Digital Literacies

Some time back, on this blog, I talked about ‘researching both ends’. this is about the need, when researching what is going on online, to take account of people’s offline contexts when they involve themselves in online text production. It is not enough to just look at what is online if you are carrying out ethnographic work, as so much of what happens online has roots in, or is influenced by offline contexts.

Fields and Kafai (2008) talk about ‘Connective ethnography’ which sounds altogether more sensible – in Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (2009). 4:47–68 They talk about how young people share knowledge in on and off line spaces in order to progress in the virtual world Whyville.

There are those who are now beginning to reject the idea of ‘Virtual ethnography’ since off line worlds are not completely separate from online spaces – we see much evidence of the replication of off line spaces in online spaces; and we also see how online spaces are used to do the social work needed to maintain off line relationships (and I am aware here of the clumsiness of my terms offline and online lives etc.) Rybas and Gajajjala prefer the term cyberethnography – emphasising the way in which the human is behind the digital activities.

I am going to explore all this stuff as it relates not just to the importance of getting the methodology right, but also to the whole issue of identity as it relates to digital activities.

*(Title refers to a paper: PublicDisplays)

Interviewing a group of 17 – 18 year old students about their uses of Facebook yesterday reminded me of a few things. Firstly, that there are a great many ways of engaging with the same thing; secondly, that even if the activities that young people are involved in over time might change superficially, young people remain pre-occupied with the same identity and social issues as ever.

Before I explain, I think maybe I should say that I don’t think I will try to discuss anything and audio record it, with as many as eight people again! That aside, it was very useful to have done this, as it reminded me of the dynamics that exist amongst young people who are attending courses together and how they banter and tease etc etc This was a good reminder of the meatspace stuff that inevitably filters into the Facebook activities.

Number one finding – the students all told me that they did not like completing their Facebook profiles; most had only put in their name, photo, date of birth and city where they live. After that, they say they rarely update their status; they do not write on their wall, and don’t like it when others do so. They said they mainly chat on the instant messaging facility in Facebook and that they also join groups. The groups are for joining and looking at , but they rarely write anything. They spend a lot of time looking at girls’ photos, talking with each other about them and trying to get the girls to ‘add’ them as friends. So my first point is that while there is a lot of looking, & some reading happening, there is not much writing or much straying across to lots of other sites to get links etc

The boys are making lots of collections however; they have lists of which groups they belong to (automatically created by Facebook) and they can display, in their ‘friends’ section, the profile pictures of the girls they have managed to add; there is something here of the collector; the groups are about funny things and the girls are to do with sexuality. (Many of the pictures of the girls’ pix are sexually provocative etc). These are the public displays of connection the boys seemed keen to share on their Facebooks.

This was all a really fascinating wake up call for me and reminded me of stuff I had been writing about ten years ago for my PhD thesis around boys’ demonstrations of hetero-normative masculinity in school…. (Paper here: expressionsofgender)…. In the classroom, I noticed these demonstrations had to be made on a regular basis, so that they would be construed always as ‘proper’ male and as heterosexual. In the classroom, such displays were often highly disruptive, anti-academic and anti feminist. In being interviewed, in showing me the Facebook pages, the students continued to banter the whole time, licking each other into shape, making each other behave in the hetero- normative ways. I liked this group of kids; don’t get me wrong. But they are a far cry from the Facebooking people I had been envisaging for a while – who have been writerly, keen on presenting themselves in text and looking for alternative possibilities. These boys were reflecting their college selves into their Facebook selves, that’s true. But the digital revolution is not one that is transforming these essential aspects of young men.

When I have managed to transcribe the recordings, there will be more to say no doubt.

Below we have a piece from Charlieissocoollike – with his take on teenage boys. Charlie is clearly VERY middleclass and has now, I noticed, got an international following of adoring girls. These girls make video responses to his films and echo many of the techniques that he sees in his work. A fascinating cultural phenomenon – we see some memes across these videos – some of which are multimodal – but I do not see Charlieissocoollike as demoonstrating anything like what is typical in Internet use. Anyhow – have a laugh at this:
.

There is something very Adrian Mole and certainly very English in all this. Now a video response from a fan in Australia ….

(!!)

Kristen Purcell from Pew Internet Research has this today:

I wonder if the statistic about using the Internet more if you are a ‘wireless’ user indicates that having wireless facility MAKES you use the Internet more .. or if it is that you get wireless as you are already mad crazy about online stuff. Prob a bit of both. We ‘went wireless’ approx seven years ago … just as we had so many people in the house using the Internet and could not afford to put routers everywhere. then we gradually all got laptops and drag them round the house with us, room to room. We take our computers with us when we go away, storing all our vital stuff and our stuff that seems vital (but probably isn’t).

I am not surprised that the SNS usage is most popular amongst the young (73% se SNS); while those going into Virtual Worlds is just 8%. I would have liked to have seen stats on gamers too… we hear often in the popular press about the huge sales of video games and about the immersive activites of gamers. But I think the gamers get attention as they are SO immersed and that involvement in game is extra to Real Life stuff … as opposed to augmentive of, RL stuff. Gamers seem to use the computer to ESCAPE, while SNS people use it to KEEP IN TOUCH.

In the February 2010 report, Social Media and Young Adults, Amanda Lenhart, Kristen Purcell, Aaron Smith, Kathryn Zickuhr explain that:

Two Pew Internet Project surveys of teens and adults reveal a decline in blogging among teens and young adults and a modest rise among adults 30 and older. In 2006, 28% of teens ages 12-17 and young adults ages 18-29 were bloggers, but by 2009 the numbers had dropped to 14% of teens and 15% of young adults. During the same period, the percentage of online adults over thirty who were bloggers rose from 7% blogging in 2006 to 11% in 2009.

Again, I am not surprised… when I was looking at young people’s uses of Diaryland and of personal websites on servers like Angelfire.com, Web 2.0 had not really arrived in the way it now has. We can produce bite size (byte size) chunks of text, that is ephemeral and possible to generate while on the move. The early versions of blogs were hard work and actually I think were used by those who already loved writing (or would have done if digital processing were not an option). Maybe they were for the ‘writerly’ type of young person. Now, with blogs being a bit more accepted, a bit more embedded in the culture, the oldies have taken them on and they are being used by them as ways of indulging their writing desires. But also those who blogged as teens in the early millenium years may now be in their twenties and some of them will be blogging still. SNS sites allow you to drop by, do something else and then drop by again. They allow for in and out attention, as opposed to blogs which tend to ask for sustained work.

looking forward to reading the report later.

Travelling to London

Good to be in Paris again after a few years of not visiting. We really notice how the city has a nostalgic feel about it, somehow not feeling as busy as London (for example) and certainly not as covered in adverts etc etc. We have also noticed there is not as much traffic as in London – although the level of crap car-parking on the kerbs and over zebra crossings is as bad as it ever was in the city – and the authorities seem to be encouraging cycling. Ranks of bikes are easily seen across the metropolis and you can simply swipe your credit card and hire the bikes by the hour. Very cool, I think. (Although of course it keeps out those without bank accounts). Here’s a picture in sepia – just to give you a spot of olde worlde atmosphere.

I’ve been thinking ahead to my teaching next week – for the MA Educational Research – on Image based Research. So I have been enjoying the photography exhibitions. Loved it at The Polka Gallerie and saw some lovely portraits from Francoise Huguier like this one:

A life saver for us also, was our visit to The European Photography Gallery. It was completely pouring with rain (I took photos and will show later) and so we were pleased to dive in and see an exhibition which surpassed expectations. We saw the work of Delpire:

‘This exhibition looks back at Robert Delpire’s career and gives him an opportunity to thank the various people who have accompanied him in ‘this exciting adventure as a book publisher, advertising art director, exhibition curator and film producer’.

and it was interesting to see how much modern photography is influenced by the work of advertising – like Delpire’s stuff (with Sarah Moon and Henri Cartier Bresson) – for Citroen & Cacharel – which is all about selling a certain lifestyle and image. This was early work which thought about identity and consumption, presenting a lifestyle to identify with & buy into.

Other stuff of interest included images by Robert Frank – Les Americains - as they say over here. His work was controversial at the time of publishing the collection, since his social commentary style was less than complimentary about aspects of American Life – his depiction of institutional racism for example, as shown in this image of passengers on a trolley-bus in 1955 New Orleans:

Frank is often described as a journalistic photographer … presumably with an intention to show and report aspects of the political and social world in order to make people more aware. This is different of course to holiday snaps, to advertising images, to story book pictures … and probably also different to the intention of photographers who use images as part of their research data. I wonder – are the photographs only different because of their intention – or can we use the same photos for many purposes`/ Do we make different kinds of image when we have different purposes or audiences in mind?

Also saw some work on children’s book images – and we watched a French video of ‘Where the Wild Things are’ – and in French ‘Max et les MaxiMonstres’ (!!)

That’s it though … apart from to confess that we have had to come to MacDonald’s in order to use the free Wifi (pronounced WeeFee) as our hotel doers not supply it. Tant Pis.

I have had a fantastic time over the last few days at the Literacy for Lifelong Learning Conference here in Jamaica – The University of West Indies Education Department. .

When I get my photos and my head sorted out a bit more about the experience of being here, I will post more about the trip, but for now, here is the slideshow which I used for the keynote presentation. (Click on the orange and blue shareware icon to go to the shareware site and see the show on full screen)

I will add more links into this post when I get home so that conference delegates can access the paper I have written relating to the keynote presentation. and also the powerpoint I used and and resources I referred to in my workshop.

But in the meantime …..I also mentioned the book in my workshop by Marsh and Millard – see here.

And Kress’s book here.

Exciting, accessible and intelligent is Lankshear and Knobel’s book on New Lteracies …. as well as their book The New Literacy Sampler … which is also available online to read here.

Amazing stuff down the pub on Ebay …

I love the way they have a discussion board called The Nag’s head. People in there can just chill n chat.
Lots of the people in there have no selling or buying history on eBay and so are just hanging out in the discussion rooms just because they can. It’s like a free place where you can go in and loll about – only attracting attention if you break the rules.
It reminds me of the young people who hang out on street corners or in shopping malls. Those cool places where adults don’t want them but they reclaim as their own. They change the nature of a place by doing different stuff in them – and sometimes they get noticed, sometimes they don’t.
The other day I came across a thread where people were talking about brandings, piercings and body carving. Really. And there was a link to the most horrendous images. (I am not putting in a link as I don’t want it connected to my blog.) Of body carving. But they basically can talk about anything at all…so here’s one person moaning about her mother …

Basiclly I just need to rant
when Im on the phone to her or Talking to her in person I could say something she looks at me blankly and then just starts ranting about something thats on her mind

Shes had a few problems with her sisters lately and resulting in her only talking to 1 out of 5
she constantly goes on and on and on And ON about them and TBH Im getting really sick of it

Its like nothing I have to say is important because she has this problem even my kids had to listen to it when she was here last week. Carl listened to it one night and then disappered for the rest of the week

or there is this one about people with no manners:

Really wind me up
13 people said their child was coming to Connors party today, i put on the invitation that i needed to know exact numbers by the 7th as i had to pay in advance, most of them i had to chase up because they were too lazy to tick the box saying i would love to come/ i cant come.
On friday i had 13 “definitley coming” i paid £161 for the bloody party £11.50 a child and 4 of them didnt turn up after their parents said they were coming

I am so temted to tell the parents tomorrow they owe me £11.50 each

and breathe

I think that people plan to meet on these discussion boards and then have a chat. I think they know each other face to face and use this as a spce to catch up. Which is a good idea I spose as it is free and there is loadsa room to put up jpgs and the like.

So my point is that people re-fashion online spaces to suit their needs. Interesting.

Such is the fascination of eBay, that one of the most viewed images on my Flick stream, is the teacups I once bought from eBay:

At last another bit of competition for Micrsoft with Dell launching the use of Ubuntu an opensource operating system to be included on some of its machines. Perhaps this will see the end of such narrow competition … yes I know that Apple’s Tiger (grrrr) is lovely everyone …. but you know what I mean.

Ubuntu is designed by the people for the people (ha ha) or as Dell says, it:

lets multiple people change, improve and redistribute the source code, meaning the software is generally community developed and available for free

So of course that makes it cheaper. And competitive. I wonder how many other manufacturers will follow suit… and what will Microsoft do to bribe them to stay loyal?

In the meantime Brendadada has this piece on Flickr, where Yahoo’s takeover of that initially wonderful online space has progressivley annoyed her so much that she has emigrated (with some friends) to
Ipernity. It looks like a very nice place indeed.

Interesting watching the debates about control of online spaces and so on and all this does have resonances for literacy practices and research about online text production and consumption. (So keep those articles coming Brendadada).

In the meantime, here is me zooming down the A57 by Stines in Derbyshire … relieved to be on the downhill run at last … and hoping we will have some kind of summer in the UK afterall

(Thanks to TT for the shot of me smiling at last and for telling me bout stuff for my blog).

Vic mentioned this wonderful new project, which takes the ‘What’s in my bag’ idea a bit further.

A long time ago I contributed this to the pool:

(Showing a bag I continue to use and will be using again this weekend when I go to this conference.)

It is clear that people do not reveal ‘all’ but construct images in a manner so that they represnt themselves in a way that they feel OK about going online. To do this, they need to think about how people might read the images – (what will they think? what associations do the objects have? what do they ‘connote’?); they need to know something about how objects represent aspects of their persona; they need to consider what to leave out as well as what to include. Maybe they arrange things so they look smart/show their label/hide their label/ look casual/ appear expensive/cheap. And the inclusion of images of faces taken on a scanner connotes something ludic; maybe a cross-reference to office parties and ‘parts of the body image making’ and a presentation of self that says @I am game’ ‘I am fun’ – ‘I live life madly’.

I am really interested in the ways in which we display online identities and have noticed the continuities in the ways some people present themselves across sites. For example they may begin a persona on a flickr stream and then deepen it through displays in other spaces… like Niznoz’s stream and his two blogs here and here; or Gamma’s stream and his blog. They are serious reporters of the city; they show something of ‘life as it is’; of the history and the way things are changing. NizNoz has two blogs, each with a different function.

People often use their blogs as a way of SPECIALISING. People use different parts of the web, different types of software to perform different tasks. And they are getting good at working out what is good for what task. This is a digital literacy skill; not everyone will ‘GET IT’ intuitively and so there is a role for researchers in working out what the conventions are and a role for educators in teaching about these things.

It has recently become trendy to represent oneself as a Simpson on Flickr and use the image as an icon of identity. YOu can get one via a new gadget available over at The Simpsons new movie website here. Obviously a lot to be written about re avatars and icons people use on websites, but no time here… must go.

But I’ll just leave you with the image my dear partner in life made of himself on Sunday. What kind of impression does he give here? (Answers on a postcard please).