Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning Engineering Play: A Cultural History of Children’s Software by Mizuko Ito Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media by Mizuko Ito, Sonja Baumer, Matteo Bittanti, danah boyd, Rachel Cody, Becky Herr-Stephenson, Heather A. Horst, Patricia G. Lange, Dilan Mahendran, Katynka Z. Martínez, C. J. Pascoe, Dan Perkel, Laura Robinson, Christo Sims, Lisa Tripp, with contributions by Judd Antin, Megan Finn, Arthur Law, Annie Manion, Sarai Mitnick, David Schlossberg, and Sarita Yardi Inaugural Series Volumes These edited volumes were created through an interactive community review process and published online and in print in December 2007. They are the pre- cursors to the peer-reviewed monographs in the series. Civic Life Online: Learning How Digital Media Can Engage Youth , edited by W. Lance Bennett Digital Media, Youth, and Credibility , edited by Miriam J. Metzger and Andrew J. Flanagin Digital Youth, Innovation, and the Unexpected , edited by Tara McPherson The Ecology of Games: Connecting Youth, Games, and Learning , edited by Katie Salen Learning Race and Ethnicity: Youth and Digital Media , edited by Anna Everett Youth, Identity, and Digital Media , edited by David Buckingham HANGING OUT, MESSING AROUND, AND GEEKING OUT Kids Living and Learning with New Media Mizuko Ito Sonja Baumer Matteo Bittanti danah boyd Rachel Cody Becky Herr-Stephenson Heather A. Horst Patricia G. Lange Dilan Mahendran Katynka Z. Martínez C. J. Pascoe Dan Perkel Laura Robinson Christo Sims Lisa Tripp with contributions by Judd Antin, Megan Finn, Arthur Law, Annie Manion, Sarai Mitnick, David Schlossberg, and Sarita Yardi The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England © 2010 Massachusetts Institute of Technology All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher. For information about special quantity discounts, please e-mail special_sales@ mitpress.mit.edu. This book was set in Stone Sans and Stone Serif by SNP Best-set Typesetter Ltd., Hong Kong. Printed and bound in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ito, Mizuko. Hanging out, messing around, and geeking out : kids living and learning with new media / Mizuko Ito. p. cm. — The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series in Digital Media and Learning Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-262-01336-9 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Mass media and youth—United States. 2. Digital media—Social aspects– United States. 3. Technology and youth—United States. 4. Learning—Social aspects. I. Title. HQ799.2.M352I87 2010 302.23'108350973—dc22 2009009932 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 To the memory and ongoing legacy of Peter Lyman. His vision, passion, and leadership have guided this project and animated its spirit of interdisciplinary, collaborative work. Contents Series Foreword xi Acknowledgments xiii Notes on the Text xvii INTRODUCTION 1 1 MEDIA ECOLOGIES 29 Lead Authors: Heather A. Horst, Becky Herr-Stephenson, and Laura Robinson Box 1.1 Media Ecologies: Quantitative Perspectives 32 Christo Sims Box 1.2 Michelle 42 Lisa Tripp Box 1.3 “You Have Another World to Create”: Teens and Online Hangouts 50 C. J. Pascoe Box 1.4 The Techne-Mentor 59 Megan Finn Box 1.5 zalas, a Digital-Information Virtuoso 67 Mizuko Ito 2 FRIENDSHIP 79 Lead Author: danah boyd Box 2.1 Sharing Snapshots of Teen Friendship and Love 85 Katynka Z. Martínez viii Contents Box 2.2 From MySpace to Facebook: Coming of Age in Networked Public Culture 92 Heather A. Horst 3 INTIMACY 117 Lead Author: C. J. Pascoe Box 3.1 The Public Nature of Mediated Breakups 133 danah boyd Box 3.2 Bob Anderson’s Story: “It Was Kind of a Weird Cyber Growing-Up Thing” 142 Christo Sims 4 FAMILIES 149 Lead Author: Heather A. Horst Box 4.1 The Garcia Family: A Portrait of Urban Los Angeles 158 Katynka Z. Martínez Box 4.2 The Miller Family: A Portrait of a Silicon Valley Family 168 Heather A. Horst Box 4.3 The Milvert Family: A Portrait of Rural California 186 Christo Sims 5 GAMING 195 Lead Authors: Mizuko Ito and Matteo Bittanti Box 5.1 Neopets: Same Game, Different Meanings 204 Laura Robinson and Heather A. Horst Box 5.2 First-Person Play: Subjectivity, Gamer Code, and Doom 210 Matteo Bittanti Box 5.3 Learning and Collaborating in Final Fantasy XI 216 Rachel Cody Box 5.4 Machinima: From Learners to Producers 224 Matteo Bittanti 6 CREATIVE PRODUCTION 243 Lead Authors: Patricia G. Lange and Mizuko Ito Contents ix Box 6.1 “MySpace Is Universal”: Creative Production in a Trajectory of Participation 257 Dan Perkel Box 6.2 All in the Family 263 Patricia G. Lange Box 6.3 Making Music Together 270 Dilan Mahendran Box 6.4 **Spoiler Alert**: Harry Potter Podcasting as Collaborative Production 285 Becky Herr-Stephenson 7 WORK 295 Lead Author: Mizuko Ito Box 7.1 “I’m Just a Nerd. It’s Not Like I’m a Rock Star or Anything” 311 Mizuko Ito Box 7.2 Technological Prospecting in Rural Landscapes 316 Christo Sims Box 7.3 Being More Than “Just a Banker”: DIY Youth Culture and DIY Capitalism in a High-School Computer Club 320 Katynka Z. Martínez Box 7.4 Final Fantasy XI: Trouncing Tiamat 326 Rachel Cody Box 7.5 Eddie: Neopets, Neocapital, and Making a Virtual Buck 331 Laura Robinson CONCLUSION 339 Appendix I: Project Overview 355 Appendix II: Project Descriptions 361 Appendix III: Project Index 371 Bibliography 373 Index 399 Series Foreword In recent years, digital media and networks have become embedded in our everyday lives and are part of broad-based changes to how we engage in knowledge production, communication, and creative expression. Unlike the early years in the development of computers and computer-based media, digital media are now commonplace and pervasive , having been taken up by a wide range of individuals and institutions in all walks of life. Digital media have escaped the boundaries of professional and formal practice, and the academic, governmental, and industry homes that ini- tially fostered their development. Now they have been taken up by diverse populations and noninstitutionalized practices, including the peer activi- ties of youth. Although specific forms of technology uptake are highly diverse, a generation is growing up in an era where digital media are part of the taken-for-granted social and cultural fabric of learning, play, and social communication. This book series is founded upon the working hypothesis that those immersed in new digital tools and networks are engaged in an unprece- dented exploration of language, games, social interaction, problem solving, and self-directed activity that leads to diverse forms of learning. These diverse forms of learning are reflected in expressions of identity, how indi- viduals express independence and creativity, and in their ability to learn, exercise judgment, and think systematically. The defining frame for this series is not a particular theoretical or disci- plinary approach, nor is it a fixed set of topics. Rather, the series revolves around a constellation of topics investigated from multiple disciplinary and practical frames. The series as a whole looks at the relation between youth, learning, and digital media, but each might deal with only a subset xii Series Foreword of this constellation. Erecting strict topical boundaries can exclude some of the most important work in the field. For example, restricting the content of the series only to people of a certain age means artificially reify- ing an age boundary when the phenomenon demands otherwise. This becomes particularly problematic with new forms of online participation where one important outcome is the mixing of participants of different ages. The same goes for digital media, which are increasingly inseparable from analog and earlier media forms. The series responds to certain changes in our media ecology that have important implications for learning. Specifically, these are new forms of media literacy and changes in the modes of media participation . Digital media are part of a convergence between interactive media (most notably gaming), online networks, and existing media forms. Navigating this media ecology involves a palette of literacies that are being defined through practice but require more scholarly scrutiny before they can be fully incor- porated pervasively into educational initiatives. Media literacy involves not only ways of understanding, interpreting, and critiquing media, but also the means for creative and social expression, online search and naviga- tion, and a host of new technical skills. The potential gap in literacies and participation skills creates new challenges for educators who struggle to bridge media engagement inside and outside the classroom. The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning, published by the MIT Press, aims to close these gaps and provide innovative ways of thinking about and using new forms of knowledge production, communication, and creative expression. Acknowledgments The research for and writing of this book was a collective effort that involved a wide network of individuals and institutions beyond those named as authors and contributors. The late Peter Lyman was a principal investigator on the project on which this book reports, and he defined the vision and direction for this project as well as forming the team that started it off. Michael Carter provided leadership as a principal investigator and as the heart and soul of the project, and he held the team together through many challenges. We are also grateful to Barrie Thorne, who stepped in as principal investigator, offering guidance and support including crucial input on our writing and analysis. The project was funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation as part of the digital media and learning initiative. We would particularly like to thank our program officer and director of education at the foundation, Constance M. Yowell, and vice president of human and community development, Julia M. Stasch. This was a multi-institutional project that was guided by the admini- strative and research staff at multiple research centers. At the University of California, Berkeley, the project was housed at the Institute for the Study of Social Change and benefited from the technical support of UC Berkeley’s School of Information. At Berkeley, we would like to thank Shalia McDonald, Janice Tanigawa, Diane Harley, Kathleen Kuhlmann, and Evelyn Wong for their help in administering and managing the project. At the University of Southern California, the project was housed at the Annenberg Center for Communication and the Institute for Multimedia Literacy at the School of Cinematic Arts. We are grateful to Mariko Oda, Josie Acosta, Steve Adcook, Chris Badua, Willy Paredes, and Chris Wittenberg for guidance with and support for the project at USC. xiv Acknowledgments In addition to the authors and contributors to this report, we had many research assistants and collaborators who enriched this project along the way. Max Besbris, Brendan Callum, Allison Dusine, Sam Jackson, Lou-Anthony Limon, Renee Saito, Judy Suwatanapongched, and Tammy Zhu were research assistants as well as vital informants and experts in all things digital and youth. We also benefited from working with our collabo- rators on this project, Natalie Boero, Carrie Burgener, Juan Devis, Scott Carter, Paul Poling, Nick Reid, Rachel Strickland, and Jennifer Urban. The Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, the Pew Internet & American Life Project, the LAUSD Arts Education Branch, and the Wallis Annenberg Initiative also were institutional collaborators in this research. Karen Bleske, in addition to careful copyediting of the entire book, provided invaluable help in integrating the many different voices and styles of the contributors. Eric Olive was our web guru who helped get our work out to the online universe. At the MIT Press, the book was in the capable editorial hands of Doug Sery, Katie Helke, and Mel Goldsipe. Our work has benefited from the wise counsel of many colleagues, more numerous than we can fully name here. We would like to acknowledge those who participated in the occasions that we organized to get formal feedback on our work in progress. An early draft of this book was reviewed by John Seely Brown, Paul Duguid, Jabari Mahiri, Daniel Miller, Katie Salen, Ellen Seiter, and Barry Wellman. Their comments resulted in considerable changes to this document that have both sharpened the arguments and made it more intelligible to diverse audiences. As we were conducting our research, we arranged for periodic meetings and conversations so we could be in dialogue with scholars we knew would inform our work. In addition to those who reviewed this book, we would like to thank those who participated and generously shared their insights and perspectives: Sasha Barab, Brigid Barron, Suzy Beemer, Linda Burch, Lynn Schofield Clark, Michael Cole, Brinda Dalal, Dale Dougherty, Penelope Eckert, Nicole Ellison, James Paul Gee, David Goldberg, Shelley Goldman, Joyce Hakansson, Eszter Hargittai, Glynda Hull, Lynn Jamieson, Henry Jenkins, Joseph Kahne, Amanda Lenhart, Jane McGonigal, Ellen Middaugh, Kenny Miller, Alesia Montgomery, Kimiko Nishimura, John Palfrey, Nichole Pinkard, Alice Robison, Ryan Shaw, Lissa Soep, Reed Stevens, Deborah Stipek, Benjamin Stokes, Pierre Tchetgen, Doug Thomas, Avril Thorne, and Margaret Weigel. Acknowledgments xv Finally, we would like to thank the many individuals, families, organiza- tions, and online communities that welcomed us into their midst and educated us about their lives with new media. Although we cannot name all the individuals who participated in our study, we would like to express our gratitude to those whom we can name who facilitated our access to various sites and who acted as key “local” experts: Vicki O’Day for intro- ducing Heather to Silicon Valley families; Tim Park, Carlo Pichay, and zalas for being Mizuko’s senpai in the anime fandom; Enki, Wurlpin, and all of KirinTheDestroyers for taking Rachel under their wing; Tom Anderson, who helped danah get access to MySpace; the people of YouTubia who spoke with Patricia and shared their videos; and all the youth media, middle-school, and high-school educators who opened their doors to us. Notes on the Text This book is a synthesis of three years of collaborative, ethnogra- phic work conducted through a project funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation: Kids’ Informal Learning with Digital Media. Early in the planning of this book, we made a decision not to structure it as a traditional edited volume, nor as a book singly written by a principal project investigator. Instead, this book was written in a highly distributed collaborative process that aimed to integrate both the ethnographic material and the analytic insights of all the project’s researchers involved at the time of its writing. We thought this approach was most in line with the spirit of collaborative, interdisciplinary inquiry that has guided our project from its inception. Each chapter has one or more lead authors who took responsibility for the writing, but every chapter incorporates material and input from a wide range of coauthors and the case studies that they represent. In line with this stance, we use a collective voice to describe this work, even in chapters with only one lead author. We did not always reach complete consensus on all aspects of this book, but there was agreement among the coauthors that we would take collective ownership. Although Mizuko Ito took the lead in the writing of this book, the three other principal investigators, Peter Lyman, Michael Carter, and Barrie Thorne, provided indispensable leadership and support for this project. In addition, we have integrated ethnographic material from former project members, who are named as contributors to this book. The full range of people who have contributed to this three-year project and this book are mentioned in the acknowledgments. xviii Notes on the Text The case studies and approaches that the coauthors brought to the writing have been diverse, but we have agreed on certain representational conventions to provide some consistency in our writing: Unlike in more traditional forms of ethnography, the descriptions in this book draw from a wide range of case studies conducted by a large team of ethnographers. When a research participant is quoted or identified, we indicate which case study the material comes from and the name of the fieldworker who conducted the interview or the observation. We use short identifiers (e.g., Horst, Silicon Valley Families) for the studies to avoid cluttering the text. A table of short titles, full study titles, and study researchers is included in Appendix III. Full descriptions of the framework for the projects are described in the appendices. More detailed descriptions of the twenty-three individual research studies conducted by members of the Digital Youth Project between the years of 2005 and 2008 are provided online at http:// digitalyouth.ischool.berkeley.edu/projects. The various case studies were conducted using different data-collection methodologies, and we have varying degrees of access to contextual information about our participants. In every case, if we know the infor- mation, then we have indicated age, gender, and what each participant self-identified as his or her racial or ethnic identity. If this information is not indicated, then it means that we did not know the information for this participant due to the constraints of the particular case study. For example, in many of the studies that focus on online interest groups, interviews were conducted over the phone or through online chat. In most cases, we derived this information from self-reports in background questionnaires we administered in advance of most of our formal interviews. Although we do not see race as a key analytic category in our work, there are times when we think it is relevant to our description, and we thought that if racial or ethnic identity were to be mentioned for some number of participants, then we needed to be symmetrical in our treatment and indicate racial identity for all respondents for whom we did have this information. We have used pseudonyms in most cases when referring to our research participants. In many, but not all, cases our participants chose these pseudonyms. In the case of some media producers, these names correspond Notes on the Text xix with their creator identities or screen names in their respective interest groups, an approach that we think honors the reputations and investments of time that many of our participants work very hard to develop. When participants specifically requested it, we have used their screen names or their real-life names. When real names or screen names are used, we indicate this by a footnote in the text.