Uneven Distribution: Representations of Technology Use and Meaning in Young Adult Literature

• In Event: Interrogating the Social Imagination: Examining the Renegotiation of Self and Others Through Young Adult Literature

Abstract

With the term Web 2.0 becoming popularized in 2004 (O’Reilly, 2005), along with the creation of MySpace in 2003, followed by Facebook in 2004, young adults have become increasingly invested in digital technologies. Realizing that a “group’s conscious and unconscious beliefs, attitudes, values and ideas are often revealed in their communication” (Fraenkel and Wallen, 2000, p. 469), the purpose of this paper is to examine how adult authors have represented these technological innovations to their young adult readers since 2004.

We ground this study in a cultural historical perspective that considers how the space, time, and sociopolitical contexts in which materials are created shape their meaning (e.g. Engeström & Sannino, 2010). Further, this perspective recognizes that the experiential interpretations and practices enacted by individuals are culturally-mediated. From within this grounding, we intentionally acknowledge that dominant narratives about values, identity, and power are implicitly and explicitly conveyed through the media products that are consumed, such as YA novels (e.g. Horkheimer & Adorno, 1947).

Analysis of the texts in this study was qualitative in nature. Texts were read twice by each of the researchers. In the first reading, the researchers noted instances of technology usage and composed written responses that included a brief summary and reactions to characters, plot, themes, and representation of technology. Second readings focused on marking specific words, sentences, and paragraphs that related to technology. Analyzing both the written responses and lists of examples from the texts, the researchers used open coding to identify themes.

Texts were selected from the Printz Award and YALSA Teen Choice books from 2004 (the year the term Web 2.0 was popularized) to present. Because the focus of the study is on contemporary technologies, the first data set only included contemporary novels, totaling 81 books. A second data set examined science fiction and fantasy books—66. Historical fiction and nonfiction were eliminated because they did not fit within the parameters of the study.

Preliminary results from this study highlight that as new technologies emerge they are treated with distrust. A device like an iPhone is foreign in the initial years of its introduction (and quantitatively shows up in fewer novels). However, as such devices reach ubiquity, they subsume specific qualities and practices—from mediating school gossip to curating personalized music. The unfamiliar, over time, becomes familiar in ways that highlight a need to read critically not simply the media that students consume but the assumptions of tools as they are represented within media. These findings highlight the implicit learning opportunities imbued within novels and the potential pedagogical opportunities that teachers may take up within their classrooms.

Apocryphally, science fiction novelist William Gibson has said that “the future has already arrived—it is just not evenly distributed.” In looking at what counts as technology and what digital tools are used for across more than a decade of critically acclaimed and popular young adult novels, this study highlights how young adult authors have delineated specific values, purposes, and assumptions about what technology means and for whom.

Authors

• Antero Garcia, Stanford University

• Robyn Seglem, Illinois State University

• Jeremy Glazer, Rowan University