Learning from Kids
Why do kids participate in some online sites rather than others? How do social categories in youth culture such as “geeks,” “jocks,” and “cool kids” affect online participation? How do specific hobbies, interests, and friendships factor into young people’s decisions of where to go online?
These are just some of the questions that Mimi Ito is addressing. Ito, a research scientist at the University of Southern California and a visiting associate professor at Keio University in Japan, recently visited Yahoo! as part of the Big Thinkers series of speaking events.
The focus of her talk was do-it-yourself media and amateur cultural production. In particular, she concentrated on fans of Japanese animation, or anime, to show how their video remixes and online sharing environments are leading to new genres of media and new forms of social sharing and communication.
“Today, we have a new generation that’s producing its own content and creating its own audiences and communities,” Ito explains. “These broad trends in network culture are actually changing the way young people express themselves online and how they support a diverse spectrum of creative and social engagements.”
Of course, local communities have long been involved in creative production. Examples include a child’s ballet recital or a neighborhood drama group. But Ito argues that when amateur productions combine with social networks, the results are transformative.
“The effects of aggregation mean that people can mobilize and create communities around any niche without having to rely on a critical mass of people in a local community,” she says.
Anime fans are a perfect example of this phenomenon—especially those in the group who create music videos around their favorite scenes and episodes. A typical anime music video, or AMV, takes the original anime footage, strips out the soundtrack, and then remixes the content to a soundtrack of the creator’s choosing.
Kids in this anime remix community are creating new works that are not only an act of self-expression, but an act of communication with peers, Ito says. The scenes they select and the songs they choose are all part of the source material for building personal identities and expressing connoisseurship and taste. The videos are then uploaded to a community site where they are critiqued and commented upon by other members.
Ito believes the AMV community is just a small slice of much bigger social trend. “This is one example of how young people traffic in cultural references and draw from professionally produced content to represent their own tastes in a social context,” Ito says.
So why is it important to study these specialized communities of youth? From an educational perspective, Ito believes they represent new models of peer-based learning, reputation assessment, and skill building. Another reason is that youth is the key driver of innovation in social technologies. “They way they use technology can often be quite surprising and unexpected for those of us who are immersed in adult society,” Ito says.
