This Friday's speaker is Dr. Mizuko Ito, Cultural Anthropologist of Technology Use. The Seminar is at 3:00 in 5011 Donald Bren Hall, followed by a social hour at 4:00.

Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Genres of Youth Participation in Networked Publics

Abstract: Digital media and online communication have become a pervasive part of the everyday lives of youth in the US. Though they may be engaging in negotiations over knowledge and identity, coming of age, and struggling for autonomy as did their predecessors, they are doing this while the contexts for communication, friendship, play, and self-expression are being reconfigured through their engagement with new media. This talk will report on some of the findings of a three-year ethnographic project that investigated how young people in the US are incorporating new media into their everyday lives. This project involved 20 different case studies conducted by 28 researchers and research collaborators looking across diverse contexts in which youth were communicating online and using digital media for creative production and expression. The project identified "genres of participation" for how different youth participate in networked publics that they engage with online, specifically the difference between friendship-driven forms of hanging out and interest-driven forms of geeking out. The talk will give specific examples from one of the case studies of anime fans to demonstrate how youth move between messing around online to more geeked out and interest-driven genres of participation.