and
also, sometimes, in a professorial way toward the audience. heir most
popular videos have six million views. Most of these are web series with
the format of “cautionary tales” (on themes such as jealousy between
siblings, disliking bath time, loss of baby teeth, bullying, irst day of
school, tantrums, etc.). Mother and daughter also propose challenges
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Lidia Marôpo, Inês Vitorino Sampaio & Nut Pereira de Miranda
to each other and switch roles. he marketing communication appears
in some content, such as when Fran publicized the work of a tourism
agency that organizes trips to Disney.
Juliana Baltar is the protagonist of the two most viewed videos among
the four YouTubers, namely “Baby Alive has an accident in the Tyrolean
traverse” and “Baby Alive is admitted to the Hospital!” (translations from
Portuguese). he videos have 53 million and 48 million views, respectively
(February 2016), and both privilege ictional narratives in improvised
and creative scenarios, in which the doll is the protagonist. As a common
strategy among the child YouTube stars, the commercial names of the
dolls are identiied in the titles of the videos, a tactic that seems to have
strongly contributed to this impressive popularity. Besides exploring
formats such as “challenges” and “life experiences”, Juliana uses the tag
#jujuresponde (#jujuanswers) to talk to the audience in a confessional
manner about varied aspects of her life (her relationship with her parents
and sister Rafaella Baltar, also a YouTuber, with whom she frequently
performs in the videos; her dream of being a YouTuber, etc.). he marketing communication arises mainly in the videos tagged as “shopping”
and “received”, in which she shows objects she has bought or received.
Manoela Antelo oten performs with her Uncle Bibi in videos in
which challenges, humor, and mockery are common. hey have fun
and play together in equal positions while interacting with each other.
Manoela also makes regular videos about her daily life, in which familial relationships are exposed in apparently spontaneous contexts.
he marketing communication appears mainly in her videos about
hanging out and taking sponsored trips.
Júlia Silva has a more moderate style, and distinguishes herself
through reined scenarios; better quality of image, edition and audiovisual efects; life experiences connected to a higher level of income
(such as international trips and expensive brands); and access to
celebrities from television, whom she interviews on her channel. She
mainly performs with her “Dad Silva” in challenges and games. She also
makes web series and tutorials about handicrat, makeup, recipes, and
fashion tips. he marketing communication is present in toy reviews,
games and apps, as well as in sponsored trips and hanging out. It also
appears in her vlogs, such as in the video “Getting braces put on! Does
it hurt??? Julia Silva” (translated from Portuguese), in which she dis-
72
Top Girls on YouTube
closes the name of the dental clinic she attended. Besides this channel
she also maintains another, “Júlia Silva TV”, dedicated exclusively to
the “commercial” format.
Discussion and conclusion
Considering the set of elements presented up to this point, we can say
that the identities created by the four YouTubers, as a “narrative of the
self ” (Giddens, 2002), become immediately singular in relation to other
numerous anonymous children. heir identities are not only being
redeined in their spontaneous relationships with their relatives and
friends, but are managed with the aim of achieving public recognition
measured by the number of views, comments, and “thumbs up”.
We are facing a game of forces, in which the YouTubers’ participation, creativity and spontaneity are juxtaposed with the pressures of a
planned professional management of their public images, in which the
goal is obtaining popularity and inancial proit.
On the one hand the channels are a potential space for the expression
of children’s identities and cultures, in which the girls play and talk
about subjects of common interest among their peers (toys, hanging out,
relationship with family and friends, school, and relevant experiences
in the child universe, such as the irst day of school, loss of baby teeth,
arrival of a new sibling, etc.). hrough this content, they achieve great
visibility for their points of view.
From this perspective, it is important to highlight the children’s
creative potential, which manifests itself in narratives, improvisation
of scenarios, re-signiication of objects, etc. he protagonist role they
play in the videos and the more egalitarian position they assume in
relation to the adults with whom they perform might be understood
as possibilities of empowerment, which distance them from the role of
fragile and helpless children. In addition, their participation in videos
and other numerous online and oline activities may be seen as an
opportunity to improve their skills of self-presentation and help them
develop technical capabilities for audiovisual production. heir public
activities also provide them with life experience and access to places
they likely would not have visited otherwise.
On the other hand, the analyzed YouTubers show a strong inluence from marketing communication and mainstream media formats,
73
Lidia Marôpo, Inês Vitorino Sampaio & Nut Pereira de Miranda
evidenced in the exaltation of consumer habits connected to brands,
seen in formats (challenges and series); in the “making of ” at the end
of some videos; in sound and visual professional efects; in the use
of jargon and standardized gestures to demonstrate afection; and in
appeals to build a loyal audience.
he act of playing, in this context of intense commodiication of the
content they author, is easily transformed into an “obligation” due to
the demands for frequency in video-sharing, commitments to sponsors,
and a busy schedule. he time they apparently dedicate to the activity,
the inancial proit generated from diferent marketing communication
strategies, and the professionalism in the management of their actions
indicate that this activity could be characterized as child labor. here
are also signs that the child and female identity they promote builds
strong connections to a consumer culture, related not only to toys and
children’s products but also to beauty products and other adult-related
manufactured goods. Moreover, having popularity as one of their main
goals in authoring content (as demonstrated in their insistent appeals
to their audiences) might make them overestimate fame and success
as their goal for the present and future, promoting a narcissist identity.
Our analysis reveals a conluence of the YouTubers’ singular and
individual characteristics with performances collectively originated
and managed as a community of practice (Lange, 2014), which are
translated into formats, content, and common strategies, in a process of
bricolage (Willet, 2008) profoundly inluenced by a consumer culture.
he four channels can also be seen as spaces broadcasting models of
thinking and acting to the wider public of children and teenagers who
accompany them regularly.
Note
1.
Ages in December 2016.
Lidia Marôpo, Ph.D., Polytechnic Institute of Setúbal and Interdisciplinary Centre
of Social Sciences/Nova University of Lisbon (CICS.NOVA), Portugal, lidia.maropo@
ese.ips.pt
Inês Vitorino Sampaio, Ph.D., Instituto de Cultura e Arte, Federal University of Ceará
(UFC), Brazil, ines@ufc.br
Nut Pereira de Miranda, Master Candidate, Instituto de Cultura e Arte, Federal
University of Ceará (UFC), Brazil, nutpereira@gmail.com
74
Top Girls on YouTube
References
Alexa (2016). About web site views. [online]. Available at <http://www.alexa.com/topsites>. [Accessed 12 February, 2016].
Buckingham, David (2008). Youth, Identity, and Digital Media. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Buckingham, David; Willett, Rebekah (2006). Digital Generations: Children, Young
People, and New Media. Nova Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers.
CGI (2016). About the use of the Internet by children and adolescents in Brazil. [online].
Available at <http://www.cetic.br/media/docs/publicacoes/2/TIC_Kids_2015_LIVRO_ELETRONICO.pdf >. [Accessed 12 January, 2017].
Dantas, haís; Godoy, Renato (2016). Youtubers mirins: mera expressão artística ou
trabalho infantil? [Youtubers kids: mere artistic expression or child labor?]. pp.
95-104 in Comitê Gestor da Internet no Brasil. Pesquisa sobre o uso da internet por
crianças e adolescentes no Brasil: TIC Kids online Brasil 2015.
Drotner, Kerstin (1992). Modernity and Media Panics, pp. 42-62 in Skovmand, Michael
& Kim Christian Schroder (eds.) Media Cultures Reappraising Transnational Media.
Londres; Nova Iorque: Routledge.
Félix, Claudia (2016). Youtubers: entre la estrategia profesional y la calidad de los
contenidos. Revista Zócalo, 25 May, 2016. [online]. Available at <http://www.
revistazocalo.com.mx/45-zocalo/10273-youtubers-entre-la-estrategia-profesional-y-la-calidad-de-los-contenidos.html> [Accessed 12 January, 2017].
Ferreras, Jesse (2016). YouTube Beats Cable TV Among Teen Video Choices: Piper
Jafray Survey. [online]. he Huington Post, 17 october, 2016. Availabe at <http://
www.huingtonpost.ca/2016/10/17/youtube-cable-tv-teens_n_12529450.html>.
[Accessed 12 January, 2017].
Giddens, Anthony (2002). Modernidade e identidade [Modernity and Identity]. Rio de
Janeiro: Jorge Zahar Ed.
Lange, Patricia (2007). Privately Public: Social Networking on YouTube. Journal of
Computer-Mediated Communication, 13(1): 361–380.
Lange, Patricia (2014). Kids on YouTube: technical identities and digital literacies. London
and New York: Routledge.
Livingstone, Sonia & Bulger, Monica (2014). Global Research Agenda for Children’s
Rights in he Digital Age. Journal of Children and Media, 8(4): 317-335.
Mascheroni, Giovanna & Ólafsson, Kjártan (2014). Net Children Go Mobile: Risks and
Opportunities. Milano: Educatt.
Postman, Neil (1994). he Disappearance of Childhood. New York: Vintage Books.
Secom (2015). About habits of media consumption by the Brazilian population. [online]. Available at <http://www.secom.gov.br/atuacao/pesquisa/lista-de-pesquisas-quantitativas-e-qualitativas-de-contratos-atuais/pesquisa-brasileira-de-midia-pbm-2015.pdf >. [Accessed 08 January, 2016].
Silva, Sérgio Damasceno (2016). Audiência infantil no YouTube chega a 52 bi de views.
[Children’s YouTube audience reaches 52 billion views]. Meio & Mensagem. 5
October 2016 [online]. Available at <http://www.meioemensagem.com.br/home/
midia/2016/10/05/audiencia-infantil-em-canais-do-youtube-chega-a-52-bilhoesde-views.html>. [Accessed 12 January, 2017].
Willett, Rebekah (2008). Consumer Citizens Online: Structure, Agency, and Gender in
Online Participation, pp. 49-70 in Buckingham, David (ed.) Youth, Identity, and
Digital Media. Cambridge, MA: he MIT Press.
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Woodward, Kathryn (1997). Concepts of Identity and Diference, pp. 7-62 in Woodward, Kathryn (ed.) Identity and Diference, London: Sage Publications/he Open
University.
Yarosh, Svetlana; Bonsignore, Elizabeth; McRoberts, Sarah & Peyton, Tamara (2016).
YouthTube: Youth Video Authorship on YouTube and Vine. Paper presented at 19th
ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing
(CSCW 2016), February 27-March 02, 2016, at San Francisco, USA.
76
6
The YouTube Channel RAK TV
A Narrative Interview with Rachel Cócaro, 14 Years Old
Paulo Guimarães & Maria Inês de C. Delorme
he initial proposal for this chapter was to talk to young people from
Rio de Janeiro aged ten to 14, in order to learn about the creative
universe of young YouTubers from Rio. We did not look for YouTubers
who were considered “celebrities” or “exceptional” in their use of media,
but practices and meanings built by “ordinary” young people who were
considered creative based on their productions in the digital sphere.
We made a Facebook call among our contacts requesting the names of
young producers of media who were active in social networks. hrough
this network of contacts, ten young people agreed to participate in the
interview.
Rachel Cócaro was one of the interviewees. As a practice among
researchers of Human Sciences, the meetings were based on the precepts
of “narrative interviews” (Delorme, 2008: 34), since this type of methodology favors knowing the person as a whole subject, the protagonist of
his/her stories, and as a producer and permanent consumer of culture,
with emphasis on his/her media creations. As narrative interviews difer
from questionnaires, we do not present questions and answers here but
rather blocks of opinions and ideas organized by the researchers, once
they have been validated by each of the interviewees.
From this point, we came to know Rachel through her media creations presented in various videos, with content of diferent themes,
formats, and lengths, shared on a YouTube channel called RAK TV1.
T
77
Guimarães, Paulo & de C. Delorme, Maria
Inês (2017).The Youtube Channel RAK TV.
A Narrative Interview with Rachel Cócaro,
14 Years Old in Ilana Eleá and Lothar Mikos
(Eds.) Young & Creative. Digital Technologies Empowering Children in Everyday Life.
Gothenburg: Nordicom
Paulo Guimarães & Maria Inês de C. Delorme
She stood out through her critical thinking and the ability of seeing
herself sometimes within and sometimes outside the universe of YouTubers of her age. In eight of our ten interviews with the young people,
there emerged certain recurring themes which we used as categories:
autonomy, creativity, YouTube quality, and celebrity/success. hese
categories were stressed throughout the interview in Rachel’s ideas
about the theoretical fragments to which her ideas refer.
Who she is
Rachel Cócaro Gouvêa Veiga is a fourteen-year-old girl who lives with
her mother and two sisters: iteen-year-old Rebecca and Rachel’s twin
sister Raphaela who, when very young, sufered a mechanical asphyxiation that let her with cognitive side-efects: “A mental age of six, seven
years.” his sister has not yet learned some things, and her mother “will
only let her have a computer when she can read and write. hat’s ok,
right? It’s not only cool things that are on the Internet”.
To quickly understand who Rachel is, just watch the video “TAG:
Twin Sister”2 where she introduces herself and Raphaela, answering
fun questions with agility and speed. Rachel’s thinking is fast; it is
fun and has the timing of spontaneous joking. On Instagram, Twitter
and YouTube her productions are designated as Rak TV in the case of
videos on the channel of the same name. his channel name originated
from her name which, ending with the letter K, would sound the way
she wanted it to [RAK], which would not be the case if she had used
the literal abbreviation for it, and [TV] because she is visually exposed
and “can be seen on a screen: from a cell phone, from computers or
from SMART TVs.”
Rachel and her sisters live with their mother, who is a doctor, in the
state of Rio de Janeiro, in the city of Niterói. heir parents are separated,
and the daughters live alternately with both of them.
She attends high school, considers herself good in the Portuguese
language, and wishes, whenever possible, to “escape from mathematics”. he three sisters study at a well-known school in Niterói, which
is considered an avant-garde school in several aspects, stressing the
encouragement of the arts in general as well as sports. Everyone knows
Rachel is a YouTuber; her family supports her and encourages her initia-
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The YouTube Channel RAK TV
Image 1. Opening photo of the
“Twin Sister” video
tive. Her schoolmates are very dear to her, and she believes she is more
valued in the school space for liking sports than for being a YouTuber.
Rachel enjoys watching TV series, usually on Netlix. She does not
like playing on the Internet but claims to have “a competitive spirit”,
which justiies “watching and liking Big Brother Brazil, because I’m
interested in knowing who will stay and who will leave.” She uses
Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat; she also has Facebook but does not
like it, and thus does not use it.
Her computer, her bedroom
and the recordings she makes at home
Rachel has her own computer in her bedroom. In this space she improvises a kind of studio, where she records using two lamps attached to a
ladder and a Canon T51 camera. She edits her videos on the computer,
using the sotware “Final Cut”. When she is producing her videos she
feels “tense, worried that her house noises will leak into the recording”
and, because of this, believes that “everyone who lives with her knows
when she is posting some new video. It’s stressful”. By researching on
the Internet she learned how to use the resources for her recordings,
as well as how to edit them and make them good enough for her fans:
“here’s nothing Google and YouTube don’t teach today, about anything,
and for all people”.
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Paulo Guimarães & Maria Inês de C. Delorme
RAK TV, her channel on YouTube
Rachel’s channel, which she started in the irst months of 2016, is called
RAK TV and ofers around 90 videos of varying duration and format.
More than a thousand people have already accessed the channel, including 340 people who have subscribed, although she “doesn’t know, even
today, exactly what can leverage success on the Internet”. She once made a
video she considered weak, bad, from which she “didn’t expect anything;
about cellphone cases. I thought it was a silly one but, to my surprise, it
got more than 3,000 likes. Videos where I just talk, with my face showing,
have to have challenges to not be boring”. She seeks to always be fun, and
this is a personal value she tries to impart in all her videos.
In fact, the Rachel we see in the videos is the same young woman
who makes herself known in the interview: funny, good-humored,
educated, and spontaneous when dancing and talking to her audience.
Still, she considers herself very impatient and talks about this in a video
called “Impatience”, where she complains about the time she wastes in
stores waiting for salespeople to do their sums and give her the change
(she is quick with igures, although she hates mathematics). She also
complains about the salespeople who do not quickly ind the products
she asks for in the shops, as well as advertisements. Her complaints
always contain certain “emphatic verbs”, such as “I hate and detest”.
In the video “Somebody Help Me?” made from Musical.ly3, a mobile
dubbing app, she dubs her favorite songs while dancing; and in another
video she presents her playlist to her fans.
In reference to vlogs, she has formed an opinion: “I think it’s unnecessary. A 14 or 15-year-old girl telling her story? Isn’t it strange?”
She made a successful video called “Types of Teachers”, presenting
ive types of teachers in a theatrical and funny way: 1. he bipolar one
(confused and contradictory); 2. he one who cannot explain anything
(repeating the students’ question); 3. he one who acts like the students’
friend (everyone wants him/her, things proceed in a loose way); 4. he
“Out of the room! “ teacher (without a reason, she/he asks the student to
leave the room); and 5. he one who is rude to the students for nothing
(nasty, does not understand anything, coarse).
Rachel studies English in English Culture Class since, for her, speaking English is a prerequisite for being a YouTuber. She uses many words
in English during the interview, with a British accent and in correct
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The YouTube Channel RAK TV
Image 2. Opening photo of the video
“Types of Teachers”
context, such as challenge, playlist, games, download, upload, choice,
free media, version, winner, turn and many others.
In media, she always appears smiling and wearing lipstick “but only
that, and always the same one, because I don’t wear makeup”. In the
video “Somebody Help Me?” she answers her fans’ questions about her
lipstick: “My lipstick is from the collection Pause for Feminine Time,
and its color name is Titânia”, and keeps changing voices, dubbing characters, and playing diferent roles as if it were a question-and answer
session, as if she were two diferent people. She dances, quotes other
videos, asks for comments, and throws kisses to her fans. She never
forgets to thank all the people who post comments on her videos, “even
when they call it trash, as one of them has done. One might think it’s
bad, but I wouldn’t post trash.”
YouTube quality
“A quality video, in my opinion, must have several things. It has to be
well lit, well edited, and have good sound. It has to be fun; that’s very
important. he person must have charisma, because it’s horrible when
someone wants to be funny but isn’t. I think you also have to present
the content of your age. I don’t like writing about subjects I don’t know
very well. I don’t need to have formed an opinion about everything,
and if I don’t know the subject I won’t talk about, for example, Nazis
on my videos. I like to watch some channels, like “Ater Eleven o’clock”4
by two Brazilians, which is very funny. I also like Taciele Alcolea5, who
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Paulo Guimarães & Maria Inês de C. Delorme
doesn’t have a channel on YouTube but is funny on Snapchat. here’s
also the Taynara OG6, who posts ten-second videos. “
About convergence of media
Rachel refers to Kéfera7, a successful YouTuber who, “from that success,
recorded a ilm – a feature ilm – and it seems like she even wrote a
book. Horrible. Being a good YouTuber doesn’t mean you’re a good
writer or actress. It was a crappy movie. here’s also JAPA, a well-known
YouTuber who suddenly turned up with a book written by a ghostwriter.
Do you know what that is? Well, he didn’t even write his book, called
Diary of a Japa” (Japa= diminutive of Japanese).
At this point, Rachel’s statements bring us closer to what we call
media convergence. Jenkins (2009) points out: “YouTube has emerged
as a key site for the production and distribution of alternative media –
the ground zero, so to speak – of the rupture in commercial mass media
operations, caused by the emergence of new forms of participatory
culture” (p. 348). In other words, beyond the commercial interests that
generate expectations of inancial gain, today it is no longer possible to
speak of producers and consumers of media as if they had dissociated
roles; they must rather be seen “as participants interacting according
to a new set of rules, which none of us fully understand”(p. 30).
In this sense, what Rachel says not only highlights YouTube and
the participation in it that “occurs at three diferent levels, in this case:
production, selection and distribution” (Jenkins, 2009, p. 349), but also
points to new paths by raising both the research on and analysis of
each media in a more speciic way, and questioning the ways in which
subjects interact with them.
Creativity
Rachel feels she has been creative in many moments in her life, for
instance at school when using paintbrushes and paint, developing her
artistic pursuits, but says, “you just want to be creative but sometimes
you’re not. When you strive, sometimes you’re not and, besides that,
creativity can be found in the simplest things. At times, and most
oten, chatting leisurely with friends at school gives you a diferent
idea that generates a good video. Never at home, only with friends
from school”.
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The YouTube Channel RAK TV
herefore, for her, being creative is not something that can be translated or even channeled simply as an action. he elements (themes) of
the production of content for the network are identiied in her everyday
relationships and in interaction with others. At the same time, she does
not refer to creativity when talking about her clothes, saying she likes
to customize, give them a unique and personal touch, and doing the
same thing with her cellphone covers. She is also creative and unique
in the way she dresses.
Image 3. Clothes customized
by Rachel
On YouTube, she feels she is creative when she “has an idea no one
has had yet,” or when posting something that already exists “but in
a very diferent, original way. Original? Yes, when I defend my own
opinions”!
She posts her videos “when it’s possible, when I can. All it takes is
for me to mark a day and time and I get tense; for me it doesn’t work”;
i.e., for her there is no creativity in having a pre-established day and
time. In general, she posts three videos a month and, sometimes, more
than this.
“Not everything can be done or played”:
Ethics on the Internet
Rachel always appreciates those who have their own opinion about
things. She feels free to post what she wants “but there are certain things
I would never do, such as posting nude scenes on the Internet, or an
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Paulo Guimarães & Maria Inês de C. Delorme
ofensive video about someone; I would never curse anyone. I would
never be a hacker, ever. “
We point out that her concern about what should and should not
be shared online can be regarded as a nuance of what we understand
as “quality on the Internet”, since she seeks a relationship of legitimacy
with what she considers not only relevant, but also simultaneously
correct, to share on the network. On this point, it is worth underlining
the complexity of building this kind of “digital regulation”8 and the
dimension of this issue in media, in contemporaneity.
I produce and post because...
Rachel posts videos aiming “to teach everyone what a good channel
is. To amuse people and for me, too, to have fun”. She hopes to meet
the expectations of her fans, become known, and get more and more
fans. “he more people watching me, the better. I don’t think there are
a million people giving “likes”; I imagine there are a million people
following me because they like me, they understand me, they recognize
themselves in me and that’s good”.
She does not know how her life will be in the future, but would like
to be an actress, working with art – always away from mathematics.
She likes to perform, cook sweets and decorate cakes (she talks about
becoming a cake maker), and stresses that she “thinks about studying
to be an actress someday.”
Image 4. Opening photo of the “RAK
Cooks” video
84
The YouTube Channel RAK TV
At the same time, she does not hide her desire to be identiied on
the streets and to have social visibility as a YouTuber, claiming: “making
money is always good, but that’s not exactly what I seek as a YouTuber”.
his happens to most creative people, “but it’s not the hope of getting
fame or fortune that guides them; rather, it’s the opportunity to do a
job they like” (Csikszentmihalyi, 1996, p. 107).
In this ield, we still need to establish a discussion about “succeeding
and being a celebrity”, since this relection was identiied in Rachel’s
comments and indeed those of all the young people we spoke with. One
of the essential reasons for producing and sharing content is a desire
for recognition by their peers, viewers, friends, fans, and everyone who
interacts with their productions.
herefore, despite her worries about the quality of what she produces
and conveys, she likes to assume that her products can have an even
greater reach. She does not produce to meet the interests of whoever
her audience is. In fact, she produces to be happy, to be as she is, and
to expose her thoughts in order to legitimize herself as a fun YouTuber
who “has her own opinions, without there necessarily being a goal to
attain”. Her speeches are vehement and coherent, and her videos conirm
what Jorge (2012) points out: “he power of celebrities has a discursive
root. In fact, contemporary celebrities are built in the interaction and
circulation by the media” (p. 79). In a consecutive way, it is possible
to say that the construction of this kind of relation between “one who
does/says/indicates/” and “one who assists/consumes/enjoys/” is also
cyclical, as it suggests its growth and expansion in the light of complicity between these two parties. In addition, it can be said that the
potential presented by media and its scope suggests the need for a more
in-depth investigation of the role of leadership and power relations in
this universe.
It is also necessary to relect on the fact that “youth cultures are
thus very marked precisely by the connection to the media culture,
the cultural and entertainment industries in complex ways of which
celebrities are an essential part” (ibid, p. 120).
In relation to the YouTuber videos, they address issues in Rachel’s
life that are important to her and that stress her identity (it is not only
her audio, but also she herself who acts and talks to the audience),
among other factors that narrow the relationship between her and her
85
Paulo Guimarães & Maria Inês de C. Delorme
public. his implies that if on the one hand there is a desire to promote
a legitimate approach between her, as a celebrity, and her fans, on the
other hand there is a concern about the clear construction of limits
that she plainly establishes and shapes.
It can be said that Rachel’s speeches, in relation to studies on celebrities, allow us to consider that “the credibility of a celebrity between
his/her public and professional life, on the one hand, and personal and
private, on the other, is fundamental for activation and reiteration of
cultural visibility and the efective functioning of the endorsement,
whether political or commercial” (ibid p. 94, 95). However, such a
nuance becomes much more sensitive in the sphere of YouTubers who
still have a small number of productions and some level of control over
their audience – compared to the examples ofered by the interviewee
herself – mainly due to her non-professionalization in the area of production and placement of videos.
herefore, to conclude, it can be said that Rachel is aware, and takes
care to ensure that her life as a YouTuber does not mix with her personal
life in issues related mainly to her safety and integrity. In addition, on
this dichotomy between public and private life, she concludes: “Yes, I
would like to be a celebrity, to be recognized on the street; but without
exaggeration, without persecution like what happened to John Lennon,
who was killed by a fan”.
Notes
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
RAK TV channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCr083JAJfAsYhtDz589ltjQ
“Tag: Twin Sister” video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwxW2OSa14Y
he Musical.Ly app: www.musical.ly . Available for download and video creation
and sharing.
Ater de Eleven o’clock channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/depoisdas11
Instagram of Taciele Alcolea: https://www.instagram.com/tacielealcolea/?hl=pt-br
and her Snapchat:@Tacialcolea
Instagram haynara OG: https://www.instagram.com/thainaraog/?hl=pt-br and
her Snapchat:@thaynaraog
Paulo Sergio de Jesus Guimarães, Master in Education and Specialization in Digital
Technologies, Institute of Education and Digital Technologies, University of Lisbon,
Portugal, paulo.guimaraes@campus.ul.pt
Maria Inês de C. Delorme, PhD, PostDoc, Professor, Department of Childhood Studies,
University of the State of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, delormenic@gmail.com
86
The YouTube Channel RAK TV
7.
8.
Kéfera Buchmann de Mattos Johnson Pereira (Curitiba, January 25, 1993), better
known as simply Kéfera, is a Brazilian actress, vlogger, voice actress, presenter, and
writer. She became better known through the YouTube channel “5ive Minutes”,
one of the irst channels in Brazil to reach a million subscribers. In 2016 she was
named by Forbes magazine as one of the most promising young women in Brazil.
Her channel can be accessed at the following address: https://www.youtube.com/
user/5iveminutes
Law 12.965/14, known as the “Civil Internet Framework”, addresses issues related
to the responsibility and attribution of rights and duties related to the use of the
Internet in national territory. Available at: http://culturadigital.br/marcocivil/
References
Csikszentmihalyi, Mihalyi (1996). Creativity. New York: Harper Collins.
Delorme, Maria Ines C. (2008) Domingo é dia de felicidade. Rio de Janeiro: Ed. Multifoco.
Guimaraes, Paulo (2016). Mobile technologies in education: Processes and developing
solutions for the learning space design. University of Lisbon. Master’s dissertation.
Jenkins, Henry (2009). Culture of Convergence (2nd Ed). São Paulo: Aleph.
Jorge, Ana (2012). he Culture of Celebrities and Youth: from consumption to participation. University of Lisbon. PhD inal thesis.
87
Expressions of Creativity
among Children and Youth
In diferent parts of the world we ind diferent cultural
expressions through media. he widely spread access to
Internet and digital media makes it possible to share and
experience this, learn from each other, get new impulses
and ind inspiration for new creations. his section provides
some examples.
7
“Exclusively for Keitai”
Literary Creativity of Japanese Media Youths
Kyounghwa Yonnie Kim
obile technology and wireless Internet were adopted early in
Japan and created a unique opportunity for Japanese people to
experience ubiquitous networking from the late 1990s. he role of Japan
as a powerful test-bed for mobile technology has been acknowledged
(Rheingold, 2002; Ito et al. 2005; Tomita, 2016), suggesting the presence
of a unique cultural milieu of mobile media use in the region. he term
keitai (the Japanese word for mobile phone, literally meaning ‘portable’
or ‘carry-with’) has been being favorably used by cultural scholars as a
way to emphasize the unique context of the mobile technologies in Japanese everyday lives. While the interest in cultural contexts occasionally
leads to the exaggeration of its Japaneseness, it may be important to note
that the rise of keitai culture is to be understood as a part of the global
mobile society (Castells et al. 2007) keitai culture should be explored as
a way to disclose the socio-cultural dynamism of the everyday practices
in diferent contexts such as generations, genders, locations, economic
situation, etc., rather than focusing on its use tendency.
M
Keitai shôsetsu and young creators in Japan
Despite continuing anxieties and widespread skepticism surrounding
excessive use of mobile media among youths (Matsuda, 2010), the
activeness of the young generation in the formation of keitai culture
has been prominent in Japan. For instance, Tomita et al. (1997) paid at91
Kim, Kyounghwa Yonnie (2017). “Exclusively for Keitai”. Literary Creativity of
Japanese Media Youths in Ilana Eleá and
Lothar Mikos (Eds.) Young & Creative.
Digital Technologies Empowering Children
in Everyday Life. Gothenburg: Nordicom
Kyounghwa Yonnie Kim
tention to the youths’ entertaining and creative interpretation of pagers
(a nascent mobile medium capable only of sending a call signal) in the
mid-1990s as a social background to generate a desire for new types
of peer communication through the mobile network. More recently, it
seems obvious that young users’ overwhelming preference for mobile
social media such as Twitter, Facebook and LINE1 has been creating
a new trend for social networking and digital culture. It is undeniable
that Japanese youths have played a crucial role as a cultural pathinder
of new media at every turning point, taking the lead in repositioning
new technology into one’s everyday life.
In this article, I put the spotlight on a phenomenon called keitai
shôsetsu, a form of user-created literature written and read exclusively
on the mobile platform, in order to demonstrate young females’ role
in initiating mobile literary creativity in Japan. Similar to other interactive literature, the keitai shôsetsu (as shôsetsu means “novel”, keitai
shôsetsu literally means “mobile novel” or “portable novel”) is usually
written by voluntary amateur writers, shared on a specialized website,
and read by audiences as it is being created. It has been particularly
popular among young females, explaining its feminine tastes in plots
such as love stories, sot school iction, and romantic science iction.
One of the key characteristics of keitai shôsetsu is that its writing and
reading practices take place on mobile media at the individual’s own
convenience, to explain its unique naming. It got its start in 2000, when
Maho-No-Airando, an online community service provider, launched
a keitai-specialized blog platform featuring a “story writing” channel.
It may be noteworthy that this was far before the global rise of the
smartphone, while in other regions wireless Internet service did not
exist or, if it did, was struggling to attract consumers.
In spite of the increasing popularity of this new channel, keitai
shôsetsu was hardly noticed by the mass media until the commercial success of the work titled Koizora (Love Sky) in 2005. he story,
originally created and uploaded by the amateur writer Mika, gained
popularity on Maho No Airando’s website, and was transformed into
a printed book to phenomenal success. Its commercial breakthrough
is partly related to its distributional structure, in that the interactive
authorship of keitai shôsetsu oten brings forth loyal readers who are
willing to not only subscribe in cyberspace, but also purchase a paper
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“Exclusively for Keitai”
book due to a desire to own it as a physical medium. he content sold
more than a million copies as a printed book, and was reproduced in
other media forms such as manga, TV drama, and a movie, yielding
impressive results here as well. Eventually, the social achievement of
Koizora brought to the forefront the fact that millions of young female
users were actively participating in media production and consumption
in cyberspace. It was also remarkable that the creativity and marketing
power of this phenomenon were entirely grounded in mobile media.
he success of this Internet-originated interactive literature was
not the irst case. For instance, a few years before the rise of Koizora,
an Internet-oriented story titled Densha Otoko (Train Boy) — an interactive literature work originally uploaded to 2ch (ni-channeru), a
well-known anonymous BBS2 forum in Japan — enjoyed great success
through multimedia marketing, appearing as a printed book, manga, a
movie, TV drama, and a play. he story features an introverted otaku
(technology geek) seeking a way to ask a gorgeous girl to go out with
him, presenting the typical male tastes in cyberspace.
he image of otaku certainly stereotypes an introvert and unstylish
male who reversely becomes active and aggressive in the anonymous
cyberspace. In fact, there is a irmly rooted dichotomous thinking in
Japan that, while males are loyal and active users of new technology,
females are less enthusiastic and are thus slow to adopt new devices.
As a creative force on the online platform, women had been regarded
as lagging behind technological trends, unless they were related to the
so-called feminine genres such as fashion and cosmetics. However, the
phenomenal success of keitai shôsetsu worked as counter-evidence of
this prejudice, to prove the power of females as a creative drive and
savvy consumers of new technology. Hjorth (2009) accurately noted
that the mobile platform has provided a niche for Japanese female users
to exert their creativity to relect their own tastes.
Meanwhile, keitai shôsetsu found itself the subject of social criticism
and public anxiety. Because its story oten deals with such sensational
issues as teenage sex, group bullying in school, rape, teen pregnancy,
and abortion, it cannot escape the denunciation of lacking reality in the
Japanese teen’s context. he writing style of keitai shôsetsu also became
the target of severe criticism, as the stories tend to contain grammatically incorrect or misspelled words. While the young amateur writers of
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Kyounghwa Yonnie Kim
Image 1. Maho No Airando is actively
running its keitai shôsetsu channel.
Accessed December 2, 2016.
keitai shôsetsu oten use unskilled and juvenile expressions, the frequent
grammatical errors are partly due to its colloquial writing styles, oten
centered on a series of conversations or short expressions for readers’
emotional immersion and enjoyment. Because of the combination of
unrealistic story composition and poor expression, professional writers
and critics alike despised keitai shôsetsu as a sort of “false literature”,
supported only by immature youngsters.
In the atermath of the runaway success of Koizora, only a handful
of the keitai shôsetsu sold well in paper book form, and the amount
of social attention paid to keitai shôsetsu has declined amidst sluggish
sales. When the website Maho-No-Airando, the largest keitai shôsetsu
distributor, was sold to a giant publishing company in 2011, social discourses started mentioning keitai shôsetsu as a transient phenomenon
that had run its course. Although
the phenomenon itself disappeared from public attention, a
survey released in 20113 showed
that the reading public of keitai
shôsetsu is growing in line with
the increase in smartphone use.
Furthermore, dozens of commercial keitai shôsetsu websites are
still operating with a proitable
business model, transforming
interactive literature into printed
books for sale (Figure 1). In other
words, keitai shôsetsu succeeded
in making inroads into the privileged position of Japanese literary
circles, to prove the emergence
of new creativity on the mobile
platform by young generations.
Exclusively for keitai: From insiders’ voices
As keitai shôsetsu involves a wide range of literary communication,
such as reading, writing, or sharing comments on mobile phones, one
key question is how to approach literary creativity on the most up-to94
“Exclusively for Keitai”
date technological platform. his has hitherto been a relatively ignored
issue, overwhelmed by discourses on the novelty of mobile technology
as well as the strong stereotype of traditional literature. In this regard,
in my ethnographic research on authors and loyal readers of keitai
shôsetsu in urban areas of Japan since 2009 (Kim, 2012), I focused more
on a subjective and voluntary aspect of their creativity rather than an
objective and social interpretation of mobile media and literature itself.
Although the speciic circumstances of experiences difer from
person to person, in many cases the presence of keitai seemed an overwhelming and critical element of “doing keitai shôsetsu”. he majority
of keitai shôsetsu consumers exclusively chose mobile media as their
favorite platform for both writing and reading. In fact, most consumers opposed the argument that they were forced to read the literature
on their mobile platforms because they had no access to other media,
such as a PC. Many instead insisted that the mobile media was the best
interface for maximizing their enjoyment, and that other media would
not allow them to savor the content to its full extent:
I’ve read the same keitai shôsetsu on both the keitai and PC since
I liked the story very much. I even read it in paperback form. But
only reading on keitai moved me to tears. Keitai shôsetsu has its own
expression, one that’s best delivered through keitai. [S, female, 21,
college student]
his can be understood in relation to the material characteristics of the
dominant keitai models in Japan at the time, which were mostly the
lip-close types with vertically rectangular and smaller screens (compared to those of early smartphone models). As most keitai shôsetsu
websites provided a best-viewed interface for these domestic models,
the genre’s production required not only the plotting of a story, but also
an integration and interspersion of expressions painstakingly tailored
for, or highly restricted by, the mobile interface of keitai (Figure 2). An
author of keitai shôsetsu explained that:
he story and characters are of course very important, but it’s also
critical to imagine what it will look like on keitai screens when you
write a story. For example, I’m paying the closest attention to the
line spacing of the text. I enter some blank lines intentionally when
I want readers to take a few minutes to scroll down before going to
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Kyounghwa Yonnie Kim
Image 2. The reading and writing of
keitai shôsetsu was most favorably
performed with the dominant models in Japan at the time. Photographed in June, 2009.
the next sentence. hat way, I can control how they dwell on the
emotions of characters. [Y, female, 23, oice worker]
Some authors tried to maintain a more strategic attitude, saying they
even paid close attention to managing technological conditions so as
to reach more readers and make them stick to their stories. As one
respondent stated:
I pay particular attention to what time I should update new content.
I usually post a new text during the day. I know some readers set
a notice function so that they’ll be immediately notiied that new
content has been posted. Once I put up a new text late at night,
when everyone was in all likelihood sleeping, and not many people
accessed this new content the next day. [T, female, 21, college student]
As a form of creative practice, keitai shôsetsu is not a simple presentation
of ictional literature but rather an integrated expression exclusively
designed for the material characteristics of mobile media. his raises the
possibility that the phenomenon might be situated and better described
within the framework of creative afordance to mobile media, rather
than general discourses on interactive literature and digital content.
While the material conditions of the interface of mobile media
seemed to be a crucial aspect for keitai shôsetsu enthusiasts, their choices
were not only based on functional and practical reasons but were also
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“Exclusively for Keitai”
underpinned by the commitment to the speciic environment of using
mobile media. Many interviewees stated that their reading experiences
tended to exclusively take place at a designated time and place. For
example, a respondent described her emotional encounter with keitai
shôsetsu as follows:
I started reading keitai shôsetsu because I was sufering from insomnia. I had trouble falling asleep so I wanted to make my eyes tired
by reading something before sleeping. My irst keitai shôsetsu was
Koizora; it was a hot topic then. I actually stayed up all night so I
could inish it. he story was so touching that I cried all night. From
that point on I was totally hooked on keitai shôsetsu. I read them
almost every night; that is, as long as I’m not so tired that I have to
zonk out. It’s ironic that it has now become another obstacle to sleep.
[S, female, 20, college student]
his case is not at all extraordinary, as a signiicant number of respondents identiied “in bed before sleeping” as the ideal situation for
reading keitai shôsetsu. Playing with one’s mobile media in bed before
sleeping was a widespread practice among youngsters, being a place
they experienced complete privacy and were the most likely to be able
to relax (Figure 3).
Afective attachment and mobile intimacy seemed to serve as another pivot for creative activity, as many respondents mentioned their
emotional moments and intimate sensitivity in writing and reading
Image 3. Keitai shôsetsu oten
delivers intimate and emotional
messages, sometimes with erotic
fantasy, suggesting readers’ taste of
reading alone before sleeping.
97
Kyounghwa Yonnie Kim
stories. A signiicant number of respondents related the experience of
writing and reading keitai shôsetsu to that of exchanging keitai emails
with close friends. hey claimed that keitai shôsetsu was by no means
a new or fresh experience, as they were already accustomed to keitai
emails:
Keitai shôsetsu are more akin to personal messages than serious literature. I became accustomed to keitai shôsetsu so quickly, because
it doesn’t feel that new. [Y, female, 26, oice worker]
From the standpoint of how insiders actually understand and translate
this phenomenon, cultural patterns of keitai shôsetsu – namely, how
to coordinate writing, reading, and commenting on the literature on
mobile broadband – should be positioned as the “remediation” (Bolter
& Grusin, 1999) of email rather than literature. By exploring the insider’s
voice around keitai shôsetsu, we can begin to understand the technological context of young creators in Japan, as well as the emotional and
intimate texture of creative labors with mobile media.
Literary creativity and a historical link
he preference for literary communication in Japanese mobile media
use was reported in a recent survey in Japan (Matsuda et al., 2014),
showing email (88%) rather than voice calls to be the preferred feature
of mobile media as a communication tool. According to the results,
this tendency was even prominent among the younger demographic
and female users, suggesting that this most up-to-date technology is
deliberately devoted to old-fashioned communications; that is, writing
and reading rather than richer visual expression. he prosperity of
literary expression and diverse creativity might be one of the distinct
characteristics of Japanese cyberspace, especially when the early adaptation of wireless Internet with low bandwidth encouraged users
to develop mobile communication strategies whereby one consumed
less network capacity but could convey rich contexts. Certainly, keitai
shôsetsu, as an emerging type of literary creativity, can be understood
as an inheritor of this tendency.
Furthermore, as a creative use of a new device (keitai) within a contemporary social context (urban environment), the practical prototype
of keitai shôsetsu can be found the early stage of postal media in Japan
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“Exclusively for Keitai”
during the Meiji era (Kim, 2014). Today, postal media, such as a letter
or a postcard, may be suitably understood as parts of social system
rather than as communication technology. However, in the early era
of the postal system, sending and receiving a postal medium across
geographical spaces was a novel way to create feelings of telepresence
(Milne, 2010). When postcards irst emerged as a medium for this new
attraction, ordinary people used them to write short ictional stories,
called hagaki-shôsetsu (hagaki means “postcard”; thus, “postcard novel”).
It is not diicult to ind the similarity between keitai shôsetsu and
hagaki-shôsetsu, in the link of both the literary genre and the new medium of the day. It is interesting to note that, in other countries such as
Mainland China and South Korea, there were attempts to build online
mobile novel platforms, mainly prompted by the mega-hit of Koizora
in Japan. However, neither of these countries achieved recognizable
success. In this sense, keitai shôsetsu certainly provides a concrete example of the social appropriation and cultural customization of mobile
technologies in Japan, revealing how new technology (mobile media)
resonates with existing cultural prototypes (literature) to generate new
creativity.
Conclusion: Mobile media as a creative platform
This article has sought to delineate keitai shôsetsu as an emerging
creativity by the Japanese younger generation, by looking into a cultural mechanism that allows to build and handle their creativity in
everyday experiences with mobile media. While keitai shôsetsu shares
many of the cultural displays of interactive literature in cyberspace,
this phenomenon cannot be fully understood without the consideration of keitai as a medium, or the gendered socio-historical context
of Japanese society. In terms of the refashioning of email rather than
literature, keitai shôsetsu is rather a cultural practice for relocating
mobile media into one’s everyday experiences, revealing its possibility
as a new creative platform.
Many aspects of mobile media have been praised; however, the focus
has been on its technological novelty and social role as a communication tool. With the convincing case of keitai shôsetsu, we can begin to
understand how creative dynamism has been deployed around mobile
media, and how new creativity is being evolved and modiied by an
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Kyounghwa Yonnie Kim
outsider group: young Japanese females. We need to understand this
emerging issue surrounding new media in youngsters’ creative activism
in cyberspace, and to grasp diverse cultural moments in the midst of
everyday practices. his new form of creativity revealed tensions between social innovation and harmful efect, both old and new, and in
diferent social groups. he question of mobile media as a creative tool
for both society and individuals could be a starting point in relecting
its path as a socio-cultural artefact.
Notes
1.
2.
3.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_(sotware)
BBS is an acronym for Bulletin Board System, commonly used in Japan to describe
an online content platform mainly for reading and writing.
http://internetcom.jp/research/20110708/1.html
References
Bolter, Jay David & Grusin, Richard (1999). Remediation: Understanding new media.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Castells, Manuel, Ferdandez-Ardevol, Mireia; Qiu, Jack Linchuan; & Sey, Araba (2007).
Mobile communication and society: A global perspective. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Hjorth, Larissa (2009). Mobile media in the Asia-Paciic: Gender and the art of being
mobile. London and New York: Routledge.
Ito, Mizuko; Okabe, Daisuke & Matsuda, M. (eds.) (2005). Personal, portable, pedestrian:
Mobile phones in Japanese life. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Kim, Kyounghwa Yonnie (2012). “he landscape of keitai shôsetsu: Mobile phones as a
literary medium among Japanese youth”. Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural
Studies, 26(3):475-485.
Kim, Kyounghwa Yonnie (2014). “Genealogy of mobile creativity: A media archaeological
approach to literary practice in Japan”, pp. 216-224 in Goggin, Gerard & Hjorth,
Larissa (eds.) he Routledge companion to mobile media. London: Routledge.
Kim, Kyounghwa Yonnie (2017 forthcoming). “Keitai in Japan” in Darling-Wolf, Fabienne
(ed.) Routledge handbook of Japanese media. New York: Routledge.
Matsuda, Misa (2010). “Japanese mobile youth in the 2000s”, pp. 31-42 in Donald,
Stephanie Hemelryk; Anderson, heresa Dirndorfer & Spry, Damien (eds.) Youth,
society and mobile media in Asia. New York: Routledge.
Matsuda, Misa; Dobashi, Shingo & Tsuji, Izumi (eds.) (2014). Keitai no 2000-nendai:
Seijuku suru Mobairu Shakai [Keitai in the 2000s: Maturation of Japanese mobile
society]. Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press.
Milne, Esther (2010). Letters, Postcards, Email: Technologies of Presence. London: Routledge.
Kyounghwa Yonnie Kim, Assistant Professor, Department of International Communication, Kanda University of International Studies, Japan, kim-ky@kanda.kuis.ac.jp
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Okada, Tomoyuki (2005). “Youth culture and the shaping of Japanese mobile media:
Personalization and the keitai Internet as multimedia”, pp. 41-60 in Ito, Mizuko;
Okabe, Daiske & Matsuda, Misa (eds.) Personal, portable, pedestrian: Mobile phones
in Japanese life. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Rheingold, Howard (2002). Smart mobs: he next social revolution. Cambridge, MA:
Perseus Publishing.
Tomita, Hidenori; Fujimoto, Kenichi; Okada, Tomoyuki; Matsuda, Misa & Takahiro, Norihiko (1997). Pokeberu-Keitai shugi [Pocket bell & Keitai-ism]. Tokyo: JustSystem.
Tomita, Hidenori (ed.) (2016). he post-mobile society: From the smart/mobile to second
oline. London and New York: Routledge.
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8
A Shared Literary Experience
Youth Reading, Creativity and Virtual Performances
Alejandra Ravettino Destefanis
W
ith the consumption of young adult (YA) literature by young
adults position in git within the novelties of the publishing world,
we must consider that this phenomenon is associated with other practices
involving young people. In this regard, we need to recognize that an
important part of this literature’s success coincides with the emergence
of spaces on the Web where young people around the globe write and
create videos to give their opinion on recent releases. YA literature also
has its own broadcasting means, redesigned from traditional marketing
strategies. Books for young people circulate on virtual spaces which
spread literary novelties: literary blogs, YouTube channels dedicated
to recommending new book releases, communities, closed Facebook
groups, and other social media like Twitter and Instagram.
For some years, on the YouTube platform, a group of book lovers
have been occupying a space; they are what are known as booktubers,
and they present and review books for young people to their peers.
So, who are these booktubers? hey constitute a virtual global
community which shares the pleasure of reading ictional works.
hey record videos, discussing literature and the actions related to
the book: from the desires and expectations around a new release,
to ways of acquiring, collecting and storing books. hey complain
about the lack of money, time and space, poor editions, and the excess of novelties. hey feel conident enough to recommend books or
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Ravettino Destefanis, Alejandra (2017)
A Shared Literary Experience. Youth
Reading, Creativity and Virtual Performances in Ilana Eleá and Lothar Mikos (Eds.)
Young & Creative. Digital Technologies
Empowering Children in Everyday Life.
Gothenburg: Nordicom
Alejandra Ravettino Destefanis
authors. hey do not follow professional critics or specialist opinions.
Besides reviewing the books, they show their personal libraries and
ofer recommendations as to how future booktubers should become
initiated in booktubing.
Like the age group targeted by YA literature, this is a large social collective which brings together adolescents and young people – both male
and female– aged between 11 and 30 years; and although the booktuber
phenomenon is originally an Anglo-Saxon movement it has moved to
diferent territories, irmly taking root in Spain, Mexico, Colombia and
Argentina. In Argentina in particular, the Feria del Libro (book fair)
presents a novelty every year, and each edition increasingly targets young
readers. In fact, for its 42nd edition, the Feria hosted the First International
Booktuber Meeting, with participating young readers from Chile, Peru,
Colombia, Argentina and other Spanish-speaking countries.1
Other activities that are gathering supporters among the younger
public, compatible with the YouTube platform, are booktalks (debates
about books involving diferent readers) and book hauls (presentations
of new publications and the most recent purchases made by booktubers
themselves).
Literature consumption by youngsters
In recent years, the literature choice for the younger audience has undergone a marked transformation. Simultaneously with classic authors
–Charlotte Brontë (1847), Jane Austen (1813), Mark Twain (1876),
Jules Verne (1865) and Daniel Defoe (1719), to mention only a few– a
new wave of dystopian, romantic, fantastic and mythological works has
emerged. his type of literature, which is experiencing huge growth in
terms of publication numbers, is referred to as YA (Young Adult), a
term coined by the media and the readers themselves.2
For their part, publishers, aware of how this growth drives the
production of the book market, tend to have a label or a specialist
in youth literature with which they release at least one or two copies
per month.3
What subject do they tackle? hese ictional works nearly always
have adolescents or young people as the protagonists and are presented
in the saga format, thus ensuring continuity in the story. he stories
tend to portray interpersonal relations –friendship, companionship,
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A Shared Literary Experience
sentimental relationships– in a “positive light”, and some even address
more complex themes like illness, bullying, unwanted pregnancy and
sexual abuse.4
Which youth literature classics, if published today for the first
time, would it into YA literature? Possibly he Catcher in the Rye by
J.D. Salinger (1951), Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (1813), To Kill
a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (1960), he Outsiders by Susan Hinton
(1967), or Lord of the Flies by William Golding (1954).
Who are the readers? From the age of 12, young people consume
these books, and although some believe the upper limit of the age
range is 17 –given the subjects discussed, the characters and the narrative core– many adults also enjoy the books. In particular, in a study
conducted among young Argentinians aged over18 years old, a large
proportion of those surveyed had recently read titles within this genre
(Ravettino Destefanis, 2016).
It is a niche market made up of a loyal and socially active audience,
keen to discover new experiences. Evidently, these YA book readers
constitute a coveted group in the publishing industry. According to a
study by Bowler (2012), these young people are:“the irst to adopt”, for
example e-book reading; “committed”, since if the book they are seeking
is not available in electronic format they buy it in print; “loyal”, because
they tend to read a favourite author’s previous books; and “socially
active”, as although more than half of those surveyed admitted to not
taking part in a reading group, they are active on social networks and
oten receive recommendations from friends.5
Some believe that it is suicient to regard literature as a creative
reading ofer; that it is an art form without adjectives. hat is to say
that there is no need, except for the commercial aspect, to categorize
it into an age group. Although literature aimed at younger readers has
its idiosyncratic marks, “literature” is a whole, and this young group
should not need reading material marked by a transition from childhood to adulthood.
Two factors deine the YA genre. One is the commercial aspect
seeking to renew its image and stop being labelled “juvenile”, which is
deemed antiquated, to announce a novelty in the market which ofers
something diferent. he other deining factor of YA literature is the
need to segment a group of young readers, 18-year-olds and over, to a
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Alejandra Ravettino Destefanis
product deined by the themes of love, sex and suspense in romantic
novels, epic sagas and vampirism (Perriconi, 2015).
What success do these books have? To answer this question, the
scope of young people’s expectations should be broadened to a space
where images, hopes, wishes and experiences converge; in essence,
we must decipher young people’s imaginary world. Reconstructing the
act of reading implies understanding how each community has genre
classiication systems which diferentiate between iction and truth, but
also between the metaphorical and ironic discourse (Chartier, 1999);
an imaginary group which works on plots, themes and characters, and
simultaneously constitutes them.
Booktubers as acting readers
Can booktubers be considered “acting readers”? Yes, insofar as they
interpret their reading: they enthusiastically prepare their performances,
resorting to words, gestures, images and sounds. hey construct eloquent stories. heir representations have become more sophisticated
over time, as one can tell by looking at their trajectory, seeing how they
have bettered themselves in terms of creativity and efort. hey have
turned their practice into a trade, and in some cases their eforts yield
results every month. heir progress is greatly owed to their charisma,
ingenuity, wit and histrionics. Several of these young people read the
book they recommend in its original language; reading in both English
and Spanish allows them to ofer even more sophisticated literary critiques. hey create stories from the ones they read. hey turn a book into
an audio-visual performance. Nevertheless, in their representations, a
personal style emerges that ends up resembling someone else’s style.
Booktubers share their similar tastes for literature, but also share the
style they use to represent their critiques: looking at the performances
alone, one will notice that although they are original, the style is shared
throughout the community.6
he multiplicity of virtual resources to which they have access means
that their confessional practices rapidly spread and become well-known
on the Web. As a sociological phenomenon, we need to consider how
young people, by becoming involved in the sphere of digital communication, make the digitalized social context the centre of their life
experience. As a result, a new youth identity appears, constituted by the
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A Shared Literary Experience
pleasure of reading and the virtual community experience. In short, new
ways of being and acting in the world of young people emerge as a result
of the literary and cultural consumption that is shared and broadcasted.
he previously set ways of communicating reading material have
changed. We could go so far as to state that booktubers operate as real
reading facilitators. Likewise, they have opened a direct communication
channel between writers, publishers and readers. As such, the dynamic
imposed by these active readers has enabled publishers to approach
them with a sales strategy for their books, leaving the traditional
broadcasting channels to the side and teaming up with these young
readers, sending them copies to review and inviting them to speciic
literary events such as book presentations and signings.
Another contemporary example uniting readers and producers is the
faniction phenomenon. For example, fans of the Twilight series wrote
a blog which gave rise to Fity Shades of Grey by E.L. James7 –which
young people from the survey themselves mentioned having read, but
to a lesser extent (Ravettino Destefanis, 2016).
Another contemporary practice which gives an account of the
alliance between young readers and publishers is the recent initiative
by the producers of the Twilight saga to encourage the spread of stories
in order to continue it.8 Could this modus operandi not be considered
the modern version of the participation of 18th-century novel readers
who sent letters to authors? Even the blog novel phenomenon, which
has already been in the virtual literary circle for several years, is characterized by the active –and at times, collaborative– participation of its
readers and by the immediacy between the writing and the publication
as it is made up of releases. In this regard, if until the 20thcentury,
newspapers were a irst step towards the publishing of novels in a
book format, from the 21st century onwards, Internet publications
could be fulilling that same role.9In short, readers’ participation in
the creative process and the periodic release of literature appear to go
back a long time.
New information and communication technologies favour the emergence of the autobiographical story of the booktuber. Since the very
start, the media have modiied the way in which information circulates,
demanding a redeinition of the discursivity and the appropriation of
contents. While in the past, newspapers, radio and television provided
107
Alejandra Ravettino Destefanis
a space for the reinterpretation of old discourses and reports, today it is
the Internet which has that role. In the same way that a self-report –the
creation of the I reader– emerges in the booktubers’ performances, an
interpretative community (De Certeau, 1996) appears, which keeps a
reduced space for traditional individual and silent reading, and revolves
more around participative and collaborative reading. In this regard,
digital technology does not only refer to the novelty of mobile devices
and appliances, but also to new ways of perceiving and of language, to
new sensitivities and writing which gradually alter the experience of
reading (Martin Barbero 2005).
In short, the booktuber phenomenon embodies the willingness to
create a community that is looking for common attributes with other
users/readers, to establish a conversational dynamic and present the
act of reading as a fundamental social act of its own accord. hat is to
say, the identity-related axis in the self-report discourse is produced
in the performative practice itself and in the creation of bonds which
generate common, virtual and global narratives whereby books and
reading operate as a connection with “the other”.
Notes
1.
2.
3.
he cultural eventgeared towards adolescent readers (which brought together
booktubers, bloggers and bookstagrammers) was boosted by the international
presence of young writers for several days at the fair. <http://www.el-libro.org.ar/
internacional/propuestas-culturales> [Accessed 31 January 2016].
Literature for Young Adults, abbreviated as YA or Ya-Lit, is gaining knowledge all
over the world and can be deined as literature for young people (12 to 17 years
old), despite having many readers from other age groups (over 18 years). It separates
itself from children’s literature by leaving aside the ingenuity of the protagonists
and concentrating on more adult themes.
According to the publishing company V&REditoras, James Dashner, author of the
he Maze Runner series, had sold 6,500,000 copies worldwide by last year. he irst
two books of the trilogy already have a ilm version, and the adaptation of the next
book into a ilm is underway. he best-selling saga-ilm version dynamic is being
repeated in other YA titles around the world, for instance Twilight, he Hunger
Games and he 5th Wave. For its part, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone
by J. K. Rowling, irst published nearly 20 years ago, set the standard for this new
youth trend. SOURCE: Oliva, Lorena. (2016). Literatura Young Adults: ¿negocio
o pasión por leer? La Nación, 08 mayo 2016 [online]. Available at <https://goo.gl/
lxwTrO>. [Accessed 31 January 2016].
Alejandra Ravettino Destefanis, Ph.D. in Social Sciences, University of Buenos Aires,
Argentina, a-rades@live.com.ar
108
A Shared Literary Experience
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
Oliva, Lorena. (2016). Literatura Young Adults: ¿negocio o pasiónpor leer? La
Nación, 08 May 2016 [online]. Available at <https://goo.gl/lxwTrO>. [Accessed
31 January 2016].
Bowker Market Research. (2012). Young Adult Books Attract Growing Numbers
of Adult Fans. Bowker, 13 September 2012 [online]. Available at <https://goo.gl/
NUglmH>. [Accessed 31 January 2016].
As an example of renowned booktubers and pioneers in the trade, we can mention
Christine from PolandBananasBooks, with over a hundred thousand followers, and
JesseheReader, who has exceeded 50thousand subscribers. At the following link, a
blogger recommends Argentinian booktubers <http://goo.gl/aeOcNG>. [Accessed
31 January 2016].
he idea came about between 2009 and 2011 as a faniction piece written by Twilight
followers, one of whom was E.L. James. Access to these texts was free and could be
gained through faniction.net. he British writer, who based her story on the protagonists of Meyer’s novel, shared the chapters she wrote, which eventually became
the trilogy Fity Shades of Grey. At the beginning, the compendium of chapters was
called Master of the Universe, until the publisher acquired the publishing rights and the
stories were removed from the Web. Eventually, both author and publisher decided to
readapt the original texts and remove any references to the Twilight saga. SOURCE:
Melty (2013). Cincuenta sombras de Grey: 5 cosas que deberías saber. Melty.es, 14 April
2013 [online]. Available at <https://goo.gl/QP4C6a>. [Accessed 31 January 2016].
Stephenie Meyer, the author of Twilight, and Lionsgate Entertainment, the production company in charge of its cinematographic adaptation, reached an agreement
with Facebook that during 2015, the social network would release ive short ilms.
hrough the competition “he Storytellers: New Creative Voices of he Twilight
Saga”, ive directors would be chosen to write the new stories. he winners were
selected by public vote as well as a panel of experts –made up exclusively of women– including the writer herself, actresses Kate Winslet, Julie Bowen and Octavia
Spencer, the protagonist and the president of the association Women In Film,
Cathy Schulman. SOURCE: Bishop, Brian. (2014). New ‘Twilight’ Short Films
Are Coming to Facebook. he Hollywood Reporter, 30 September 2014 [online].
Available at <https://goo.gl/y9lTpp>. [Accessed 31 January 2016].
Furthermore, the blognovel has a format in which the posts replace what was
initially organized into chapters. Both saga and blognovel readers can access the
text through any release and can therefore “pick up the already commenced novel”; this is why each of the releases is updated with the progression of the story,
which characters are acting at the time, and what has happened in the immediate
past. he diference between the saga and the blognovel lies in how it is updated.
While the saga presents an analysis summary of the facts and descriptions of the
characters, blognovels provide this information through hyperlinks on the names
of the characters (Ravettino Destefanis 2011).
References
Austen, Jane (1813). Pride and Prejudice. [online]. Available at <https://goo.gl/khBi>.
[Accessed 05 February 2016].
Barnes & Noble (2015). he Best Young Adults Books of 2015, Barnes & Noble, 03 December 2015 [online]. Available at <https://goo.gl/ar4smu>. [Accessed 31 January 2016].
109
Alejandra Ravettino Destefanis
Bishop, Brian (2014). New ‘Twilight’ Short Films Are Coming to Facebook. he Hollywood Reporter, 30 September 2014 [online]. Available at <https://goo.gl/y9lTpp>.
[Accessed 31 January 2016].
Brontë, Charlotte (1847). Jane Eyne. [online]. Available at <https://goo.gl/N3T7Ln>.
[Accessed 05 February 2016].
Bowker Market Research (2012). Young Adult Books Attract Growing Numbers of Adult
Fans. Bowker, 13 September 2012 [online]. Available at <https://goo.gl/NUglmH>.
[Accessed 31 January 2016].
Chartier, Roger (1999). Cultura escrita, literatura e historia. México: Fondo de la Cultura
Económica.
De Certeau, Michel (1996). La Invención de lo Cotidiano I. Artes de Hacer. México:
Universidad Iberoamericana.
Defoe, Daniel (1719). Robinson Crusoe. [online]. Available at <https://goo.gl/6RPCnh>.
[Accessed 05 February 2016].
Golding, William (1954). Lord of the Flies. [online]. Available at <https://goo.gl/BuW4dj>.
[Accessed 05 February 2016].
Hinton, Susan (1967). he Outsiders.[online]. Available at <https://goo.gl/7XkDTs>.
[Accessed 05 February 2016].
Lee, Harper (1960). To Kill a Mockingbird. [online]. Available at <https://goo.gl/qmNrGM>. [Accessed 05 February 2016].
Martín-Barbero, Jesús (2005). “Los modos de leer”. Presentado en la semana de la lectura
CERLALC en el panel “Lectura y medios de comunicación”. Bogotá: Centro de
Competencia en Comunicación para América Latina.
Melty (2013). Cincuenta sombras de Grey: 5 cosas que deberías saber. Melty.es, 14 April
2013 [online]. Available at <https://goo.gl/QP4C6a>. [Accessed 31 January 2016].
Perriconi, Graciela (2015). La construcción del géneroen la literaturainfantil y juvenil.
Buenos Aires: Editorial Lugar.
Oliva, Lorena (2016). Literatura Young Adults: ¿negocio o pasiónpor leer? La Nación, 08
mayo 2016 [online]. Available at <https://goo.gl/lxwTrO>. [Accessed 31 January 2016].
Ravettino Destefanis, Alejandra (2011). ”La producción de contenidos literarios en
Internet. Emprendimientos culturales y autogestión”, ponencia presentada en
las IX Jornadas de Sociología Capitalismo del Siglo XXI, crisis y reconiguraciones.
Luces y sombras en América Latina, del 08 al 12 de agosto de 2011, Buenos Aires.
Ravettino Destefanis, Alejandra (2016). Cultura escrita, tiempo libre y jóvenes universitarios. Acerca de las prácticas e imágenes vinculadas con la lectura, los contenidos y
los soportes. Buenos Aires: Teseo Press. Available at <https://www.teseopress.com/
culturaescrita/>. [Accessed 31 January 2016].
Salinger, Jerome David (1951). he Catcher in the Rye. [online]. Available at <https://
goo.gl/rhEpNp>. [Accessed 05 February 2016].
Twain, Mark (1876). he Adventures of Tom Sawyer. [online]. Available at <https://goo.
gl/GaEO4M>. [Accessed 05 February 2016].
Verne, Jules (1865). From the Earth to the Moon. [online]. Available at <https://goo.gl/
lcJalb>. [Accessed 05 February 2016].
110
9
Internet Mukbang
(Foodcasting) in South Korea
Seok-Kyeong Hong & Sojeong Park
s the saying goes, “We are what we eat”; food is closely related to
one’s identity. Recently in Korea, Internet users have shed new
light on eating through online content called mukbang1. Mukbang is
primarily known as an online broadcast genre of Afreeca TV2, the
largest MCN (Multi-Channel Network) in Korea. Individuals called
BJs (Broadcasting Jockeys) can broadcast whatever content they want,
and viewers can tune in to any channel and enjoy watching them while
chatting with the BJs. At the time of writing (2016), about 3,500 channels are on air every day and typically 150-300 thousand users access
the live broadcasts. Afreeca TV provides a virtual space for people to
communicate whatever they want.
Ater Afreeca TV began service in 2006, it gained sudden popularity
during the anti-US beef import protest of 2008.3 Mukbang appeared on
Afreeca TV the same year, and has since then expanded dramatically
in numbers and formats. Today, 10-15 per cent of all the channels ofer
the mukbang genre, with many BJs displaying their own styles of eating
and broadcasting.
he fact that BJs earn a great deal of money by eating on screen
surprised the media. hey covered this new phenomenon with great
attention, especially its economy system: Afreeca TV has a unique proit
system entailing the “star balloon”, a type of currency within Afreeca
TV. Viewers send star balloons to BJs as a sign of appreciation. One star
A
111
Hong, Seok-Kyeong & Park, Sojeong
(2017). Internet Mukbang (Foodcasting)
in South Korea in Ilana Eleá and Lothar
Mikos (Eds.) Young & Creative. Digital Technologies Empowering Children in Everyday
Life. Gothenburg: Nordicom
copyright: AfreecaTV
Seok-Kyeong Hong & Sojeong Park
balloon costs 10 cents, and viewers can send them to BJs as much as
they want while watching a program. Afreeca TV usually gets 30-40 per
cent of the proit, while the BJs get 60-70 per cent. hrough this process,
popular mukbang BJs can earn as much as thousands of dollars a night.
As mukbang has gained in popularity, television programs have
adopted its terms and ideas, and new programs appropriating features
of mukbang have been successful. his phenomenon provides an interesting case of Internet subculture transforming the legitimate discourse
produced by conventional media.
his article examines mukbang, as provided by Afreeca TV, and
analyzes its implications on contemporary Korean society. Deining
mukbang as a new and unique phenomenon developed in a speciic
socio-historical context of Korea, we will discuss its aesthetics and
ethics, which break the norms of traditional food culture and challenge
the social norms governing the body and subjectivity. Furthermore, this
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Internet Mukbang (Foodcasting) in South Korea
study addresses the question of how cultural practices on the Internet
have challenged the legitimate food culture on TV programs.
Eating in the wonderland of mukbang
BJs, the eaters
“he Diva”, an attractive young woman with a perfect body, is one of
the most famous mukbang BJs. Nearly every day she eats in front of the
camera, live broadcasting this for about three hours. Her meals usually
consist of multiple courses with abnormally large portions. For example,
she eats ive portions of noodles and a kilo of chicken in two hours,
or four diferent kinds of large pizzas. Sometimes she stimulates her
viewers’ senses via sounds sizzling of meat, chewing, or the dripping
of sauce. his usually accompanies her description of the food’s taste.
Besides the Diva, over 1,000 BJs provide mukbang. We observed
30 mukbang BJs who are currently active, and tried to clarify some of
their typologies. he irst type can be called the “big food ighter”. BJs
of this type have a large, over-sized physique. hey frequently launch
food challenges: one of them once attempted to inish ive bowls of
Chinese-style Korean noodles in a very short time. Another has inished
ten bowls of this noodle dish in ten minutes, which is a record no other
BJ has yet broken. Another has eaten a hundred pieces of sushi at one
sitting. And so it goes.
he second type is the “calm eater”. Calm eaters rarely make a fuss,
instead only focusing on eating. hey do not attempt any extreme
challenges, but they do eat quite large portions of foods neatly and
with great delight. hey provide information about the food and kindly
answer viewer questions. Some give detailed information about a new
brand or new food on the market, as well as a highly analytical explanation of the food. Others show unique layouts on the screen in order
to stimulate viewers’ visual and auditory senses.
he third type is the “weirdo”, who broadcasts eccentric behaviors.
An overweight person displaying a grotesque and tough eating style
is considered so hilarious that it is even known among foreigners. A
man wearing strange makeup demonstrates odd mukbang, such as
wrestling with a large octopus while cooking or popping corn in a
frying pan, causing it to pop all around the room, which appeals a
great deal to viewers.
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Seok-Kyeong Hong & Sojeong Park
he fourth type is the “cook”. Cook BJs actually cook and eat the
foods they make, explaining the recipes to the viewers. Some have
previously worked as cooks at hotels or other institutions. Making use
of their experience, they provide both cookbang, and mukbang.
he ith type is the “pretty boy/girl”. BJs of this type usually focus
on their looks and communicate with their fans. Mukbang seems to be
a subordinate theme here, since they do not eat much and talk very little
about food. hey set up the lighting to make their facial complexion
look fair. Female BJs wear heavy makeup and sexy outits, and some
male BJs show their pretty faces and slim bodies as well.
Fried chicken and convenience stores:
The social implications of food in mukbang
Fried chicken appears the most frequently on mukbang. In Korea, fried
chicken is popular as a late-night snack and is usually delivered. here
are two crucial moments that have formed people’s particular perception of fried chicken. he irst was in 1997, when the economic crisis
struck Korea. Many of those who lost their jobs at the time opened fried
chicken stores with their severance pay; otherwise, a great number of
these people would have been ruined. Since then, there is a perception
in Korea that fried chicken stores are one of the last solutions for those
who have been ired or retire from their careers. Furthermore, during
the 2002 World Cup, the demand for fried chicken increased dramatically as Koreans consume it, along with beer, while watching football
matches on TV. As a result, the number of fried chicken stores soared
from 10,000 to 25,000, creating the conception of fried chicken as the
most popular delivery food.
Many BJs also consume foods from convenience stores, buying
instant foods, and even ingredients such as eggs and onions, there.
According to Jeon (2013), the convenience store is an emblem of the
“McDonaldization of society” and is a new urban infrastructure in the
highly individualized contemporary society. Korean cities, especially
Seoul, are full of so-called “homo nomads”, students and workers living
apart from their families. To these people, convenience stores provide
food eiciently and comfortably, since they are stocked with all kinds
of items. In another sense, the convenience store is an impersonalized
space that economizes one’s eforts.
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Internet Mukbang (Foodcasting) in South Korea
Besides fried chicken, a variety of delivery foods are consumed in
mukbang – not only pizza and Chinese food, but virtually everything,
is deliverable in Korea, from hamburgers to sukiyaki. Recently, the term
“nation of delivery’ was coined for Koreans, portraying the country’s
excellent food delivery system. According to Choi (2013), Korea’s
delivery system relects the society’s exhaustion, whereby people are
obsessed with inishing things as quickly as possible.
In sum, what BJs eat contains multidimensional meanings that relect the current history of Korean society. he prevalence of impersonal
relationships and individualization are materialized in their menus.
Even though they are consuming junk food, eating this food appeals
to many viewers and elicits empathy.
The aesthetics and ethics of mukbang
Mukbang exhibits unique aesthetics and ethics, which transgress the
conventional norms of the food culture in Korea. First of all, it detaches
itself from traditional values regarding meals, such as healthiness and
sincerity. Before 2008, all Korean TV food programs concentrated on
healthiness: they usually introduced high-quality foods provided by
legitimate restaurants, regional foods with a long history, healthy recipes
for homemade meals, and information about healthy ingredients. he
foods presented by the media were attractively prepared and served in
a pleasant atmosphere with many people gathered around. hese are
fundamentally important aspects of the Korean traditional table, and
the media did their best to support them.
However, mukbang values neither the good nutrition nor the cozy
sentiment that comes from whole-hearted food. It encourages viewers
to enjoy instant meals, frozen foods, and junk foods that are easily affordable at convenience stores. Also, BJs mostly eat spicy or greasy foods
with a high caloric content. herefore, the mukbang menus are far from
what conventional food programs would portray. A few BJs do cook the
food themselves, but they still lack the cozy sentiment of the traditional
table and the common sense of cooking. For example, a BJ called Mr.
Jaw makes popcorn in a frying pan, enjoying the corn popping all over
the place, and BJ Pooh makes onigiri that is as big as his head.
Secondly, mukbang reverses table manners by showing people
grabbing or shoveling food, and devouring it sloppily. Since BJs con115
Seok-Kyeong Hong & Sojeong Park
copyright: AfreecaTV
tinuously communicate with their viewers, they frequently talk with
their mouths full. hey do not hide the sounds of their eating, but
rather emphasize them to deliver a liveliness and stimulate viewers’
senses. Some BJs moan, cough, and curse while they eat spicy foods.
hey don’t mind blowing their noses, burping, or even spitting. While
some viewers express disgust at these behaviors, most accept them as
natural and authentic reactions of the BJs. hese rude table manners
are typically detected among male BJs. his strengthens the gender
stereotype of eating, in which men are allowed to eat wildly but women
are expected to maintain their grace. Even though some female BJs are
known to eat large portions of food and shovel it in their mouths, they
still manage to look pleasant.
hirdly, BJs repetitively challenge themselves to eat extremely spicy
food, which looks quite sadistic. hey moan, cry out, cough, and have a
runny nose while eating these foods. Many viewers ind this funny, and
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Internet Mukbang (Foodcasting) in South Korea
ask them to eat other, new spicy foods or add more capsaicin powder
to increase the spiciness. his aspect is interesting, as it also shows a
gender diference: it is usually male BJs who challenge themselves to
eat foods in a sadistic way. hey continue adding spiciness for fun, or
in desire of conquest: the more spiciness they endure, the more viewers
will like them and the more manly they believe they look. A few female
BJs enjoy eating spicy foods, but they hold back their pain or express it
in a calmer way. Sometimes they look erotic while eating this type of
food, breathing heavily and moaning, thereby exciting some viewers
and earning balloons from them.
Lastly, mukbang portrays BJs swallowing masses of calories of food,
neglecting the social pressure to have a slender body. In other words,
BJs explicitly show themselves abusing their own bodies. In contemporary Korean society great attention is paid to body size, but mukbang
BJs do not seem to care about this tacit social requirement on body.
Many of them consume tens of thousands of calories at a time, usually
at night. Yet most female BJs are slimmer than the average Korean
woman. Many viewers ind this surprising, and frequently ask about
their weight. his transgresses the universal law that the more one eats,
the more weight one gains.
The social context of mukbang
Single-person households
One of the most noticeable changes in Korea’s social structure is the
increase in single-person households. According to 2015 population
statistics, there are about 5.2 million single-person households; this
accounts for 27 per cent of all households and is the irst household
type to surpass the traditional four- or three-person household. It is
predicted that this igure will rise continuously, to reach 34 per cent in
2035. his change is partly attributed to the increase in senior citizens
living alone due to aging, but also to the increase in young people in
their twenties and thirties living alone, reluctant to marry due to their
unstable careers. hese young single-person households have afected
the industry and consumption structure to such a degree that the term
“single economy” has appeared.
his change serves as an important background to the advent of
mukbang. It is not pleasurable for single-person households to prepare
117
Seok-Kyeong Hong & Sojeong Park
Table 1.
Year
Number
Percentage
Number and percentage of single-person households in Korea
1980
1985
1990
1995
2000
2005
2010
2015
382,743
660,941
1,021,481
1,642,406
2,224,433
3,170,675
4,142,165
5,203,440
4.8
6.9
9.0
12.7
15.5
20.0
24.9
27.2
Source: Statistics Korea (2015). Demographic Trend Census
food only for themselves and eat alone in silence, as this lacks the cozy
atmosphere of a family gathering. So they tend to face the TV or a
computer monitor while eating, with mukbang serving as their “meal
mate”, soothing their loneliness during mealtime. People usually access
mukbang around mealtime or late-night snack time.
he particularity of the Asian table culture can be a complementary
explanation for the advent of mukbang.4 Since the staple food of Asian
countries is rice, a culture of side dishes has developed. herefore,
unlike Western countries, Koreans serve several kinds of side dishes
and consume them together. So regardless of whether one lives with
family or not, one has to set a table consisting of several dishes; this
is a great burden to single-person households, most of which contain
people in their twenties to early thirties, who lack the knowledge, ability
and time for cooking.
Mukbang fulfills both the physical and sentimental hunger of
single-person households. First, it fulills viewers’ physical hunger by
providing simple recipes or tips for eating alone. BJs introduce newly
released small-portion foods that can be prepared easily. Also, while
people living alone oten cannot order diverse menus at one time, many
BJs are gourmands who eat a great deal of diverse foods in one sitting,
thereby ofering viewers a vicarious satisfaction.
As Georg Simmel said, “the shared meal…lits an event of physiological primitivity and inescapable commonality into the sphere of social
interaction” (Probyn, 1999), while eating alone lacks social interaction.
Food deinitely plays a social role that creates bonds between people.5
Many single-person households are in want of this bond, but are
suiciently individualized to have given up inding someone to share
a meal with. Instead, they try to overcome their sentimental hunger
through the interactive nature of mukbang. hey soothe their loneliness
by eating in front of a computer and communicating via the keyboard.
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Internet Mukbang (Foodcasting) in South Korea
herefore, mukbang is a channel that somewhat drags people out toward
social communication. Still, the question remains as to whether this
can create a sincere bond and serve a communal function.
Internet, the surplusage generation, and media culture
As Korea entered an information-intensive society within a very short
period, the Internet became a very powerful media tool that inluenced
society in general. he collective power formed in cyberspace satirizes
the mainstream culture; and people strengthen their online networking with the object in which they can be immersed, weakening oline
networking (Lee, 2010). hese characteristics are backgrounds to the
Korean Internet culture that began appearing in the 2000s.
Korea’s Internet culture accompanied the recent phenomenon of
“surplusage culture”. “Surplusage” (”(잉여; Ying-Yeo) is a neologism
indicating a person wandering around cyberspace, creating parodies,
compounds, and distorted expressions, investing their abundant time
capital. hese activities that seem tedious and useless make up a great
cultural stream on the Internet. Surplusage culture is characterized as
useless, extreme, trivial, stupid, reckless, and immature.6 Kim (2011)
deines the activity of surplusage as something that is done with a great
self-satisfying passion but is not given any value at all in a social sense.
Mukbang is deinitely an activity of surplusage in the sense that
Kim explains. Mukbang BJs consider themselves surplusage. heir
food challenges and eating in front of strangers are completely useless
things, except for a few BJs who earn enough money to allow them
not to have to hold other jobs. Most BJs start their broadcasts solely
for their own satisfaction and fun. Mukbang viewers consider themselves surplusage as well. hey are conscious that they have nothing
to do except watch the dumb behavior of other surplusages and sneer
at themselves.
In contemporary Korean society, the young generation is sufering
from severe competition and high unemployment rates. Many young
people ind themselves without a job or ailiation ater a long education, and feel lost. Oicially, most of them can be classiied as NEET
(Not in Education, Employment or Training). he number of NEET
in Korea has increased to 1.63 million, which accounts for 17 per cent
of youth aged 15 to 29 years. Some 42 per cent of these young NEET
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Seok-Kyeong Hong & Sojeong Park
%
50
47
45.4
45.3
44
45
40.9
42.3
40
40.5
39.3
35
30
2005
2008
2011
2014
Year
Figure 1.
Rate of students and employed among non-NEET, aged 15 to 29 (per cent)
Source: Hyundai Research Institute (2015). Characteristics and Implications of Young NEET.
are without a job for more than a year. Graph 1 indicates the rate of
students and employed among the population aged 15 to 29, and shows
that the rate of students is rising while that of those who are employed
is decreasing. his implies that a growing number of students in their
twenties postpone graduation, failing to ind a decent job. Since their
student status gives them a feeling of belonging or stability, they tend
to remain students. hus, the percentage of the NEET could be more
than statistics indicators, and the fear of NEET being their near future
is a shared sentiment among the young population.
he parent generation of the NEET had to survive the post-economic crisis of 1997, with many opening fried chicken or convenience
stores as their last resort, as mentioned. he NEET, who are in the
atermath of the economic crisis of the late 2000s, do not even dare
start a business. he prevalent sense of “social loser” among young
people and their socioeconomic status as NEET sustain the online
surplusage culture. Consuming fried chicken and convenience store
foods on camera, and watching it, might be one of the ways of enduring
this time of defeatism.
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Internet Mukbang (Foodcasting) in South Korea
Conclusion:
Subcultural power and the hegemonic process
As mukbang gained in popularity, a hegemonic process taken on by
conventional TV is observed: new TV food programs have recently
appropriated the culinary aesthetics and ethical attitudes developed by
Internet mukbang (Hong & Park, 2016). Conventional food programs
have typically introduced fancy foods cooked by professional chefs, or
exotic foods that are not available in everyday life. Also, they have always
emphasized the healthiness of foods and recipes. But, as they embrace
the ethics of mukbang, they have started portraying junk food such
as instant, frozen, and high-calorie foods. he standard of excellence
concerning food has been altered as well. Its excellence was originally
evaluated based on taste, presentation, the elaborateness of recipes,
and the professionalism of chefs. But ater mukbang’s inluence on TV,
it is judged only by the eater’s satisfaction. If the eater is content with
the food, it does not matter how much fat or spice is used to prepare
it. hus, the hegemony of judgement for cooking and food has shited
from top-class chefs to ordinary eaters.
TV programs do not exactly copy the formats of Internet mukbang,
but rather adapt them to the television platform by negotiating with
the norms of conventional food programs: they are either aired on a
cable channel (which requires less public responsibility than terrestrial
channels) or aired late at night on terrestrial channels; and they omit,
dilute or rework the components of Internet mukbang.
Also, TV appropriates Internet mukbang, rearticulating the dominant diferential system of gender into a new format. In traditional food
culture it is the woman who cooks for the family, with the exception
that the man does the cooking when it comes to “creation”.7 his role
division between the sexes seemed nulliied in Internet mukbang, with
women and men eating on both sides of the screen and the cooking
diminished to an instant boiling or replaced with delivery foods. But in
the mukbang-inluenced TV programs most cooking guests are men,
and professional male chefs are considered sexy; on the other hand,
men as everyday cooks and nurturers are portrayed as efeminate. his
representation still holds onto the dominant ideology of the sexual labor
division between the creator/producer and the re-creator/reproducer.
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Seok-Kyeong Hong & Sojeong Park
However, we can still say that it is a remarkable phenomenon that
mukbang is imposing negotiations for TV to deal with a new system of
value regarding the food culture, even though it is contrary to the justiied
and consensual values of good nutrition. his proves how powerful the
inluence of the Internet media culture on contemporary Korean society
is. Mukbang, marked by its special expressivity, resonates with the social
and communicational needs of the surplusage generation, the majority
of them living alone and eating alone. he generational dimension of
Internet mukbang and its anti-conventional aesthetics and ethics toward
the body and the diet permit us to interpret it as a unique subcultural
practice. he self-consciousness of viewers’ NEET situation and of the
nature of the time-consuming “useless” activities they are practicing
through mukbang creates a subcultural potential for the youth.
Notes
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
Abbreviation for food broadcasting in Korean, which can be translated to ‘foodcasting’. It includes all kinds of programs on TV and the Internet showing scenes
of eating as an important part of the content.
Abbreviation for ‘Any Free Casting’ TV.
During the protest, thousands of people occupied the streets and police took action
to control the demonstrators. People who were angry at the police brutality started
ilming with their portable recording devices to deliver lively scenes and expose the
violence. In the process, Afreeca TV was mobilized as a main platform for these
recordings.
he high rate of single-person households alone cannot explain the advent of mukbang, since Western countries also have a great deal of single-person households. In
Northern European countries such as Denmark, Norway and Finland, the share of
single-person households reached 40per cent in the 2000s. (URL: http://ec.europa.
eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/People_in_the_EU_%E2%80%93_statistics_on_household_and_family_structures)
he word “companion” originates from the meaning “person who eats bread with
someone else”. In Korea as well, there are some words that indicate the importance
of food in human relationship, such as “bapjung, an attachment that grows between
people who share meals for a long time.
For example, some count the number of strawberry seeds in a strawberry yogurt
pot, collect all the bones ater eating chicken, or hack a certain Internet server for
no reason.
he extreme majority of professional chefs are male.
Seok-Kyeong Hong, Associate Professor, Department of Communication, Seoul
National University, South Korea, skhong63@snu.ac.kr
Sojeong Park, Doctoral Student, Department of Communication, Seoul National
University, South Korea, psj25psj25@snu.ac.kr
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Internet Mukbang (Foodcasting) in South Korea
References
Cha, Frances (2014). South Korea’s online trend: Paying to watch a pretty girl eat. CNN,
3 February 2014 [online]. Available at <http://edition.cnn.com/2014/01/29/world/
asia/korea-eating-room/>. [Accessed 25 October 2016].
Choi, J. (2013). Sociology of Delivery, pp. 49-84 in Suan Lee (ed.) Cultural Escape of
Korean Society. Seoul: Green.
People in the EU – who are we and how do we live? (2015, 6). Retrieved from http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/People_in_the_EU_%E2%80%93_
statistics_on_household_and_family_structures. [Accessed 13 February 2017].
Evans, Stephen (2015). The Koreans who televise themselves eating dinner. BBC
News, 5 February 2015 [online]. Available at <http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-31130947>. [Accessed 25 October 2016].
Hong, Sojeong, & Park, Seok-Kyeong (2016). he Emergence of Internet Mukbang
(Foodcasting) and its Hegemonic Process in Media Culture. Media & Society,
24(1): 105-150.
Hyundai Research Institute (2015). Characteristics and Implications of Young NEET.
[online]. Available at <http://hri.co.kr/upload/publication/20151238612[1].pdf>.
[Accessed 25 October 2016].
Jeon, S. (2013). Exploration of Urbanites’ Life and Culture through Convenience Store,
pp. 207-234 in Suan Lee (ed.) Cultural Escape of Korean Society. Seoul: Green.
Jeong, H. (2011). Research on Social Structural Characteristics of Single-person Households in Korea and Japan. Paper presented at the conference he 9th Symposium
of the Japanese Language Literature Association of Korea, 30 June – 2 July 2011, at
Keimyung University, Daegu.
Joo, C. Y. (2013). Hunger Society. Paju: Geulhangari.
Kim, Soo-Hwan (2011). he New Structure of Feeling in Webtoon. Beyond Borders
Humanities, 4(2):101-123.
Lee, Hyunjoo (2010). he Coniguration of the Korean Cyberspace: A Tentative Study
on Cultural Traits of Korean Internet Users. Social Science Collection, 12: 123-153.
Probyn, Elspeth (1999). Beyond Food/Sex: Eating and an Ethics of Existence. heory,
Culture & Society, 16(2): 215-228.
Rauhala, Emily (2014). South Korean ‘Diva’ Makes $9000 a Month Eating on Camera.
Time, 26 March 2014 [online]. Available at <http://time.com/38219/south-koreafood-blogger>. [Accessed 25 October 2016].
Shin, C. (2013). South Korea-Japan French Fries Competition – Story about Teenagers’
International Competition. Joseilbo, 6 March 2013 [online]. Available at <http://
ent.joseilbo.com/htmls/173786.html>. [Accessed 25 October 2016].
Statistics Korea (2015). Demographic Trend Census. [online]. Available at <http://
kosis.kr/statisticsList/statisticsList_01List.jsp?vwcd=MT_ZTITLE&parmTabId=M_01_01>. [Accessed 25 October 2016].
123
10
“Transmedia Storytelling
as a Narrative Expansion”
Interview with Carlos Scolari
C
arlos A. Scolari has a Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics and Communication
Languages (Catholic University of Milan, Italy) and a Degree in Social
Communication (University of Rosario, Argentina). He is Associate Professor
(tenure) at the Department of Communication of the University Pompeu
Fabra (Barcelona, Spain). Researcher specialized in transmedia storytelling,
collaborative culture, user-generated contents, narratology, and semiotics
of new media. Professor in diferent master and PhD courses in Europe and
Latin America1.
Could you give us an introduction about the concepts of
Transmedia Literacy and Transmedia Storytelling?
As Henry Jenkins put it, at the most basic level transmedia stories “are
stories told across multiple media”. Transmedia Storytelling is not just an
adaptation from one media to another: it is a narrative expansion. his
textual dispersion is one of the most important sources of complexity
in contemporary popular culture. his narrative expansion is one of
the basic properties of transmedia storytelling; the second one is the
participation of users in that narrative expansion. How? Producing
new contents, for example parodies, new stories, trailers, mashups, or
recapitulations. Only in Fanciction.net Harry Potter’s fans have shared
more than 730,000 new stories! his is the territory of participatory
cultures, one of the most interesting phenomena emerging from contemporary media ecology. In this context, we are working around a
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“Transmedia Storytelling as a narrative expansion”. Interview with Carlos Scolari in
Ilana Eleá and Lothar Mikos (Eds.) Young &
Creative. Digital Technologies Empowering
Children in Everyday Life. Gothenburg:
Nordicom
Interview with Carlos Scolari
new concept: transmedia literacy. From our perspective, transmedia
literacy could be understood as a set of skills, practices, values, priorities, sensibilities, and learning/sharing strategies developed and
applied in the context of the new participatory cultures. If traditional
literacy was book-centred or, in the case of media literacy, mostly
television-centred, then multimodal literacy places digital networks
and interactive media experiences at the centre of its analytical and
practical experience. Traditional forms of literacy generally treated the
subject as illiterate, while media literacy focused on the consumer as a
passive spectator; transmedia literacy, however, considers the subject
to be a prosumer (producer + consumer). Another essential element
of transmedia literacy is the learning space. he institutional learning
environment for traditional forms of literacy is the school, but new
generations are now developing their transmedia literacy skills outside
the school (from YouTube to online forums, social media, and blogs).
hese informal learning spaces will be a key component of transmedia
literacy research.
You are the researcher leader of Transmedia Literacy project funded by European Union. What can you tell us about it?
We want to introduce new questions and challenges to traditional media
literacy. If traditional media literacy was about how to teach youths to
deal with (broadcast) media, in this case we are proposing diferent
questions: What are teens doing with media? What do they know?
How did they learn to do it? Teens are doing many things with media!
hey play videogames, share pictures, learn to solve problems, create
new contents, and manage their online life. Where did they learn to
do that? Outside the school. hese are the main research questions of
the Transmedia Literacy H2020 research project. he research started
in April 2015 and will inish in March 2018. We are developing the
research in eight countries.
Why is it important to focus on non-formal educational settings
when investigating teens uses of media?
Because most of their knowledge about new interactive media comes
from non-formal and informal environments. When a child or a teen
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“Transmedia Storytelling as a Narrative Expansion”
Image 1 & 2. Students analyse and reflect on social media and transmedia narrative worlds
Image 3. Students during the narrative workshop (fanfiction production
/ narrative expansions)
has a problem to solve (How to move to next level in this videogame?
How to manipulate an Instagram ilter?), they do not ask their parents
or the teachers: they check their favourite YouTube channels, ask their
friends or consult an online community. We should be able to map this
territory, identify the ‘transmedia skills’ they are developing outside the
school and be able to exploit these skills inside the classroom. In this
context, at the end of the Transmedia Literacy project we will produce
a Professor’s Kit so any teacher can download didactic activities to
exploit the transmedia skills inside the school.
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Interview with Carlos Scolari
What is the project status until now and expected outcomes?
Right now (November 2016) we are inishing the ieldwork in the
diferent countries and starting the data processing. Even if we use
nVivo for Teams, this is a very slow process, we have so many inputs
(data from surveys, workshops, interviews, media consume diaries,
researchers’ notes, videos, pictures, etc.). In 2017, we will conclude the
data processing and inal analysis, and we will work on the creation of
the Professor’s Kit. We will organise a couple of international events
in Europe and Latin America to disseminate the scientiic outcomes
and present the kit.
In 2008, you co-edited the book “Colabor_arte. Medios y artes
en la era de la producción colaborativa” (Media and arts in the era of
collaborative production). Is there any need to distinguish between
creative and collaborative media production by youth from what is
considered art? How to delimit it?
hat book presents diferent experiences of user-generated contents
in media and art. he editors – Mario Carlón, from the Universidad of
Buenos Aires, and I – consider there is a ‘continuum’ between art and
media practices. In that context, the user-generated contents move from
one side to the other. Many users produce content (like the parodies of
Hitler in Downfall) that follow the same logic of artists: they ‘intervene’
mainstream contents to generate new interpretations. Duchamp did
something similar when he drew a moustache and beard on a postcard
of Mona Lisa! he production of new contents by youth, both inspired
by media or art, is an unexplored territory. his could be one of the
next challenges of Transmedia Literacy research.
You have been doing research about transmedia storytelling,
user-generated content, and participatory culture for many years.
What are the most fascinating findings about your studies on
digital content creation by young people?
he creative of user-generated contents is incredible. Fans have a lot
of time, they know how to deal with the most advanced sotware and,
the most important thing, they have much passion. It is not easy to
separate between youth and adult faniction or user-generated contents
(sometimes the creators just use a nickname). However, fans know how
to organise themselves and generate emerging complex projects that
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“Transmedia Storytelling as a Narrative Expansion”
may involve hundreds of people. For example, fans have created movies
with professional-level special efects inspired by Star Trek, Halo, or he
Lord of the Rings. In our research, we have found teens that organise
international teams to play online videogames like Counterstrike, or
girls writing and sharing faniction in collaborative platforms like
Wattpad. Even if we do not believe in the mythology of the ‘digital
natives’ (like adults, not all teens are geeks or digital experts), in every
class it was not diicult for the research team to identify advanced
videogame players or media content creators.
And the most intriguing dilemmas?
As the research is developing in diferent countries, we only stay with the
teens for about a month, sometimes a month and a half. We are thinking about staying more time with them in future projects. In their last
book (he Class), Sonia Livingstone and Julian Seton-Green describe
an interesting research experience: they stayed for almost one year in
the same school. hat is possible if you only work in a single country.
In our case, it would be impossible to do something like that in eight
countries. However, we have obtained much data about transmedia
skills, media practices, and informal learning strategies.
From a general point of view, the big challenge is to redesign the
relationship between schools, teens, families, and media. he school
is an interface between kids and knowledge. hat interface is in crisis.
Both ecologies, the media ecology and the educational ecology, are going through deep mutations and we must learn how to deal with them.
If you could send a message to parents and to teachers about children and youth media creative production, what would you say?
What do they need to be aware or inspired by?
Listen to the teens. When we tested our methodology in a school at
Barcelona, one of the kids said: “I can inally talk about the things that
interest me”.
Note
1.
https://transmedialiteracy.org/the-people/
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Conversations on
Creativity and Communication
Carmilla Floyd
ow do children and young people use social media as a creative
outlet? As a journalist specialising in children and youth culture, I
have travelled extensively in Europe, Asia, Africa, and the United States,
collecting stories about children and young people’s lives.
For this book, I decided to reach out through my network to a select
number of youngsters who have sparked my curiosity through their
social media feeds. From teenagers to young adults, they all seem to
master the media in the sense that they have taken control of their digital
identities. Using visual imagery and words, they decide how they want
to be perceived by others, not the other way around.
he conversations took place online and some asked me not to
publish their real names or @handles.
H
• In my home country Sweden, I spoke to Alex, DJ, law student Valeria and high school student Xuan, who posts aesthetically about
everything from lipstick to kpop and xenophobia.
• In Shanghai, China, I chatted with Tony, who uses his social media
skills both privately and for proit, promoting luxury brands online.
• Ayanda “Yaya” Nhlapo, TV host and fashion designer, shared her
ideas from her home in Johannesburg, South Africa, for example
about ‘making her dreams a reality one sequin at a time’.
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Floyd, Carmilla (2017). Conversations on
Creativity and Communication in Ilana
Eleá and Lothar Mikos (Eds.) Young &
Creative. Digital Technologies Empowering
Children in Everyday Life. Gothenburg:
Nordicom
Carmilla Floyd
• In Los Angeles, United States, Xicana1 activist and DJ Roseli explained why she thinks that people of colour should use social
media to ’carve out their own culture’. In LA, I also chatted to Erik,
student and gay/queer activist who shared his feelings about being
creative but also stalked and threatened online.
• Finally, Phuong, from Hanoi in Vietnam, communicated from her
temporary home in Berlin, Germany, where she studies photography.
Below, read some excerpts.
Tell us a little bit about why and how you use social media
Erik: I use all of them relatively diferently but also use them all together.
So there are things that I will post on Instagram that will always show
up on my Facebook and my Twitter. hese will range from selies to
places where I’ve been, but mostly selies. I use a lot of # so that people
can look it up. Snapchat is more of a tool I use to send pics and chat
with people safely without giving my number out.
Phuong: I like to share both my photos and my opinions about world
politics, the environment, and social afairs, especially relating to children and women, culture, and entertainment. I share stuf like breaking
news but also interesting stories, videos and photo essays that have
inspired me and that I think can inspire others.
Yaya: I use a wide range of social media platforms and each platform
has its own use, although many are similar. I go according to the use of
each one, feel and vibe, as well as the audience and reach. For example,
on Instagram and Facebook I share what I do in fashion and other areas
while I use Pinterest to be inspired, Snapchat for fun and Twitter for
information and news.
Alex: I use both Facebook and Instagram to promote when I am going
to DJ somewhere. For inspiration and ideas, I go on Instagram and
Youtube.
Roseli: For me, as a Xicana, social media is deinitely an important way
to communicate with other people of colour, a way for us to ‘carve out
our own culture’ instead of being interpreted and appropriated by others.
It is via these social networks I have met many of the people that I’ve
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collaborated with on creative projects, as a model, an artist, DJ and more.
Social media is also usually the platform where we release the projects
we work on together. Social media is also my news outlet, where I ind
out about issues in real time, oten before they break in the established
news channels. I used to be active on more platforms but currently I only
use Twitter and Instagram, where I publish events related to activism,
my personal life – mainly my dog – and music. I also promote events,
hosted by friends, or that I am part of in any way. I used to have a Tumblr
and that deinitely was an inspiration because of the amount of images I
was seeing being posted by the like-minded people I followed. Most of
them were also Xicanxs, queer and gender non-conforming people of
colour. It made me feel like I wasn’t alone and became a sort of lifeline.
Xicana activist and DJ Roseli uses social media to carve out her own culture
Image 1. Roseli’s images
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Carmilla Floyd
Valeria: I use Instagram to express myself, and to desperately try to
stay a tiny little bit creative while trying to stay alive in the world of academics. I mainly use Facebook and Snapchat for communication with
friends, and for collaborating with people in diferent projects. With
my Chinese friends, I have to use WeChat, due to censorship and the
‘great ire wall of China’. I post and chat there to make sure my friends
remember me and don’t think I’m dead. I actually think WeChat and
its multitude of cute smileys are way more creative for chatting than
the stuf ofered on Facebook.
Tony: I use only WeChat, I see it as a self-marketing tool. Not to further
my career, but as a way to show my personality and myself in the way I
want. When like-minded people see what I post, it gives me a chance to
meet interesting people and to build relationships. From a marketing
perspective, they are my ‘target audiences’ that consume my content. But
I don’t want them to buy a product, only to get to know me. Of course,
I also use social media for information and inspiration in general.
Xuan: I use social media for creative expression, to connect with
friends and new people, to promote my interests, and get inspiration,
information, and news. Facebook is mostly to communicate with
friends, others, and to call out racism, homophobia, and xenophobia.
If I experience racism or prejudices IRL (In Real Life), I will sometimes
share that story on Facebook, to let people know how they should not
act. Snapchat is for spontaneous fun and communication. I also use
Tumblr to be inspired and inspire others.
What type of content do you post?
Valeria: Instagram is the only creative outlet I have online where I post
stuf that I create myself. I post more personal content there, though
my followers might not realize that, as I rarely explain what a particular
picture means to me. It might be a photo taken when meeting someone
I love, when doing something I hate, or from when I’m feeling down
and sick and tired of everything and everyone.
Alex: I use my Instagram as a photo-diary so I can post pretty much
anything there. Facebook is a little more private so I don’t want too much
weird stuf there. I post things about my life that I think are interesting
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to my friends. Cute stuf or selies gets the most reactions and likes. A
photo of homemade food does well too.
Yaya: I post to inspire people and to inluence them for the better. I
also post content that people can relate to, which afects the reactions
on my posts.
Phuong, from Hanoi in Vietnam, studies photography in Berlin, Germany and uses
social media to communicate and share her images and ideas.
2
4
3
Image 2. This is Phuong, in Hanoi, Image 3. Berlin Wall, Image 4. Berlin Street
Phuong: I post mostly my own documentary and street photos. I also
raise arguments, give my point of view about social problems, especially
on environmental issues and stories relating to journalistic ethics. And
I share my feelings about places, cities I live in or travel to.
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Carmilla Floyd
What don’t you share on social media?
Alex: I don’t like to advocate for issues I feel strongly about on social
media. It feels too private.
Phuong: I mostly try to be objective and I prefer a well-organised and
minimalist look. I rarely share private stuf, personal information, or
photos of family, publicly.
Valeria: On Facebook I never share anything private anymore. No feelings, good or bad, no anxieties, no life happenings, nothing. Facebook
is overloaded with information, why would my information be more
important than others?
Does your social media activity reflect who you really are?
Tony: I never share content that I feel doesn’t relate to me or relect myself. I like to be spontaneous, the moment I feel like it, I share and post.
Xuan: It relects the person I want to be on that account. Who I want
to be can change over time. I oten change my handles to relect that
change, and I have a lot of diferent accounts on, for example, Instagram.
Some are private, some public or semi-private. I allow my mother on
some but not on all! I oten erase accounts, or my whole feed, and start
fresh with a new style.
Erik: What I put out there is really I. All my social media without a
shadow of a doubt screams I am a Queer, POC2, Native American and
more.
Valeria: My Instagram relects who I am way more than Facebook does.
I feel like I mainly use Instagram for myself. Sometimes when I wonder,
“wth am I doing with my life?” I look through my feed over these last
two years or so, and I feel better. My Instagram is a storyteller, maybe
not to my followers, but to me, about myself.
Do you put in a lot of work when creating your content?
Tony: No, I don’t think it is creative to do too [much] stuf on social
media on purpose.
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Yaya: I do both planned content that is well thought of, and spontaneous content as a channel of self-expression, which I post with a little
less structure and thought, and more freedom. I always stick to high
quality, visually stimulating images and videos. My captions are also
of a high standard, in the sense that I write to express myself and share
my story. hat’s what primarily gets me the most reactions or likes too.
Ayanda “Yaya” Nhlapo, TV host and fashion designer in South Africa, shares glimpses of her life
and work on her SM accounts, and tries to inspire and influence her followers for the better.
Image 5. “Yaya”
Xuan: I do mostly, but sometimes I just get lucky with a shot. Angles,
location, and lighting is vital. I take a lot of selies in the restroom in
my high school restroom, because I like the clean look of luorescent
lights and white tiles. I always work with the images, picking ilters and
colours that go with the tone and look of my diferent feeds.
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Carmilla Floyd
Xuan uses social media for creative expression, and always works with the images,
picking filters and colors that go with the tone and look of her diferent SM feeds.
6
7
9
4 8
Image 6. Xuan showing of her nails and a new bag, Image 7. Xuan showing of her brand new velvet shoes,
Images 8 & 9. These two photos were taken at an exhibition by Doug Aitken at MOMA in Los Angeles
What do you like and dislike most about social media?
Alex: I like that I can connect with people, and that I can brag about
stuf if I want.
Erik: he thing I dislike most is being too exposed. I have had death
threats, stalkers, and unwelcome attention, but there was not much
I was able to do other than change some privacy settings. he other
thing is the social shame that is connected to some of the content that
I provide, because it is considered taboo. I ind it disgusting that employers check Facebook to see if people are ‘employable’ by their social
media appropriateness. Also, it is unfortunate that people are driven
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by likes and sometimes to disconnect from life in order to connect to
the Internet. I don’t like sacriicing real life myself.
Erik, student and personality, brands himself online as #gay #gayinked
#queer #poc #indigenous and more.
10
11
12
13
Image 10. Erik hanging out doing homework, Image 11. Erik posing with the lamp post exhibit at the LACMA museum in
Los Angeles, Image 12. Caption on Instagram: “When I bathe my dogs always hang out right next me. The company of
my pups are the best. Sometimes Appa insists that I wash behind my ears and if I don’t he will.”, Image 13. Caption on
Instagram: “Just hanging out like a Leather Mary. Rocking my leather jacket”.
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Xuan: I love having access the world at my ingertips. I hate the ignorance, racism, exotism, and sexism. Stupid comments and questions
from narrow minded people or douche guys (that I immediately block).
Followers asking: ‘Are you from Japan or Korea’, because stereotypes
tell them that cool Asians must be from there? But I like that social
media ofer me and other young people a platform and safe spaces
where we can talk about our feelings, norms, and discrimination. Some
of the accounts I follow forbid white people to comment, although
they can read the posts and comments that POC and WOC3 make.
I think that’s really good, because social media is so full of hate and
stupid comments, sometimes we want to say stuf without worrying
about being attacked.
Rosie: Just the fact that it is available, I like. I believe that the reason
why young folks create and share via social media is because the reality
of our present and future is so overwhelming. We need any outlet to
express ourselves, support others, and unwind with memes.
Alex: Sometimes I get annoyed when people close to me write stupid
stuf.
Valeria: I like that social media lets people express themselves freely,
and can connect with other people they’ve never met before. I like that
it can be used for activism, for sharing knowledge, and for questioning
the status quo. I also dislike when people are too private. Some of my
friends, classmates and family members love to spill everything on
Facebook – even their arguments with other people. It’s embarrassing
and annoying.
Do you ever get tired of the digital life?
Xuan: Nope, although I just got an Instax camera that uses really expensive ilm. It’s weird because I can take endless shots with my phone
and ix them in diferent apps. But with this camera I have to be careful.
I click and out comes a tiny photograph that I can’t change! But it gives
me a good feeling! All my friends want that camera too.
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Law student Valeria uses Instagram to express herself and stay a tiny bit creative as opposed
to what she can be in the academic world.
Images 14 & 15. Valeria´s pictures
Roseli: Well, I do have a lot of vinyls, and I DJ together with the Chulita
Vinyl Club in LA. A lot of my friends make artwork that is physical
and three dimensional. But then we share promote our stuf online, so
it works out well.
Valeria: Sometimes. I think it comes from the overload of information
we receive online all day, every hour, every minute and second. hen
I turn to something analogue, like a DVD or a vinyl record. Analogue
creativity takes us back to the roots, in a sense. It lets me relax for a
minute, and disconnect from the world. When I listen to my vinyl
records I live in the moment, not through the screen of my phone. I
can’t switch from one artist to the next in a second. I have the albums
I have, the songs I have, and that’s enough. But only until I pick up my
phone and have access to everything and nothing is ever enough. And
that’s great too! here’s always something new to learn and discover.
Carmilla Floyd, Journalist and Communications specialist, Walkie Talkie, Sweden,
carmilla@walkie-talkie.com
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Carmilla Floyd
Notes
1.
2.
3.
142
Xicana: a female Mexican-American.
POC: abbreviation for people of color, as in everybody except caucasians.
WOC: abbreviation for women of color.
Collecting and Sharing
Creativity
Display, share and communicate creative work, share
knowledge and exercise freedom of expression – in the
following section diferent platforms facilitating this are
in focus. We will also eavesdrop on creative peer teaching
and learning among two ive-year-olds.
12
“My Portfolio Helps My Making”
Motivations and Mechanisms for Documenting
Creative Projects
Anna Keune, Naomi Thompson, Kylie Peppler & Stephanie Chang
W
ithin the growing world of makerspaces with youth-oriented
educational programs, where youth make anything from robots
to costumes to digital games, much of the value of making lies in the
process of creating personally and communally meaningful projects
(Peppler, Halverson, & Kafai, 2016). By sharing their projects and
processes, makers invite constructive feedback, communicate their
maker journeys, share their eforts and struggles, and learn through
planning and relection (Tseng, 2015a). In fact, the documentation of
making regained interest as makers’ portfolios became vital parts of
job application and college admissions processes (Byrne & Davidson,
2015). Emerging from the arts (Gardner, 1989), portfolios serve as a
response to the increased pressures of accountability, a hopeful alternative for standardized testing, and a way to provide a richer picture
of student learning (Niguidula, 1993). Portfolios become valuable
learning and community-building tools when they inform overall
classroom community learning and allow students to take ownership
over their learning (Riconscente, 2000). In makerspaces, the overwhelming majority of educators recognize both the importance of
portfolios as learning tools and the diiculty of capturing making as
it happens without disrupting or taking time away from the making
145
Keune, Anna, Thompson, Naomi, Peppler,
Kylie, & Chang, Stephanie (2017). “My
Portfolio Helps My Making.” Motivations
and Mechanisms for Documenting Creative Projects in Ilana Eleá and Lothar Mikos
(Eds.) Young & Creative. Digital Technologies Empowering Children in Everyday Life.
Gothenburg: Nordicom
Anna Keune, Naomi Thompson, Kylie Peppler & Stephanie Chang
(Keune, Peppler, Chang, & Regalla, 2015). his can lead to portfolios
becoming an aterthought that does not evoke the excitement oten
connected with making.
Organizers of out-of-school spaces (e.g., ater-school clubs, libraries,
museums) particularly ind it challenging to meaningfully integrate
the documentation of hands-on projects; despite its perceived importance, documenting is tricky to implement, especially in out-of-school
settings without attendance requirements. Portfolio creation to bolster
college and job applications may not be suiciently motivational for
youth, as this does not directly serve their immediate project needs.
It is unclear how to support the capturing and sharing of hands-on
creative work in out-of-school makerspaces in a way that is purposeful
and meaningful for youth. Educators need examples of youth capturing
their projects on their own terms, in their own ways, and on their own
time to inform out-of-school portfolio processes. his knowledge gap
prompted us to ask: what are the mechanisms and motivators that
make the documentation of creative projects immediately purposeful
and meaningful for youth?
To answer this question, we examined the youth portfolios of an
urban, out-of-school, and youth-serving makerspace in the eastern
United States through a year-long qualitative study. he makerspace
we worked with had a space-wide process whereby every youth had
their own online portfolio. In this article, we focus on three youth
who captured and shared their creative out-of-school work beyond
the adult-initiated process. he three cases concretize diferent ways
of documenting and allowed us to extract speciic motivators and
mechanisms that could frame portfolio creation in other out-of-school
settings as immediately purposeful and meaningful for youth.
The maker movement and portfolios
Internationally, educators have created informal networks of people
interested in and supportive of learning through personally meaningful projects within workshops for exploratory tinkering with tools
from looms to laser-cutters (Peppler & Bender, 2013). What many
educators and researchers aligned with the maker movement agree on
is the importance of the process of making, the possibility to run into
challenges and untangle them into personally meaningful projects that
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“My Portfolio Helps My Making”
can be shared to enrich a community of makers (Peppler, Halverson,
& Kafai, 2016). By sharing projects online, whether puppet shows or
programmed animations, makers call for others to comment on their
work; represent their processes, challenges, and approaches; and iterate
on their work (Tseng, 2015a).
he maker movement is closely aligned with the arts, from which
portfolios emerged in the 1990s (Gardner, 1989). Since then, portfolios, and particularly electronic portfolios, have been talked about
as promising ways to capture rich learning, improve instruction, and
foster learning communities (Lamme & Hysmith, 1991). hrough tight
coupling between standards and classroom practices, portfolios have
been praised as assessment tools that might expand lattened test scores
(Love, McKean, & Gathercoal, 2004). Beyond the K-12 education1, colleges and professional applications ask youth to share examples of their
creative work related to disciplinary practice within or outside schools
(Byrne & Davidson, 2015). Making out-of-school practices relevant for
future opportunities promises to provide a wider audience with access
to higher education and professional opportunities (Peppler, Maltese,
Keune, Chang, & Regalla, 2015). hus, portfolios in out-of-school
makerspaces are increasing their relevance. Speciically focused on
making, sotware and hardware tools have been designed for capturing
and sharing processes and projects. For example, Spin is a tool that
allows youth to create revolving animated GIFs of their projects (Tseng,
2015b). However, it can be challenging for out-of-school makerspaces
to implement consistent space-wide portfolio practices. In the low of
making it can feel disruptive to pause and snap a photograph, especially
if the photograph does not serve an immediate project purpose (Keune,
Peppler, Chang, & Regalla, 2015). It is unclear what immediate purposes
would motivate the capturing of making processes.
To better understand youth motivations that could guide portfolio
practices in out-of-school makerspaces, we took a sociocultural and
situative approach to motivation (Nolen, Horn, & Ward, 2015). Unlike
strictly cognitive approaches to motivation that focus on aspects of
the learning environment that stimulate internal shits in individual understanding and skills, situative approaches of motivation are
concerned with the meaning of particular social practices within the
broader context of a learning environment (Nolen, Horn, & Ward,
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Anna Keune, Naomi Thompson, Kylie Peppler & Stephanie Chang
2015). For example, rather than considering how photographs of a
3D-printing process communicate an individual’s knowledge of the
disciplinary concepts of engineering, we focus on the underlying
objectives that called the youth to snap and share the pictures in the
irst place, potentially to explore, engage, and enrich social practices.
Apart from understanding what drives youth to document, we are also
curious about how technology might mediate and support particular
motivations and sustained practice (Blumfeld et al., 1991). We refer to
this as mechanisms that facilitate capturing and sharing.
Introducing the Digital Harbor Foundation
he Digital Harbor Foundation (DHF) is a youth-serving, out-of-school
makerspace. he space ofers a diverse range of youth programs, including courses centered on 3D printing, constructing micro-controller
musical instruments, soldering robotic creatures, and open-ended
explorations. he long-standing history of portfolios in the space allowed us to observe how youth documentation takes place, and what
motivates and facilitates the youth to create portfolios. he space has
been facilitating portfolios since early 2014, and since then has continuously reined its portfolio practices in response to programs and youth
needs. Every youth has a WordPress-based portfolio page with a unique
URL, and all websites are linked to an umbrella page that displays the
latest posts of each portfolio. Overall, the space-wide system presents
an opportunity for the youth to document their out-of-school work in
an open portfolio that grows with them.
Over the course of a year, our engagement with DHF consisted of
online observation of 22 youth portfolios and two ield site visits that
included observations of youth documentation, and semi-structured
portfolio walkthroughs with six youth whom the educators had identiied as having exceptional portfolios2. he portfolio walkthroughs combined a walkthrough approach from usability testing, in which designers
click through their interactive interfaces while performing a typical task
(Rieman, Franzke, & Redmiles, 1995), and (2) semi-structured interviews (Merriam & Tisdell, 2015). During the walkthroughs, we asked
the youth to open all the online documentation of their projects and
to show examples of their work while we asked them questions about
their documentation and making practices as well as their motivations
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“My Portfolio Helps My Making”
for capturing and sharing their work. Portfolio walkthroughs typically
lasted 30 minutes, and were audio- and video recorded.
We chose to dive into three youth portfolio cases in our analysis
of motivators and mechanisms because these portfolios extended the
adult-initiated process.
Youth portfolio cases
A portfolio for building an extended professional network
Akida was most intrigued by electronics, coding, and Minecrat. Recently, he had created an interactive project in collaboration with staf
and other youth: the makerspace donation box. his project involved
the creation of a cube with red and blue laser-cut walls (Image 1). he
front side had laser-engraved instructions that read: “Give a donation
and get an instant thank you.” Below this, Akida’s name and the year
of making were engraved. While the box seemed to have been cut
and assembled with precision through anchoring the laser-cut pieces
tightly together, it was in fact prototypically held together with masking tape. he sides of the boxes had carefully aligned holes similar to
those found on speakers, so that sound could escape from the hidden
electronics inside the box. Inside, microcontrollers were connected to
speakers and programmed to play a recording of makerspace youth
Image 1. Akida’s Donation box
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Anna Keune, Naomi Thompson, Kylie Peppler & Stephanie Chang
and staf members saying “thank you” when someone dropped coins
into the box. he donation box was positioned on a small table next
to the entrance of the makerspace.
Although the donation box was one of his favorite projects, Akida
did not document it on his makerspace portfolio. He planned to share
the code for the project in the future, and the fact that the project was
displayed and in use at the makerspace made it possible to go back and
capture the work online. More importantly, the project was displayed
along with other youth projects, including a cardboard sign with embedded LEDs that changed color depending on the hashtags posted
to the social media feed of the makerspace. his project inspired the
creation of a large light installation for the White House art festival
SXSL (South by South Lawn) in 2016. Besides serving as inspiration
for potentially larger projects, photographs of the donation box were
oten shared on social media. For example, sharing a photograph of
Akida presenting the donation box at a local manufacturing company
made it possible for his work to be ampliied and to reach an audience
outside the makerspace (see Image 2).
Presenting work to audiences outside the makerspace can be a motivator for youth to preserve their projects. Displaying and using projects
inside the makerspace was one mechanism for achieving this, while
another was to provide opportunities for anyone to capture and share
by encouraging visitors to post pictures for their online network. he
interplay of online and oline sharing of youth work in the makerspace
and beyond can create dynamic impacts on the way youth experience
the possibilities of their projects.
A portfolio for spinning of new projects based on old threads
Alma was a high school senior at a STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics)-focused school, where she centered her
academic interests on engineering. Her school activities difered from
those at the makerspace, where she could engage engineering concepts
through hands-on creative projects.
he DHF required the youth to create a project combining the
many skills and techniques they had learned, including circuitry and
3D printing. Alma created an installation that she titled “Wonderland
2.0” (Image 3). he installation consisted of blue 3D-printed mush-
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“My Portfolio Helps My Making”
Image 2. A social media post
showing Akida presenting the
donation box
rooms that were positioned on a painted cardboard box and connected
with copper tape and wires to a Makey Makey breakout board. Using
sound-editing sotware, Alma coordinated eerie sounds to diferent
wires and programmed the computer to play them when the mushrooms were touched.
Incorporating diferent skills into the project, Alma constructed it
one idea at a time, without knowing its inal shape or form when she
started:
Everything came together. As I irst set out in doing this, I would
have never expected this to happen. (...) When I irst started I began
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Anna Keune, Naomi Thompson, Kylie Peppler & Stephanie Chang
Image 3. Alma’s installation “Alice
in Wonderland 2.0”, combining the
skills she learned at the makerspace
with an idea of a mushroom, a table, and a setting created with a 3D
printer. Once the sounds and the painting got in, the project grew
and ideas started lowing. It was not planned from the start.
In the low of making, Alma’s ideas emerged as she layered more and
more skills onto the project while working toward her inal project.
One example of layering prior skills was related to the stackability of
the mushrooms. Similar to a birdhouse she had previously documented
on her portfolio (Image 4), Alma had to consider the tolerance setting
of the 3D printer she was using to create removable parts. Each of the
printers at the makerspace was assembled and calibrated by hand, so it
was important to know the settings of the printer in use while working
on a project that required precision.
Alma started documenting projects on her DHF website when she
joined the makerspace. At designated times, she wrote periodic posts
throughout the beginner’s course, addressing her audience through
witty writing and usually including project photographs. hese allotted
times presented checkpoints for Alma to remember to keep track of
capturing the making in order to better serve the creation of her inal
project:
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“My Portfolio Helps My Making”
Image 4. Screenshot of Alma’s birdhouse post
I think [my portfolio] helps making. (…) It helps when you’re well
on your way, you can always go back and remember what you did
and what you may not remember in the present. Going back, you
can get a fresh look on things, and that changes your perspective
and that would also help your current making.
For Alma, consistent documenting was a way to mindfully work toward completing her inal project. Jotting down notes online helped
her plan ahead. Knowing that the posts would serve to inspire her
next moves motivated Alma to document regularly. Prompts and
speciically allotted timelines helped her capture her work easily; this
portfolio creation became part of her creative low and facilitated
idea spin-ofs.
A portfolio for overcoming social apprehension
Evan joined the makerspace hoping to overcome his shyness and learn
to work more easily with others. At the makerspace he could move at
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Anna Keune, Naomi Thompson, Kylie Peppler & Stephanie Chang
his own pace, from working on personal projects alongside peers, which
he called working “human-adjacent,” to contributing to collaborative
projects in small groups. In this move to overcome his shyness, Evan’s
portfolio played a strong role. Just how important the portfolio was to
Evan can be seen in the sheer number of project posts he published
online. Over the course of a year he published a total of 33 posts, the
highest number in the makerspace. In nine of these posts, he relected
on his social interactions with others. his was nearly triple the average
of the other youths, suggesting that Evan was deliberately seeking to
capture his progress in this area.
One of the projects Evan highlighted for us as particularly interesting to him was part of a Zombie-centered design course, in which
makerspace educators asked the youth to prototype a solution for
escaping from zombies across a ravine. Evan created a pulley bridge
out of cardboard and string (Image 5, let). He explained that it was
challenging to make the bridge function and to plan for a clean, functional design. To show how the bridge would function, Evan shared a
video on his portfolio that demoed his prototype (Image 6, right). He
explained that he looked across the portfolio entries of other youth
working alongside him and noticed that “there were diferent ways
for people to get across the gorge.” he process ofered by the online
portfolio infrastructure motivated Evan to relect on face-to-face and
online social engagement.
Another example of Evan’s social engagement at the makerspace was
related to a Minecrat course, in which small groups of youth collaborated to build a small virtual town. Evan led one of the construction
groups, coordinating the actions of his group members with other
groups by moving in and out of the virtual space:
When everyone had diferent pieces of the map, we had to do it twice,
because the irst time things collapsed. But the second time it worked
a lot better when people were forming groups. (...) It was the same
when we built the inal colony in the inal project. Before we worked
more organized, we elected leaders and worked in groups. But the
irst day of building a colony a few people did random stuf and a
leader (of another group) got distracted and (the joined) leadership
was diicult to keep going. Once everyone decided to build in the
same place, the group came together.
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“My Portfolio Helps My Making”
Image 5 & 6. Snapshot of Evan’s pulley bridge (let) and portfolio (right)
Using the portfolio to relect on social engagements and capture strategies for successfully working with peers seemed to motivate Evan to
continue documenting and sharing his work. he mechanism that made
this possible was that he could choose how many posts he wanted to
share about his engagement, and to follow this own progression through
the chronological organization of his posts. Working with these projects
and documenting his experiences led Evan to take on new challenges,
such as presenting his work outside the makerspace in front of adults he
had not previously met. Neither Evan nor the educators had imagined
this possibility when he irst joined the makerspace.
Discussion and conclusions
All the cases explored in this article tell unique stories: Akida’s portfolio
served to extend his professional network through combining online
and oline sharing; Alma’s portfolio helped her spin of new projects
based on old threads; and Evan used his portfolio to overcome social
apprehension.
Looking across the cases, we identiied important motivators and
mechanisms in the creation of the three youths’ portfolios that could
inform the establishment of portfolio practices in other out-of-school
makerspaces. Table 1 summarizes these motivators and mechanisms.
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Anna Keune, Naomi Thompson, Kylie Peppler & Stephanie Chang
Table 1.
Motivators and mechanisms of portfolios at the Digital Harbor Foundation
Motivators
Connecting to authentic audiences
Mechanisms
•
•
Taking ownership over portfolios
•
•
•
Working toward a final project
•
•
Provide physical and online spaces for sharing
projects.
Encourage visitors to capture and share youth
projects.
Ofer choice over how and where to document
and share.
Make customization features available.
Encourage use of existing tools and support
multiple spaces.
Make it known to youth that small projects can
build toward final projects.
Allot time for documenting and browsing portfolios.
Comparing project solutions
•
•
Initiate a space-wide portfolio system.
Encourage sharing portfolio posts among youth.
Encouraging following passions
and elaborating interests
•
•
Be flexible about number of posts.
Provide opportunities for shiting between
personal and shared projects.
Give space to track progress over time.
•
he three cases show how possibilities arise as youth are given the space
and resources for making and for taking ownership of documenting and
sharing their work. his way, portfolios are not simply a requirement
set by adults, but a way to share with peers, follow passions, and elaborate interests. heir portfolios allowed these three youth to share their
projects on their own terms, in their own ways, and on their own time.
At the DHF, adult-driven portfolio practices ignited and spread
documentation throughout the makerspace. All the portfolios presented in this article took the adult-driven portfolio process and turned it
into an adult-initiated process that was lexible enough for the youth
Anna Keune, Doctoral Student, Department of Learning Sciences, Indiana University,
USA, akeune@indiana.edu
Naomi Thompson, Doctoral Student , Department of Learning Sciences, Indiana
University, USA, naothomp@indiana.edu
Kylie Peppler, Associate Professor, Department of Learning Sciences, Indiana University, USA, kpeppler@indiana.edu
Stephanie Chang, Director of Programs , Maker Ed (Non-profit organization), USA,
stephanie@makered.org
156
“My Portfolio Helps My Making”
to adapt to their personal purposes and needs. For example, they were
motivated by the ability to follow their passions and elaborate their
interests through a lexible number of required posts, opportunities to
shit between personal and collaborative projects, and visual tools for
seeing their personal development.
he youth connected to authentic audiences who were genuinely
interested in their projects presented outside the makerspace, and
found their projects being shared on social media by visitors. his
speaks to the importance of providing opportunities for youth to engage
communities with specialized interests within the safe conines of the
out-of-school makerspace. Treated in these ways, portfolios can become
tools for uncovering interests and possibilities for future opportunities
and community memberships.
he youth were motivated by taking ownership over their portfolios,
which was encouraged by giving them the power to make choices
about aesthetics as well as location(s) in the matter of how and where
their work would be viewed by others. he immediate usefulness of
the portfolios was also perceived when the youth were allowed to use
their portfolios to work toward a inal project; for example, when the
makerspace provided time and space for documenting and browsing
portfolios. Viewing projects and portfolios could inspire comparing project solutions, new ideas or ways in which challenges could be overcome.
While youth are creating projects in makerspaces, preparing for
college or future jobs might be a far-away goal; however, these cases
show that the social context of portfolios – creating and sharing work
within and outside local learning spaces – may be more immediately
useful and personally relevant for youth and serve as a driver to continue documenting. hrough diverse tools, the youth took ownership
over the process of capturing and sharing their work, and beyond this,
took ownership of their future making opportunities and possibilities.
Acknowledgement
his work was part of the Open Portfolio Project, a research initiative concerned
with the use of open and decentralized portfolio systems as tools for lifelong learning
and assessment, funded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. We thank
the youth and educators of the Digital Harbor Foundation for their participation
and contribution.
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Anna Keune, Naomi Thompson, Kylie Peppler & Stephanie Chang
Note
1.
2.
he expression is a shortening of kindergarten (K) for 4- to 6-year-olds through
twelth grade (12) for 17- to 19-year-olds.
More information about the Open Portfolio Project: http://makered.org/opp/
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beyond: Levels of maturation. Educause Quarterly, 27(2): 24-38.
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implementation. John Wiley & Sons.
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as Learning Environments (Vol. 1). New York: Routledge.
Riconscente, Michelle (2000). Digital Portfolios: An Enduring Promise for Enhancing
Assessment. New York, NY: Center for Children and Technology.
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13
Pockets of Freedom,
but Mostly Constraints
Emerging Trends in Children’s DIY Media Platforms
Deborah A. Fields & Sara M. Grimes
he spread of “web 2.0” and WYSIWYG (“what-you-see-is-whatyou-get”) content creation tools has led to a massive increase in
user-generated content across the connected digital landscape. According to a survey conducted by YouTube and Ipsos Reid, over 90 per cent
of online “millennials” create content at least once a month (YouTube,
2014). From citizen journalism to personal “vlogs,” producing do-ityourself (DIY) media has become a key component of many young
people’s digital experience. One of the most important aspects of this
phenomenon is how it expands even younger children’s access to “mass”
media production and distribution. Whereas child-made media was once
relegated to refrigerator doors and classroom bulletin boards, it can now
be published online.
From an educational perspective, this shit has the potential to open
up numerous social learning practices that build on long-acknowledged
aspects of learning (e.g. Buckingham, 2009; Vygotsky, 2004). From a
rights perspective, increased participation in media making has important implications for children’s cultural rights and potential rights
as authors, artists and performers. At the same time, designing DIY
media platforms for children is situated at the crossroads of a number
of challenging – and otentimes competing – social expectations and
T
159
Fields, Deborah A. & Grimes, Sara M.
(2017). Pockets of Freedom, but Mostly
Constraints. Emerging Trends in Children’s
DIY Media Platforms in Ilana Eleá and
Lothar Mikos (Eds.) Young & Creative.
Digital Technologies Empowering Children
in Everyday Life. Gothenburg: Nordicom
Deborah A. Fields & Sara M. Grimes
controversies. hese include geographically bound regulatory requirements (Grimes, 2013), commercial inluences, parental concerns, digital
divides, and emerging “hierarchies of access” (Grimes & Fields, 2012).
he Kids DIY Media Partnership seeks to identify the types of support systems – regulatory, infrastructural, and technical – that most
efectively and sustainably foster a rights-based, inclusive, child-centric
approach to addressing children’s cultural participation online. he irst
stage1 of this project consisted of a media scan aimed at identifying
websites describing themselves as having a focus on DIY media, that
were determined to be targeted to children or otherwise child-inclusive (for a few examples see Images 1-4)2. he sites identiied through
this scan were then subjected to two forms of content analysis: irst a
broad analysis of their graphic user interface (GUI) designs (herein
referred to as “designs”) and texts, and second a review of their privacy
policies and terms of service documents. he third stage consisted of
two workshops that brought together designers, educators, researchers,
and children’s media policy advocates to discuss some of the challenges
and issues associated with children’s DIY media creation and sharing.
Drawing on the indings and discussion of the research above, in this
chapter we argue that children’s freedom of expression is constrained
within the online DIY media landscape in three main ways: the low
Image 1. Tate Kids homepage
(partial view). Users create art and
games, and browse ideas from the
Tate Museum.
160
Pockets of Freedom, but Mostly Constraints
Image 2. Scratch.mit.edu homepage (partial view). Users share their
computer programming creations
as well as browse other users’ work.
The homepage on Scratch is dominated by user-generated content.
Image 3. Storybird.com homepage
(partial view). Users write and share
stories by assembling professionally
created illustrations.
Image 4. DIY.org homepage (partial
view). Users share a wide range of
things they have made both digitally
and physically.
161
Deborah A. Fields & Sara M. Grimes
availability of sites where children can lawfully share their DIY media
creations; the limited design features for sharing and creating found on
these sites that are available to children; and the absence of adequate
guidelines and policies prioritizing children’s freedom of expression
currently available to designers.
Literature review
Previous academic research on children’s digital media making has been
limited in many ways. For one, large surveys of Internet use tend to
exclude children entirely, focusing instead on teens and young adults.
Important exceptions to this include works associated with the EU Kids
Online project (Livingstone, 2008), longitudinal research conducted as
part of the Young Canadians in a Wired World project (Steeves, 2014),
and research by Svoen (2007). Even here, younger children aged 0 to 8
years are absent from most available data sets. While a growing number
of qualitative studies examine the experiences of younger children creating and sharing content online (e.g. Burn & Richards, 2014; Willett et
al., 2013), it remains an underexplored area of research. Among recent
studies that do attend to children’s DIY media production, there is a
tendency to focus on classroom contexts, and most do not explicitly
consider children’s sharing of their creations (for an exception to this,
see Fields, Kafai & Giang, 2016). Instead, sharing behavior is implied
instead of described, or simply noted as a potential implication of
creative production (e.g. Kearney, 2007).
As with other aspects of children’s digital technology use, few (if any)
previous studies consider the overall scope and quality of the available
spaces, tools and platforms for children’s DIY media making, especially
with consideration for how larger policy inluences might shape these
designs. To date, much of the scholarship on children’s online spaces
has focused on single websites, some of which were developed under
highly unique circumstances – such as at a university (e.g. Scratch), or
through a special funding initiative (e.g. YouMedia). Similar trends can
be found in the literature on children’s games, apps and other digital
technologies (e.g. Rafalow & Salen Tekinbas, 2014; Bailey, 2016) – leaving a dearth of comprehensive and comparative research to draw on.
hese gaps in our understanding are problematic, as we cannot
assume that trends exhibited by teens and young adults will hold for
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Pockets of Freedom, but Mostly Constraints
children, or that the features found on one site are universal. his is
especially the case when we consider not only the vast diferences in
development experienced between the preschool and teenage years, but
also diferences in family structures and supervision of online activities.
For instance, even among users of similar ages, sharing behaviors can
difer substantially (e.g. Svoen, 2007). Concurrently, however, emerging
research suggests that increased participation in media making and
sharing can provide children with a myriad of valuable opportunities
from giving and receiving constructive criticism (e.g. Black, 2008), to
public and civic engagement (e.g. Bennett, 2007), to exercising one’s
communication rights (e.g. Coombe, 2010). Furthermore, the spread of
child-created content has the potential to make media as a whole more
diverse and democratic, through the inclusion of the voices, ideas and
perspectives of a group that has until recently been largely excluded
from directly contributing its content (Grimes & Fields, 2015).
The kids DIY media online landscape
he irst step in our research was to map out the scope and shape of
online DIY media platforms available to children under the age of 13
years. A media scan was conducted with the goal of identifying all
available English-language websites where children could make and
share media content they themselves had created, remixed or heavily
customized. While our search yielded a handful of intergenerational
websites previously known to include child users, we largely focused
on those that described themselves as, or otherwise indicated that they
were, targeted speciically to youth, kids and/or children. he scan
was completed over a four-month period in 2013-2014 by researchers
located in diferent geographic regions using multiple search engines
(e.g. Google, Bing) and search terms (e.g. “DIY media,” “stories by kids,”
“children’s music websites”).
he media scan produced several unexpected indings. First, we
were surprised by the relatively small number of sites it yielded. Our
preliminary data set counted in the low hundreds, and was further
reduced once we eliminated sites that claimed to be for children
(e.g. in their self-descriptions) but contained terms of use or privacy
policies that forbade children under the age of 13 from participating.
Second, relatively few DIY media sites for children contained sharing
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Deborah A. Fields & Sara M. Grimes
features. A signiicant number of our early search results contained
tools or resources for creating media, but did not provide any features
or systems for sharing this media with others. During the early stages
of coding, 107 sites – nearly half the sites in our preliminary data set –
were eliminated for failing to include built-in sharing features, despite
containing descriptions or other indications that such features would
be provided. In terms of major trends within the online children’s DIY
media landscape, “making” clearly trumped “making and sharing.”
Ultimately, our media scan identiied only 140 websites that allowed
children under the age of 13 to both make and share their own media
content (Grimes & Fields, 2015).
What do kids DIY media sites look like?
he content of 120 of the sites identiied in the media scan was subsequently analyzed using a standardized, 83-item coding protocol. he
content analysis did not extend to content made or posted by the sites’
users, but instead focused solely on content created by the sites’ owners/operators, including features of the sites’ designs, descriptive texts
(e.g. About Us pages, instructions), advertisements, terms of service,
and privacy policies. While a comprehensive overview of the content
analysis indings is beyond the scope of this chapter, a discussion of
dominant trends can be useful for understanding what the children’s
online DIY media environment looked like in 2014 (see Table 1 for
layout of results discussed below).
As this was a criterion for inclusion, all the sites examined provided
tools, features and/or forums for users to either make or upload some
form of DIY or user-generated content, which could then be shared with
either the public or other registered users. he vast majority enabled
on-site sharing, while another signiicant proportion enabled users to
share through third-party sites such as Facebook. We examined the
extent to which user creations were included in the construction of
the site’s public face or “front page,” and found that most, seven out of
ten, showcased their users in some way. he most popular means of
showing user involvement on the front page was by displaying users’
shared content, their DIY media creations.
Another key consideration was the extent to which children’s
content was moderated, censored or otherwise restricted on the sites.
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Pockets of Freedom, but Mostly Constraints
Table 1.
Qualities of Kids DIY Media Websites (per cent)
Supports for sharing user-generated content
%
On-site sharing
96
Sharing in third-party sites
68
Visibility of users on front page
Showcase users on front page
74
Showcase users’ creations on front-page
65
Moderation
Moderate users’ content before posting
19
Site moderates content of users’ communication
26
Instructions to report unacceptable content
65
Networking residues
Commenting
80
Liking/favoriting/rating
68
Private messaging
48
Text chat
16
Curate projects in a gallery or list
49
Finding and following other users
Friend users
37
Follow users
52
Search for other users
56
Support for creating content
Support for creation within the site
55
User forums
44
Expert support
22
User-generated tutorials
17
No support from site
45
N=120
Note: Sites provided multiple features wich is why the sum within each category is exceeds 100.
Source: Compiled by the authors
Notably, only a ith of the sites analyzed moderated user content before
it was posted, while less than a third monitored users’ contributions
to on-site forums, comment sections, and other communication
channels. Support for various forms of peer moderation was more
prevalent: 65 per cent of the sites instructed users to “report” unacceptable or ofensive content. It is important to note that the content
analysis did not extend to the sites’ own creation tools, which may
very well have contained design limitations that restricted users at the
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Deborah A. Fields & Sara M. Grimes
point of creation (including banned words ilters, missing features, or
reduced menu options).
Creation does not happen in a vacuum: many supports, both technical and social, are needed to help children develop the skills and
understanding to be creative in a particular area, as well as to cultivate
the conditions in which a shared cultural experience might emerge.
As such, we also examined the ways, and the extent to which, the sites
fostered community and allowed for users to provide one another with
peer support. Eight out of ten sites did provide users with features allowing them to leave (public) comments on other users’ projects. Many
also enabled users to “like,” “favorite” or otherwise rate each other’s
creations. Other forms of communication were less common. Less
than half the sites ofered private messaging or text chat features, and
less than half enabled users to curate projects to a public list or gallery.
In terms of friending and following, just over half the sites allowed
members to friend, follow or search for other users. Many of the sites
provided means of creative support from within their own communities, but most did this through the inclusion of user forums – a feature
that previous research has found to often be used by only a small
proportion of core users (e.g. Kafai & Fields, 2013). In addition, some
sites were designed for other means of community support such as
expert support and user-generated tutorials. However, at nearly half
the sites analyzed, there were no places explicitly designed for users to
ind help from each other.
Overall, we found that some children’s DIY media sites do provide
a range of technical and social supports for younger users to engage in
media making and sharing, but also that this is far from consistent or
even pervasive. Although most of the sites showcased user content on
their front pages, thereby including children’s voices in the construction
of the site’s “public face,” tools for socializing, networking, and providing
peer support were sparse and limited. An unexpected inding was the
lack of identiiable moderation policies found on so many of the sites.
While this could potentially have beneicial implications for children’s
freedom of speech rights, it also raises serious questions about compliance with the US Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA)
and the status of children’s privacy, safety and well-being within the
DIY media realm.
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Pockets of Freedom, but Mostly Constraints
Navigating a complex terrain
Since the partnership was launched in 2013 we have hosted two workshops, bringing together project partners with established children’s
media producers and designers, educators, policy experts, and academic
researchers. hese workshops have presented a unique opportunity to
share and receive feedback on our preliminary indings, and discuss
relevant issues with a cross-sector group of key stakeholders. he irst
workshop was held in early 2014, included 22 participants (along with 8
members of the research team), and focused on the theme “sharing.” he
second was held in early 2016, included 18 participants (in addition to
11 members of the research team), and centered on the theme “agency.”
An important set of issues brought up by our participants concerned
the legal requirements, regulatory protections, and costs associated with
maintaining a DIY media platform for children online. Some reported
that designers oten choose to exclude children (through the inclusion
of formal age restrictions, for instance) because of governmental regulations on collecting data from users under the age of 13, particularly
those established by COPPA. If companies do target users under 13, they
risk opening themselves up to potential litigation and civil penalties. he
challenges involved in moderating online content and communication
in order to make sites “safe” for children were raised as a related concern. Efective moderation requires people who can review all content
and comments, which necessitates a signiicant investment of time and
money. In both cases, money spent on legal fees or moderator salaries
was described as detracting investment from the sites themselves – for
making them better, expanding their features, and so on. Participants
discussed the implications these legal and moderation concerns had on
the kinds and quality of digital media available to children.
Another issue raised by our workshop participants was the perceived lack of resources available to help designers navigate regulatory
requirements, as well as evaluate and apply appropriate ethical standards to the design and management of children’s online DIY media
spaces. Some of our participants suggested that placing strict limits on
certain words, themes or images was an unavoidable part of hosting a
space where children post and view user-made content, but they also
acknowledged that deining these limits was sometimes diicult. his
discussion shited to the lack of appropriate standards and guidelines to
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Deborah A. Fields & Sara M. Grimes
refer to when making such decisions. Relatedly, participants discussed
tensions around the privacy policies and terms of service contracts
contained within children’s websites, games and apps, specifically
those that arose when the desire to ensure that children (and parents)
understood the policies conlicted with the various legal requirements
associated with such documents. Some reported that although they had
wanted to include child-friendly language about privacy, intellectual
property ownership and other terms of service in their policies, their
legal departments had ultimately nixed these plans, opting instead for
standard, legalese-laden documents.
Our participants also expressed concerns about younger children’s
access to adequate information on the implications of posting content
online. A number of them proposed that at least some of the problems
we discussed might be addressed through digital literacy curricula speciically aimed at teaching younger users about their rights and responsibilities as content creators. Others mentioned that many parents and
educators also lack a irm understanding of the various issues involved,
and did not have the adequate resources to efectively guide their children through complex copyright and privacy issues. his led to some
concerns about the ability of both children and parents to make informed
decisions about the legal relationships they enter online, as well as some
preliminary questions about how digital literacy can be addressed in, or
perhaps even built into, privacy policy and terms of service documents.
he discussions that unfolded during these workshops thus provided
additional context for understanding the indings of our media scan
and content analysis, while introducing some contradictions as well. On
the one hand, the participants revealed some of the probable reasons
behind the paucity of sites available to children for creating and sharing
their own DIY media content, highlighting the various challenges that
designers face at various points in the development process, as well as
the lack of adequate support available to them when it comes to tackling the emerging ethical and legal issues involved. On the other hand,
our indings suggest that not all sites are equally limited by the types
of considerations raised by our workshop participants – at least not in
ways discernable through our content analysis. For instance, very few
of the sites we examined appeared to moderate or review user-made
content. As mentioned, this raises important questions about the rates
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Pockets of Freedom, but Mostly Constraints
of COPPA compliance found in this area of the children’s digital landscape, as well as the implications for children’s freedom of expression
and other cultural rights. It also raises new questions about how and
where regulatory requirements and industry standards relating to the
publication of children’s content might both overlap and conlict.
Conclusion and next steps
Overall, the indings of our media scan and content analysis show that
many sites did not suiciently aford or support users’ sharing content
with the public or sharing ideas with other creators. his trend is concerning, since sharing and interacting with others play such an instrumental role in many of the beneits associated with media making. It is
important to note, however, that our research also identiied a number
of promising exceptions to the dominant trends identiied above. his
included a site that incorporated creative commons licensing and a site
that provided detailed editorial feedback on all user-created submissions, as well as a handful of sites featuring peer mentoring tools and
support systems. While these exceptions were not discussed in this
chapter, they do form the basis of the next planned step in our research
– a series of in-depth case studies aimed at better understanding the
workings, rationale and uses of sites (as well as digital games and apps)
found to contain particularly noteworthy, child-centric, and ethical
approaches to supporting children’s DIY media making and sharing.
he indings described here have informed our research in other
ways as well. Key among them are the contradictory indings that
emerged around issues of content moderation, COPPA compliance,
and children’s freedom of expression rights. Previous research suggests
that many web 2.0 platforms opt to ban children under the age of 13 in
order to avoid the costs and potential challenges associated with moderating children’s content and ensuring COPPA compliance. Many of
our workshop participants conirmed that this was oten the case, and
some related anecdotes about projects or features that were ultimately
discontinued on these very grounds. Our media scan results appear
to support this inding; however, our content analysis results do not.
he discrepancy raises a number of questions: Does the lack of on-site
moderation observed among these sites translate into greater freedoms
for children to express themselves and be creative? Or are these trends
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Deborah A. Fields & Sara M. Grimes
evidence of a lack of accountability and responsibility on behalf of
the site creators? Or, were our results skewed by the limited scope of
our coding protocol, or alternatively, by a lack of transparency about
underlying content moderation and censorship practices?
On these and other issues, our indings have raised more questions
than answers. his is especially the case when it comes to thinking about
why children’s DIY media sites are designed the way they are, and what
the implications are for children’s creativity, learning and cultural rights.
In addition to justifying the need to conduct an in-depth comparative
case study, our indings to date inform some of the questions we will
be asking in our upcoming interviews with children’s DIY media site
designers. We are also drawing on these indings, particularly the issues
and questions that emerged during our workshops, in our planning
of a daylong consultation event with a select group of child media
makers, to be held in the inal year of the Kids DIY Media Partnership.
While there is still much work to be done, we anticipate that at the
project’s end our study will yield a rich and detailed mapping of the
contemporary children’s DIY media landscape, and provide a set of
recommendations for building and managing child-centric, ethical
and rights-based platforms, policies and approaches for supporting
children’s media making and sharing online.
Notes
1.
2.
Additional research stages associated with this project include a transnational
policy analysis and a series of in-depth case studies, both of which are currently
underway. Once the data from these stages have been analyzed, we furthermore
plan to hold a daylong “child advisory” event, which will bring together Kids DIY
Media partners and child creators to discuss the implications of our indings, and
establish a series of next steps and priority areas.
he sites covered a broad range of media, from writing and art to game-making
and science. A few examples are Scratch.mit.edu, storybird.com, youtube.com, diy.
org, roblox.com, gamestarmechanic.com, and kids.tate.org.uk.
Deborah A. Fields, Temporary Assistant Professor, Instructional Technologies and
Learning Sciences, Utah State University, USA, deborah.fields@usu.edu
Sara M. Grimes, Associate Professor, Faculty of Information, University of Toronto,
Canada, sara.grimes@utoronto.ca
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Pockets of Freedom, but Mostly Constraints
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14
Peer Teaching and Learning
A Case of Two Five-year-olds as Minecraft Creators1
Sara Sintonen, Maj-Britt Kentz & Lasse Lipponen
inecrat is a highly interesting form of the digital culture of our
time. Oakley (2014) speaks of Minecrat as a sandbox, because just
like in a sandbox, Minecrat players create the game world themselves
while building content in it (Banks & Potts, 2010). While the Minecrat
world could be researched from the perspective of play, we became more
interested in looking at it as a pedagogical phenomenon and creative
production that encourages peer learning from the perspectives of both
learning and teaching. In our research on Minecrat creation by two
Finnish ive-year-old children, our attention was strongly drawn to their
spontaneous pedagogical activities: peer learning and teaching. We were
amazed at how two ive-year-olds were capable of acting in a self-directed
manner, teaching each other, working together to solve rather complex
challenges arising from the Minecrat environment, and building a cohesive and intensive session in collaboration.
M
Minecrat as a digital environment for children
Minecrat is oten characterized as a (game) world without any rules,
storyline, or predeined objectives (Bebbington & Vellino, 2015). Its
desktop version (PC/Mac) has ive game modes, each of which has
clearly deined rules. Creative mode, the freest of the ive, allows for
endless construction, collection and peaceful living. In contrast, in the
Survival, Adventure, Spectator and Hardcore modes, the boundary
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Sintonen, Sara, Kentz, Maj-Britt & Lipponen, Lasse (2017). Peer Teaching and
Learning. A Case of Two Five-year-olds as
Minecrat Creators in Ilana Eleá and Lothar
Mikos (Eds.) Young & Creative. Digital Technologies Empowering Children in Everyday
Life. Gothenburg: Nordicom
Sara Sintonen, Maj-Britt Kentz & Lasse Lipponen
conditions are clearly deined (Koutsouras et al. 2016). Weapons, potions, protective gear, and traps used in diferent modes also have clear
instructions: what kinds and amounts of construction or raw materials
are needed, and the order in which the construction and preparation
can progress. Following the guidelines also requires precise knowledge
of the location of the necessary materials, as well as the courage and
skill to acquire them. For example, before you can prepare a healing
potion (vs a harming one), you will irst need to crat a brewing stand,
a cauldron and a glass bottle (Milton, 2014).
Playing Minecrat on a server brings a collaborative multiplayer dimension to the game (PVP, person versus person). Any user can choose
to set up a Minecrat server and, as administrator, deine the rules on
their platform (for example, they might choose to authorize or disable
the option for live team playing), which further elicits the players’ creativity. he multiplayer genre is closely linked to sharing game sessions
and following them on YouTube channels. YouTube ofers Minecrat
enthusiasts game instructions and solutions for survival, and also new
ideas for creating and building their own game culture. he vocabulary
used in YouTube’s Minecrat videos relects the fact that Finnish players
generally prefer to use English as their interface language.
he transparency and lexibility of Minecrat has prompted players
to create complex worlds, amazing works of art, and performances
(Duncan, 2011). Minecrat is currently one of the bestselling PC games
in the world, making it a point of interest for many researchers from different academic disciplines. Globally, it is also one of the digital brands
best known to pre-school and primary-school aged children (Chaudron et al. 2015; Noppari, 2014). In the context of learning, Minecrat
and its environment have been studied in terms of the development
of teenagers’ information literacy (Bebbington & Vellino, 2015), as a
learning environment that relects and supports high school students’
creativity in literature studies (Cipollone et al. 2014) and inspires the
production of art, develops students’ collaborative planning (Wu, 2016),
and promotes social learning (Banks & Potts, 2010). hese researchers
seem to have focused on looking at Minecrat as a tool for achieving a
certain learning objective.
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Peer Teaching and Learning
Collaborative activities in digital environments and the
basis for peer learning
Many environments of digital culture are community platforms.
Bruns (2008), for example, speaks of produsage, whereby an open
and wide-ranging community of participants is an active producer of
content that is continually modiiable and developable. Such environments promote peer learning: Minecrat encourages users to be creative
and supportive of each other, and in doing so, support peer learning
(Wernholm & Vigmo, 2015).
Peer learning is typically deined as an event in which the learner
serves as a teacher to his or her peers and the community works together to solve a problem (Fawcett & Garton, 2005). We approach peer
learning through a socio-cultural frame of reference with Vygotskian
roots (Greeno, 1997; Säljö, 2001). From this perspective, learning irst
and foremost entails an involvement in activities by a set community.
Knowhow is seen as communal, a practical skill of doing and acting.
In participation, knowledge is created from and mediated through the
variety of perspectives of the participating actors. People learn to use
the tools of thought and action, and especially those of the communities they take part in. In addition to participation, the socio-cultural
learning framework emphasizes the importance of tools in human
action (Säljö, 2001; Vygotsky, 1978). Peer learning is deined here as
learning from others, including the teaching aspect, on the one hand,
and communal learning as a mutual, shared process on the other.
In young children, peer learning is oten studied from the perspective of what children learn about themselves and their own abilities in
relationships with others of their own age, with the peer group acting
as a model for thinking and behaviour (Bandura, 1997). In light of this
material, peer learning is based on teaching each other. It is manifested
as mutual negotiation and the search for a solution born out of the
creative process.
From peer learning to mutual knowledge-building
he focus of this article is an analysis of the shared Minecrat creation
activity of two ive-year olds from the perspective of peer teaching
and learning. Our qualitative data consist of a video recorded session
(22:13 minutes), which represents peer learning and teaching, as well
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Sara Sintonen, Maj-Britt Kentz & Lasse Lipponen
as the players’ Minecrat competence and ability to perform sovereign
actions in digital environments. Our data show children who are competent in their own digital cultures communicate in a way that can be
characterized as an expert interaction, through teaching and learning.
he video data were collected in an environment that was natural for
both ive-year-olds in the study. Both players were in their own homes,
using laptops and communicating at the same time via FaceTime on
mobile devices (iPads). hey themselves had come up with the idea
for this technological setting for sharing their game.
Image 1. One of the players showing
the screen to the other player
through FaceTime.
We will now consider the ive-year-olds’ digital creation in Minecrat
through ive episodes. hese episodes represent the nature and quality
of the intersubjective, shared idea and understanding the players have,
and show how they engage in a participatory and collaborative social
teaching and learning context.
he game session (22:13 min) is divided into two clear subsets. Most
of the irst ten minutes (9:26 min) covers the use of the EMC (energy
matter currency) generator. he session continues with a focus on building a versatile and powerful tool for Minecrat (the morning star). It is
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Peer Teaching and Learning
worth noting that the players, Topi and Mikael, do not see each other
playing in real time, except when their communication is mediated via
the iPad. In other words, the two create in ‘diferent worlds’, and do not
play side by side during this session.
During the irst part of the session, Topi’s primary role is to advise
and explain the EMC generator’s operating principles and beneits, as
the tool is new to Mikael. he two friends’ comments are distributed
fairly evenly, with Mikael slightly more active (61 comments) in his
role as the primary learner than Topi (53). Since the boys are working
separately, Topi (for whom the EMC generator is already a familiar
tool), has the ability to do other things on his own, like looking ater his
bee farm. hus, in addition to explaining the use of the EMC generator
and advising, explaining, and justifying his choices, Topi himself has
an opportunity to experiment and learn new things.
In this irst part of the session, the cooperation between the boys
starts easily and naturally. hey work on the EMC challenge for ten
minutes, but to begin, only one direct question from Mikael and one
straight answer from Topi are required. he rest of Topi’s EMC responses
(15) are explanatory, specifying and justifying, and also include questions guiding Mikael’s progress and comments supporting his choices,
such as ‘Yes’, ‘So’ and ‘Okay’ (10).
Mikael’s role as a learner manifests itself in the discussion in a variety of ways. He explains his actions quite richly from a pedagogical
point of view. He asks Topi for clariication six (6) times, expresses
his understanding of the instructions/advice (3) and his acceptance
of and compliance with the instructions given (7), and slows Topi’s
pace down once (1). Mikael justiies his solutions and choices relating to the construction phases (8), and explains and shares his
achievements (13).
Although Mikael is immersed in his work, he follows (5) what Topi
is doing the whole time and comments briely, for instance saying
‘Okay’ and ‘Yep’. In Mikael’s case, our attention turned to his relective
speech, which also acts to guide his own actions when faced with new
things (12). he role of learner prompts Mikael (4) to also thank Topi
and express his enjoyment: ‘hanks for telling me that, that it’s this I
mean, it’s so cool that I can copy these now…’
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Sara Sintonen, Maj-Britt Kentz & Lasse Lipponen
he second half of the session also starts very spontaneously. Mikael has just managed to get the EMC generator to work and grasped
the principle of ‘duplication’, although complete success still requires
some ine tuning, and at the same time the phone rings at Topi’s and
he leaves to report this to an adult. Mikael continues ine tuning and
Topi returns. Topi begins to persuade Mikael to pursue new challenges,
asking ‘You know Morning Star?’.
he second half of the session, therefore, focuses on the construction of the Morning Star. As the tool is new to Topi as well, he starts
learning by doing, meaning that he begins to build while explaining the
building process at the same time. he work becomes less synchronized,
as Mikael was not prepared for the change, and it takes him a while to
gather the necessary materials and working space. During the session
Topi himself becomes a learner, trying his best to igure out how the
morning star can be constructed. he players gather dark matter, duplicate it their own, and take turns counting how many stacks (=64) of
red matter the EMC generator has produced.2 As the gaming session
progresses, the vocabulary they use becomes more professional and
incorporates more English terms mixed into the Finnish.
Although the setup of the activity changes (both players are now
learners), the narration shows that the action is intentional. Morning
Star is a common goal that is achieved through peer learning in a
nuanced way, and through deeper mutual intersubjectivity. Intersubjectivity requires initiative, listening to the other and understanding
perspective, as well as linguistic exchange. According to Kronqvist
(2004), these are obligatory conditions for successful collaboration.
In the inal stage, when the players are close to the target, they are creating the same, new thing in the game almost synchronously. At this
point, the negotiations, questions and mutual teaching have turned
into talking out loud to themselves (Episode 1). Finally, the players
manage to reach their goal:
Topi’s parent: Five minutes. Boys, now, ive minutes.
Mikael: Okay, that’s ine.
Topi: Okay.
Mikael: Now, yes, I have mor[e]…I just take a little like this…
Topi: Dark matter, picks, dark, no but… what am I doing…
Mikael: Dark matter, picks [pickaxes] over there. Okay, I put some
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Peer Teaching and Learning
of those here, like this, this, this, this, this. Now we do this, like this.
Now, yes, now. Now a lot of these come... really… I take only a little
of this dark matter…
Topi: Guess what I have?
Mikael: What?
Topi: Morning Star.
Mikael: Yes.
In the second period of the gaming session, Mikael starts acting more
independently, and tries diferent solutions on his own. he players
might work on their own for longer periods of time, but when one of
them needs help, both are immediately drawn back into the joint action
and dialogue (Episode 2):
Topi: I really need to make a chest.
Mikael: Like so, so, so… [mumbles]
Topi: I have an invi… [inventory] full of red matter.
Mikael: Okay. I’ll just put some things in there. What…okay, one
can’t do that. So, can one put any of these in? No, only Silver Ingots…
[explains his own testing]
Topi: Okay, now I have also Dark Matter in here, good.
Mikael: I just take some of these…Silver Ingots…not really, let’s
take some of these…
Topi: Dark Matter
Mikael: So, let’s check one of those over here…
Topi: I did…[mumbles]
Mikael: [mumbles] h-th-this is way, not that way, yes, now!
Topi: Okay!
Mikael: [lits his arm] Mum, come and see! [mumbles] a couple of
stacks of these…
Mikael: Here is my red matter! hen one creates some more…let’s
take some more
Topi: How much red matter do you have?
Mikael: Wait, see, let me tell you soon, as soon as I’ve put these
emeralds in here…
Mikael: Forty-two.
Peer learning emerges in the material as negotiation and guidance,
but also includes commanding the other and relecting out loud. It is
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Sara Sintonen, Maj-Britt Kentz & Lasse Lipponen
clearly not simply a discussion as an exchange of ideas; a discussion
during a Minecrat gaming session manifests itself as social, shared
thinking (Mercer, 1996) that also progresses synchronously at the
level of the players’ activities. Mercer noted that not all speech helps
learning, but found exploratory talk – characterized by collaborative
relection, problem analysis, comparison of explanations and making
joint decisions – particularly important for community and peer learning. his feature of peer learning (exploratory talk, shared thinking)
are visible in Episode 3:
Topi: he other option is, that you write in there…wait a minute.
Write. Wait a minute. Can you write the same thing, the one, how
did you get the EM…EMC machine?
Mikael: Hmm…?
Topi: hat E N E R G Y.
Mikael: Yes?
Topi: Write it down.
Although in our material peer learning is based primarily in linguistic activities, the gaming sessions also emphasized the importance of
sharing the game view (Episode 4). Sharing the representation and
looking at it together gives the boys an opportunity to point at this
representation. his makes it possible for them to ‘see’ what the other
is thinking. In this way, tools serve primarily to facilitate interaction
and participation between people. Minecrat is a framework for the
action, but does not limit or determine it:
Mikael: [shows his screen via FaceTime to Topi]
Topi: See there, at the top, a chest.
Mikael: Oh, those?
Topi: hat’s the place for those, for those chips
Mikael: Oh, you mean those, with that kind of, chest, with a lot of
colours, you mean?
Topi: Y-yes
Mikael: Yes, yes, I’ll take them both, because I’m not sure which
one it is.
Topi: Mmm, oh, are there two of those?
Mikael: Yes.
Topi: ...equal?
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Peer Teaching and Learning
Mikael: Yes.
Topi: Okay, then it’s right.
he learners have equal decision-making power (because both are
building on their own, but with the same content), and mutual respect.
his is in line with Slavin’s (2014) view of peer learning as being about
a common will to succeed, rather than competition. Slavin emphasizes the role of a shared, clearly deined objective in a successful peer
learning experience. In his view, the objective and the action have to
be suiciently challenging, with none of the parties acting as a helper
to another, but everyone is supposed to learn. he situation must be
enjoyable, as peer learning is strongly social and communal in nature.
his is illustrated in Episode 5:
Topi: You know morning star?
Mikael: Oh, what?
Topi: You know morning star?
Mikael: Yes, I... [is listening while working]
Topi: Have you ever managed to make one?
Mikael: No, what’s morning star? [stops for listening]
Topi: Well, it’s like, if you right-click [on the mouse], it will attract
a lot of that kind of cobblestone, and will leave the ores in there.
Mikael: Okay, how you do it, I want to know?
Topi: You need to put, wait a minute, I need to check that too. Blah.
You need to have a lot of red matter.
Mikael: Okay, I’m already copying them here, it works!
Topi: Okay, let me see.
In the above exchange, one player probes the other for his knowledge of
Minecrat’s morning star tool. As the dialogue progresses, it is discovered that the asker himself is slightly unsure how to use it. However, the
players solve this together. Ogden (2000) brings up an interesting point
concerning collaboration and peer learning: making sense together.
He argues that, in addition to a common language, the parties need to
have an understanding of others and the environment. his includes
mutual respect (De Lisi, 2002). Shared Minecrat creating sessions, like
the episodes presented here, are possible only when both parties are
familiar with each other’s — partly unspoken — intentions, goals and
beliefs, in addition to a very sophisticated communication system (ibid.,
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Sara Sintonen, Maj-Britt Kentz & Lasse Lipponen
215). In this case, this includes knowledge of the game’s terminology.
Interestingly, the players have taught themselves the sophisticated
communication system without adult guidance.
Discussion
Minecrat is an environment where young people can create, play and
communicate with others. In this case, two ive-year-olds were on their
way to doing this, for instance, collaborating as multiplayers in a local
setting. hey were creating and producing their own digital culture,
whereby ‘communities entice learning by initiating a give and take
dialogue between individuals across all backgrounds and skill levels’
(Kuznetsov & Paulos, 2010:7). Our study shows that also these very
young children are comfortable in a digital environment, exploiting it in
highly diverse and rapidly developing ways. he players’ collaboration
conveys both insensitivity and sensitivity in cheering, encouraging and
helping the other player. As well as skills related to playing Minecrat
(e.g. IT skills, English, mathematics), the players learn social skills and
how to settle conlicts. hey also develop new rules for the game, as a
kind of in-game play, expressing their creativity. Game discourse is a
dialogue between two amateur experts, whereby ideas, experiences and
observations related to other digital cultures are also shared. Further,
our own analysis of the players’ creative and productive actions shows
that digital tools are not an ‘addition’ to their activity, but rather an integral part of it. hese tools mediate player communication and actions.
In this case, the ive-year-olds’ gaming knowhow and the skills and
knowledge associated with the game are a product of participation and
playing together, rather than a prerequisite for participation. his is an
interesting inding: these ive-year-olds are capable of intersubjective
digital production and scafolding. It is particularly remarkable that
the two players spontaneously and continuously created new tools
for shared action: diferent concepts and stories related to the action.
Sara Sintonen, Associate Professor, Senior Lecturer, Department Faculty of Educational Sciences, University University of Helsinki, Finland, sara.sintonen@helsinki.fi
Maj-Britt Kentz, Ph.D. student, School of Educational Sciences and Psychology/
Philosophical Faculty, University of Eastern Finland, majbritt.kentz@gmail.com
Lasse Lipponen, Professor of Early Childhood Education, Faculty of Educational
Sciences, University of Helsinki, Finland, lasse.lipponen@helsinki.fi
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Peer Teaching and Learning
hus, they deliberately sought to change their social practices and their
material, instrumental world. At the same time, they moved towards
a common understanding of which resources are available, where to
ind them, and how they are used and reproduced.
Notes
1.
2.
his article has been modiied by the writers of the original Finnish version. It will
be published in Kasvatus & Aika, 2017, http://www.kasvatus-ja-aika.i/site/
Dark matter is an extremely powerful material for buildings in Minecrat that is
undestructible. Red matter is an item that can be used to upgrade other items.
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15
“Children Love to be Hilariously
Silly and Dead-Serious Alike”
Interview with Margret Albers
M
argret Albers has been managing director of the Children’s Media
Foundation GOLDENER SPATZ and director of the German Children’s
Media Film Festival of the same name from 1996 to 2016. She developed the
festival from a film and television only festival to a media festival where children are engaged at several levels. In addition, she is the board spokeswoman
of the Association for the Promotion of German Children’s Film. Together with
Thomas Hailer and Greg Childs, she is responsible for the direction of studies at
the Academy for Children’s Media. She is also project director for the initiatives
Outstanding Films for Children, and Television from Thuringia1. Albers was
recently nominated president of the European Children’s Film Association.
You have been the managing director of the German Children’s
Media Festival “Goldener Spatz” from 1996 to 2016. How did you
come up with the idea to introduce the Spixel-Award for television
productions of children into the festival in 2005?
From the mid-90s on, we had an increasing amount of submissions
from projects and institutions which enable or support children to
produce ilms. Some of these ilms were of remarkable quality. Since
the festival’s competition is aimed at professionals, we started to present a selection of ilms in a side-programme called “Up- and Coming
Talents” in 1999. Facing an increase of productions made by children
that have been aired either on Public Access or Regional TV, on the
long term this non-competitive slot turned out to be unsatisfactory.
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“Children Love to be Hilariously Silly
and Dead-Serious Alike”. Interview with
Margret Albers in Ilana Eleá and Lothar
Mikos (Eds.) Young & Creative. Digital Technologies Empowering Children in Everyday
Life. Gothenburg: Nordicom
Interview with Margret Albers
herefore we teamed up with the huringian Media Authority, which
runs the “Public Access Children’s Channel PiXEL” in Gera and started
with this competition for TV productions made by children.
Image 1. SPiXEL- Logo
Source: Deutsche Kindermedienstitung
GOLDENER SPATZ
What is the main idea behind the Spixel Award and which age
groups do you address?
here are diferent awards that have their focus on the media-educational process, which leads to an audio-visual product. In the case of
the Spixel the focus lies on the production itself. To submit a ilm it has
to be aired on TV or (since 2016) been made available on the internet.
he aim is to support and award high quality and experimental TV
productions made by children, age 8 to 14.
What kind of challenges did you have to manage with the Spixel
Award in the beginning?
We had to make it known at the right places, but that actually happened
quite fast because the approach of the competition is quite unique. In the
irst year, the age group was “up to 12 years”. his turned out to be diicult.
One of the main criteria of the award is that the ilms have to express the
children’s viewpoint. Especially in case of productions made by young
children, the viewpoint of the educators became very evident. herefore
we changed the age range into 8 – 14, which actually works quite well.
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“Children Love to be Hilariously Silly and Dead-Serious Alike”
Why do you diferentiate between animation productions, feature
film productions, and information or documentary productions?
To display the variety of TV productions made by children. Most of the
TV formats made by children can be diferentiated in these categories,
as animation, feature ilm and information/documentary.
How would you describe the creative process behind
the productions?
As diferent as the productions are, [so are] the creative processes behind them: Sometimes friends join in their spare time together to be
creative. In some cases, children who have never met before take part
in a media summer camp, develop an idea, and make a ilm. “Making a
ilm or magazine” could also be part of a project week at school. here
are also children who do every step of ilmmaking on their own, but
that is rather an exception, like Midas Kempke’s 7-minute stop motion
“Harry Potter and the Lego-Philosopher’s Stone – Part III”, which won
the animation Spixel in 2013.
he Toolbox available for children to display their creativity has
grown larger and more technical. Most of them have at least access to
small high resolution cameras or smartphones and you don’t have to
pay a fortune for editing-sotware anymore. Nonetheless, the production of a TV programme, either as a magazine or short ilm, is a crat.
While developing and inally producing a programme, children igure
out that it is more diicult than it seems on irst sight. Skilful media
educators who are not eager to realise their own visions are crucial
at this point – they give advice and support and don’t intend to lead
throughout the process.
Usually children develop basic skills quickly and react to production
restrictions (e.g. huge explosions) with new, more manageable ideas.
Being part of a ilm or TV project is for the participants being part of
a creative process and in most cases a positive teamwork experience.
The Spixel competition has now been running for 12 years. Can you
summarize some tendencies in the production of the participating
children regarding style, topics, professional role models for the
children, passion for television or….?
187
Interview with Margret Albers
Image 2. Happy Award Winners & Jury 2016. Source: Deutsche Kindermedienstitung GOLDENER SPATZ
he popularity of crime/detective stories is unbroken since we started
with the Spixel Award. Also, picking up topics that are relevant while
growing up, like friendship and irst love. In recent years, we had an
increasing number of productions dealing with mobbing in its analogue
and digital variations.
hroughout all categories, children display a strong sense of justice
and [show] that they care about the environment and the fate of other
people. In magazine formats, grown-up interview partners oten have
a hard time to deal with the frankness of the interviewing children.
Regularly the diference of what grown-ups say and what they do is
unmasked. In this context, the young TV makers also like to provoke.
In the street-interview format “What makes you ask these stupid
questions?” (2010) passers-by in Hamburg are asked questions like
“Who is lazier – we schoolkids or unemployed people?” he answers
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“Children Love to be Hilariously Silly and Dead-Serious Alike”
are revealing. Also, in terms of style children display a sometimes very
quirky sense of humour, like in the stop motion production “Who let the
plopp out” (2014): Rapper “Bottle” (actually a beer bottle) is abducted
by two Ninja-Pine-Cones.
Over the years there have been a lot of parodies of popular TV-formats, especially casting shows, which makes obvious how well known
and liked TV-formats are.
Could you please summarize your experiences with the award in
term of children’s creativity?
he use of audiovisual means to display their creativity becomes more
and more natural for children. hey are quick adaptors of formats and
like to play with them. hey love to be hilariously silly and dead-serious
alike. Unfortunately neither media nor education acknowledge, value
or support this immense creative potential as they should.
Note
1.
http://www.kids-regio.org/speakers/albers-margret/
189
Training Teachers to
Spark Young People’s Creativity
he educational setting is a place where creative expressions
can stimulate learning and facilitate the appropriation of
new knowledge. In this section, the reader will ind examples of how this can be done through diferent teaching
methods.
16
AMORES
Discovering a Love for Literature Through
Digital Collaboration and Creativity
Geoff Walton, Mark Childs, Janet Hetherington & Gordana Jugo
What is AMORES and why was it necessary?
More than a ith of children and young people (23 per cent) rarely or
never read (GB: Department for Education, 2012) on their own time,
and nearly a ith (17 per cent) would be embarrassed (Clark, 2012) if
their friends saw them reading. Many school children lack knowledge
of their own national or broader European literature. Teachers ind it
challenging to interest children (especially boys) in reading literature,
but agree that the use of ICT could help raise the level of student interest.
To implement ICT in literacy teaching, we argue that teachers need not
only expertise in using ICT but also a new teaching methodology in
order to ind efective ways of using ICT to engage pupils in reading and
writing through the creation of e-artefacts. What we mean by e-artefact
is anything that can be communicated digitally, such as a photograph,
video, digital comic strip, blog entry, tweet or Facebook post, and that
is based in some way on a story that the schoolchildren are reading.
What we mean by literature is more contested, but keeping in mind
the rationale that reading is of value in a person’s development – for
example because it requires extended focus and concentration – and
that storytelling is imperative, while wanting to be lexible concerning
what was important to the children, we regarded extended narratives
in any format as literature. Hence, from the examples given by the
193
Walton, Geof, Childs, Mark; Hetherington,
Janet & Jugo, Gordana (2017). AMORES.
Discovering a Love for Literature Through
Digital Collaboration and Creativity in
Ilana Eleá and Lothar Mikos (Eds.) Young &
Creative. Digital Technologies Empowering
Children in Everyday Life. Gothenburg:
Nordicom
Geoff Walton, Mark Childs, Janet Hetherington & Gordana Jugo
children themselves, faniction, autobiographies and graphic novels
were included, while magazines, websites and computer code were
excluded. AMORES was designed to address the issue of children’s
disengagement with literature through a new teaching methodology
of interactivity and collaboration using ICT and the pupils’ creativity,
which requires teachers to become more digitally literate and use these
new capabilities in their teaching in the classroom.
Image 1. AMORES logo competition
winner designed by Rafaela Familia
from 1st Model Experimental Primary School of Rhodes, Greece
How did we do this?
he project used an approach called Participatory Research in Action,
or PRA (Fetterman, Katarian & Wandersman, 1996). his treats teachers as experts, placing them at the heart of the process, empowering
them to express their opinions and identify what they need to know
to become digitally literate. It is also based on the idea that learners
construct meaning through the act of design and collaborative learning,
whereby meaning is constructed jointly by a community (social constructivism). Teachers are excellently positioned to be actively engaged
in the research process, and are able to introduce young people to this
method. Using this technique and working with children and young
people to create e-artefacts, the researchers and the participants learn
from each other as equals (Tavares, Hepworth & De Souza Costa, 2011).
Ultimately, this not only enables teachers to deliver the research aims
194
AMORES
AMORES, a two-year European Union-funded project under the
Comenius Multilateral strand of the Lifelong Learning Programme,
is a collaboration between schools from Croatia, Denmark, Poland,
Sweden and the UK, led by CARNet (Croatia) and three UK higher
education institutions (Coventry, Northumbria and Stafordshire
Universities). It secured €299,500 and ran until the end of November 2015. All the resources mentioned here are freely available for
download via the AMORES website: www.amores-project.eu.
but also enables each teacher to incorporate his or her own personal
goals into the process.
PRA is seen as favoured because it takes into consideration local
knowledge and experience, and is therefore arguably more practical
and thus indings may be more deliverable in the future (Reason &
Bradbury, 2011). hus, ownership of the AMORES process by teachers
is more secure because they are involved in both the research itself
and the outcomes of the project. his ultimately leads to improved
research results and an enhancement of teachers’ professional practice
in digital literacy.
The teachers’ face-to-face workshops
We held a teacher workshop in Stoke on Trent in March 2014, led by
the UK partners (Northumbria, Stafordshire and Coventry Universities). his not only established the PRA community of practice but also
informed the creation of a six-week online course (May-June 2014) as
well as a second workshop, held in Stoke in March 2015.
The benefit of engaging teachers as co-researchers is twofold:
not only do we gain their expertise and knowledge regarding using
technology in this context; they also get the experience of embedding
technology as part of their teaching practices, and are able to use the
research process to procure time for learning and to relect upon their
teaching experiences.
In developing the PRA methods, speciic issues which may impact
upon the teachers’ involvement were also taken into account. Prior to
the workshop a questionnaire had been disseminated to gather data
on current practice and user needs. he questionnaire’s indings were
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Geoff Walton, Mark Childs, Janet Hetherington & Gordana Jugo
Image 2. Teacher workshop, Stoke
on Trent, UK, March 2013
summarized to provide an introduction to all the schools involved, and
to inform the selection of which technologies to suggest to the teachers
for use. hese activities were included to enable participants to feel
more comfortable in working with each other, and to demonstrate that
their views and experiences were highly valued. his approach helps
participants feel more able to inluence decision-making, even though
the project objectives had been established in the EU bid beforehand.
his approach ensured that the group felt an ownership of the objectives.
he irst workshop comprised three sections, over three days (a
second workshop was held in March 2015). Two teachers from each
participating country (except Poland, from which one teacher attended) as well as representatives from the lead partner (CARNet Croatia)
and the quality assurance organization 36.6 from Poland, participated.
Section 1: Each teacher was encouraged to think about the wider school
environment and consider how technology was being used within the
home, in out-of-school settings (including libraries), and in the home
environment.
Teachers talked about and shared their experiences of using technology, and relected upon their learning needs.
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Section 2: he research team presented potential ways in which technology could be used to help support literacy work, and worked with
the teachers to relect on and develop these uses.
Section 3: he teachers discussed how their learning and the relationships that had developed over the course of the workshop could inluence the structure of the next part of the project, and began drawing
up initial plans to implement this. hrough this process they developed
content for the online teacher-training plan.
Mapping and asset-building
While we used a number of interactive techniques in the workshop,
here we describe one in particular. Participants were asked to work in
small groups to develop images of a typical learner in their education
system. he teachers were placed in groups of two and given a large
piece of lipchart paper. One drew around the other to create a representation of a learner. hey then drew a line down the middle of the
outline drawing and began discussing the typical characteristics of their
learners, listing these in the drawing. he advantage of this task was
that participants were able to start identifying with the similarities and
diferences between education systems, societies, and the experiences
of the young people. It also helped them relect upon their assumptions
and knowledge concerning the lives of their learners. It prompted
discussion concerning how to best work with learners, and indicated
points of similarity that could be exploited to support communication
between learners from the diferent schools.
Online course
Based on the outcomes of the workshop, a plan was devised for the
teachers’ online training course to further enhance and embed their
digital literacy capabilities. In brief, the online course lasted approximately six weeks and consisted of the following activities: creating
videos and comic strips, and learning about games-based learning.
he platform used was Edmodo (a secure social medium speciically
designed for schools), and using videoconferencing for collaborative
learning. he course, delivered via Moodle, can be found at http://www.
amores-project.eu/results.html .
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Teachers engaged strongly with the video creation section of
the online course as well as the comic strips, and the evidence for
this comes through very clearly in the inal artefacts created by the
students. However, they were less engaged with the games-based
learning and the Edmodo platform itself. Edmodo was used more as
a repository for students’ e-artefacts than for genuine discussion and
collaboration between students. Our teacher colleagues were generally
positive regarding the online course, but one teacher mentioned that
it may have been better to “use the online module as a test for the
ideas in the implementation phase, pick a speciic book and try to
create some lesson plans so we can compare approaches in diferent
school systems. hat way everyone could see how it could actually be
incorporated into reading in the classroom; [in other words,] building
the ship while sailing.”
In parallel with the online course, the project team drew up a Technology Selections Report based on what the teachers felt they needed in
order to enhance their digital literacy capabilities. his report used the
SECTIONS model (Students [i.e. users], Ease of use, Costs, Teaching &
learning, Interactivity, Organization, Novelty and Speed) developed by
Bates and Poole (2010), which is a framework for evaluating technology
and can be found at http://www.amores-project.eu/results.html .
Drating and piloting a new teaching methodology
he teachers involved in the project and the research team jointly drated an innovative teaching methodology – the most important result of
the AMORES project – which promotes student creativity, interaction
and engagement with literature. As opposed to simply reading a book
and writing a book report, the methodology includes the following
steps: reading the book, creating e-artefacts based on the book, sharing
these e-artefacts with peers via social networks and videoconference,
and inally relecting on the process.
he literature review, accessible at http://www.amores-project.eu/
d1-1-download indicates that creating artefacts is a learning strategy
that involves the highest-order learning skills, found at the top of the
revised Bloom’s taxonomy (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2011). he pedagogical theory that best describes learning by creating is that of Papert’s
idea of constructionism. his emphasizes not only the learning that is
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triggered by the constructivist approach of activity-based learning (or
learning by doing), but also the importance of the learning that occurs
as a result of discussion leading to shared meanings.
he recommended instructional strategy is therefore collaborative
creation, which is underpinned by the theory of social constructivism.
In brief, collaborative learning is described within social constructivism
as a means by which meaning is constructed jointly by a community
(Conole, Littlejohn, Falconer & Jefery, 2005). Lewis, Pea and Rosen
(2010) summarize social constructivism as the process in which “by
together questioning texts and situations, conceptualizing problems,
designing solutions, building artifacts, redesigning, re-conceptualizing
and reinterpreting, people generate forms of public knowledge that in
turn provide conceptual and relational support for further interaction
and learning”. Lewis, Pea and Rosen (2010) remark that “students engage
in deep learning when they research, design and construct an artifact
or model as a representation of their knowledge” and that “constructionism links personal and social inluences on learning because the
artefact produced is an output of the interaction of personal and social
knowledge construction that needs to be meaningful and made public”.
he model for this online collaboration was Dahlsveen’s storytelling
arc (Tilkin, Paulus, Biesen, & Land, 2011), which was reinterpreted by
the authors as a cycle.1 When viewed as a cyclical process, the storytelling arc closely resembles Kolb’s experiential learning cycle2 (Kolb,
Rubin & Osland, 1991). he act of telling the story is motivational for
the creation of the story, and feedback from audiences promotes further
motivation for creating more stories.
hese two forms of interaction resulted in marked diferences in the
success of their implementation. he use of the social media platform
was used as a collaborative tool only in its later stages, and only to the
extent that students commented on and “liked” particular artefacts.
Reasons for this included unfamiliarity with using social media for
learning, and diiculty organizing content within the platform, resulting
in its being used purely as a content repository.
he videoconferencing was highly efective, however, commonly on
the second attempt. Initial attempts displayed the usual initial barriers
to interaction through the medium (indicating that the initial training
course had not been successful in relaying how to circumvent these
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barriers). Students displayed the storytelling and audience relationships
indicated by the Dahlsveen model, with no discernible impairment due
to the distanced mode. Unanticipated barriers involved the small age
diference between participants (small to us but large to the students)
and students’ self-consciousness over a (misplaced) perception of poor
language ability.
he conclusions from this interaction are that rehearsal, planning
and playfulness will help students develop the conidence to present and
respond in videoconferencing activities. Modelling learning activities
online will help teachers comprehend how social media can be used
to facilitate the sharing and co-creation of content.
Students need time to relect on the creation of e-artefacts. Relection as a whole class exercise, in which students can see each other’s
work, can also be motivational and is the point at which learning about
the meaning and content of the literature can be investigated in more
depth. In fact, we would argue that it is because the creation of artefacts
requires relection that the AMORES methodology is such an efective
learning process. In this regard, videos (in which students appear) seem
to work best as shared classroom activities as students ind them more
personally engaging and because they take a longer time to create, thus
extending the period for which a text is investigated and resulting in
deeper relection.
Bilateral videoconferences
A number of bilateral videoconferences (VCs) took place; here we describe a typical event. Having read the book Mio my Son (original title
Mio min Mio, by children’s author Astrid Lindgren), Swedish students
presented the e-artefacts they had created to Croatian students. he 28
students on the Swedish side, and the 16 Croatian students with their
teachers, met online in May 2015. he Swedish students presented
their e-artefacts about Swedish author Astrid Lindgren and her story.
hey had made ilms in iMovie in which they presented parts of the
book (iMovie e-artefacts were shared through Edmodo). he ilms
were sent to Croatia in advance, so that the Croatian students could
prepare questions to ask during the VC. he Croatian students also
voted for the best e-artefact.
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Image 3. Danish students visit
Poland
World Book Day
All ive schools taking part in the project held a joint VC on World
Book Day, 23 April 2015. Around 60 students and ten teachers from
Denmark, Croatia, Poland, Sweden and the UK shared their experiences in the project up to that point, and talked about some of the
books they had read.
E-artefacts competition
We launched a competition open to all schoolchildren in the EU.
Contestants were invited to enter their e-artefact in the form of a video
or digital comic strip. Five judges, including Dr Jane Secker (Chair of
ILG), chose the winning entry, which was announced in August 2015.
he winning videos and comic strips are displayed on our website, and
the prize was a visit to Dubrovnik, Croatia.
Research results
Students were surveyed through a number of mechanisms suggested
by the central research team of the project, but individual schools were
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Geoff Walton, Mark Childs, Janet Hetherington & Gordana Jugo
Image 4. An example of an e-artefact
from a cartoon generator
allowed to apply those they considered appropriate for their learners,
in keeping with the participative and egalitarian ethos of the project.
Where surveys were conducted, data were anonymized by allowing
the children to select a pseudonym for their responses. A master list of
pseudonyms and real names was kept by teachers on paper, and never
let the classroom. his meant that all electronic iles contained only
pseudonymized information.
In the UK we found that Diary of a Wimpy Kid is a very popular
book amongst ten-year-olds, and that the most popular author is David Walliams. From the data we have gathered since the new teaching
methodology was tried out, we know that our participant schoolchildren now get more from the stories they are reading; this is manifest
in a much greater depth of understanding for both plot and characters.
UK schoolchildren created video e-artefacts that explored the story in
their own words, which demonstrated a richness in comprehension
and knowledge of the text.
In Sweden, we found that the factors encouraging children to read
were numerous. We asked them what they had read most recently
(a mechanism for inding a randomly selected cross-section of their
reading material). Amongst the older children (14 and 15 years old)
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who responded, we found that the most recent literature they had read
fell into one of the following categories:
• A text set by the school (or a sequel to a set text), cited by half the
sample
• A ilm tie-in (either the novelization of ilm, or a book on which a
recently released ilm had been based)
• A book within the fantasy genre
• A biography of a sports star or heavy metal musician (i.e. Zlatan
Ibrahimović, AC/DC or Ozzy Osbourne)
• Faniction3
• Responses we did not count as literature (magazine, website or social
media)
he inclusion of soccer and heavy metal is a relection of the issues of
masculinity that surround the issue of reading. Many of the respondents
(particularly those who used male pseudonyms) reported that they did
not like reading, but still reported that they frequently read for fun.
his was interpreted by teachers as an aversion to boys categorizing
themselves as readers, even though they read, as they perceived this
as un-masculine. Boys with higher social status, and self-conidence,
had no qualms about self-identifying as readers. he interpretation of
the “sports or metal” inding is that some boys will admit to reading a
book if it is about what they perceive as an uncontestably male subject.
Amongst the younger readers (12 to 13 years old), the greatest
diference was that they read more texts that were not set by teachers:
only two of 42 children reported that the last book they had read was
a set text, compared with 44 of 88 of the older age group. his indicates
that at this age they are far more proactive in inding texts that interest
them. As with the older students, fantasy, ilm tie-ins and the “sports
or metal” biographies also featured, whereas diferences included the
presence of graphic novels and teen dramas. Responses regarding the
last item read that were not regarded as literature included newspapers,
subtitles in a movie, an inode (a text descriptor in Linux or Unix) and
the survey tool itself!
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Geoff Walton, Mark Childs, Janet Hetherington & Gordana Jugo
Impact of the project
The most important impact of the project is the success of the
AMORES teaching methodology, with 14 participating teachers and
around 400 students, which brought about a change in the teaching
of national literature by increasing students’ engagement with literary
works. his is clearly visible in the evaluation report, showing that
the use of the AMORES methodology contributes to greater student
engagement. he teachers who took part in the project were very
pleased with how the use of the methodology had an impact on their
classes. All participating teachers were willing to use the AMORES
methodology ater the pilot implementation and ater the end of the
project in their literature classes. Additionally, there have also been
examples of teachers using the AMORES methodology in other subjects, such as the social sciences.
There were several examples of establishing partnerships with
schools and other stakeholders outside the project. he project team
held a number of workshops for teachers on how to use the teaching
methodology and meetings with the aim of presenting the AMORES
methodology and facilitating its adoption by teachers, principals and
librarians. his has helped establish a network that will make it possible
to encourage more educators to use the AMORES methodology in their
classes. his network includes about 40 teachers from the workshops
who did not participate in the pilot implementation, and about 70 stakeholders who were present at meetings with members of the AMORES
team. he stakeholders included teachers and principals, school librarians, publishers, and a national volunteer reading programme.
Furthermore, at the project website there have been more than
380 registered downloads of the project outcomes, the most popular
of which is the AMORES Revised Methodology. he digital training
materials intended to help educators make the best use of the methodology in their classrooms have undergone several stages, and are
available at the project website: http://www.amores-project.eu/results .
hese training materials, available in English, Croatian, Danish, Polish
and Swedish, have been accessed about 800 times.
Teachers formed a community of practice, sharing ideas and examples of good practice as well as supporting each other in the implementation of the AMORES methodology. he communication went
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through diferent channels, including the AMORES teacher mailing
list, the AMORES Facebook community, and the AMORES teacher
closed group.
What was encouraging in terms of the AMORES methodology
extended beyond changes in the learning of literature. Although the
project promotes the reading of literature and digital literacy, it is in its
development of students’ personal sense of self-eicacy and co-oper-
Image 5. Poster of AMORES teaching
methodology
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Geoff Walton, Mark Childs, Janet Hetherington & Gordana Jugo
ation that it has its strongest transformative power. here were many
stories of students from all the countries who had not previously had
the opportunity to present their abilities inding a new presence in the
classroom as a result of making videos or comics, or participating in the
VC. Students also developed skills in co-operation and language ability.
hrough their videoconferencing, they acquired a greater knowledge of
other cultures and an appreciation of the strength of their own.
What the results also show, however, is an absence of impact on the
extent to which children report that they like reading. In the analysis
of the Swedish schoolchildren at the start of the project, the percentage of children who claimed a love for literature fell at a rate of 12
per cent per year. At the end of the project, the fall-of rate remained
unchanged. he sample is too small for any clear-cut declarations; and
of course, these are only the reported opinions, which are distorted by
the children’s self-perceptions and how they choose to be perceived.
Also, as seen above, reading is tied up with many gender-related anxieties concerning identity. Despite this, the children’s engagement with
literature within the classroom is heightened, and far more enjoyable.
Successful strategies for translating this to transform daily habits of
reading still need to be identiied.
Notes
1.
2.
he storytelling arc deines the beginning and the end of a story, it’s the process of
storytelling. Traditionally a story comes to an end, but in participatory environments it is possible to create an interactive way of storytelling in which the story
unfolds in a circle between storyteller and listeners who participate in the creation
of the story (Tilkin, Paulus, Biesen, & Land, 2011: 8-10)
Kolb’s learning cycle suggests that learners’ ideas are formed and reformed continuously through experience, and that they bring their own ideas and preconceptions
to difering levels of elaboration to the iterative learning process. In summary this
Geoff Walton, Senior Lecturer, Information and Communications, Department
Languages, information and Communications, University Manchester Metropolitan
University, UK, g.walton@mmu.ac.uk
Mark Childs, Afiliate Consultant, OCSLD, Oxford Brookes University, Honorary Visitor,
Coventry University, UK, mark@markchilds.org
Janet Hetherington, Senior Lecture, Creative Communities Unit, Staffordshire
University, UK, hetheringtonjanet@hotmail.com
Gordana Jugo, Head of Educational Technology, Education Support Department,
Croatian Academic and Research Network - CARNet, Croatia, gordana.jugo@carnet.hr
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3.
cycle involves: doing, relecting, processing, thinking and understanding, which
are governed by the learner’s needs and goals, and all elements are necessary for
learning to be achieved.
Faniction websites are communities of devotees of various books, comics, ilms
or games, who write their own short stories based on the characters. he teachers
reported that children read these because they were simpler (oten having been
written by other children), had an “underground” appeal, and were part of an
online community to which they belonged (Black, 2007).
References
Anderson, Lorin, & Krathwohl, David (eds.) (2001). A taxonomy for learning, teaching
and assessing: A revision of Bloom’s Taxonomy of educational objectives: Complete
edition. New York: Longman.
Bates, Tony & Poole, Gary (2010). Assessing technology: Using the SECTIONS model.
[Online] Available at http://wiki.ubc.ca/File:SECTIONS_Framework.pdf (Accessed
6th December 2016).
Black, Rebecca (2007). Faniction writing and the construction of space, E-Learning 4
(4) page 387.
Clark, Christina (2012). Children’s and young people’s reading today. Findings form the
National Trust’s 2011 literacy survey. National Literacy Trust. [Online] Available
at http://www.literacytrust.org.uk/research/nlt_research/p4s3 (Accessed 6th
December 2016).
Conole, Grainne; Littlejohn, Alison; Falconer, Isabel & Jefery, Ann (2005). Pedagogical
review of learning activities and use cases, LADIE project report, JISC; August 2005.
Fetterman, David; Katarian, Shakeh & Wandersman, Abraham (1996). Empowerment
Evaluation. California: Sage.
GB: Department for Education; Education Standards Research Team (2012). Research
evidence on reading for pleasure. [Online] Available at < https://www.gov.uk/
government/publications/research-evidence-on-reading-for-pleasure > (Accessed
6th December 2016).
Kolb, David; Rubin, Irwin & Osland, Joyce (1991). Organizational behavior; an experiential approach. (5th ed.). Englewood Clifs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.
Lewis, Sarah; Pea, Roy & Rosen, Joseph (2010). Special issue: Digitize and transfer. Social
Science Information, Vol. 49(3): 1–19 .
Reason, Peter & Bradbury Hilary (2011). Handbook of action research: participative
inquiry and practice. London: Sage.
Tavares, Rosemeire; Hepworth, Mark & De Souza Costa, Sely (2011). Investigating
citizens’ information needs through participative research: a pilot study in Candangolandia, Brazil. Information Development, 27(2), pp. 125-138.
Tilkin, Guy; Paulus, Michèle; Biesen, Alden & Land, Jennifer (2011). 1001 Stories for Adult
Learning, Sheherazade Consortium. [Online] Available at http://www.sheherazade.
eu/sites/default/iles/manuals/Manual_English.pdf (Accessed 6th December 2016).
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17
Bringing Maker Literacies
to Early Childhood Education
Jill Scott & Karen Wohlwend
iteracies are proliferating at a rapid pace as new ways of making
meaning become possible with the advent of powerful technologies
and innovative practices. his is especially evident in makerspaces (Peppler & Bender, 2013) where new forms of literacy emerge in encounters
with digital media (e.g., ilmmaking and animation) and manufacturing
technologies (e.g., sewing, woodworking, and robotics). Museums, libraries, ater-school clubs, and other out-of-school spaces ofer informal
learning spaces for children and youth in an ever-expanding network of
youth makerspaces.
Despite this burst of innovation outside schools, classrooms in
the United States look eerily similar to classrooms of the last century,
perhaps the chalkboards have been replaced with whiteboards, but the
books and seatwork paper-pencil lessons remain squarely situated in
traditional literacy practices. However, a quick scan of the playground
in those same schools reveals a lively peer culture, enlivened and circulated by digital media that ills children’s new textual landscapes.
We know from our ongoing literacy playshop research with young
children in early childhood classrooms that popular media toys are
an important resource for children’s media production (Wohlwend et
al., 2013; Medina & Wohlwend, 2014; Wohlwend, 2015, 2016). When
children are given an opportunity to play together at school, their play
oten turns to making as they pause to make props for their characters:
L
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Scott, Jill & Wohlwend, Karen (2017) Bringing Maker Literacies to Early Childhood
Education in Ilana Eleá and Lothar Mikos
(Eds.) Young & Creative. Digital Technologies Empowering Children in Everyday Life.
Gothenburg: Nordicom
Jill Scott & Karen Wohlwend
from paper crowns for Elsa and Anna (Disney’s Frozen) or fashion a
cape for hor (Marvel’s Avengers) from a play kitchen tablecloth. It has
also become evident pre-service teacher training must better prepare
teachers to respond to the student’s interests in popular culture, play,
and making. Maker literacies (Wohlwend et al., in press 2017) that include popular media, toyhacking, and creating ilms can be included
in literacy practices if pre-service teachers develop an understanding
of their value and place within the literacy curriculum. How do we tap
into the creative potential of play and making interests in a way that
aligns with school literacy goals? How could early literacy curriculum
and instruction expand to incorporate making into primary literacy
methods courses?
his study documents maker literacies pre-service teachers used
when a “play, toyhacking, and ilmmaking module” was added to their
primary literacy methods class. he pre-service teachers completed
this module during their literacy methods course at the university.
he main purpose was to encourage pre-service teachers to transform
and expand their notions about what counts as literacy and literacy
curriculum in early childhood education.
Theoretical framework
Play is a literacy that creates action texts (Wohlwend, 2011), stories
enacted with bodies, toys, props, and puppets rather than print on
paper. During play, players collaborate and pretend scenarios or “as
if ” worlds (Holland et al., 1998), attaching agreed-upon meanings to
bodies, materials, and actions (Vygotsky, 1978; hiel, 2015). he notion of toyhacking in this article enables redesign of toys’ and puppets’
materials but also their embedded texts (e.g., characters, narratives)
(Rowsell & Pahl, 2006). Digital technologies save and document play
and open further opportunities for redesign through video-editing.
In Literacy Playshop, four processes contribute to children’s meaning-making with media: play, storying, collaboration, and production. While the three levels move inside-out and back again, the four
processes are represented here as loosely-deined domains so there
is no production sequence or curricular “cycle” but rather recursive
connections spreading across domains in multiple and unruly directions. Each of the four processes contributes a critical, productive, and
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Bringing Maker Literacies to Early Childhood Education
interdependent aspect of meaning-making that also links to a larger
curricular ield: drama, literature, diversity and community, and media
and cinema arts (Wohlwend, et al., 2013, p. 46).
Methods and research context of the study
his project is excerpted from a ive-year study on literacy play, the
data from this particular study documents the ‘play, toy hacking, and
ilmmaking module’ added to four sections of a PK-31 early literacy
methods course at a US Midwestern university. hree instructors and
about 140 university students participated in this project. Data sources
include video of pre-service teachers’ toyhacking and ilmmaking, the
ilms they made with their fellow university students and their hacked
toys, the elementary student’s ilms, and post project relective blog
entries written by the university students.
We used mediated discourse analysis (Scollon & Scollon, 2004;
Wohlwend, 2007, 2014) to analyse students’ and children’s making and
ilm production, tracking collaborative meanings and shits in participation. Video analysis identiied and coded maker literacies and patterns
of improvisation and collaboration in the agreed-upon meanings of
characters and props as well as roles for students as toy animators, camera crew, directors, musicians, and sound efect synthesizers through
the process from toyhacking to video-production. Mediated discourse
analysis iltering identiied moments of collaborative transformation
(e.g., agreements to change characters’ texts, the emerging storyline,
or students’ production roles). Transformative clips were triangulated
with students’ relective blog posts (e.g., value of maker literacies in class
and in later ilmmaking with children in ield experiences).
Findings
he sessions progressed in three stages of media pre-production, production, and post-production: toyhacking and character development,
storyboarding and ilming, and video-editing and sharing.
Participants began the pre-production module by deconstructing
familiar characters and narratives of popular culture toy franchises,
such as Barbie and Star Wars. hey looked closely at each toy to identify its commercial franchise, its character traits and ilmic narrative,
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Jill Scott & Karen Wohlwend
and the material messages in its materials. Toys are designed with
anticipated identities (Wohlwend, 2009), that is, companies produce
toys and games with a particular consumer demographic in mind. his
guides the selection of colours, textures, shapes, and other material
decisions about toys and products in order to appeal to boys or girls
or age groups of children.
In this study, as university students examined a commercial mass
media toy, they pondered questions like,
• What is the toys intended text?
• Who is the toy intended for?
• Who could be let out by this toy?
• What could I do to change the toy’s text?
Following this critical deconstruction, the participants proceeded
eagerly down the hallway to visit the university’s designated makerspace where they worked to modify toys’ popular culture texts, social
meanings, and the material features. In this space students were given
boxes full of inexpensive commercial mass media toys that they cut,
glued, painted, combined, and otherwise decorated.
When newly revised characters emerged, the participants worked in
small collaborative groups to create a storyline for their toys. hrough
Image 1 & 2. Sally and Linus telling a new story.
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Bringing Maker Literacies to Early Childhood Education
collaborative negotiation and improvisation, stories were enacted and
ilmed as students animated the toys with hand movements. Once the
ilm footage was gathered, students worked together to share their
expertise to edit the short ilms using the iMovie app on iPads. Most
groups added voice-overs, captions, music, sound effects, setting
backdrops, and textual elements. Upon completing the editing process,
students shared their ilms with the entire class.
Pre-service teachers expressed enthusiasm about the project through
comments such as, “It was a blast!” and “I was surprised by how much
fun I had”. hey also predicted they would incorporate playful making
and ilmmaking in the future, saying that they felt very engaged in the
process and could see value in doing similar activities in their own
classrooms someday. One participant explained,
he day of class that we made our toys and ilmed was one of the
most fun days of college I have ever had. Even just putting together
the toys stretched my brain into ways it was not used to; having to
break things apart and put them back together. I can deinitely see
students boosting their imagination and creativity through this
process. I also can see students enjoying the ilming and editing
because they love technology so much.
In the following weeks, during their ield placements, the pre-service
teachers dedicated two sessions to working with a focus student to share
their hacked toys, create child initiated stories, build props and sets for
them, and ilm their stories. In a third session with their child, the team
worked together to edit their original ilms and celebrate their accomplishments. Upon relection, many pre-service teachers wrote about
how the activities opened doors for creativity and meaning making.
One noted that the creativity followed their child home,
When I came in today, the teacher informed me that Max2 had so
much fun that he went home and made his own toys for our time
together this week. hey were made of clay and they matched the
colour scheme and shape of the hacked toys we brought in two weeks
ago. I was so excited that instead of just watching the inished ilm
we also made a new ilm with his toys and our extra time. Needless
to say, I think it was a really successful experience for both of us, and
I would deinitely try to implement similar projects in the future!
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While children are participating in collaborative socially constructed
new literacies constantly in out and of school spaces, these participatory
literacy practices typically are not welcomed in school. We currently
live in an age of accountability, in which, the central driving force of
education is increasing standardized test scores (Cochran-Smith & Lytle,
2009). Top-down policies about schooling bring scripted curricula, data
driven teaching practices, standardization, and little room for exploring
new literacy practices. We hope that by introducing this creative play,
toyhacking, and ilmmaking module to literacy coursework that pre-service teachers will ind value in the practices and create spaces in their
future classrooms for expanded literacies. A majority of the university
students, found that participation in the module legitimised an alternative conception of meaning making. Many of the university students
completed this project with relections that expressed strong commitments to using maker and digital literacies in their future classrooms.
Throughout this project, active engagement and collaborative
participation was evident as the university students expressed their
excitement about creating new characters and producing digital stories. Many of the pre-service teachers noted that they were initially
sceptical about maker literacies and their place in literacy instruction.
One student relected,
Had I seen the makerspace before this class, I would have probably
thought that it seemed out of place [in a college of education]. Ater
the assignment, however, I realize its huge potential.
his potential, for literacy instruction, student engagement, involvement, and collaboration, was referenced by a many of the participants,
and oten was accompanied by relections of transformed understandings. Many students responded with positive comments,
I think this project was a really great way to introduce a diferent
kind of literacy learning. While I can only hope my future school
has a space for my students to be this creative, I deinitely hope to
do a ilm making process of some sort with them, hacked toys or
not. I also think they will enjoy working together to come up with
the funniest, scariest, silliest, or most clever movie they can think
of. Creativity is essential, and this project hands the opportunity to
use their imagination to them.
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Bringing Maker Literacies to Early Childhood Education
Image 3. These toys were hacked,
but their gendered storyline remained untroubled.
As university literacy instructors, we noticed increased laughter, smiles,
and enhanced engagement from our students when we compared makerspace activities with the traditional literacy activities encountered
throughout the semester.
Multiple and fluid transformations of the toys’ texts occurred
through maker literacies in toyhacking, collaborative storying, and
media production. Pre-service teachers commented that the ability
to create new toys without the traditional marginalizing efects was
empowering and fun. Many students pointed out that the toys that they
created relected their worlds more appropriately than the oten-exaggerated gender coding of pre-packaged toys. A participant explained, “I
loved creating my own toy, that was gender neutral. I purposely chose
a usual male dominated toy, a Flintstone dinosaur, and a Hello Kitty
doll toy bank to work with”.
215
Jill Scott & Karen Wohlwend
It is interesting to note that while the participants were encouraged
to change the narratives of their toys by hacking them, we also found
that the pre-service teachers relied on their own shared knowledge of
popular media culture to recreate familiar stories for their characters.
Oten, these remixed stories (Ito, 2007) did not look at the appropriated
text critically, but instead reiied stereotypes. Pre-service teacher’s talk,
jokes, and ilms tended to reproduce stereotypical toy texts, gendered
roles, or popular culture tropes. For instance, one group of six participants developed a ilm that mimicked Monty Python and the Holy
Grail (1975). In planning for their ilm they relied on their shared
media knowledge. Despite that the characters had been hacked, the
ilm provided the basis for remixing a commonly-shared and socially
understood text. Even though the characters were diferent, the gendered storyline was not troubled.
Seeking popular culture and social media tropes peers would easily
recognize was evident across many of the ilming groups in all classes
during the literacy module. Groups gained inspiration for their ilms
from popular music videos, damsel in distress tropes, and viral videos. But students can also hold fond memories and other emotional
commitments to these shared texts, making them diicult for groups
to revise. Children have strong passions for beloved characters and favourite stories that anchor their story making. One pre-service teacher
observed this tension in remixing with his focus child,
He did ind the (hacked) toy much more interesting, but even though
it was a half horse/half man with a Peanuts head [Woodstock], he still
automatically decided that the toy was in fact simply a weird-looking
Batman. he story that he created was a classic story about Joker being a bad guy, and Batman saving the day. He was somewhat creative
in explaining that Joker was “disguised,” and adding in the “sneaky
Penguin” who was Joker’s accomplice, but in general, his story was
very much like popular culture stories we had read about before.
A great strength of this project is that the university students were able
to actively consider their assigned elementary child’s media interests
and funds of knowledge (Moll et al., 1992) as they were hacking their
toys. In addition, they welcomed children’s toys and popular culture
connections from home into their ield experience activities. Allowing
216
Bringing Maker Literacies to Early Childhood Education
children’s favourite storylines and narratives into the classroom validated each child’s interests.
he enthusiastic reactions from the children who participated in
the project indicated the time spent creating digital ilms was fun, collaborative, productive, and engaging. Many pre-service teachers noted
changes in their focus child’s participation level and in their engagement
in story making. One university student wrote,
My student had a blast ilming and wanted to make a part two to the
video. She was so excited she asked if we could do it next time too.
She liked telling stories and I feel like it allowed her to express her
emotions. She loved that she was able to do impromptu and make
up the story with no restrictions. Overall, I thought this was a great
experience and I was able to learn new ideas from it.
Another pre-service teacher noted,
he move from traditional school literacies to newer ideas of literacies certainly engaged the student – he was enjoying himself but also
working diligently to produce a story and a ilm.
Importance for engaged learning in and out of school
If literacy is a socio-cultural activity then we must provide students
with opportunities to create meaning together. he image of children
sitting alone, writing at desks needs to vanish. It is through projects
like this one that invitations to co-construct can emerge and we can
expand our notions of a solitary writer and reader into collaborative
makers and producers.
Maker literacies are best supported by playshop models, which
expand reading and writing workshops to include play-enriched new
literacies curricula. (Wohlwend, 2011, 2013; Wohlwend & Peppler,
2015). he playshop model empowers children to collaboratively produce with digital literacies and new technologies. hese literacies will
require new kinds of teaching and learning by practitioners in and out
of classrooms. While this article has documented learning in a university classroom and elementary school ield experience, the learning
and teaching applies to out-of-school sites such as museums, arts,
ater-school programs, and so on. Other practitioners could similarly
217
Jill Scott & Karen Wohlwend
visit a makerspace, engage in toyhacking, and experience the power
of collaborating creatively, producing digital stories, and exploring the
potential of expanded literacies.
We know it is critically important to ofer children engaging activities that matter to them. Maker literacies validate children’s interests
and passions, promote student generated ideas and stories, and allow for
co-creation of collaborative texts in socially signiicant ways. Playshops
and maker literacies reveal the exciting possibilities in teaching for collaboration, creativity, storying, technology, and placing play at the core.
Notes
1.
Pre-kindergarten (also called Pre-K or PK) is a classroom-based preschool program
for children at or below the age of ive in the United States, Canada and Turkey.
An applicant for PK3 must be three years old by Sept. 30. https://en.wikipedia.org/
wiki/Pre-kindergarten
2.
All names are pseudonyms.
References
Cochran-Smith, Marilyn & Lytle, Susan L. (2009). Inquiry as Stance: Practitioner research
for the next generation. New York: Teachers College Press.
Forstater, Mark & White, Michael (Producers); Gilliam, Terry, & Jones, Terry (Directors).
(1975). Monty Python and the Holy Grail (Motion Picture). United Kingdom,
Michael White Productions, National Film Trustee Company, Python Pictures.
Holland, Dorothy; Lachicotte, William; Skinner, Debra, & Cain, Carole (1998). Identity
and agency in cultural worlds. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Ito, Mizuko (2007). Technologies of the Childhood Imagination: Media Mixes, Hypersociality, and Recombinant Cultural Form. Médiamorphoses, 21 Available at http://
documents.irevues.inist.fr/handle/2042/23561.
Medina, Carmen & Wohlwend, Karen (2014). Literacy, Play, and Globalization: Converging
Imaginaries in Children’s Critical and Cultural Performances. New York: Routledge.
Moll, Luis; Amanti, Cathy; Neff, Deborah, & Gonzalez, Norma (1992). Funds of
Knowledge for Teaching: Using a Qualitative Approach to Connect Homes and
Classrooms. heory into Practice 31:132-141 doi: 10.1080/00405849209543534.
Peppler, Kylie & Bender, Sophia (2013). Maker Movement Spreads Innovation One Project at a Time. Phi Delta Kappan 95(3): 22-27 doi: 10.1177/003172171309500306.
Rowsell, Jennifer & Pahl, Kate (2006). Sedimented Identities in Texts: Instances of
Practice. Reading Research Quarterly 42(3): 388-404 doi: 10.1598/RRQ.42.3.3.
Jill Scott, Doctoral Student, Literacy, Culture and Language Education, School of
Education, Indiana University, USA, jillscot@indiana.edu
Karen Wohlwend, Ph.D, Associate Professor, Literacy, Culture and Language Education, School of Education, Indiana University, USA, kwohlwen@indiana.edu
218
Bringing Maker Literacies to Early Childhood Education
Scollon, Ronald &, Scollon, Suzanne (2004). Nexus analysis: Discourse and the Emerging
Internet. Routledge, New York.
Thiel, Jayne Johnson (2015). Bumblebees in Trouble: Embodied Literacies During
Imaginative Superhero Play. Language Arts 93(1): 38-49
Vygotsky, Lev S. (1978). Mind in Society: he Development of Higher Psychological Processes. Cambridge, Harvard University Press.
Wohlwend, Karen; Buchholz, Beth & Medina, Carmen (In press for 2017). Playful
Literacies and Practices of Making in Children’s Imaginaries. In Mills, Kathy;
Stornaiuolo, Amy; Smith, Anna & Pandya, Jessica Zacher (Eds.), Handbook of
Writing, Literacies, and Education in Digital Cultures. New York, NY: Routledge.
Wohlwend, Karen; Buchholz, Beth; Wessel-Powell, Christy; Coggin, Linda, & Husbye,
Nicholas (2013). Literacy Playshop: New Literacies, Popular Media, and Play in the
Early Childhood Classroom. Teachers College Press, New York.
Wohlwend, Karen (2009). Damsels in Discourse: Girls Consuming and Producing
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Acknowledgement
An earlier version of this article was originally published in the Spring 2016 issue
of the Elon Journal of Undergraduate Research in Communications.
he author would like to extend thanks to Kenn Gaither, associate professor
and associate dean at Elon University, for his constant guidance throughout this
process, without which this article could not have been written. he author also
thanks the School of Communications and the many reviewers who have helped
revise this article.
219
18
Meeting Change with
Creativity
Interview with Kirsten Drotner
K
irsten Drotner is chair of media studies at University of South Denmark
(SDU) and founding director of a national programme Our Museum,
and of DREAM (Danish Research Centre on Advanced Media Materials). She
is a leading researcher on children’s and young people’s interactions with
media at present and in the past, on the formation of creative, digital media
literacies, and on users’ engagements with museums, libraries and similar
cultural institutions1.
Tell us how your interest (and approaches) regarding children,
youth, media and creativity have developed over your career. How
about the projects you are involved in at the moment?
Early in my career I was involved in organizing academic collaboration
in Denmark in the area of children’s culture. his was a time when the
Scandinavian countries of Europe developed a lively interest in approaches to culture that would later be termed cultural studies, based
on parallel developments in the UK. In Scandinavia, the particular
interest in children’s culture tied in with welfarist notions of children
as agents in their own lives, not merely as future citizens or denizens of
the state. So, my interest in children’s and young people’s own cultural
expressions and the creative processes behind them took inspiration
from these trends.
More speciically, I had already conducted historical research on
juvenile media representations, resulting in a DPhil. in 1985 followed
221
Meeting Change with Creativity. Interview
with Kirsten Drotner in Ilana Eleá and
Lothar Mikos (Eds.) Young & Creative.
Digital Technologies Empowering Children
in Everyday Life. Gothenburg: Nordicom
Interview with Kirsten Drotner
by a book three years later2. Having spent the best part of my twenties
in historical archives, I wanted to turn to more contemporary media
issues. So in line with the wider interests at the time in cultural agency,
I chose to conduct a media-ethnographic study, not of dedicated fan
culture, but of ‘ordinary’ young people’s video-making. I followed about
25 informants for about a year across a range of sites and settings in
which they moved, and I analysed their video-making processes as
well as their results3. his work allowed me to gain insight into the
fascinating processes of creative collaboration; and that fascination has
stayed with me, even if I have worked on many other media projects
since then.
Naturally, the pervasive uptake of digital media technologies that
ofer immediate and easy options for shaping and sharing all sorts of
images, sound and text have turned what 25 years ago seemed like a
niche research area into a key concern. I have just inished a project,
conducted with my colleague Heidi Philipsen, on children’s ilm-making
practices and the didactics needed to further these practices4. hat work
has made it absolutely evident that today children’s digital content creation is at the core of exercising their freedom of expression. But it has
equally documented that children are not digital natives who already
know how to exercise this freedom. hey need sustained training to
Image 1. Making stop-motion film
ofers an easy pathway to productive media and information literacy.
222
Meeting Change with Creativity
competently use what Uwe Hasebrink and colleagues in the major EU
Kids Online project have called the digital ‘ladder of opportunities’5.
While children naturally have a voice, they must learn how to apply
digital media to shape its modes of expression so that others may hear
and understand, even if these others choose to disagree or reject the
result. While 25 years ago I studied young people’s media production
as a form of peer production within a leisured participatory culture,
our current research has illuminated that today children’s digital content creation is critically about securing pathways to their citizenship.
“Leisure is hard work” is the title of one of your articles, published in
2008. Could you explain how you came to this conclusion?
he title is really the result of two key indings in our studies on digital
content creation. First, we have documented that there is a mismatch
between young media users’ technical options of production and their
abilities to exercise these options in such a way that others understand
the result. Many have the technical skills needed, but fewer know how
to communicate with media in terms of, for example, narrative, framing or editing; and surprisingly few have a clue about the contexts of
power in which their results circulate. hey may know about the privacy
settings of their Facebook proiles, but they are at a loss to understand
Facebook’s platform power over their data. Second, we have seen that
school provides very little in terms of systematically training students’
digital content creation, despite the fact that this training is at the core
of 21st-century skills. School, in Denmark as elsewhere, is very focused
on reproductive learning (reading, math), rather than on the forms of
productive learning that are involved in digital processes of creation.
Young media users primarily train these creative resources in their
leisure time – hence the title.
If you could send a message to parents and teachers about children’s and youth’s media creative production, what would you say?
What do they need to be aware of and/or inspired by?
We all need to rethink the purpose of media and information literacy
in view of the resources needed in the 21st century. In the past, much
efort has focused on ofering students critical skills of representation,
for example spotting ideological bias and marketing eforts. More re223
Interview with Kirsten Drotner
Image 2. Sharing the fun of production is a serious matter, even for very young children.
cently, we have witnessed an upsurge in a technology-driven emphasis
on information skills in terms of handling hardware and teaching
students how to code. When it comes to children’s and young people’s
own media output, not only third-sector organisations and school but
also parents are keen to guide the young about what (and whom) to
avoid online. Given the high-proile and very tragic cases of harm, this
is a natural irst step. Naturally, children need critical awareness and
there is nothing wrong in promoting coding. But the pervasive focus
on technological skills and on online avoidance very easily implies that
adults are sidestepping the key perspective of how we may guide children’s freedom to express themselves online. We need a better balance
in teaching about media obstacles and options here.
Parents or school authorities, who may not be persuaded by such
lufy democratic arguments, may take note of a report issued by the
224
Meeting Change with Creativity
World Economic Forum in 2016 and stating that of the generation populating schools today 65 per cent will hold future jobs not yet perceived
or invented6. To prepare for such dramatic changes, creative skills are
needed by all, not merely a select creative class. For without creativity,
no innovation, and no training in meeting change with a capacity to
act on that change. And where better to start than by advancing children’s and young people’s creative media competences. hey have the
resources; they already apply these in their leisure time. But mobiles
and tablets are still oten banned in the classroom as distracting gadgets
diverting attention from the main elements of teaching. We need to
turn the tables.
Notes
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
http://indresearcher.sdu.dk/portal/en/persons/kirsten-drotner(b0d73222-74a5417c-b313-0bccaaf812fa)/cv.html?id=79386239
Drotner, Kirsten (1988). English children and their magazines, 1752-1945. New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Drotner, Kirsten (1989). Girl meets boy: Aesthetic production, reception, and
gender identity, Cultural Studies 3, (2): 208-225. Drotner, Kirsten (1991). At skabe
sig – selv: unge, æstetik, pædagogik. Copenhagen: Gyldendal. Rev. ed. 1995.
Drotner, Kirsten & Philipsen, Heidi (2016). Udvikling af tværfaglig ilmpædagogik:
Kreativitet, kreation og kollaboration [Developing interdisciplinary ilm pedagogy:
Creativity, creation and collaboration]. Odense: Kulturregion Fyn. See: http://
ilmportalfyn.dk/ny-forskningsrapport-udvikling-af-tvaerfaglig-ilmpaedagogik/
Philipsen, Heidi & Drotner, Kirsten (2017). Praksiskatalog: Produktiv læring med
ilm i dansk og de praktisk-musiske fag. Hvordan udvikles praksis? [Best practice:
Productive learning through film in Danish and cultural subjects]. Odense:
Kulturregion Fyn. See: http://ilmportalfyn.dk/praksiskatalog-om-ilmundervisning-til-skolerne/
Hasebrink, Uwe; Görz, Anke; Haddon, Leslie; Kalmus, Veronika; Livingstone,
Sonia. et al. (2011). Patterns of risk and safety online: In-depth analysis from the EU
Kids Online Survey of 9- to 16-year-olds and their parents in 25 European countries.
London: London School of Economics. See: http://www.lse.ac.uk/media@lse/research/EUKidsOnline/EU%20Kids%20II%20(2009-11)/EUKidsOnlineIIReports/
D5%20Patterns%20of%20risk.pdf
he future of jobs: Employment, skills and workforce strategy for the fourth industrial
revolution (2016). World Economic Forum.
225
Publications from the International Clearinghouse on Children, Youth and Media
Yearbooks
Dafna Lemish & Maya Götz (Eds.) Beyond the Stereotypes? Images of Boys and Girls, and their Consequences. Yearbook 2017
Magda Abu-Fadil, Jordi Torrent, Alton Grizzle (Eds.) Opportunities for Media and Information Literacy in the Middle East
and North Africa. Yearbook 2016
Sirkku Kotilainen, Reijo Kupiainen (Eds.) Reflections on Media Education Futures. Contributions to the Conference Media Education Futures in
Tampere, Finland 2014. Yearbook 2015
Ilana Eleá (Ed.) Agentes e Vozes. Um Panorama da Mídia-Educação no Brasil, Portugal e Espanha. Yearbook 2014. Portuguese/Spanish Edition.
Cecilia von Feilitzen & Johanna Stenersen (Eds): Young People, Media and Health. Risks and Rights. Yearbook 2014.
English Edition.
Thomas Tute, Norbert Wildermuth, Anne Sofie Hansen-Skovmoes, Winnie Mitullah (Eds): Speaking Up and Talking Back? Media Empowerment and
Civic Engagement among East and Southern African Youth. Yearbook 2012/2013.
Cecilia von Feilitzen, Ulla Carlsson & Catharina Bucht (Eds): New Questions, New Insights, New Approaches. Contributions
to the Research Forum at the World Summit on Media for Children and Youth 2010. Yearbook 2011.
Ulla Carlsson (Ed.) Children and Youth in the Digital Media Culture. From a Nordic Horizon. Yearbook 2010.
The Creative YouTubers
Thomas Tute & Florencia Enghel (Eds): Youth Engaging With the World. Media, Communication and Social Change. Yearbook 2009.
Norma Pecora, Enyonam Osei-Hwere & Ulla Carlsson (Eds): African Media, African Children. Yearbook 2008.
Karin M. Ekström & Birgitte Tute (Eds): Children, Media and Consumption. On the Front Edge. Yearbook 2007.
Ulla Carlsson & Cecilia von Feilitzen (Eds): In the Service of Young People? Studies and Reflections on Media in the Digital Age. Yearbook 2005/2006.
Cecilia von Feilitzen (Ed.): Young People, Soap Operas and Reality TV. Yearbook 2004.
Somewhere around 300-400 hours of video is uploaded
every minute on the immensely popular platform of YouCecilia von Feilitzen & Catharina Bucht: Outlooks on Children and Media. Child Rights, Media Trends, Media Research, Media Literacy, Child
Tube. In this section, authors present examples of videoParticipation, Declarations. Yearbook 2001.
blogging,
otherwise
as invlogging,
common
feature
Cecilia
von Feilitzen
& Ulla Carlssonknown
(Eds): Children
the New MediaaLandscape.
Games,
Pornography, Perceptions. Yearbook 2000.
Cecilia
von
Feilitzen
&
Ulla
Carlsson
(Eds):
Children
and
Media.
Image,
Education,
Participation.
among viewers. Some vloggers have become world famousYearbook 1999.
Ulla Carlsson & Cecilia von Feilitzen (Eds): Children and Media Violence. Yearbook 1998.
through their presence on the screen, some of them are still
Other publications
mostly known among their friends and family.
Cecilia von Feilitzen & Ulla Carlsson (Eds): Promote or Protect? Perspectives on Media Literacy and Media Regulations. Yearbook 2003.
Cecilia von Feilitzen & Ulla Carlsson (Eds): Children, Young People and Media Globalisation. Yearbook 2002.
Ilana Eleá (Ed.) Agents and Voices. A Panorama of Media Education in Brazil, Portugal and Spain, 2015.
Jagtar Singh, Alton Grizzle, Sin Joan Yee & Sherri Hope Culver (Eds): MILID Yearbook 2015.
Media and Information Literacy for the Sustainable Development Goals
Sherri Hope Culver & Paulette Kerr (Eds): MILID Yearbook 2014. Global Citizenship in a Digital World.
Catharina Bucht & Eva Harrie: Young People in the Nordic Digital Media Culture. A Statistical Overview, 2013.
Ulla Carlsson & Sherri Hope Culver (Eds): MILID Yearbook 2013. Media and Information Literacy and Intercultural Dialogue.
Catharina Bucht & Maria Edström (Eds): Youth Have Their Say on Internet Governance. Nordic Youth Forum at EuroDig, Stockholm June 2012.
Sirkku Kotilainen & Sol-Britt Arnolds-Granlund (Eds): Media Literacy Education. Nordic Perspectives, in cooperation with the Finnish Society on
Media Education, 2010.
María Dolores Souza & Patricio Cabello (Eds): The Emerging Media Toddlers, 2010.
Young People in the European Digital Media Landscape. A Statistical Overview with an Introduction by Sonia Livingstone
and Leslie Haddon. 2009 (For the EU conference ‘Promoting a Creative Generation’, July 2009)
Cecilia von Feilitzen: Influences of Mediated Violence. A Brief Research Summary, 2009.
Ulla Carlsson, Samy Tayie, Geneviève Jacquinot-Delaunay & José Manuel Pérez Tornero (Eds): Empowerment Through Media Education. An
Intercultural Dialogue, in co-operation with UNESCO, Dar Graphit and the Mentor Association, 2008.
Ulla Carlsson (Ed.): Regulation, Awareness, Empowerment. Young People and Harmful Media Content in the Digital Age, in co-operation with
UNESCO, 2006.
Maria Jacobson: Young People and Gendered Media Messages, 2005.
Simon Egenfeldt-Nielsen & Jonas Heide Smith: Playing with Fire. How do Computer Games Influence the Player?, 2004.
This book YOUNG & CREATIVE – Digital Technologies Empowering Children in Everyday Life aims to catch diferent examples where children and youth have been active
and creative by their own initiative, driven by intrinsic motivation, personal interests
and peer relations. We want to show the opportunities of digital technologies for creative processes of children and young people. The access to digital technology and
its growing convergence has allowed young people to experiment active roles as cultural producers. Participation becomes a keyword when “consumers take media into
their own hands”. Digital technologies ofer the potential of diferent forms of participatory media culture, and finally creative practices.
The Creative YouTubers
YOUNG and CREATIVE is a mix of research articles, interviews and case studies. The
target audience of this book is students, professionals and researchers working in the
field of education, communication, children and youth studies, new literacy studies
and media and information literacy.
Somewhere around 300-400 hours of video is uploaded
every minute on the immensely popular platform of YouTube.Eleá,
In this
authors
of Brazil,
video-is former scientific coorIlana
PhDsection,
in Education
frompresent
PUC-Rioexamples
de Janeiro,
dinator
at The
International
Children,
Youth and Media, Nordicom,
blogging,
otherwise
knownClearinghouse
as vlogging, a on
common
feature
Sweden.
among viewers. Some vloggers have become world famous
through
theirProfessor
presenceof
onTelevision
the screen,
some of
them are still
Lothar
Mikos,
Studies,
Department
of Media Studies, Filmunimostly
known
among
their
friends
and
family.
versität Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF, Potsdam, Germany, and Honorary Professsor at
University of Gothenburg
Box 713, SE 405 30 Göteborg, Sweden
Telephone +46 31 786 00 00 • Fax + 46 31 786 46 55
9 789187 957857
ISBN 978-91-87957-85-7
University of International Business and Economy, Beijing, China.
E-mail info@nordicom.gu.se
www.nordicom.gu.se