Video Games and Social Negotiations: Associations Between On-Screen and Offscreen Behavior in a Public Library

• In Event: From Online to Off-Line: Examining Gaming Environments and Innovative Learning

Abstract

Objectives
This paper examines socially mediated behavior and negotiated space in online and offline videogame environments at a New Jersey public library. Ethnographic data suggest that adolescents are involved in cross-textual experiences and creative opportunities guided by self- and group-regulations that normalize behavior and often support collaborative literacy experiences.

Theoretical Perspectives
Videogaming inherently involves passionate affinity-based learning (Gee & Hayes, 2011), which “occurs when people organize themselves in the real world and/or via the Internet (or a virtual world) to learn something connected to a shared endeavor, interest, or passion” (p. 69). The adolescents involved in the library’s informal and formal videogame programs are part of a specific affinity space influenced by the design of the library’s game environment, as well as the knowledge and values of the library’s videogame community. The adolescents negotiate roles and relationships as they engage in shared practices, and such collaboration can enable students to reach new discoveries and meanings together (Davies, 2006). However, documentation, surveillance and space normalize student behavior as they collaborate, and these ‘technologies of power’ (Foucault, 1977) both confine and nurture students’ involvement within the affinity space. Further, one’s anticipation of surveillance facilitates self-observation and self-regulation (Foucault, 1980), ultimately reinforcing accepted behavior in online and offline spaces.

Data Sources & Method
This presentation draws upon ongoing ethnographic research of videogame playing at a suburban New Jersey public library that originally took place from 2009-2011 and resumed in 2012. Data stemmed from observations of weekly and monthly gaming sessions and competitions, field notes, videotaped gaming sessions, and participant interviews. Observation over an extended period of time, accompanied by thick, rich description, researcher reflexivity, member checking, and first-hand accounts helped to preserve the validity of the data (Cresswell, 2009). In addition, two-to-three individual interviews with four focal adolescent male participants provided insight into the students’ nuanced and negotiated practices and roles within their game spaces. Data were analyzed through an emic perspective assumed while “data walking” (Eakle, 2007), an approach that limited a priori coding and allowed themes to emerge.

Findings
The regulation of the affinity space stemmed from students’ self and group observation of game play, their multimodal texts and documented scores, as well as the design of online and offline gaming contexts. From videogaming to posting on Facebook to sharing Instagram images to completing homework, the teens created, experimented with, showcased and analyzed online and offline artifacts. Students used such artifacts as Instagram photos or videogame scores and moves to initiate, contribute to, and/or negotiate community-based discourse and practices. Because the gaming space hinged on surveillance, it was common for students to observe and narrate each other’s game moves, inquire about strategy, and question game-based decisions, thus making such regulating behavior part of the affinity space.

Scholarly Significance
The examination of these literacies in online and offline gaming environments underscores an infrastructure of regulated collaboration and suggests how online and offline structures can influence adolescents’ behavior, foster a layering of literacy practices, and support (and sometimes stymie) innovation.

Author

• Sandra Schamroth Abrams, Saint John's University