“Put Us on the Map”: Youth, DIY (Do-It-Yourself) Media, and Urban Schooling

• In Event: Digital Media Arts: Learning, Assessment, and Design

Abstract

In this presentation, the author discusses an ethnographic study centered on youth and do-it-yourself (DIY) media. Students as members of a media communications class at an urban high school in a Midwestern city created a television broadcast called “Put Us On the Map.” Students had the opportunity not only to work with traditional and digital communications technology in their classroom, but also trained with professional staff at the school district’s television studio. In the course of a year, students were introduced to different technologies and tools to create OpEd news projects based on relevant issues in their school and surrounding community. These issues included teen pregnancy, gang violence, dropout and graduation rates, and school closures, among others. The resulting OpEd news projects were broadcast via the school’s television network. Key in the production were embedded literacies such as reading, writing, listening, and speaking, as well as other communicative skills involved in conducting interviews, doing online research, assembling and reporting. Data was drawn from several sources: field notes from participant observation, interviews of student and teacher participants, videotaping of classroom episodes and related events, literacy artifacts including written drafts and digital recordings during the production, curricular materials, teacher’s syllabus and lesson plans, and school district public profile. While elements of play and appropriation are central to new media literacy and participatory culture (Jenkins, 2006), what the study reveals is the importance of apprenticeship and scaffolding activities to support youth’s interest in DIY media and continued literacy development. A pedagogy of collegiality (Soep & Chavez, 2010) between youth and adult participants in and out of school provided a safe backdrop for critical feedback and collaborative engagement. For youth in the study, creating OpEd news projects was not a means to an end but an opportunity to expand their literacies and generate knowledge about pressing issues affecting their lives and others’ in their community. In addition to the results of the study, implications for research and practice will also be discussed.

Author

• Korina Jocson, Washington University in St. Louis