Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media (The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning) [Hardcover]

Mizuko Ito (Author), Heather A. Horst (Assistant), Judd Antin (Contributor), Megan Finn (Contributor), Arthur Law (Contributor), Annie Manion (Contributor), Sarai Mitnick (Contributor), David Schlossberg (Contributor), Sarita Yardi (Contributor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0262013363 | ISBN-13: 978-0262013369 | Publication Date: October 30, 2009 | Edition: 1

An examination of young people's everyday new media practices--including video-game playing, text-messaging, digital media production, and social media use.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Finally a book that provides a deeply grounded and nuanced description of today's digital youth culture and practices as they negotiate their identity, their peer-based relationships, and their relationships with adults. Then, building on this rich and diverse set of ethnographies, the authors constructed a powerful analytic framework which provides new conceptual lenses to make sense of the emerging digital media landscape. This book is a must for anyone interested in youth culture, learning, and new media."--John Seely Brown, Former Chief Scientist, Xerox Corporation, and Former Director of Xerox PARC

This book was written as a collaborative effort by members of the Digital Youth Project, a three-year research effort funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and conducted at the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Southern California.

"Through their meticulous ethnographic exploration of emerging media practices in everyday life, Mizuko Ito and her colleagues paint a vivid portrait of young people's diverse modes of participation with new media. Over and again, this thought-provoking book challenges adult preconceptions and traditional preoccupations, insisting that we recognize the values, concerns, and literacies of today's youth." --Sonia Livingstone, London School of Economics and Political Science

(Sonia Livingstone )

About the Author

Conventional wisdom about young people's use of digital technology often equates generational identity with technology identity: today's teens seem constantly plugged in to video games, social networking sites, and text messaging. Yet there is little actual research that investigates the intricate dynamics of youth's social and recreational use of digital media. Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out fills this gap, reporting on an ambitious three-year ethnographic investigation into how young people are living and learning with new media in varied settings--at home, in after school programs, and in online spaces. By focusing on media practices in the everyday contexts of family and peer interaction, the book views the relationship of youth and new media not simply in terms of technology trends but situated within the broader structural conditions of childhood and the negotiations with adults that frame the experience of youth in the United States. Integrating twenty-three different case studies--which include Harry Potter podcasting, video-game playing, music-sharing, and online romantic breakups--in a unique collaborative authorship style, Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out is distinctive for its combination of in-depth description of specific group dynamics with conceptual analysis.

"While the in-depth description of this framework would in itself value the time spent reading this book, there is much more in it. It is highly suggested reading to anyone interested to know more about kids' everyday informal learning practices with new media (especially teachers, parents, and policy-makers)." Fabio Giglietto Information, Communication and Society

Becky Herr-Stephenson is a Research Fellow at the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop. Previously, she was a postdoctoral researcher with the Digital Media and Learning Hub at the University of California Humanities Research Institute.

Dan Perkel is a doctoral candidate at UC Berkeley earning a degree in Information Management and Systems from the School of Information, with a Designated Emphasis in New Media from the Berkeley Center for New Media.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 440 pages
• Publisher: The MIT Press; 1 edition (October 30, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0262013363
• ISBN-13: 978-0262013369
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #159,093 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Book...free here..., November 30, 2011

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V. Nguyen "NGUYEN1195" (somewhere, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media (The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning) (Hardcover)

This is an excellent book, qualitative study using ethnographic research to explore the ubiquity and variety of online use by pre-teens and teens. It is free from MIT: mitpress dot mit dot edu/books/full_pdfs/hanging_out dot pdf

3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars interesting insight into teen's view of technology, February 7, 2010

By 

Kevin Watt "I know that poetry is indispensab... (San Jose, CA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media (The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning) (Hardcover)

Teens use technology in ways that I don't really understand. Massive amounts of SMSing (which this book argues have replaced the elaborately folded classroom-passed note), and things like that. TV use online allows light "comments" and a sense of community while doing something as isolationsist as watching T.V. And search abilities make it possible to talk about something after the fact, and have a friend go find the show later.

This book is an interesting view into this world.... a bit dry but pretty interesting so I was able to keep reading.

The first chapter is online free from the publisher here: [...]

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A valuable asset for anyone interested in young people and media, February 28, 2011

By 

Andrew King - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media (The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning) (Hardcover)

This book draws upon a rich assortment of ethnographic case studies from across the United States to examine how contemporary youth cultures engage with new media. As a broad-based qualitative study, each chapter focuses on the subjects important to young people, from negotiating relationships with friends and family, networking with peers in online gaming environments, through to developing technical skills and professional interests with websites, blogs and social media. In that sense, Hanging Out, Messing Around and Geeking Out is an excellent study of different individuals, peer groups and families relationships, showing how everyday interactions of young people and technology are invariably framed by issues such as peer status, knowledge and learning, identity, gender and economics.

The book's title is a memorable one, and comes from the author's desire to accurately capture the `three genres of participation' most relevant to young people and new media. The case studies quoted are highly descriptive, giving ample evidence to show how `young people's practices, learning, and identity formation' are intertwined and relational (31). The concept of `media ecology' is used to emphasize the interrelatedness of new media with more accepted structures of learning and cohabitation, such as schools and nuclear families. Their approach adds real value to way that media and technology is studied, showing that it is indelibly part of contemporary everyday life, where it exists on a continuum of high to low usage for both parents and teenagers. Though there is considerable focus on high-end users of technology (on the geekier-side of the scale), each study provides just as much information about young people who have little access to the internet and/or even mobile phones. As the book illustrates, teen attitudes towards internet and social media are ultimately framed by a combination of parental attitudes, peer expectations and personal interests.

A most engaging part of the book is the way in which case studies are tied into broader media and academic debates about media usage. This is particularly true of chapter 2, which examines the `hanging out' aspects of teen friendships through social networking sites like Facebook, Photobucket and Myspace. This chapter engages with the common perception that social networking sites expose teens to more dangerous forms of relationships with unfamiliar people. Hanging Out provides evidence to show how, as the majority of teens are aware of the risks, interviewees are much more interested in using new media to maintain existing offline relationships. Teens use social networking websites to organise friendships according to similar interests and values, meaning that applications like `Top Friends' on Myspace are well-suited to teenage obsessions with social status and popularity. Here the author's present a convincing account of teenage autonomy through which friendship is performed through websites, gadgets and widgets to extend school-based friendships, hierarchies and anxieties. Hanging Out is a brilliant resource not only for scholars interested in new research methods and findings about new media, but also for parents and teachers in understanding more about teenage patterns of media usage, technology and education.

A real strength in that respect is the breadth of different contexts from which insights are gleaned - from computer use for school projects in the home, networked relationships in remote school communities, to teens organising multiplayer online gaming events. There are plenty of situations that parents will identify with, just as many important points are made about different styles of parental and educational discipline. Such a cross section of multidisciplinary studies serves well to address the common misperception about `youth these days', and their supposedly mischievous, unruly use of technology - in the school classroom, at home and elsewhere. Above all, by showing that that `social participation and cultural identity' are central components of young people's learning experience (31), the book is a highly valuable contribution to both the media and educational scholarly fields.