Museum Teen Websites: A New Space for Plurality and Discourse

• In Event: Scholar to Scholar VI

Abstract

Teen websites are separate cyberspaces within museums where teenagers actively participate and contribute. Contrasted to the physical space of museums that are often perceived as unfriendly or austere, these websites represent opportunities for vernacular discourse, creative expression, and social networking. Four of the most well-developed websites are studied in relation to the institutional space of their parent museums, reviewing issues of community, power and discourse, and to recent studies of teenagers, learning, and digital media.

Author

• Susana Smith Bautista, University of Southern California