Growing Up Online: Young People and Digital Technologies

by S. Weber (Editor), S. Dixon (Editor)

Overview

In this cutting-edge anthology, contributors examine the diverse ways in which girls and young women across a variety of ethnic, socio-economic, and national backgounds use digital technology in their everyday lives. They explore identity development, how young women interact with technology, and how race, class, and identity influence game play.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780230620018
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan US
Publication date:	05/13/2010
Edition description:	2007
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

SANDRA WEBER is Professor of Education, Concordia University, Canada.

SHANLY DIXON is a PhD candidate, Concordia University, Canada.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations ix

Acknowledgments xi

About the Contributors xiii

Introduction: Perspectives on Young People and Technologies Sandra Weber Shanly Dixon 1

1 Playspaces, Childhood, and Video games Shanly Dixon Sandra Weber 17

2 "I'm the One Who Makes the Lego Racers Go": Studying Virtual and Actual Play Seth Giddings 37

3 Girls' Adoption of New Technologies Sandra Weber Julia Weber 51

4 The Girls' Room: Negotiating Schoolyard Friendships Online Kelly Boudreau 69

5 "I Think We Must be Normal...There are Too Many of Us for This to be Abnormal!!!": Girls Creating Identity and Forming Community in Pro-Ana/Mia Websites Michele Polak 83

6 Private Writing in Public Spaces: Girls' Blogs and Shifting Boundaries Brandi Bell 97

7 Consuming Fashion and Producing Meaning through Online Paper Dolls Rebekah Witllett 115

8 Producing Gender in Digital Interactions: What Young People Set Out to Achieve through Computer Game Design Caroline Pelletier 131

9 Contexts, Pleasures, and Preferences: Girls Playing Computer Games Diane Carr 151

10 Adolescent Girls' Expression on Web Home Pages: Spirited, Somber, and Self-Conscious Sites Susannah R. Stern 161

11 Playing At and With Popular Teen Culture on "Girl" Websites: The Case of Alice Jacqueline Reid-Walsh 183

12 Girl Culture and Digital Technology in the Age of AIDS Claudia Mitchell Jacqueline Reid-Walsh 197

13 New Girl (and New Boy) at the Internet Café: Digital Divides/Digital Futures Claudia Mitchell Grace Sokoya 213

14 Contested Spaces: Protecting or Inhibiting Girls Online? Leslie Regan Shade 229

15 Reviewing Young Peoples' Engagement with Technology Sandra Weber Shanly Dixon 249

Index 263

Editorial Reviews

â From blogs to video games, from living rooms to internet café's, from Africa to Canada, Growing up Online has it all. Transcending the hype and moral panic that typically pervade adult discourses about youth and media, the essays in this collection deconstruct the complexities of young people's relationship with a range of digital technologies. More importantly, most chapters provide a space in which young people themselves tell us what it means to grow up online. We would be wise to listen.â— Sharon R. Mazzarella, Professor of Communication Studies at Clemson University and editor of Girl Wide Web

â Growing Up Online provides us with a wealth of vivid images of the changing position of girls and young women as both consumers and producers in the emerging digital world. It offers a plethora of issues for further research and debate about the new possibilities-and some of the limitations-that characterize the new online cultures of information, play and social interaction.â— David Buckingham, Professor of Education, Institute of Education, University of London

From the Publisher