DIGITAL MEDIA AND LEARNING CONFERENCE DIVERSIFYING PARTICIPATION CALIT2 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO FEBRUARY 18 – 20, 2010 CONFERENCE CHAIR Henry Jenkins CONFERENCE COMMITTEE David Theo Goldberg Heather A. Horst Mizuko Ito Jabari Mahiri Holly Willis The Digital Media and Learning Conference 2010 is the first of an annual event supported by the MacArthur Foundation and organized by the Digital Media and Learning Hub at University of California, Irvine. The conference is designed to be an inclusive, international and annual gathering of scholars and practitioners in the field, focused on fostering interdisciplinary and participatory dialog and linking theory, empirical study, policy, and practice. SPONSORED BY TABLE OF CONTENTS Conference Theme: Diversifying Participation 3 Digital Media and Learning Conference Chair 4 Henry Jenkins 4 Keynote Speakers 5 S. Craig Watkins 5 Sonia Livingstone 6 Conference Schedule Overview 7 Conference Program 8 Thursday, February 18, 2010 8 Friday, February 19, 2010 9 Saturday, February 20, 2010 15 Conference Session Abstracts 21 Conference Information 59 Conference Venues 59 Wireless Internet 59 Shuttle Schedule 60 Map of Conference Area 61 UCSD Campus Map 62 Map of Conference Hotel Area and Local Restaurants 63 About the Digital Media and Learning Conference Logo: The DML Conference 2010 logo image is a composite of "invaders" generated from the OS Code from the image InvaderFractal by Jared Tarbell (July 2003). To learn more about the original image, see http://levitated.net/daily/levInvaderFractal.html 2 DIVERSIFYING PARTICIPATION A growing body of research has identified how young people's digital media use is tied to basic social and cultural competencies needed for full participation in contemporary society. We continue to develop an understanding of the impact of these experiences on learning, civic engagement, professional development, and ethical comprehension of the digital world. Yet research has also suggested that young people's forms of participation with new media are incredibly diverse, and that risks, opportunities, and competencies are spread unevenly across the social and cultural landscape. Young people have differential access to online experiences, practices, and tools and this has a consequence in their developing sense of their own identities and their place in the world. In some cases, different forms of participation and access correspond with familiar cultural and social divides. In other cases, however, new media have introduced novel and unexpected kinds of social differences, subcultures, and identities. It is far too simple to talk about this in terms of binaries such as "information haves and have nots" or "digital divides". There are many different kinds of obstacles to full participation, many different degrees of access to information, technologies, and online communities, and many different ways of processing those experiences. Participatory cultures surrounding digital media are characterized by a diversity that does not track automatically to high and low access or more or less sophisticated use. Rather, multiple forms of expertise, connoisseurship, identity, and practice are proliferating in online worlds, with complicated relationships to pre-existing categories such as socioeconomic status, gender, nationality, race, or ethnicity. We encourage sessions that describe, document, and critically analyze different forms of participation and how they relate to various forms of social and cultural capital. We are interested in accounts of the challenges and obstacles which block or inhibit engagement to different forms of online participation. We also encourage session proposals that engage with successful intervention strategies and pedagogical processes enabling once marginalized groups to more fully exploit the opportunities for learning with digital media. Conversely, we are interested in hearing more about how marginal and subcultural communities find diverse uses of new and emerging technologies, pushing them in new directions and navigating a complicated relationship with "mainstream" forms of participation. Specifically, we seek to understand the following: • What can research on more diverse communities contribute to our understanding of the learning ecologies surrounding new media? • What are the technologies, practices, economic, and cultural divides that lead to segregation, "gated" information communities, and differential access? • When and how do diversity and differentiation in participation promote social and cultural benefits and opportunities, and when do they create schisms that are less equitable or productive? • What strategies have proven successful at broadening opportunities for participation, overcoming the many different kinds of segregation or exclusion which impact the online world, and empowering more diverse presences throughout cyberspace? • Are there things occurring on the margins of the existing digital culture that might valuably be incorporated into more mainstream practices? 3 Henry Jenkins Digital Media and Learning Conference Chair Henry Jenkins joins USC from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he was Peter de Florez Professor in the Humanities. He directed MIT’s Comparative Media Studies graduate degree program from 1993-2009, setting an innovative research agenda during a time of fundamental change in communication, journalism and entertainment. As one of the first media scholars to chart the changing role of the audience in an environment of increasingly pervasive digital content, Jenkins has been at the forefront of understanding the effects of participatory media on society, politics and culture. His research gives key insights to the success of social-networking Web sites, networked computer games, online fan communities and other advocacy organizations, and emerging news media outlets. Jenkins is recognized as a leading thinker in the effort to redefine the role of journalism in the digital age. Through parallels drawn between the consumption of pop culture and the processing of news information, he and his fellow researchers have identified new methods to encourage citizen engagement. Jenkins launched the Center for Future Civic Media at MIT to further explore these parallels. Jenkins has also played a central role in demonstrating the importance of new media technologies in educational settings. At MIT, he led a consortium of educators and business leaders promoting the educational benefits of computer games, and oversaw a research group working to help teach 21st century literacy skills to high school students through documentary videos. He also has worked closely with the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to shape a media literacy program designed to explore the effects of participatory media on young people, and reveal potential new pathways for education through emerging digital media. His most recent book, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, is recognized as a hallmark of recent research on the subject of transmedia storytelling. His other published works reflect the wide range of his research interests, touching on democracy and new media, the “wow factor” of popular culture, science-fiction fan communities and the early history of film comedy. 4 KEYNOTE SPEAKERS S. Craig Watkins Living on the Digital Margins: How Black and Latino Youth are Remaking the Participation Gap S. Craig Watkins has been researching young people's media behaviors for more than ten years. He teaches in the departments of Radio-Television- Film and Sociology and the Center for African and African American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. His new book, The Young and the Digital: What the Migration to Social Network Sites, Games, and Anytime, Anywhere Media Means for Our Future (Beacon 2009), is based on survey research, in-depth interviews, and fieldwork with teens, young twenty- somethings, teachers, parents, and technology advocates. While writing this book Craig fully immersed himself in what he calls the "digital trenches," to see up close how young people learn, play, bond, communicate, and engage in civic life in the digital age. Craig has also explored the intersections between race, youth, hip hop, and digital media. This work, for example, considers the politics of music production and remix tapes, the rise of hip hop communities on line, and the influence of the hip hop lifestyle in black youth's use of social and mobile media. Craig participated in the MacArthur Foundation Series on Youth, Digital Media and Learning. His work on this groundbreaking project focused on race, learning, and the growing culture of gaming. He has been invited to be a Research Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (Stanford). Currently, Craig is launching a new digital media research initiative that focuses on the use and evolution of social media platforms. For updates on these and other projects visit theyoungandthedigital.com. 5 Sonia Livingstone Youthful Participation – What have we learned, what shall we ask next? Sonia Livingstone (BSc Psychology, UCL; DPhil Social Psychology, Oxford) is Professor of Social Psychology and Head of the Department of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She is author or editor of fourteen books and many academic articles and chapters. Her research examines children, young people and the internet; social and family contexts and uses of ICT; media and digital literacies;