“Las prácticas de literacidad digitales de jóvenes conectados”
(The digital literacy practices of networked young people)
Michele Knobel & Colin Lankshear
Invited Keynote paper
II Semenario Internacional de Lectura en la Universidad (2nd International Seminar
in Reading in the University) I Congreso Nacional de Expresiones de Cultura Escrita
en Instiuciones de Educacion Media Superior y Superior (1st National Congress in
Expressions of Written Culture in Tertiary Education). Aguascalientes, Mexico, 7
August 2010.
Introduction
This paper will explore some typical digital literacy practices of young people in contexts
we are familiar with in relation to four dimensions of interest:
1. Aspects of language use
2. Approaches to researching digital literacies as social practices
3. What it means for young people to be “networked”
4. Understanding some contemporary “ways of being a young person (or young people)”
that are highly valued by many youth.
We will do this by briefly sketching a range of cases from our own work as well as from
the work of other researchers who investigate digital literacies from a sociocultural
perspective. Our paper is based on a particular conception of digital literacy practices,
and we will begin by spelling this out.
“Digital literacy practices”
We define digital literacy practices as “socially recognized ways in which people
generate, communicate and negotiate meanings, as members of Discourses, through the
medium of digitally encoded texts.”
This draws on a well-known account of social practice provided by Silvia Scribner and
Michael Cole (1981), who were among the first researchers to investigate literacy as
social practice. It also draws on James Gee's account of the relationship between
meaning, meanings, and meaningful activity and Discourses. While “engaging in social
practices” and “being members of Discourses and participating in Discourses” are similar
concepts, they emphasize different things, and their respective emphases augment each
other in ways that are important and useful for thinking about “literacies” and about
“young people” as an identity marker.
Social practices
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Scribner and Cole define practices as “socially developed and patterned ways of
using technology and knowledge to accomplish tasks.” They say that when people
participate in tasks that direct them “to socially recognized goals and make use of
a shared technology and knowledge system, they are engaged in a social practice”
(Scribner and Cole 1981: 236). This involves co-ordinated sets of actions – e.g.,
clicking and dragging a 5 second segment of sound to a timeline in an audio or
audiovisual mixing application like Audacity or Moviemaker, having selected out
the sound segment, etc. – which Scribner and Cole refer to as “skills.” Social
practices, then, comprise technology, knowledge and skills organized in ways that
participants recognize, appropriate, and develop as they pursue tasks and
purposes.
Meaning and Discourse
Discourse can be seen as the underlying principle of meaning and meaningfulness. We
“do life” as individuals and as members of social and cultural groups – always as what
Gee calls “situated selves” – in and through Discourses, which can be understood as
meaningful co-ordinations of human and non-human elements. Besides people
themselves, the human elements of co-ordinations include people’s ways of thinking,
acting, feeling, moving, dressing, speaking, gesturing, believing, and valuing. Nonhuman elements of co-ordinations include such things as tools, objects, institutions,
networks, places, vehicles, machines, physical spaces, buildings. “Within such coordinations we humans become recognizable to ourselves and to others and recognize
ourselves, other people, and things as meaningful in distinctive ways” (Gee 1997: xiv).
Digitally encoded texts
By “encoded texts” we mean texts that have been rendered in a form that allows them to
be retrieved, worked with, and made available independently of the physical presence of
another person. “Encoded texts” are texts that have been “frozen” or “captured” in ways
that free them from their immediate context of production so that they are
“transportable.”
Perhaps what is most important about literacy as a social phenomenon is that it enables
people to do what cannot be done by orality alone. Literacy enables human beings to
communicate and share meanings in ways that go beyond the use of voice within face-toface settings (which is orality). Literacy checks in when the conditions of everyday life
are such that people need more than the use of voice alone to get the meaning-making
work done that needs to get done for life to go on. The bottom line for literacy is that it
enables meaning-making to occur or “travel” across space and time, mediated by systems
of signs in the form of encoded texts of one kind or another. Unencoded texts like speech
and hand signs “expire” at the point of production other than to the extent that they can
live on – fallibly – in the memories of whoever was there at the time. Encoded texts give
(semi) permanence and transcendence to thought and language in the sense that they can
“travel” without requiring particular people to transport them. The particular kinds of
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codes employed in literacy practices are varied and contingent. Literacies can involve any
kind of codification system that “captures” language in the sense we have described.
Literacy includes “letteracy” (i.e., within the English language, recognition and
manipulation of alphabetic symbols), but in our view goes far beyond this, which puts us
at odds with scholars who tie literacy to reading and writing. In our view, someone who
“freezes” language as a digitally encoded passage of speech and uploads it to the internet
as a podcast is engaging in literacy. So, equally, is someone who photoshops an image –
whether or not it includes a written text component. It is not that memory and speech
alone cannot sustain considerable meaning making across distance and contexts. It is just
that this is exponentially enabled and facilitated by literacy as encodification, which
permits all kinds of procedures and institutions and practices that would be impossible, or
impossibly cumbersome, without encoded thought and language.
Members of Discourses
Literacies can be seen both as elements of co-ordinations, and as themselves coordinations that are parts of Discourses. Meaning-making draws on knowledge of
Discourses; insider perspectives – these often go beyond the literal; beyond what is
“literally” in the sign. Part of the importance of defining literacies explicitly in relation to
Discourses, then, is that it speaks to the meanings that insiders and outsiders to particular
practices can and cannot make respectively. It reminds us that texts evoke interpretation
on all kinds of levels that may only partially be “tappable” or “accessible” linguistically.
Four young people, their networks and their digital literacy practices
a. Dynamite Breakdown and anime music remixing
Dynamite Beakdown began creating anime music videos when he was 15 years old.
Anime music videos (or AMV for short) are a distinct branch of fan music video clips
and are created by splicing together tiny clips of anime—Japanese animated cartoons—
into new sequences or narratives and synching them to a song track. Dynamite spends
much of his spare time creating anime music videos and some of his projects require
months of time and hundreds of anime clips to complete. Dynamite’s work is well
regarded and his “Konoha Memory Book” AMV won the “popular vote” at the 2006
Anime Expo in Los Angeles.
Before beginning to remix his own AMVs, Matt watched hundreds of AMVs online—
accessing them via YouTube networks and the premium online archive and AMV
network, AnimeMusicVideos.org. It was through watching these music videos that Matt
became a fan of anime itself, and he spent additional hundreds of hours watching series
like Naruto, Street Fighter Alpha, Tengan Toppa Gurren Lagann, Digimon, Fullmetal
Alchemist, Tenjou Tenge, and Azumanga Daioh.
To create his AMVs, Dynamite originally used the free video editing software that ships
with Windows: Windows Movie Maker. Dynamite was aware that this software was
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looked down upon by many seasoned AMV remixers, but explained that by tinkering
with the software and seeing what it could be pushed to do, he’d been able to “create
effects in Movie Maker that programs like Adobe Premier can do.” This included
overlaying moving images, superimposing still images, and the like. Other skills
including being able to synch the clips both literally and symbolically to the music and
the lyrics of the song soundtrack by manipulating clip length and transitions within Movie
Maker. He learned early on how to rip a DRM-protected DVD of an anime movie or
series, how to locate and download anime series episodes from file-sharing networks, and
how to locate, download and convert anime clips from YouTube and other sites. He also
emails sometimes emails other AMV remixers and asks for copies of a particular clip
they’ve used if he can’t find it by any other means.
Matt also has a deep understanding of what needs to be done in order to create what other
AMV remixers consider a “good” AMV. This includes, to name just a few, not using
clips that have subtitles or series end-credits (because the subtitles or end-credit
sequences rarely match what’s happening in the song), ensuring high quality clip
resolution across the entire video (e.g., clips downloaded from YouTube have a much
fuzzier resolution than clips taken from a DVD), ensuring a seamless “synch” between
the video and the music/song, paying attention to the mood and meaning of a song and
matching this with the colours and action in the accompanying video clips.
Each of his AMVs is a narrative—some serve to summaries an entire season of a series,
others explore relationships and sub-plots not necessarily developed within the series
itself. As a non-fan of anime, it is quite possible to enjoy and appreciate the stories he
tells in each AMV. However, being a fan of anime adds additional layers of meaning to
each of his videos—and Dynamite deliberately builds on this dimension of AMV
remixing, too. For example, if the viewer doesn’t understand the tense relationship
between Naruto and Sasuke, then the closing scene in Dynamite’s “Now We Are Men”
may only be interpreted as two youth fighting in the rain, rather than Dynamite’s
intended exploration of a possible deep connection between the two.
Dynamite is very sensitive to anime fans watching his videos and regularly posts
“spoiler” alerts alongside his AMVs to warn viewers that key plot points will be given
away. Dynamite uses alphabetic text in interesting other ways, too.
He sometimes includes superimposed text or other devices within the actual; video itself
to help viewers interpret his video clips. He explicitly describes this as a “fan service”
(e.g., in one video, words like “passion”, “angst” appear at specific points in the video).
He often writes an accompanying blurb for each video, explaining the origins or ideas
that sparked a given AMV and listing the song and band featured in the video. He will
also use terms familiar to anime and Japanese pop culture in his contextual notes, too. For
example, the information text Dynamite wrote for one AMV concludes with the full-caps
text: “WARNING YAOI-ESQUE ENDING!!!” “Yaoi” is a term used outside Japan by
fans of Japanese manga and anime to describe a genre of manga and anime that focuses
on male/male love (Wikipedia 2008). Yaoi texts are not necessarily sexual in nature, nor
are they considered “gay” texts per se. Dynamite explains that he described this particular
AMV as yaoi because “The AMV overall has that kind of passionate feeling of the two
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[Naruto and Sasuke] longing for each other kind of sense. And in the end they're just
practically face to face in the rain, and with the lack of a visual and the rain still running
it leaves you to think what might happen.”
As a fan of anime, and a consumer and producer of anime music videos, Dynamite makes
good use of a range of digital and face-to-face networks. When he was 15 years old, he
created a profile for himself on AnimeMusicVidoes.org, and began posting his AMV
remixes there for feedback and comment. He found that other AMV fans were
downloading his videos, however, and posting them to YouTube and garnering large
numbers of “views” without attributing the work to him. Within both spaces, he responds
regularly to comments left by viewers—and is very appreciative of people taking the time
to comment on his work. He also explains certain editing decisions when called into
question by commenters, such as the time someone criticized the absence of transitions
between some clips within a Naruto-based AMV. Dynamite explained he deliberately left
out transition effects at that point because the resulting choppiness matched the ideas he
was wanting to convey about speed and chaos within the video at that point. Dynamite is
also active in submitting his AMVs to competitions, where he does very well, and loves
nothing more than sitting in a large audience and seeing one of his prize-winning AMVs
projected onto a large screen cinema-style.
Dynamite is also an avid artist, and draws many of the characters from his favourite
anime series, along with original anime characters. These he posts to an online artists’
network called DeviantArt.org. This is a site for serious artists—with many professional
artists showcasing their work here and providing important insights into their own
creative process, not to mention important feedback on new artists’ work. This is not a
network for the feint-hearted or the easily-intimidated. Feedback can be brutally honest
and searingly evaluative. Within his DeviantArt.org profile, Dynamite has a blog that he
updates regularly and on which a small group of regulars comments. He also runs a
separate blog that largely showcases photographs of his latest interest to have grown out
of his AMV remixing: cosplaying anime characters. This involves him in designing and
making elaborate costumes based on a recognizable character and role-playing being this
character with a group of others (who are dressed as different characters). This sometimes
involves attending comic conventions dressed as an anime character, but more often that
not, sees him and his friends, taking over a park on the weekend and acting out different
narratives based loosely on a given anime series or set of series.
b. Tanaka Nanako and fan fiction writing
Tanaka Nanako is a 16-year-old English language learner who migrated to Canada as a
non-English speaking native speaker of Mandarin Chinese. Nanako is a successful fan
fiction writer who became the key informant of a three year, ethnographic study by
Rebecca Black (2005, 2007, 2008). “Fan fiction” is the name given to the practice where
devotees of some media or literary phenomenon like a television show, movie, video
game, or book write stories based on its characters (.g., the Harry Potter books, the Star
Wars movies). Fan fiction is especially notable for the way in which amateur writers
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often band together to read and respond to each others’ work. This is often facilitated by
online sites—like Fanfiction.net—that enable members to post and review stories quite
easily.
When Nanako began writing fan fiction and posting it online, she had been learning
English for just two and a half years. By the time Black’s study was written up, Nanako
had received over “6000 [written] reviews of her 50-plus publicly-posted fanfiction texts”
(Black 2007: 120). This number of reviews alone signals the extent to which her stories
are read and responded to by others. While a somewhat atypical case, Nanako is a good
example of how engaging in fan fiction writing practices—which includes drafting
stories and posting them online for feedback, polishing them in light of readers’
comments and suggestions, reviewing others’ work, discussing narrative elements with
others (e.g., plot development, setting details, character development), borrowing
characters from existing texts and movies and creating original stories with them, to name
only a few—can, over time, contribute to young people becoming accomplished narrative
writers. The case of Nanako also shows how social networks of interested others can
serve to improve one’s written mastery of a new language, too.
For example, Black describes how Nanako’s “author notes” to readers at the start,
middle, or end of her fan fiction chapters initially apologized for grammatical and
spelling errors, and how these author notes evolved into seeking specific feedback from
reviewers with respect to English grammar and spelling. These author notes also
reference key understandings of what it means to be a keen and active member of a fan
fiction writing network. Two segments from a much longer author note at the start of one
of Nanako’s narratives exemplify this “insider knowledge” quite clearly (Black 2007:
122):
Segment D
L13 Thank you all who reviewed this story,
L14 and this chapter is dedicated to Sakura Blossomz01, wild-gurl, Sweet^^Rose, DZ pals, Fire Light and Lily-Chan.
L15 Thank you for adding me to your favorite author list! ^//.//^
L16 THANKS FOR THE GREAT SUPPORT YOU ARE GIVING
ME! ^________^
L17 *Hugs her reviewers*
Segment E
L18 By the way, please pay close attentions to the e-mails in this chapter,
L19 because they are some really important clues.
Line 15 and Line 16 refer directly to the importance of having other people review one’s
work. Line 14 specifically identifies readers who have provided especially helpful and
supportive feedback on previous chapters (Black 2007: 123). Nanako also thanks readers
who have added to their favourite authors lists in Line 15. These hyperlinked lists “make
it easier for members with shared interests to find each other and for like-minded readers
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to find Nanako’s fan fictions” (Black 2007: 123). The use of particular kinds of
emoticons—symbols that convey emotions—also signal Nanako’s anime fanship and
“insiderliness” that she knows her readers, in turn, will recognise and be able to interpret
(i.e., ^//.//^ to mean delight and ^________^ to mean a wide smile). Placing a description
of an action within asterisks in Line17 (i.e., *Hugs her reviewers*) is a common move in
text-based online spaces and harks back to the day of online multi-user dungeons or
domains (i.e., MUDS) and can be read as signalling a kind of online-savviness with
respect to how language can be used. Line 17 also further conveys Nanako’s gratefulness
to her reviewers, too. Lines 18 and 19 shift the focus of this author note a little and
provide readers of this new chapter of Nanako’s fan fiction with a guide for reading the
story (Black, 2007: 123). These lines suggest that Nanako is experimenting with her
narratives and using email messages sent between characters to help convey the plotline
in this particular chapter—and that she very much wants readers to understand this plot
device.
Reviewers do provide Nanako with constructive criticism of various kinds. However,
they typically do so in ways that are respectful, sympathetic and appreciative. They
generally focus on errata that undermine their enjoyment of the fiction, and introduce
their criticisms in humble, disclaiming, even self-effacing, ways: e.g., “This is just an
idea”. Nanako explicitly and repeatedly incorporates reviewer feedback into subsequent
chapter revisions (cf., Black, 2005: 123). Black argues that while Nanako’s Englishlanguage development was supported in school, reviewer feedback on the technical and
literary dimensions of Nanako’s fan fiction also contributes directly to enhancing
Nanako’s English writing proficiency (Black, 2008). For example, Nanako’s spelling has
improved over time as different, as has her subject-verb agreement within sentences and
use of tenses, as reviewers point out these errors and model how to fix her mistakes.
A key dimension of fan fiction writing is staying “true enough” to the original source
narrative—in Nanako’s case, to the Card Captor Sakura anime series for the most part—
for the new narrative to be recognizable as “fan fiction.” This requires good fan fiction
writers to have a close, detailed knowledge of the texts from which they’re drawing their
ideas and resources. Reviewers comment, for example, on how Nanako is developing
characters taken from an anime series, and the extent to which she is plausibly showing
sides of them not necessarily explored in the original anime (Black, 2007: 130). Nanako’s
use of Japanese terms (she is learning Japanese at school), along with Chinese Mandarin
terms, in her English-language narratives generates special admiration from her readers.
Reviewers regularly reference Nanako’s expert anime knowledge, and in so doing, have
the opportunity to display their own personal, social and pop culture knowledge. This, in
turn, becomes an exchange based in solidarity and affiliation that constructs a welldefined social network around Nanako’s online fan fiction texts.
In addition to posting and reviewing fan fictions on Fanfiction.net, Black found that
Nanako and her social network of writers and reviewers also spent time on other
websites, such as “fanfiction glossaries, fanfiction writing help sites, members’ personal
web pages, and official corporate sites that provide information on copyright laws for the
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various media texts that fans are drawing from, to name just a few” (Black, 2007: 117118).
c. Corey and Facebooking
Corey is a 15-year old Australian male who has been a member of Facebook for almost
two years. Corey attends a public high school in an area that is rapidly being developed
as a dormitory region for a large state-capital and a significant coastal region nearby. The
area currently represents a range of extremes with respect to family incomes, housing
types and adult occupations. Corey’s mother and father are divorced and have joint
custody of Corey, which sees him spending time each week at his mother’s home and his
father and stepmother’s home. As a disclaimer, Corey is our nephew, which is how we
came to have full access to—and his and his parents’ permission to use in this paper—his
Facebook profile.
Facebook is widely recognized as the most popular online social network site on the
internet today (cite that site). An online social network site is distinct from other online
spaces in that it is developed deliberately to foster social relationships of one kind or
another online. Typically, social network sites are “profile” driven; that is, a member of
the site completes a template that elicits a range of personal information, spanning
everything from gender and birth date through to favourite music and food. The template
and interactive dimensions of the site are easy to use, and the user requires very little
computer or internet know-how in order to participate effectively within the site. Indeed,
Facebook has been described bluntly by a well known social network insider as “training
wheels” for the internet (Huh, 2010). This all-about-me profile then becomes a launch
pad for “friending” or connecting with others within the site (e.g., family members,
friends in physical space, online friends and a host of others). Networks also can be
established through joining special interest groups that others have made, or creating one
and asking others to join (see Knobel and Lankshear, 2008). Other popular social
network sites of this type include Hi5 (popular in Mexico), Bebo (popular in the UK and
India), and Orkut (popular in Brazil). Social network sites can also be driven by short
blog-like posts and status updates—short notes about what you’re doing/thinking/eating
etc. Twitter is a classic example of this kind. Facebook is moving more towards this
model as the primary method for interacting with others, too, as it now by default
foregrounds users’ and their friends’ status updates, rather than the user’s profile.
According to Corey, he joined Facebook because xxxxxx. He has 218 friends (as of 20
July, 2010) who are a mix of family and friends. Many of these friends are school mates
or local kids he knows personally (personal communication, July 2010). Others xxxxx.
Despite this large number of Facebook friends, active commenters on Corey’s Facebook
page appear to be a small group of 8 or so friends he sees regularly, or family members.
This is in keeping with general findings regarding social network sites like Facebook (cf.,
boyd, 2009; Ellison et al. 2007). Although Corey’s stepmum and father had Facebook
profiles a sometime before Corey started one, he explains that he taught himself to
navigate and use Facebook by xxxxx.
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On Facebook, Corey presents himself as someone who is interested in and savvy about
cars, who likes certain kinds of music, who is an avid video gamer, and who is a school
student. The bulk of the photos he’s used as profile images are of cars, and his Facebook
photo albums include pictures of cars or things to do with cars. This includes humorous
photos, too, such as an image of a car stereo system lying on the ground and on fire,
accompanied by the caption “Valiant stereo upgrade” (where he implies that destroying
the stereo is actually an improvement on its quality). A popular feature of Facebook is its
“like” function. Non-profile pages, or even text and websites outside Facebook, can be
“liked” by a member of Facebook simply by clicking on the available “like” button. In
Cody’s case, the items listed as things he “likes” include car-related Facebook pages,
such as: Pirelli, and Super Cheap Auto Racing. He is also open about his abiding interest
in music. A recent status update posted by Corey reads: “Just added another 461 songs to
my collection of 29,000.” Other status updates refer to acquiring Eminem’s new album—
“Recovery”—and how much he’s enjoying it; with a subsequent status update comprising
a few lines from Eminem’s “Space Bound” from the album. Another status update reads:
“Ahhhh, end the day to Nirvana”—referencing Nirvana, the 1990s grunge band. He’s
apparently not a fan of Justin Bieber. His list of things he likes on Facebook includes:
40fm (a radio station), LMFAO (an electro/hiphop duo in the U.S.), and the status or
statement lines “I like my music LOUD,” and “ ‘That girl has such a pretty voice!’ –
‘Mom, that's Justin Bieber.’ ” These links to status or statement lines are interesting and
are discussed in more detail below.
Corey is most definitely an avid gamer and expresses his interest in video games
repeatedly via his Facebook profile. He regularly posts status updates about the games
he’s playing or wants to play—for example, he wrote recently about watching video
advertisements online for the next Call of Duty game (i.e., “Black Ops”) and that it
“looks great”. Previous status updates include count-downs to the release of a new game,
or a tally of hours spent playing a new game. Under his set of interests on Facebook, he
has listed The GTA Place—a space dedicated to Grand Theft Auto news and fan
comments—along with the F.E.A.R. (First Encounter Assault Recon) Facebook page,
among others. He has marked that he “likes” statements such as “Yeah I’ll do it in a
minute really translates to F*** Off I’m playing COD [Call of Duty]” and “Driving
through Inala [a depressed city suburb] is like real life COD”, to name just a few.
Corey doesn’t hide the fact that he’s a Grade 10 high school student, either. Many of the
photographs he’s posted to Facebook show him dressed in school uniform—including
two of his previous profile pictures (these pictures also appear to have been taken at
school, based on the classroom-like backgrounds). His references to school often have a
“students versus teachers” tone to them, or are ironic comments on being a “typical”
student. This includes “liking” Facebook pages such as: “OK! I am going to get stuck
into my homework. *goes to google* OMG PACMAN!”, “looking at a test and thinking,
‘When did we learn this?’,” and “I should start my assignment now LOL jk its not due for
2 days.” One of his status updates talks about how he and some mates surreptiously
unplugged a teacher’s computer mouse and what happened when the teacher went to try
and use it during class. Corey himself doesn’t do so well at school—his report cards list
him as a barely average student in most subject areas and he was suspended last year
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from school for three days due to a misdemeanor. He relishes every opportunity he has to
miss school in sanctioned ways (e.g., visits to family interstate, family trips to major
events that require a day or two off school). His “likes” indicate some of this disaffection
with school, too: “I swear that the office ladies at school hate kids” and “DON'T YOU
HATE SCHOOL INTERNET BLOCKING” and “Oh hey life, i didn't see you there
behind all that school.”
One literacy practice on Corey’s Facebook profile that stands out is his use of “like”
statements to convey meanings. The Facebook “like” function has taken on a life of its
own in the past 12 months. Originally, Facebook developers designed the “like” function
as a means for sharing Facebook content between users (clicking the like button next to
someone’s status update or on a Facebook page lists that content on your page)
(Facebook 2010). In turn, Facebook users have taken advantage of the “like” function
and have created pages devoid of any significant content apart from the actual name of
the page (e.g., “I have texted lying down and dropped my phone on my face” which at the
time of writing was “liked” by 618,141 people; or “Comebacks that make the whole
room go ‘OOOOOHHHHHH’ ” liked by 1,692,969 people). Alternatively, countless
websites external to Facebook have sprung up that simply list hundreds of statements that
can be “liked” and displayed on one’s Facebook profile (see, for example, iLike.com,
Likingspree.com, Likeworthy.com and FBlike.net). “Liking” these pages not only
automatically publishes the title of the page in one’s “news feed” or status updates for
one’s friends to see, but adds it to the list of interests on one’s actual profile page. Corey
has well over 300 of these “likes” at the time of writing. For Cody, it appears that he
finds appeal to write-with-one-click by means of the like function on Facebook. He
explains that it’s a quick way of saying something xxxxxxxx. It can also be seen as a way
of affiliating with others on Facebook who like the same things, without necessarily
having to “friend” them or invest socially in them. Most of these “like” statements are
amusing in some way and reveal a sense of ironic humour to his Facebook friends.
Another practice revolves around Corey’s status updates. These each typically elicit a
number of comments from his friends, with responses to comments from Corey, which in
turn create a short conversation that sometimes deviates from the topic of the status
update to talk about some aspect of school or plans for the weekend, and so on. At times
his status updates are like parts of conversations, such as when he wishes everyone good
night, or comments cryptically on something (e.g., “Countin’ down the hours..” in
reference, it later transpires, to getting a new video game; or “So… sore” which in a
subsequent status update turns out to be connected to bike riding at speed through his
school grounds that night). These updates very much convey the sense that Corey takes it
for granted that others will be reading his Facebook updates (and which is confirmed by
the number of comments his posts often elicit).
To sum up, Corey seems to use Facebook as an extension of his everyday life. He
occasionally uploads photos to his profile—many of these are taken and uploaded using a
mobile phone. He regularly updates his status using his mobile phone, too. This suggests
that Facebook is something that he taps into on a regular basis—at school, at home, or
wherever he finds himself with a few spare minutes. His “like” statements clearly and
succinctly capture his interests in cars, music and gaming, as well as his disaffection with
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school. His own status updates tend to elicit comments from friends to which he
responds, often generating a short conversation-like text in turn. He also takes time to
comment on other people’s status updates, too. Such evidence makes easy to claim that
he very much considers himself to be engaged in ongoing conversations with friends and
family on Facebook. Corey’s use of Facebook demonstrates engagement in two rather
distinct ways of social networking with others. One is concerned with maintaining realworld relationships, and the other with affiliating with unknown others through
“friending” and “liking” practices (see similar findings in boyd 2009).
d. DIY Stunt Videos
The social networks utilized in many young people’s digital literacy practices can be
rather ad hoc in nature. That is, young people can create networks of solidarity and
shared jokes within spaces not necessarily designed to be or designated to be used as such
(cf., Alvermann 2010; Gee, 2007; Jenkins, 2006). These social networks tend to coalesce
around a shared interest or joke rather than around fan practices (as is the case in the
social networks of Dynamite Breakdown and Tanaka Nanako described earlier). Indeed,
what is shared within these networks may often contain very little content or content,
with meaning tied more to the act of filming and public sharing of the resulting video
than with anything else.
YouTube, the enormously popular online the user-generated video hosting site, provides
plenty of evidence of these kinds of social networks (Burgess and Green 2009). In
addition to enabling users to post their own videos under their own accounts, YouTube
also enables users to post videos in response to other people’s videos, to comment in
writing on others’ videos, and to vote on the quality of people’s written comments in
order to help other viewers to sort valuable comments from not-so-valuable comments.
These affordances of YouTube, coupled with people’s tendency online to gravitate
towards others who seem to be interested in the same things as they are establish
interesting social networks.
A popular practice within the YouTube universe is creating and posting short, do-ityourself (DIY) amateur video clips of stunts done with bicycles and skateboards. A quick
search of YouTube at the end of July, 2010, for the terms “bike + stunt” returned around
188,000 videos; a similar search for “skateboard + stunt” returned over 5,000 videos. A
quick trawl through both sets of results showed that a significant proportion of these
videos were “home made” and featured groups of young people filming themselves doing
“stunts” with bicycles and skateboards. Stunts, in this sense, are about getting attention
by doing unusual things that involve an element of risk and that draw on exploiting the
affordances of resources like skateboards and bicycles outside their normal or intended
ranges of application. These stunts include, for example, riding bikes into large bodies of
water (e.g., off piers and into lakes or the ocean); jumping bikes over ramps or obstacles
(e.g., over low brick walls); riding a skateboard down a handrail or across a space
divider; flipping skateboards while skating down stairs; to name just a few.
11
DIY bike and skateboard stunt videos tend to fall into two dominant types (we exclude
from this set altogether videos featuring stunts from news clips, documentaries, pro-demo
events, competitions, movies etc.). The first are compilations of a whole range of stunts
found online and spliced together into a single video. These clips include a mix of DIY
videos and videos taken at professional or pro-am demonstration events. Clips in these
compilation videos have been found online, ripped from DVDs, or recorded from
television. They are often set to music and typically run to 3 to 5 minutes or so in length.
The second type—and the kind in which we’re most interested here—very much
emphasize the do-it-yourself nature of both the stunt featured in the video and the video
itself. These DIY stunt videos tend to follow a similar pattern: a simple title page, a single
clip, or a clip with only few edits (e.g., a slow motion replay), and possibly a credit page
at the end. These short clips tend to run for one minute or less, and are rarely
accompanied by a music track. The action is live and bystanders comments and actions
are very much a part of the video. The camera work suggests that many of these videos
are taken using handheld videos or other video devices, such as mobile phones. Mobile
phones tend to produce very grainy resolution, too. Thus, it appears that these videos are
filmed outdoors where the stunts take place, then uploaded later to YouTube. Some are
uploaded simply as filmed, although many are tidied up or polished a little using video
editing software before being uploaded to YouTube.
In terms of digital literacy skills, it can be argued that among other things, it’s most likely
that young people who create these videos know how to capture live action using some
kind of recording device, how to transfer that recording to a computer, are able to use
digital video editing software—such as iMovie or Windows Movie Maker—to edit their
video and insert title pages and credits pages or other text into the video. They also have a
YouTube account, and know how to upload videos to their account. This often also
includes adding a title to the video upload (e.g., “Moron Bike jump off dock” or “Bike
jump into water”) and a short written description to accompany the video (e.g., “idiot
tries to jump off a dock and into the water and facepalms hardcore” or “jumping my bike
off my pier big air into water”) using YouTube’s display page template prompts. Video
posters can also choose to categorise their video using YouTube’s pre-set categories (e.g.,
entertainment, sport, comedy, education) and add self-generated tags to their video (e.g.,
biking jumping ramps water pier) in order to help others more easily find and view their
video.
Judging the “success” of a DIY stunt video on YouTube is a relatively straightforward
manner—typically the more “views” or “reproducciones” the video has, the more it’s
considered to be successful in terms of attracting attention to the poster of the video (cf.,
Cheng, Dale and Liu 200x). Studying DIY stunt videos that have attracted more than
1000 views suggests that even within this admittedly marginal digital literacy practice
there are important technical proficiencies and understandings of what is most
appreciated within this practice that are valued and looked for in these videos. Two
examples make the point here.
12
“Stupid bike stunts” is the title YouTube user “brushettmark” has given to his DIY bike
stunt video (see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQuLIewEUXs). This video runs for
23 seconds as a single clip. It has not been edited and does not have a title or credit page.
Given the extremely grainy resolution, it could well be that the video was captured using
a mobile phone or other low-range megapixel device. The setting for the clip appears to
be a large deserted area and a sizable puddle, with a large bank of snow close to where
the person filming the action is standing. The clip begins with someone off-camera
loudly shouting, “Go! Go, Niick!” Then we see a boy of about 12 years of age peddling
towards us on his bike and into this deep puddle; he promptly flies head-first over the
handlebars and into the water while the bike flips out from underneath him and lands on
his back—all accompanied by raucous laughter by onlookers standing out of camera
range. At the time of writing, this video has been viewed over 2,700 times since it was
posted in April, 2007. It is the six comments left for this video by viewers—whether
known to “brushettmark” or not is impossible to say—that are the most interesting and
informative aspects of this vide, however, because they’re far from complimentary. Two
comments express quizzical dismay and confusion over the meaning and purpose of the
video (i.e., “WTF?”); another commenter wrote “poor!” but softened this with a smileyfaced emoticon; and someone complained about the quality of the video itself by writing:
“focus the camera!” Perhaps the most damning comment, however, referred to the quality
of the actual stunt in the video (which seemed to comprise simply writing into a deep
puddle at high speed). This commenter declared: “omg who cant do that [?] that was so
stupid [.] we have a track and my 4 year old brother can jump a double[.] poor quality.”
This commenter is implying that his or her 4-year-old brother can do more complex
stunts than the rider in the video, and that the video itself isn’t worth watching because it
doesn’t capture anything risky or out of the ordinary.
“Bike stunt crashes in water” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQ__Dwvh5Lg)by was
uploaded to YouTube by “LMcorporations” in June, 2007, and has had over 12,200
views at the time of writing. This 1 minute 28 seconds long video opens with a quick
montage of images and rapid-beat music (a clip from “Joker and the Thief” by the
Australian band, Wolfmother), invoking the start of television documentary films and the
like. The video proper begins with a lad—who self-identifies as “FlyingM”--of about 14
years explaining what’s about to happen. Using multiple edits and camera zooming, the
video shows him simply riding a bike down a steep hill and into a shallow creek. This is
followed by the written words, “Well, this just won’t do….” And then “take two”. This
time the action is set to the opening bars of dramatic Carmina Burana: O Fortuna! The
video is slowed and the ride into the water is faster and begins higher up the hill,
concluding a dramatic—and clearly rather painful—fall from the bike once it hits the
water. This is then replayed, again in slow motion, and ends with the text “much better”
and a closing shot of a spinning bicycle wheel. The credits roll and thank FlyingM for
“putting his body on the line”. This video gives every evidence of having been planned in
advance and carefully put together before being uploaded to YouTube. Moreover, in
many ways, the inclusion of a “lame” stunt, then a more spectacular one set to a stretch of
epic music often used in commercial videos and movies to denote great drama, could be
seen as simultaneously participating in and spoofing DIY stunt videos.
13
This video had 22 comments at the time of writing. The majority of these comment on
the quality of the second stunt, which commenters appear to find suitably risky or
impressively painful: “LOL that’s gotta hurt”, “That guy is brave” and “hahaha I can’t
believe he did that”. A number of appreciative comments are made about the opening
title music. Comments also include general, positive comments as well: “haha noice!”
and “reminds me of the last time I tried something like that at a lake.. good times… good
times…” Only one openly negative comment reads as “boring,” but is accompanied by
no explanation of why the viewer found it boring.
Focusing on just the comments on these two different—but nonetheless highly-viewed,
videos—it seems that some of the variables involved in judging the quality of a bike stunt
video and shared among people who enjoy or watch such videos are likely to include:



the stunt itself has to be good (or a spectacular, noteworthy failure; and
certainly not a limp effort)
video resolution matters
the point of the video needs to be clear to viewers; that is, they know how
to make sense of it (i.e., is it capturing someone doing something enviable,
or something “stupid”? Is it meant to be humorous or is it a
“bragging/upping the ante on stunts” video?)
Thus, it seems that this digital literacy practice does entail using skills (such as bike
riding skills, along with digital video-making skills and being able to use a video file
sharing service), tools (such as having a bicycle, a digital video recording device, a
computer with video editing software or an internet connection), and knowledge (about
what constitutes an positive attention attracting DIY bike stunt movie, knowing the
importance of being seen to take some personal risks when executing a stunt,
But when all is said and done, many of these DIY stunt videos aren’t exactly “content
rich” and certainly don’t go to great lengths to convey much information of any depth or
obvious significance. It seems that a key element of stunt videos as a digital literacy
practice lies simply in participating in this loosely defined, ad hoc network of shared
interests in pushing bikes and skateboards to their—and their riders’—limits, in exploring
all the different unexpected things that can be done with bikes and skateboards (e.g.,
balancing a single bike wheel on the top of a short thing pole; running the tail of a
skateboard rather than the wheels along a low wall as part of a conglomeration of forward
movement moves), sharing these feats—or spoof stunts, or fail stunts—with others
online, and reacting to and commenting on posted DIY stunt videos.
This case, too, is where we run up against the limits of analyzing young people’s DIY
media texts made available for public viewing or use online (see also Burn, 2008, 2009).
In order to more fully understand and appreciate the practice of creating, distributing and
viewing DIY stunt videos we would need to interview different “members” of this ad hoc
network and ask them about the meaning of these text for them, about how they
themselves participate in this ad hoc network, what attracts them to particular videos and
why, and what they consider to be the driving force behind the practice of taking and
14
distributing DIY stunt videos. Without such “insider” explanations, our own
interpretations are at best only inferred or surmised.
Discussion
Aspects of language use
Studying the ways in which these four sets of different young people use language
underscores the extent to which traditional conceptions of “reading” and “writing” no
longer hold. As Lawrence Lessig explains,
For those of us over the age of 40, our conception of writing is writing with text....
But if you think about the ways kids under 15 use digital technology to think
about writing, [then] writing with text is just one way to write, and not even the
most interesting way to write. The more interesting ways are increasingly to use
images and sound and video to express ideas. (cited in Koman, 2005, n.p.)
The components of Dynamite Breakdown’s AMV, “Konoha Memory Book”—the
video, the song—all existed prior to him creating it. Dynamite Breakdown
assembled these components painstakingly, downloading clips from the internet,
locating the song track, emailing others for clips he wasn’t able to locate himself, and
remixed them into a fresh, now text. He very much paid attention to the mood of the
song and his intention to summarize the entire first season of the anime series,
Naruto. At the same time, he also wanted to foreground the important, and often
complicated, relationships among the characters. This included carefully sequencing
clips, syncing them to the beat and lyrics of the song, selecting transitions between
clips carefully so as not to interrupt the flow of the story being told in his AMV, and
so on. Dynamite Breakdown finds “writing with clips and music” a deeply satisfying
and expressive medium for generating, communicating and negotiating meanings
(Knobel, Lankshear and Lewis, 2010).
Many DIY stunt videos embody an interest in “writing with cameras” (Lessig, 2005), too.
The “Bike stunt crashes into water” video described above includes a definite narrative
arc: an initial orientation to the video, where the bike rider introduces himself and
explains what he’s about to do; then a “lame” stunt, that establishes a “problem” to be
resolved, culminating in a second, more spectacular stunt set to epic music and shown
and replayed in slow motion for maximum impact as the “resolution” to the tale. In
addition, this video narrative is sandwiched between an opening title sequence and
closing credits strongly reminiscent of documentary-type videos, upping the ante again
on the “reality” of what was videoed.
This strong sense of story structure, of “writing” for a real audience, the use of a
range of narrative devices (e.g., music, slow motion, certain transitions between
clips, interesting juxtaposition between images and song lyrics), establishing mood,
and so on are all widely considered to be elements of good narrative writing (Burn,
15
2009; Knobel & Lankshear, 2008). Both Dynamite Breakdown and the creators of
“Bike Stunt Crash” clearly have spent time planning, crafting and editing their
narratives. None of them appears to have been required to produce such texts, and
in Dynamite’s case in particular, seem perfectly happy to be spending time
producing their digital media artifacts and expressing their ideas by means of
multiple visual and aural media, and very little written text.
Approaches to researching digital literacies as social practices
From a social practice research perspective, analyzing cases like the four described above
strongly suggest that understanding young people’s digital literacy practices and what it
means for them to be “networked” requires paying attention to at least two things: the
importance of being an “insider” to any given digital literacy practice (or at least working
towards becoming an insider), and of talking to young people themselves about the texts
they produce and the networks in which they participate or of which they avail
themselves. It would be easy, for example, for someone not at all familiar with stunt bike
videos to dismiss them “silly” or “meaningless.” An approach to researching digital
literacy practices focuses on understanding them as experienced by and from the
perspective of those who engage in them. This is to privilege an emic—or insider—
understanding of these practices, rather than to impose observer meanings upon
these practices from the outside (i.e., an etic perspective) or on the basis of
generalizations presumed to hold across a range of cultural contexts and social
networks (Lankshear and Knobel, 2007; Lankshear, Leander and Knobel, in press).
This very much involves attending to the ways in which meaningful content—which
may not reside in a text itself, but rather be found in the production and exchange of
texts--and socially recognized ways of interacting, using expressive resources, and
conveying meanings are engaged, monitored, ‘realized’ and thought about by those
who are ‘inside’ the practice in question.
Nanako’s fan fiction writing is a case in point. While her narratives are interesting in and
of themselves, being a fan of and having a thorough knowledge of the Japanese anime
and manga series on which she draws, understanding the meaning of key Japanese
greetings and other turns of phrases which she uses in her texts and how these signal her
affiliation with Japanese pop culture, and appreciating her own fluency with Manadarin
Chinese—which she also weaves expertly into her stories—heightens the reader’s
appreciation for the cleverness of her writing. This kind of insider understanding adds
multiple layers of meaning and depth to each tale.
The same holds for Dynamite Breakdown’s AMVs, too. A close familiarity with the
Naruto series adds additional layers of meanings to his Konoha Memory Book AMV. For
example, showing Naruto and Sasuke kissing in one clip references the love-hate
relationship between these two males throughout the series; the death scene in the AMV
references the death of Naruto’s sensei and is a pivotal event in the first series. Perhaps
more powerfully, the soundtrack’s lyrics (Nickleback’s “Photograph”) speak of
someone looking through a photograph album and how the photos jog long16
forgotten memories about growing up poor, skipping out on school, getting into
trouble with the law, hanging out with friends, first love, etc. The narrator is leaving
his hometown. Despite all that’s happened, he’s leaving reluctantly and with fond
memories. This very much resonates with the main character’s own experiences—
growing up as an orphan in a village that misunderstands and often mistreats him,
and who at the age of 12 years begins training to become a ninja, which requires
him to leave his home (the village of Konoha)—such as it was—and travel with his
three-person team and teacher as part of his training. Fans of the series clearly pick
up on the complexity of this AMV and comments left in response to this AMV on
Dynamite’s YouTube account admit that “Konoha Memory Book” did or almost make
them cry while watching it.
Studying a practice from the inside aims at understanding how meanings are made,
conveyed, taken up and passed around within a social network. It pays attention to
the resources young people draw on in their text, the meanings that come “free” or
tat already embedded in these texts (cf., the universe of meanings associated with
Sakura in Card Captor Sakura, or Naruto in his eponymous series) and how these are
leveraged in a given text, how these texts are taken up by other “insiders”, and what
is valued within this practice and why (cf., Gee, 2007; Jenkins 2006).
Nanako’s fan fiction and Dynamite’s AMVs also remind us that just the texts
produced by young people themselves are insufficient data for studying digital
literacy practices in any depth. Nanako was interviewed repeatedly by Rebecca
Black in order to obtain Nanako’s own explanations of why she wrote her stories,
what they meant to her, why she devoted so much time to not only writing stories,
but to participating very actively within the Fanfiction.net network reading others’
narratives and writing reviews, becoming friends with other writers, and, later, as a
mentor to many new fan fiction writers. Nanako’s responses afforded Black (2005,
2008, 2009) additional insights into fan fiction as a digital literacy practice than
would otherwise have been possible if Black had opted to simply examine Nanako’s
written narratives alone. Similarly for us; our interviews with Dynamite Breakdown
explained for us how he first encountered AMVs, what attracted him to them, how
he got started with making his own, and ultimately, how he honed his skills and craft
as he began creating more and more complex and finely tuned AMVs. Talking with
Dynamite alerted us to ways in which different hosting sites online are valued more
than others (e.g., AnimeMusicVideos.org is the premier site because it has the
capacity to host high quality videos and because it provides a venue for novice and
expert AMV remixers to share their work and view the work of others). Interview
data also alerted us to the fact that Dynamite has multiple online aliases, and that we
needed to look at them all in order to fully appreciate the extent to which he
participated in the AMV remix universe, both online and offline.
What it means for young people to be “networked”
When examining digital literacy practices and young people’s involvement in them, it
becomes clear that “being networked” is no single, straightforward thing. These four
17
cases suggest participating in social networks is important, but that this participation can
take multiple forms and serve different goals. Forms of participation range, for example,
from watching online videos for self-entertainment purposes, clicking “like” buttons on
Facebook to show affiliation, reviewing someone’s fan fiction, through to creating an
AMV that gets shown at a large convention.
Dynamite Breakdown is very much an active participant in a range of social networks
associated with AMVs. Corey, too, is a keen user of Facebook—updating his status
regularly, and posting text and images fro his mobile phone while on the go. Both young
men use their networks for different purposes, however. Dynamite is keen to tp into
networks and use them in ways that will help him to attract attention to his AMV remixs.
Corey, in contrast, uses the social networking site to actively maintain a range of
relationships with school friends, family members and others.
Dynamite Breakdown
 Semi-regularly posts well-crafted AMVs to his profile on AnimeMusicVideos.org
and to YouTube
 Explicitly invites feedback and comments from others “Please leave a comment
after watching this. I love eharing what you all have to say” (AMV.org)
 Began posting on YouTube after he found that others were posting his work ad
taking credit. Mentioned he didn’t mind others hosting his AMVs, but that he
would like credit for it.
 His YouTube comments are very personal in tenor—as though the readers are all
his friends (or even fans)
 Actively responds to comments on YouTube—including comments that clarify
why he did something within a clip, adding additional details about a series,
responding to commenter’s requests for where a clip originated etc. These
comments are extremely polite and good-natured
 Regularly watches other people’s AMVs and leaves supportive comments and/or
advice on how to improve the video
Sharing his work online is also about being committed to improving the
quality of his work, too, through being open to feedback and criticism.
 Enters offline AMV competitions and is quite well-known that way for his work,
too
Corey



His choices on Facebook appear to be tied mostly to maintaining a
network of relationships with people mostly known to him (e.g., he
doesn’t join groups, he doesn’t play any of the Facebook games or take
any of the countless quizzes available)
Comments on status updates often turn into conversations, and often
include humorous exchanges
The language he uses in his status updates is very much the language he
would use when speaking to family and friends (e.g., “I'm off night guys”)
18







His mother posts on his wall and he never shows he minds
A lot of his posts end in “LOL”, or simply are just “LOL”
Many of the things he clicks as “liking” are humorous to himself and to
friends and family
He invites his Facebook friends in some status updates to evaluate what
kind of friend they consider him to be etc.
He posts status updates about video games and shows his keen affiliation
with his other game-playing mates on Facebook
He regularly posts comments on family and a small circle of friends’ walls
He lists a school friend as his brother
General


the importance of shared affinities, affiliations and expressions of solidarity in
young people’s networks (Hull 20094; Ito et al. 2009; Lam 2000, 2009a,
2009b; Leander and Lovorrn 2006; Vasudevan 2010)
understanding that digital literacy practices often thread across multiple online
and offline spaces (Chandler-Olcott and Mahar 2003; Hull, Stornaiuolo, and
Sahni, 2010; Thomas 2004, 2007)
Understanding some contemporary “ways of being a young person (or young
people)” that are highly valued by many youth
The importance of identity work:

Being an expert: dynamite and Nanako

Corey navigating between being an adolescent and a young adult

about being suitably risky and/or funny in the bike stunt videos
5. What do we want to come out of this?
For us, examining young people’s digital literacy practices and their participation in
networks helps to start a conversation here about things that we’re more familiar with and
in contexts we’re more familiar with and what might resonate with what can be studied in
Mexico. We don’t aim at pronouncing on how digital literacies should look or how they
should be learned/taught. We’re certainly not assuming a direct transfer of these ideas to
a Mexican context, either. Our goal is to sharing some of the things we see, and then tot
talk about possible resonances and the like.
19
Part of this conversation could certainly include an examination of research angles not
addressed in this paper, and which are nonetheless interesting and important. This
includes, for example, a research focus on social learning (c., Brown and Adler, 200x),
which would study how the young people in the fours cases presented earlier learned to
do what they did and how they drew on the affordances of the networks available to them
as part of this learning.
- focusing on social practices shapes the way we – and others like Rebecca black
etc.—conduct research, too. Including what we choose to look at, how we collect
data about it, and how we analyse it.
- a point for understanding literacy? Literacy practices are only a theme or focus of
interest because schools have abstracted this dimension of social practice out of its
context of use, and have taken it up as something to be taught in largely decontextualised
ways. So a lot of what we’re trying to talk about is really to say to avoid the pain and
counterproductivity work of doing literacy work a la school, you have to put literacy back
into context and strive for a richer and larger understanding of how this stuff goes
together. Gee’s point about not reading for reading’s sake.
- A point for pedagogy? A narrow focus on literacy as fluent encoding and decoding has
done nothing to change familiar patterns of academic success and failure. It has almost
become a research cliche to cite instances of young people trapped in literacy remediation
in schools whilst winning public esteem as fan fiction writers, AMV remixers, or
successful gamers online.
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