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Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media ...

An occasional paper on digital Media and learningConfronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the21stCenturyHenry jenkins , Director of the Comparative Media Studies Programat the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with Katie ClintonRavi PurushotmaAlice J. Robison Margaret WeigelBuilding the new field of digital Media and learningThe MacArthur Foundation launched its five-year, $50 million digital Media and learning initiative in 2006 to help determine how digital technologies are changing the way young people learn, play, socialize, and participate in civic life. Answers are critical to developing educational and other social institutions that can meet the needs of this and future initiative is both marshaling what it is already known about the field and seeding innovationfor continued growth. For more information, visit engagein conversations about these projects and the field of digital learning, visit the Spotlight blog the MacArthur FoundationThe John D.

in the new media landscape.Participatory culture shifts the focus of literacy from one of indi- ... how to ensure honest elections,and about the future of democracy in a digital age.Alphaville is the largest city in the popular multiplayer game,The Sims Online. Heather Lawver (H.Jenkins,2006a) was 14 years old.She wanted to help other young ...

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1 An occasional paper on digital Media and learningConfronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the21stCenturyHenry jenkins , Director of the Comparative Media Studies Programat the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with Katie ClintonRavi PurushotmaAlice J. Robison Margaret WeigelBuilding the new field of digital Media and learningThe MacArthur Foundation launched its five-year, $50 million digital Media and learning initiative in 2006 to help determine how digital technologies are changing the way young people learn, play, socialize, and participate in civic life. Answers are critical to developing educational and other social institutions that can meet the needs of this and future initiative is both marshaling what it is already known about the field and seeding innovationfor continued growth. For more information, visit engagein conversations about these projects and the field of digital learning, visit the Spotlight blog the MacArthur FoundationThe John D.

2 And Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is a private, independent grantmakinginstitution dedicated to helping groups and individuals foster lasting improvement in the human assets of $ billion, the Foundation makes grants totaling approximately$200 million annually. For more information or to sign up for MacArthur s monthly electronicnewsletter, visit MacArthur Foundation140 South Dearborn Street, Suite 1200 Chicago, Illinois 60603 Tel. (312) occasional paper on digital Media and learningConfronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the21stCenturyHenry jenkins , Director of the Comparative Media Studies Programat the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with Katie ClintonRavi PurushotmaAlice J. Robison Margaret Weigel2 Table of ContentsExecutive Summary3 The Needed Skills in the New Media Culture5 Enabling Participation7 Why We Should Teach Media Literacy:Three Core Problems12 What Should We Teach?

3 Rethinking Literacy19 Core Media Literacy Skills22 Who Should Respond? A Systemic Approach to Media Education56 The Challenge Ahead: Ensuring that All Benefit from the Expanding Media Landscape61 Sources62 Executive SummaryAccording to a recent study from the Pew Internet & American Life project (Lenhardt &Madden, 2005), more than one-half of all teens have created Media content, and roughly one-third of teens who use the Internet have shared content they produced. In many cases, theseteens are actively involved in what we are calling Participatory cultures. A Participatory culture isa culture with relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement, strong supportfor creating and sharing one s creations, and some type of informal mentorship whereby whatis known by the most experienced is passed along to novices. A Participatory culture is alsoone in which members believe their contributions matter, and feel some degree of social con-nection with one another (at the least they care what other people think about what they havecreated).

4 Forms of Participatory culture include:Affiliations memberships, formal and informal, in online communities centeredaround various forms of Media , such as Friendster, Facebook, message boards,metagaming, game clans, or MySpace).Expressions producing new creative forms, such as digital sampling, skinning andmodding, fan videomaking, fan fiction writing, zines, mash-ups).Collaborative Problem-solving working together in teams, formal and informal,to complete tasks and develop new knowledge (such as through Wikipedia, alternativereality gaming, spoiling).Circulations Shaping the flow of Media (such as podcasting, blogging).A growing body of scholarship suggests potential benefits of these forms of Participatory cul-ture, including opportunities for peer-to-peer learning, a changed attitude toward intellectualproperty, the diversification of cultural expression, the development of skills valued in the mod-ern workplace, and a more empowered conception of citizenship.

5 Access to this participatoryculture functions as a new form of the hidden curriculum, shaping which youth will succeedand which will be left behind as they enter school and the have argued that children and youth acquire these key skills and competencies on theirown by interacting with popular concerns, however, suggest the need for policyand pedagogical interventions:The Participation Gap the unequal access to the opportunities, experiences, skills, andknowledge that will prepare youth for full participation in the world of Transparency Problem The Challenges young people face in learning to seeclearly the ways that Media shape perceptions of the Ethics Challenge The breakdown of traditional forms of professional training andsocialization that might prepare young people for their increasingly public roles as mediamakers and community must work together to ensure that every American young person has access to theskills and experiences needed to become a full participant, can articulate their understanding of34how Media shapes perceptions.

6 And has been socialized into the emerging ethical standards thatshould shape their practices as Media makers and participants in online central goal of this report is to shift the focus of the conversation about the digital dividefrom questions of technological access to those of opportunities to participate and to developthe cultural competencies and social skills needed for full involvement. Schools as institutionshave been slow to react to the emergence of this new Participatory culture ; the greatest oppor-tunity for change is currently found in afterschool programs and informal learning communi-ties. Schools and afterschool programs must devote more attention to fostering what we callthe new Media literacies: a set of cultural competencies and social skills that young people needin the new Media landscape. Participatory culture shifts the focus of literacy from one of indi-vidual expression to community new literacies almost all involve social skillsdeveloped through collaboration and skills build on the foundation of tradi-tional literacy, research skills, technical skills, and critical analysis skills taught in the new skills include.

7 Play the capacity to experiment with one s surroundings as a form of problem-solvingPerformance the ability to adopt alternative identities for the purpose of improvisationand discoverySimulation the ability to interpret and construct dynamic models of real-worldprocessesAppropriation the ability to meaningfully sample and remix Media contentMultitasking the ability to scan one s environment and shift focus as needed to Cognition the ability to interact meaningfully with tools that expandmental capacitiesCollective Intelligence the ability to pool knowledge and compare notes with others toward a common goalJudgment the ability to evaluate the reliability and credibility of different informationsourcesTransmedia Navigation the ability to follow the flow of stories and informationacross multiple modalitiesNetworking the ability to search for, synthesize, and disseminate informationNegotiation the ability to travel across diverse communities, discerning and respectingmultiple perspectives, and grasping and following alternative such social skills and cultural competencies requires a more systemic approach tomedia education in the United States.

8 Everyone involved in preparing young people to go out into the world has contributions to make in helping students acquire the skills they needto become full participants in our society. Schools, afterschool programs, and parents have distinctive roles to play as they do what they can in their own spaces to encourage and nurturethese Needed Skills in the New Media culture If it were possible to define generally the mission of education, it could be said that its fundamental pur-pose is to ensure that all students benefit from learning in ways that allow them to participate fully in pub-lic, community, [Creative] and economic life. New London Group (2000, p. 9)Ashley Richardson ( jenkins , 2004b) was a middle-schooler when she ran for president ofAlphaville. She wanted to control a government that had more than 100 volunteer workers andthat made policies that affected thousands of people. She debated her opponent on NationalPublic Radio.

9 She found herself in the center of a debate about the nature of citizenship, abouthow to ensure honest elections, and about the future of democracy in a digital age. Alphaville isthe largest city in the popular multiplayer game,The Sims Lawver (H. jenkins , 2006a) was 14 years old. She wanted to help other young peopleimprove their reading and writing skills. She established an online publication with a staff ofmore than 100 people across the world. Her project was embraced by teachers and integratedinto their curriculum. She emerged as an important spokesperson in a national debate aboutintellectual website Lawver created was a school newspaper for the fictionalHogwarts, the location for the popular Harry Ross (McHugh, 2005) was 14 years old when he was hired for a summer internship atNetscape. By that point, he already had developed computer programming skills and publishedhis own website.

10 Frustrated by many of the corporate decisions made at Netscape, Ross decid-ed to design his own web the joint participation of thousands of other vol-unteer youth and adults working on his project worldwide, the Firefox web browser was , Firefox enjoys more than 60 times as many users as Netscape Navigator. By age 19, Rosshad the venture capital needed to launch his own start-up company. His interest in computingwas sparked by playing the popular video game,Sim Meeter (Bertozzi & jenkins , forthcoming) was about to graduate from high school whenhe completed the claymation animation for Awards Showdown, which subsequent was widelycirculated on the web. Meeter negotiated with composer John Williams for the rights to useexcerpts from his film scores. By networking, he was able to convince Stephen Spielberg towatch the film, and it was later featured on the Spielberg s Dreamworks website. Meeter is nowstarting work on his first feature , Lawver, Ross, and Meeter are the future politicians, activists, educators, writers,entrepreneurs, and Media skills they acquired learning how to campaign andgovern; how to read, write, edit, and defend civil liberties; how to program computers and runa business; how to make a movie and get it distributed are the kinds of skills we might hopeour best schools would , none of these activities took place in schools.


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