Artificial Intelligence in a Media Production Program

• In Event: "STEAM" Programs: Equitable Approaches to Transdisciplinary Informal Environments

Abstract

Objectives: The objective of the research presented in this poster is a specific domain of STEAM learning: artificial intelligence. The study draws on our hands-on facilitation of an Oakland, California-based youth media program’s Interactive team, where young people combine journalism, design, data and code. Beginning in the summer of 2019, young people who are part of the Interactive team have been partnering with professional designers and developers to build AI literacies, interrogate AI ethics, and produce AI media that reaches audiences in the thousands. Our objective is to mine this rich context for insights relevant to STEAM learning and equity within comparable settings for informal education and beyond.

Theoretical Framework: Our theoretical framework holds that: 1) Computational Thinking plus Critical Pedagogy equals Critical Computational Literacy (CCL). CCL is a process of creating technology that combines computational thinking and consciousness about social issues, connecting individual gain with public good (Lee & Garcia, 2014; Lee & Soep, 2018). 2) Digital Age Civics plus Participatory Culture equals Civic Imagination. Civic Imagination is based on the idea that social change begins through a process of collective imagining enabled by digital tools and the new forms of cultural participation they make possible (Jenkins, Shresthova & Peters-Lazaro, 2020; Soep, Lee, Van Wart, Parikh, 2020). If young people are to build AI literacy, applications, and ethics, they need ways to connect computation to civics, the technological to the imaginative.

Methods: Our study combines ethnographic methods, interviews, focus groups and a survey we have developed and piloted to establish baseline knowledge of young people’s understanding of AI, its promise and perils.

Data: Data sources include transcripts of moment-to-moment interactions and interviews with young people who are a part of YR Media’s Interactive team and their instructors; works in progress and finished products the young people have developed; conversation their products, once distributed, have sparked on social media and other channels; and findings from our survey outlined above.

Results: We have found that for young people to produce media that applies a critical and creative lens to AI, attentive to its potential while keenly aware of its biases and dangers, they leverage reasoning that triangulates three domains: 1) creative expression, 2) computational, data-driven and other forms of scientific thinking; and 3) justice-oriented analysis of their process and products.

Scholarly Significance: Through conceptualizing, creating and distributing interactive news and arts content related to AI, young people come to understand nuanced concepts at the intersection of science and art including those involving ethics and impact of emerging technology. Learning conditions need to provide opportunities for young people to play, inquire, critique, create, question and express themselves artistically and through computation. Creativity and artistic agency allow youth to encounter and challenge core tensions and produce projects that spark further conversation amongst the makers and their audiences. Findings inform field-wide efforts to cultivate AI awareness, build literacy, and advance ethical practice in the realm of AI as an emerging technology that exists at the intersection of human creativity and machine learning.

Authors

• Nimah Gobir

• Lissa Soep, YR Media (Formerly Youth Radio)

• Clifford Lee