Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century

Vague goal, contradicting concerns, and critical report
Posted by: Research_Reviewer on Tue, 28 Apr 09 16:36:39 +0000
    I very much like the way the different forms of participatory culture are written, as well as, various kinds of examples with each form. On the first page where it states the three concerns suggesting the need for policy and pedagogical interventions which include: the participation gap, the transparency problem, and the ethics challenge--stating various questions within tow of the concerns. These concerns as stated contradict with each other. It’s vague to say that,  “children are not victims of media is not to say that they are any more than anyone fully mastered the skills of the emerging social practices”. I have no idea what you are trying to say here.
    Beginning with The Participation Gap, what would you say about the age gap? Participation of which age groups is this intended for? Regarding The Transparency Problem, what about how teens will face the future and the ways they would percept it? I mean the media has its own perceptions about the future but what about teens and how they’d like to see the future through their own minds and ways not through the peer pressure of the media to see it a certain way.
    On the second page, the central goal of the report is adequately stated as “a shift of the digital divide from technological access to opportunities in participation and the development of cultural and social skills“. The next sentence states how schools have been slow in the involvement of such new “culture” as it is stated. I really cannot understand the culture that is stated here and what it has to do with the instructions of teachers and overall the schooling system with this digital divide. I mean, technology has already consumed more than 90% of the population in the United States thus far outside of school programs, why bring technology into the classroom if teachers are the ones hired to teach and not computers? Wouldn’t it be better for a child, a student, a human being to make their own decisions instead of a computer to do it for them? Also, what if there was no computers available, how would one manage?
    The page with, The Needed Skills in the New Media Culture, shows many juvenile children making it big (online publications, summer internships, start-up companies, etc. ) and stating that none of these has taken place in schools. I ask myself right here and then, what is education and what does it mean for each person to get a degree? Networking, summer internships, and starting one’s own company is part of the working life of an adult not a child at the age of 14. These children who have done these activities are exceptional, yes, but to be exceptional at any age one has got to work hard to achieve what they set their mind towards. At the same time what works best is being at the right place at the right time with the right people.
    The Enabling Participation section states “in terms of personal development, identity, expression and their social consequences-- participation, social capital, civic culture- these are the activities that serve to network today’s younger generation” as Livingstone writes. My evaluation here is again with these children and younger generation. Aren’t children supposed to live out their childhoods while they are children rather than act as adults by spending their time on the internet? Furthermore, I would criticize much about the computer influence to children and the communication process as to say how much the use of computers has declined the real face to face communication between society and has adopted these ways of writing through email, chat rooms, and picture messaging. Overall, I am a bit confused as to what the actual goal of this report is: to support the younger generation in spending their time on the internet or rejecting that idea?
    Furthermore, how is participatory culture emerging as new media technology comes out? Here we have technology versus culture or do we have interactivity versus participatory? A paragraph below it states how the goals of this report should encourage youth to develop the skills and knowledge needed to fulfill to its participatory culture. Using the word ‘should’ in a states that you are not sure as to what exactly could get the youth to develop these skills. I mean what if the goal does not encourage the youth to be engaged, what then? Such that as stated, many young people already participate on such sites as Facebook and MySpace connecting with online friends, communicating virtually, but what about making friends off camera, off the inernet, off the computer screen? Also, within these walls, how does this deal with the safety of these websites and the people children talk to, how do they know if they are who they say they are? We all know that as one sits on the computer, they put on a mask and become someone else. How would a child know they are chatting their life away with a safe person unless they’d only assume that way. Furthermore, why is it so important for contemporary culture to be part in a youth’s life early on if they will learn it later on? As well, these “opportunities” as stated by Affiliation, Expressions, Collaborative Problem-solving, and Circulations; For who are these opportunities: the youth or mass media and technology creators?
    The page describing, Affinity Spaces, I ask myself the same question as Mr. Gee, “ he calls such informal learning cultures ‘affinity spaces’, asking why people learn more, participate more actively, engage more deeply with popular culture than they do with the contents of their textbooks”. Further down, we have formal education versus informal and the differences between them. The formal education is primarily the traditional one and the informal is the media based one. Here is my top thing: formal education is taught with teachers and parents, but informal education is but with who other than alone by yourself. One paragraph states that “you suspect that young people who spend more time playing within these new media environments will feel greater comfort interacting with one another” and so on, though this shows suspicion rather than suggestion or observation. I mean, what evidence do you have that shows these young people’s feelings? Any surveys, interviews, anything? What is the difference between a child with a computer versus a child without one? Is one smarter than the other one?
    Overall, the research is okay, but it needs improvement. I mean you state what each concern and forms of participatory culture is, yet you show no evidence as to who else thinks that way as well. The actual question of this research to me has been as to whether young people should keep their formal education or throw it away by adapting informal education processes.