BSA303, Notes on media education 21st century paper, 16 March, 2017

An occasional paper on digital media and learning
Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century

Henry Jenkins, Director of the Comparative Media Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
with Katie Clinton
Ravi Purushotma
Alice J. Robison
Margaret Weigel

Table of Contents
 Executive Summary 3
The Needed Skills in the New Media Culture 5
Enabling Participation 7
Why We Should Teach Media Literacy:Three Core Problems 12
What Should We Teach? Rethinking Literacy 19
Core Media Literacy Skills 22
Who Should Respond? A Systemic Approach to Media Education 56
The Challenge Ahead: Ensuring that All Benefit from the Expanding Media Landscape 61
Sources 62

.A participatory culture is a culture with relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement, strong support for creating and sharing one’s creations, and some type of informal mentorship whereby what is known by the most experienced is passed along to novices.

Affiliations — memberships, formal and informal, in online communities centered around 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 and modding, fan videomaking, fan fiction writing, zines, mash-ups)  Skinning and modding allow individual users to alter commercial computer software.

Collaborative Problem-solving — working together in teams, formal and informal, to complete tasks and develop new knowledge (such as through Wikipedia, alternative reality gaming, spoiling).

Circulations — Shaping the flow of media (such as podcasting, blogging).

p.8 According to a 2005 study conducted by the Pew Internet and American Life project (Lenhardt & Madden, 2005), more than one-half of all American teens—and 57 percent of teens who use the Internet—could be considered media creators. For the purpose of the study, a media creator is someone who created a blog or webpage, posted original artwork, photography, stories or videos online or remixed online content into their own new creations. Most have done two or more of these activities. One-third of teens share what they create online with others, 22 percent have their own websites, 19 percent blog, and 19 percent remix online content. Contrary to popular stereotypes, these activities are not restricted to white suburban males. In fact, urban youth (40 percent) are somewhat more likely than their suburban (28 percent) or rural (38 percent) counterparts to be media creators. Girls aged 15-17 (27 percent) are more likely than boys their age (17 percent) to be involved with blogging or other social activities online.The Pew researchers found no significant differences in participation by race-ethnicity

p17  the young people took the game’s representation of historical evidence at face value, acting as if all of the information in the game was authentic.

p18 Increasingly, content comes to us already branded, already shaped through an economics of sponsorship, if not overt advertising.

Seiter (2005) concludes,“The World Wide Web is a more aggressive and stealthy marketeer to children than television ever was, and children need as much information about its business practices as teachers and parents can give them” (p. 100).