Interactive Media Practices of Young People - Utrecht University ...

Interactive Media Practices of Young People: Origins, Backgrounds, Motives and Patterns



Antoine van den Beemt

IVLOS Series The IVLOS-series is published by IVLOS Institute of Education of Utrecht University (Instituut voor Lerarenopleiding, Onderwijsontwikkeling en Studievaardigheden). The purpose of this series is the dissemination of results of research to enhance the quality of education. The members of the editorial board are: Prof. dr. A. Pilot Prof. dr. P. R. J. Simons Prof. dr. J. D. H. M. Vermunt Recent publications in this serie are: M. D. Endedijk. Student teachers’ self-regulated learning. I. Zitter. Designing for learning. Studying learning environments in higher professional education from a design perspective. M. N. Rosenfeld. Developing teacher sensitivity to individual learning differences. Studies on increasing teacher effectiveness. M. J. J. Coenders. Leerarchitectuur.Een exploratief onderzoek naar de relatie tussen ruimte en leren in werksituaties en het ontwerpen voor leren dichtbij de praktijk M. Moonen. Testing the multi-feature hypothesis. Tasks, mental actions and second language acquisition. Ä. Leijen. The reflective dancer. ICT support for practical training. M. P. Nguyen. Culture and cooperation: Cooperative learning in Asian Confucian heritage cultures – The case of Viet Nam. A. Hoekstra. Experienced teachers’ informal learning in the workplace. J. van der Pol. Facilitating online learning conversations: Exploring tool affordances in higher education. S. F. Akkerman. Strangers in dialogue: Academic collaboration across organizational boundaries.

Van den Beemt, A. A. J. Interactive Media Practices of Young People: Origins, Backgrounds, Motives and Patterns Het gebruik van interactieve media door jongeren: bronnen, achtergronden, motieven en patronen) Proefschrift Universiteit Utrecht – Met literatuuropgave – Met samenvatting in het Nederlands ISBN 9789088912122 Keywords: education, interactive media, learning, net generation, participation, patterns Trefwoorden: onderwijs, interactieve media, leren, netgeneratie, participatie, patronen Cover Design: Gé Helsen. Cover Photo: Lex van Lith, 2001, Zonder titel (OL80800101), 80x80 cm, oil on canvas. Printed by: Proefschriftmaken.nl || Printyourthesis.com Published by: Uitgeverij BOXPress, Oisterwijk © 2010, Antoine van den Beemt All rights reserved. No part of this thesis may be reproduced, stored in databases or retrieval systems, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.

Interactive Media Practices of Young People: Origins, Backgrounds, Motives and Patterns

Het gebruik van interactieve media door jongeren: bronnen, achtergronden, motieven en patronen (met een samenvatting in het Nederlands)

Proefschrift

ter verkrijging van de graad van doctor aan de Universiteit Utrecht op gezag van de rector magnificus, prof.dr. J.C. Stoof, ingevolge het besluit van het college voor promoties in het openbaar te verdedigen op vrijdag 17 december 2010 des middags te 12.45 uur

door Antonius Arnoldus Jacobus van den Beemt geboren op 24 december 1967, te Breda

Promotor:

Prof.dr. P.R.J. Simons

Co-promotor:

Dr. S.F. Akkerman

Dit proefschrift werd mede mogelijk gemaakt met financiële steun van Fontys Hogescholen.

Manuscript commissie:

Prof.dr. M. De Haan, Universiteit Utrecht Prof.dr. J. Jansz, Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam Prof dr. D.W. Shaffer, University of Wisconsin-Madison Prof.dr. W. Veen, Technische Universiteit Delft

Acknowledgements It was long ago, in a time when the world was considered flat again, and all young people were thought to be using interactive media as one homogeneous group. It was in those days that Ton Bruining revived my long lost dream to leave behind the 'not yet'-stage and become a Doctor of Philosophy. We talked about education, learning and the possible use of internet and games as learning tools. Ton introduced me to Robert-Jan Simons, for which I am greatly indebted to him. During our first meeting, Robert-Jan listened to my ideas and nodded. Then he asked me if I really wanted to pursue the enterprise of a PhD project. He would ask me that, time and again for the following eight months. The first time, I answered, “yes, I really want to, but let me think about it”. And Robert-Jan nodded. So I went to France, and thought about it. And one evening, in restaurant ‘Le Coq d'Or’ in Cognac, I decided “yes I will do it!”. I called the garçon and ordered an XO. He returned, uncorked a bottle with a handwritten label on it, and filled my glass generously. Drinking the XO was a moment of magic. A myriad of flavours filled my mouth and nostrils. I would like to think that at this moment the spirit of thesis was blown into my nose. I went home, told Robert-Jan about my decision, and he nodded. That's how it started. This thesis is the final result. Between the summer of 2006 and the summer of 2010, I wrote this thesis, rebuilt my house twice, became a father twice, saw hospitals on the inside, more than twice, and I developed a game-design curriculum at Fontys University of Applied Sciences. Completing all of this was only possible thanks to a number of people: First of all, Robert-Jan, a master in accepting multiple truths. Thank you for your open minded attitude, the discussions and the consistent search for positive formulations in my texts. Sanne, thank you for your persistent constructiveness in both attitude and feedback. With your simultaneous attention to both detail and the larger picture you showed great editorial skills. Scientific writing is a vocation. Your way of supervising inspired me to re-examine my own role as a teacher and supervisor. Together, Sanne and Robert-Jan formed the best team of supervisors I could think of. You made this a great experience!

Thank you: Ton Bruining, for reviving the dream and introducing me to your network. My former colleagues at CMD-Breda, for your advice and comments at the start of the project. Joke Jansen, for believing in this project and for giving me the chance to complete this thesis in times of turmoil. My colleagues at the GD&T team, especially Gabri Heinrichs, for covering for me in the last few years, for inventing labels for my research results. Menno Deen and Gabri, for proof-reading, even when deadlines where looming. Bob Wilkinson, for language corrections. David Shaffer, for convincing me to publish the preliminary study, chapter 3 in this thesis. Laurence Frank and Perry den Brok, for methodological support. Chris Jones, for inviting me to your network of researchers on interactive media and students. A special thank you to my online PLN: many of you I have never met in person, but in a perpetuous stream of subject related tweets you are a source of inspiration. The research described in this thesis could not have been completed without the help of Jan Beijers, Arnoud van Leuven, Etienne Houben and many teachers and school principals, together with 178 + 2138 + 11 students. For Luc and Isabelle, my writing this thesis meant ‘daddy working upstairs’. I am glad they never cease(d) to show me that there is a life beside the thesis. You are right guys, building MegaBlocks towers is indeed the most important skill in this world. My friends, especially Esther and Piet-Hein, Sim and Ingeborg, thank you for your support. Sim and Piet-Hein, I am happy that you both agreed to stand by my side today. Elly, thank you.... for being there, for not reading my manuscripts, for still trying to follow lines of reasoning, for commenting on attitude and aberrations of my mind, for posing 'what if...'-questions, for two lovely headstrong children, for sharing night-shifts when stress levels raised to the max, for commenting on grumpyness and susceptibility, for living without daily fresh word-jokes for almost four years. Thanks everyone! It was hard work, it was fun and I enjoyed the ride. And it was a ride. Antoine van den Beemt Tilburg, december 2010

Contents Chapter 1

Introduction

11

Chapter 2

Considering young people's motives for interactive media use

23

Chapter 3

The use of interactive media among today's youth: Results of a survey

53

Chapter 4

Patterns of interactive media use among contemporary youth

75

Chapter 5

Student characteristics contributing to interactive media use

103

Chapter 6

Pathways in interactive media practices among youths

135

Chapter 7

Discussion and reflection

155

Samenvatting in het Nederlands

181

Curriculum Vitae

191

Publications

193

CHAPTER ONE

Introduction 

12  Chapter 1

1. Scientific and social context of this study At the beginning of the 21st century, educators, journalists and researchers showed a large interest in young people's1 use of Internet applications and videogames. Many publications discussed possible implications of this use, often in relation to the future of learning and education (cf. Boschma & Groen, 2006; Oblinger & Oblinger, 2005; Prenksy, 2006; Veen & Jacobs, 2005). These publications contributed to a peak in what came to be known as the net generation debate, which started when Tapscott (1998) coined the term 'Net generation'. In its best form, the debate evoked educators to think about the implementation as learning tools of Internet applications and videogames, which we define as interactive media. However, often the net generation debate was interpreted as a call for radical education renewal (Bullen, 2008). This call was based on the assumption that young people's intensive use of interactive media in and out of school would make them think and learn in a different manner compared to earlier generations. Some participants in the debate even claimed that because of this intensive media use, young people's brains would be different from those of older people (Prensky, 2006). The publications contributing to the net generation debate hardly included any large-scale empirical studies examining the actual use of interactive media, user backgrounds or consequences of interactive media use. Most available studies were influenced by presumptions, claims and emotions, rather than based on theorydriven empirical evidence (see also Hargittai, 2010; Jones, Ramanau, Cross, & Healing, 2009; Selwyn, 2010a). Nonetheless, researchers, journalists and educators broadly absorbed conclusions drawn from these studies (Bisschop-Boele, 2005; Bennet, Maton, & Kervin, 2008). These conclusions caused educators to foresee problems in addressing and challenging future students in school. For instance, policy documents of several Dutch institutions for higher education maintained that the cohorts entering schools from 2010 onward would ask for a different approach because of their skilful and experienced interactive media use (cf. Avans Hogeschool, 2006; Stichting Brabantse Hogescholen, 2003).

1

'Young people' and 'youths' in this text both refer to a cohort of young people, especially those aged 10 to 25. We distinghuish our references to young people, including 'youth', from the social construct of youthfulness. See also Buckingham (2008) for a discussion of 'youth' as a social construct.

Introduction  13

2. Aims and research questions The lack of empirical data combined with the broad interest among educators made it timely and significant to focus attention on the phenomenon of young people's interactive media practices. Accordingly, the aim of this PhD study is to produce an academic account of students' relations to interactive media in view of possible consequences for education. This account should describe the present use of interactive media and its consequences, rather than a speculative forecast of the future of education. Therefore, the emphasis in this study is on 'here and now' realities (Selwyn, 2010a) of the 'mundane' (Buckingham, 2008) forms of interactive media use found among students. This emphasis goes together with a critical attitude towards the employment of interactive media as learning tools in education. The question central to this PhD thesis can be formulated as: What interactive media practices do young people in contemporary Western society engage in? We expect to find diversity among youths regarding the use of interactive media in relation to the repertoire of experiences, stories, tools, and ways of addressing recurring problems, also known as practice (Wenger 1998). Accordingly, the hypothesis for this thesis is: a diversity in interactive media practices can be found among young people in terms of origins, backgrounds, motives, and patterns. This hypothesis is grounded in the idea that human behaviour is formed in a dynamic exchange with other people and objects, as discussed in the works of Thomas (1928), Schütz (1964, 1967) and Berger & Luckmann (1966). This dynamic exchange relates to ways in which people naturally organise themselves in networks of likeminded others, within which they learn through processes of participation. Contemporary examples of this approach are the concepts peripheral participation and practices (Lavé & Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998), theoretical approaches to modernity (Giddens, 1993; Van den Brink, 2007), ethnographic accounts of technology use (Latour & Woolgar, 1979; Suchman, 1993; Traweek, 1992; Turkle, 1995) and youth culture research (Brake, 1985; Buckingham, 2008). A thorough investigation of a possible diversity in interactive media use includes examining motives, patterns, backgrounds and origins of interactive media use among youths. Examining exactly these aspects follows from the idea of a natural development of practices, which we expect to lead to a grouping of a) interactive media and b) opinions and preferences related to these media. Subsequently, we expect this grouping to be influenced by peers and by background

14  Chapter 1

characteristics, such as educational level and gender. Hence, we formulated the following sub-questions, each of them forming the basis for a study within this thesis. First, we wanted to know what brings youths to use interactive media, given the current state of affairs in society: What motivates contemporary youth in Western societies to use interactive media? Second, with the motives as perspective, we examined the actual use of interactive media, including a possible diversity represented in patterns of behaviour: Can patterns be found in the interactive media activities and opinions of young people? Third, with these patterns surveyed, we investigated contributing user backgrounds: How do background factors and opinions contribute to intensity in interactive media use? Finally, we used the image of motives, patterns and backgrounds to investigate the emergence of interactive media use among youths: What are the origins of diversity in interactive media patterns?

3. Scientific and practical relevance The scientific relevance of empirically investigating origins, backgrounds, motives and patterns of interactive media use, is the resulting comprehensive image of young people's interactive media practices. This thesis fits in a growing stream of empirical studies about young people's interactive media use. However, our studies have additional value because of the large data sample consisting of reports by students from a broad range of ages and educational levels, on which we employ multiple methods of analysis. We conduct our studies on the boundaries of three fields of research: sociology, (interactive) media studies and educational science. Crossing the boundaries of these fields provides added value because it allows us to examine our main question in relation to young people's actual use of interactive media, their corresponding opinions and preferences and the possible consequences for education. All three fields of research emphasize that human behaviour, including learning, is socially organized in the form of diversity in practices. Practical relevance of this study is provided by the analysis of possible consequences for education in view of each sub-question. Contemporary students bring their interactive media knowledge, experience and subsequent networks to school. Suitable education requires knowledge of the everyday lives of students as socially formed and mediated by interactive media in diverse ways.

Introduction  15

4. Structure of studies The chapters in this thesis follow the order of the sub-questions as discussed above, which is similar to the sequence in which the separate studies were conducted2 (see Figure 1). The problem of this thesis is addressed by going along the path of developing a perspective, collecting and analysing empirical data and deducting implications for education. Accordingly, this thesis starts with a literature study that results in a framework for the subsequent questions. This framework maintains that

Motives for interactive media use

Patterns of interactive media use

Patterns of interactive media use

Backgrounds of interactive media use

Origins of interactive media use

Reflection on implications

Literature review

Preliminary survey - Cluster analysis

Large-scale survey - Confirmatory Factor analysis, Exploratory factor analysis

Multi level analysis on survey data

Qualitative study - Semi-structured interviewing, Autodriving visual elicitation, Photo elicitation

Discussion

Figure 1: Structure of Studies

2

As a consequence of journal policy, the language in this thesis alternates between UK English and US English. Chapter 2 and Chapter 3 were written in US English, all other chapters in UK English.

16  Chapter 1

technology is a socially constructed phenomenon and that interactive media have a function in people's day-to-day activities and corresponding reflections. The literature study is followed by a preliminary empirical survey, which explores the diversity in interactive media use among students. We replicated this study with a larger sample and more profound analyses. This large-scale survey study is followed by a multilevel analysis of background factors contributing to interactive media use. Next, we examine origins of interactive media use by means of a qualitative study. In the final chapter we reflect on theory, methodology, empirical results and implications for both research and education. In what follows we introduce the different studies and their relation to the main question. 4.1 Overview of motives for young people's interactive media use (Chapter 2) Before starting our empirical investigation of interactive media practices among contemporary youths, we searched for a perspective to frame our research questions. First we looked at the assertions and central question of the net generation debate by discussing studies in this context published between 1998 and 2009. The main assumption of the debate is the existence of a new generation of students that is different from earlier generations with regard to interactive media use. Because publications about young people's interactive media use describe contemporary youth as different from earlier generations, we applied late modernity as a concept to describe the current state of affairs in society. With this concept as jumping-off point, we formulated our research question about the role of interactive media in the dynamic of renewal and tradition for young people: What motivates contemporary youth in Western societies to use interactive media? Because we argue for theory-driven empirical research rather than assertions as a basis for education development, we discussed sensitizing concepts as a perspective for research on the relation between interactive media and youth culture. The sensitizing concepts contributed to an understanding of how in contemporary society human behaviour is influenced by forces of renewal and tradition. This examination led to questions for education and a subsequent plan for future research, which should focus on diversity among students. This plan entailed studying both the preferences and the actual use of interactive media, which should be a concern of educational practices.

Introduction  17

4.2 Diversity in young people's interactive media use (Chapter 3) The empirical examination of young people's interactive media practices started with a quantitative study conducted in view of the motives for interactive media use, which we discussed in the first chapter. These motives and the forces of tradition and renewal in society make it reasonable to find diversity in interactive media use among youths. The aim of our investigation was to scrutinize the net generation debate's assumption of homogeneity, which we questioned from a sociological perspective. We expected that human behaviour, including interactive media use, could be described in patterns. Therefore the research question for this chapter: Can patterns be found in the use of interactive media among youth? We answered this question by a survey among 178 Dutch students aged 10 to 23. In order to add value to other studies, we intended our respondents to come from several educational levels and a broad age range. We explored diversity in interactive media use among our respondents by employing cluster analysis. By including all interactive media applications used at the time of inquiry in the analysis, without a priori categories, we were able to create a bottom-up image of the interactive media use among youth. This bottom-up approach allowed us to analyse relations between individual activities. The results provided a contextualized understanding of the position of interactive media in the lives of contemporary youth, and a nuanced conceptualization of the ‘net generation’. At the same time, these results called for a follow-up study, with a larger sample and more profound analyses. 4.3 Patterns in young people's interactive media use (Chapter 4) The preliminary survey was replicated with a larger and geographically more dispersed sample of 2138 Dutch students aged 9 to 23 in education levels ranging from primary education to higher professional education. The results of the preliminary study called for a better understanding of the categories of interactive media and the characteristics of users. Therefore we extended the research question to: Can patterns be found in the interactive media activities and opinions of young people? To answer this question, we employed confirmatory factor analysis, exploratory factor analysis and cluster analysis on the dataset. The results show educators what differences in interactive media use among youths exist. These differences are of importance for applying these media as learning tools or for addressing the

18  Chapter 1

expertise, preferences and identities that students develop by using interactive media. 4.4 Backgrounds of interactive media use (Chapter 5) The results of the survey study gave rise to further examine the contribution of student, class and school characteristics to the intensity of interactive media use. We expected that several factors - including gender, educational level, peers in class and preferences for specific media - would contribute to the intensity of interactive media activities. To examine this expectated result, we formulated the following research question: How do background factors and opinions contribute to intensity in interactive media use? We answered this question by means of multilevel analysis. The categories of interactive media activities found in the survey served as a starting point for this analysis. We took into account the hierarchical structure of the data by analysing factors on school, class and student level. These results specify the pointers for educators to think through possible consequences of young people's interactive media use. 4.5 The nature of students’ diversity in interactive media use (Chapter 6) The categories of users found in our quantitative analyses served as a jumping off point for a qualitative study. This study examined how eleven Dutch middle school students developed interest in specific types of interactive media practices and how they perceived these practices in relation to others. With this focus we aimed to understand the nature of the diversity in interactive media practices that was found in earlier studies. The main question for this study was formulated as follows: What are the origins of diversity in interactive media patterns? We answered this question by focusing on 1) the causes to become interested in specific interactive media practices, and 2) the students' perception of their own interactive media practices in relation to others. The methods included semi-structured interviewing, autodriving visual elicitation and photo elicitation using 'moodboards'. Together with the other four studies, this qualitative analysis provides a contextualised understanding of both the emergence of interactive media practices and possible implications for education.

Introduction  19

4.6 Discussion and reflection (Chapter 7) The final chapter aimed to reflect on the theories, methods and results discussed in the preceding chapters. The benefits and limitations of the applied theoretical and methodological approaches are discussed by exemplifying their essential aspects. This led to recommendations for future research alongside implications for research and education. These implications are elaborated on with a focus on digital games and are presented as an overview of lenses to critically examine the application of digital games in educational contexts.

5. Published chapters The following chapters of this PhD thesis have been published by peer-reviewed international journals: •

Chapter 2 has been published as: o Van den Beemt, A., Akkerman, S., & Simons, P.R.J. (2010). Considering young people's motives for interactive media use. Educational Research Review, DOI: 10.1016/j.edurev.2010.06.002

•

Chapter 3 has been published as: o Van den Beemt, A., Akkerman, S., & Simons, P.R.J. (2010). The use of interactive media among today's youth: results of a survey. Computers in Human Behavior, Vol. 26, 1158-1165. DOI: 10.1016/j.chb.2010.03.022

•

Chapter 4 has been published as: o Van den Beemt, A., Akkerman, S., & Simons, P.R.J. (2010). Patterns of interactive media use among contemporary youth. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2729.2010.00384.x

•

Chapter 6 has been accepted as: o Van den Beemt, A., Akkerman, S., & Simons, P.R.J. (2010). Pathways in interactive media practices among young people. Learning, Media and Technology

20  Chapter 1

The following chapter of this PhD thesis has been submitted to a peer-reviewed international journal: •

Chapter 5 has been submitted as: o Van den Beemt, A., Akkerman, S., Den Brok, P., & Simons, P.R.J. (under review). Student characteristics contributing to interactive media use.

Introduction  21

References Avans Hogeschool (2006) Wederkerig investeren, Meerjarenbeleidsplan van Avans Hogeschool 2007-2010 [Investing reciprocically, policy plan of Avans Hogeschool 2007-2010]. Bennett, S., Maton, K., & Kervin, L. (2008). The ‘digital natives’ debate: A critical review of the evidence, British Journal of Educational Technology, doi:10.1111/j.14678535.2007.00793.x Berger, J., & Luckmann, G. (1966). The social construction of reality. Middlesex: Penguin. Bisschop Boele, E. (2005). Leren van jongeren: Een kritische blik. [Learning from young people: A critical view]. Retrieved November 11, 2007 from http://www.scienceguide.nl/article.asp?articleid=100449. Boschma, J., & Groen, I. (2006). De Einstein Generatie. [Generation Einstein]. Amsterdam: Prentice Hall. Brake, M. (1985). Comparative youth culture. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Buckingham, D. (Ed.) (2008). Youth, Identity, and Digital Media. Cambridge: MIT Press. Bullen, M. (2008). Contradictions in Oblinger & Oblinger. Retrieved April 3, 2009 from http://netgennonsense.blogspot.com/2008/04/contradictions-in-oblingeroblinger.html Giddens, A (1993). The Consequences of Modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press. Hargittai, E. (2010). Digital Na(t)ives? Variation in Internet Skills and Uses among Members of the ‘‘Net Generation’. Sociological Inquiry, Vol. 80, No. 1, 92–113 Jones, C., Ramanau, R., Cross, S., & Healing, G. (2009). Net generation or Digital Natives: Is there a distinct new generation entering university? Computers & Education, doi:10.1016/j.compedu.2009.09.022 Latour, B., Woolgar, S. (1979). Laboratory Life: the Social Construction of Scientific Facts, Los Angeles: Sage. Lavé, J. and Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Oblinger, D., Oblinger, J. (Eds.) (2005). Educating the Net generation. Boulder, CO: EDUCAUSE. Retrieved March 09, 2008, from http://www.educause.edu/educatingthenetgen Prensky, M. (2006). Don’t Bother Me Mum, I’m Learning. St. Paul: Paragon House.

22  Chapter 1

Schütz, A. (1964). Collected Papers, vol 2. Den Haag: Nijhoff. Schütz, A. (1967). Collected Papers, vol 1. Den Haag: Nijhoff. Selwyn, N. (2010a) Looking beyond learning: notes towards the critical study of educational technology, Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 26, 65–73. Selwyn, N. (2010b). The educational significance of social media: a critical perspective. Keynote presented at the AACE Ed-Media Conference 2010, Toronto, Canada. Stichting Brabantse Hogescholen (2003). Meerjarenbeleidsplan 2003-2006 [Policy plan 2003-2006]. Suchman, L. (1993) Plans and situated actions: The problem of human-machine communication. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tapscott, D. (1998). Growing up digital: The rise of the net generation. New York: McGraw Hill. Thomas, W.I. (1928). The Child in America: Behavior problems and programs. New York: Knopf. Traweek, S. (1992) Beamtimes and Lifetimes: The world of high energy physicists. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Turkle, S. (1995). Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet. New York: Simon & Schuster. Van den Brink, G. (2007). Moderniteit als opgave. Een antwoord aan relativisme en conservatisme. [Modernity as assignment. A reply to relativism and conservatism] Amsterdam: Sun. Veen, W., & Jacobs, F. (2005). Leren van Jongeren. [Learning of young people]. Utrecht: Stichting Surf. Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of Practice: Learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

CHAPTER TWO

Considering young people's motives for interactive media use1 

Abstract Young people's increasing use of interactive media has led to assertions about possible consequences for education. Rather than following assertions, we argue for theory-driven empirical research as a basis for education renewal. First, we review the existing empirical research, concluding that there is almost no theory-driven research available. Subsequently we discuss sensitizing concepts as a perspective for research on the relation between interactive media and youth culture. These concepts, derived from the literature, include insecurity, reflexivity, affinity spaces and shape-shifting portfolio people. With this perspective we examine social and cultural functions of interactive media within contemporary Western youth culture. This examination leads to questions for education and a subsequent plan for future research, with a focus on diversity among students and the development of local cultures. This entails studying both the motives as well as the actual use of interactive media, which should be the concern of educational practices.

1

This chapter has been published as: Van den Beemt, A., Akkerman, S., & Simons, P.R.J. (2010). Considering young people's motives for interactive media use. Educational Research Review, DOI: 10.1016/j.edurev.2010.06.002

24  Chapter 2

1. Introduction Western countries and large parts of Asia are witnessing a generation of young people who have spent their entire lives surrounded by Internet, games and mobile phones (Ito et al., 2008). During the last decade, interactive media, consisting of games and Internet applications, have become tools for information and communication that are used daily by the so-called ‘Netgeneration’ (Tapscott, 1998). This development has led to many assertions about the enormous effect of interactive media on youth (cf. Prensky, 2006; Veen & Jacobs, 2005). For instance, it is believed that the members of the net generation are fast and impatient, live at ‘twitchspeed’ (Prensky, 1998), get bored easily, and have a short attention span. Social interaction for them means being always online and connected; networking is their lifestyle. When it comes to learning they do not want to read books, they want to learn by doing, in a similar way as in videogames. They only want to work towards clear goals, preferably while multi-tasking. They do their homework, while at the same time chatting with friends, watching television and surfing the net (Prensky, 2006). Several authors have argued that consequently, children will develop a different attitude towards communication patterns (Veen & Jacobs, 2005) and as a result will use information in a different manner or even will learn in a different way. However, this characterization of the net generation is for the larger part the result of generalizations based on professional opinions and literature studies rather than being a differentiated description founded on empirical evidence (Bennett, Maton, & Kervin, 2008; Schulmeister, 2008). The arrival of a new generation, as suggested in the terms ‘Netgeneration’ (Tapscott, 1998), ‘Generation Einstein’ (Boschma & Groen, 2006), ‘Millennials’ (Howe & Strauss, 2000), ‘Webgeneration’ (Hartmann, 2003) or ‘Digital natives’ (Prensky, 2001), has inspired participants in the net generation debate to connect interactive media use directly to consequences for education. Along with the generalized characterization of youth, strong statements are made which call for a radical departure in education from the old and an embracing of the new (Bisschop Boele, 2005; cf. Oblinger & Oblinger, 2005). The net generation debate has two limitations. First, the debate presumes homogeneity among all contemporary youth, as is implied by the 'generation' terminology. Second, the debate typifies youth on the basis of interactive media use, rather than on the motives for this use. This approach bears the risk of considering

Considering young people's motives  25

interactive media as a goal in itself, instead of seeing its contribution to the ways people relate to each other and to sources of information and communication. In order to add value to the net generation debate, it is important to study the ways interactive media function in young people's activities from the perspective of a changing society. This perspective allows describing possible consequences of societal tendencies for young people's everyday life; it allows describing interactive media as part of young people's behavior and systems of values and beliefs. The functions of interactive media in everyday life are considered here as the motives for types of interactive media use among youth. Studying these motives asks for a sociological understanding of culture, specifically contemporary youth culture. Youth culture can be defined as the particular way of life of young people in which they express certain meanings and values (Brake, 1985; Frith, 1984). Understanding this particular way of life in relation to interactive media leads to a contextualization of the intensive use of interactive media among youth. The central question to this article is: what motivates contemporary youth in Western societies to use interactive media? In response to the central question, this study first presents a review of available empirical research on the relation between contemporary youth culture, interactive media and learning. The results of this review lead to a framework starting from the sociological notion of late modernity. This notion helps to understand both youth culture and interactive media as part of contemporary everyday life. We describe late modernity in relation to contemporary youth by means of four concepts: insecurity, reflexivity, affinity spaces and shapeshifting portfolio people. These concepts are derived from literature on modernity and game-based learning and will be described below. On the basis of these descriptions of youth culture, we are able to formulate more specific questions that are relevant for educational practice. These questions raise an awareness of differences in culture between groups of people, and as such allow a differentiated description of contemporary youth, rather than an assertion of homogeneity. Moreover, these questions are concerned, not with the use of interactive media as such, but their function in the daily life of youth. It is this latter insight that should become the basis for educational practice to think about ways of adjusting to contemporary youth. The outcome of this article is a set of questions for further research on youth culture, interactive media use and possible consequences for education. Informed by

26  Chapter 2

these research questions, we are currently pursuing an empirical investigation including both large-scale quantitative (Van den Beemt, Akkerman, & Simons, 2009, 2010) and in-depth qualitative research of media use and meaning.

2. Review of research on interactive media use 2.1 Interactive media and the net generation Following the intense use of interactive media by today's youth, a growing amount of research explores the application of games and social software in education as a means of triggering young people to learn (cf. De Bakker, Sloep & Jochems, 2007; cf. Kafai, 2006; Margaryan & Littlejohn, 2008; cf. Sandford, Ulicsak, Faser & Rudd, 2006). But this push of interactive media towards education and the strong statements about youth do not rely on a thorough understanding of current youth culture. At the same time we see a growing body of literature on the use of ICT. The first landmark in this respect is a collection of studies on the net generation and learning presented by Oblinger and Oblinger (2005). Their book provides a framework to pose questions about learning and the use of ICT. However, one could wonder whether the fundamental idea behind the book, namely the undisputed existence of the net generation, is correct. The notion that this generation has "unprecedented levels of skills with information technology" and "that they take technology for granted, that they want more of it in their classes, that postsecondary institutions aren't responding fast enough to meet their needs" (Oblinger & Oblinger 2005, p. 7.5) appears to contradict findings from a large-scale US-survey discussed elsewhere in the book (Bullen, 2008). One of the survey's findings states that students have basic text editing skills and can use email and surf the Internet with ease but "moving beyond basic activities is problematic. It appears they do not recognize the enhanced functionality of the applications they own and use." (Oblinger & Oblinger 2005, p. 7.7). 2.2 Method of inquiry In order to discuss existing empirical data on the use of interactive media and their meaning in young people's lives, we applied searches on the ERIC, Education Abstracts and Web of Science databases. We stopped the search on 16 March 2009, and any study published after this date was not included in the review. The


following keywords were used for a Boolean search: "youth culture", "net generation" or "netgeneration" or "millennials" or "digital natives", "video games" or "videogames" or "games" or "interactive media" and "learning" or "education". Peer reviewed journal articles and book chapters were included. This search resulted in twelve articles. After reading the articles, five of them were left out of the analysis because they did not discuss the net generation nor the consequences of interactive media use for education. Applying the so-called snowball method of checking references in the remaining seven articles did not result in any extra references relevant to our aim. Four documents, published as a book or on the Internet, were included as well. In total eleven texts were included in the review (Table 1). 2.3 Use and non-use of interactive media The large-scale surveys on youth and ICT give a good overview of use and skills of interactive media (Duimel & De Haan, 2007; Kutteroff & Behrens, 2008). However, the meaning of these media in the user's lives remains unclear. Noteworthy is that some of these studies are only meant to describe large trends in social actions rather than to investigate the motives behind them. In addition to the use of interactive media, Duimel and De Haan (2007) and Kutteroff and Behrens (2008) both provide insight into the non-use of these media as well. In the Netherlands 7% of 13-18-year olds do not search websites for information, and 12% do not use MSN (http://www.msn.com) for contacting friends (Duimel & De Haan, 2007). E-mail is being used less than once a week by 18% of youth in the Netherlands, while other Internet activities show a higher percentage of non-use (Duimel & De Haan, 2007). Kutteroff and Behrens (2008), after presenting similar results for German youth between thirteen and nineteen, draw the conclusion that young people see radio or television as a more trustworthy news source than the internet. The results of these studies incline towards a differentiation of contemporary youth in groups based on interactive media use, rather than assuming a generation with uniform user characteristics. 2.4 Interactive media skills Two surveys among university students with a focus on ICT-skills in relation to learning (Cameron, 2005; Margaryan & Littlejohn, 2008) support the inclination of a differentiation based on user patterns. They suggest that students use a limited

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range of technologies for both learning and socialization. Students make limited, recreational use of social technologies such as networking sites. Furthermore, the results point to a "low level of use of and familiarity with collaborative knowledge creation tools, virtual worlds, personal web publishing, and other emergent social technologies" (Margaryan & Littlejohn, 2008, p. 1). Neither study found evidence to support the claims regarding students adopting radically different patterns of knowledge creation and sharing, as suggested by some previous studies. Similar results can be found in Ito et al. (2008), a collection of US-based studies on the development of popular culture in exchange with interactive media, which concludes that there is no homogeneous group, but rather a differentiation in subcultures based on interactive media. 2.5 Meaning and identity The available qualitative studies often take the characterization of the net generation (such as described in the introduction) as starting point rather than discussing it. At the same time these studies testify to the intricate relationship between identity development and interactive media (Kelly, Pomerantz & Currie, 2006). This indicates that these media are meaningful tools in organizing and directing youth's cognitive, social and emotional life, rather than being ends in themselves (Baki, Leng, Ali, Mahmud & Gani, 2008). It appears that more studies are needed in order to theorize how interactive media are meaningful to young people’s lives. 2.6 Today's youth and interactive media From this review of empirical studies, we can conclude that contemporary youth in the studied (mainly Western) countries makes intensive use of interactive media, although young people appear to have intermediate media skills. The available results show a description of young people as differentiated in groups regarding interactive media use and skills, rather than as one homogeneous generation. Our database search shows that only a small number of empirical studies on interactive media use by young people are available. As Table 1 shows, half of the studies applied large-scale quantitative surveys, with a focus on interactive media use and skills, while in three studies a qualitative investigation was conducted. Of these studies, only one made a connection with the meaning of interactive media for

Considering young people's motives  29 Table 1: Summary of 11 studies Main research approach

Data collection

Cameron (2005)

Quantitative

Survey (N=210)

So-called 'digital natives': have mainly basic ICT-skills, prefer real life contact in learning situations, are not really multitasking, prefer scanning information above deep-reading, see technology not as a negative force in society.

Kelly et al. (2006)

Qualitative

Focus group interview (N=16)

Study on how girls use online tools for developing their feminine identity

Sefton-Green (2006)

Qualitative

Literature study

Description of current youth culture theory. Mention of the necessity of empirical data. Analysis of debate on media based learning versus traditional schooling

Skiba et al. (2006)

Qualitative

Literature study

Present possible consequences for education based on the characteristics of the net generation as described by Tapscott, Prensky and Oblinger and Oblinger

Duimel et al. (2007)

Quantitative

Survey (N=1561)

Present overview of actual use, skills and posession of ICT by teenagers and how this use is perceived by parents.

Annetta (2008)

Qualitative

Case study

Discussion of games in educational context. Starting point is net generation and 21st century skills

Baki et al. (2008)

Qualitative

Focus group interview (N=6)

Because young people like to play games, parents and educators should take this kind of entertainment serious.

Fellini (2008)

Qualitative

Action-research

Games are useful for education because many young people in Italy play games.

Ito et al (2008)

Quantitative

Survey (N=1138)

Provides overview of studies on ICT use and youth culture.

Kutteroff et al. Quantitative (2008)

Survey (N=1208)

Present broad spectrum of youth activities and young people's attitude towards ICT.

Margaryan et al (2008)

Survey (N=160)

Discusses the skills assertion of the net generation. Most students have only basic ICT-skills

Study

Quantitative

Results in relation to net generation, media use or consequence for education

young people and a description of subcultures based on interactive media use (Ito et al., 2008). Furthermore, only one study investigated the use of interactive media among non-Western youth (Baki et al., 2008). The other studies investigated a number of Western countries. The remainder of this article will also focus on Western youth.

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With these studies a first step is taken into describing young people's use of interactive media. The results ask for more research that investigates not only interactive media use, but the user's motives for interactive media use in the context of identity and youth culture developments as well. Furthermore, while most of the research discussed here is descriptive, we argue for empirical research driven by theory in general and sociological theory in particular. A sociological perspective allows us to turn our attention to the motives of interactive media use, rather than perceiving interactive media use as an end in itself. As we will reason later, these motives should be the main concern of educational practices.

3. A sociological perspective to understand youth culture It is obvious that youth culture in a certain era differs from its predecessors. Each youth culture is a reflection of the societal constellation of its time (Frith, 1984): hippies, punks, yuppies, skaters, and ravers, to name but a few. However, it appears that contemporary youth culture develops itself in a different way from before: where socializing institutions such as school, parents and the local community used to be directing sources, youth culture increasingly appears to evolve with and through interactive media and outside of school (Gee, 2004; Ito et al., 2008). It is in this context that we discuss contemporary youth culture as a reflection of late modernity. The expressions of youth culture itself, such as style of clothing, values or music preferences will not be discussed here. Rather, we focus on the developmental process and characteristics of youth culture in relation to interactive media. In this way we provide a contextualized understanding of the social and the cultural implications of contemporary modernity on youth. With this contextualized understanding it is possible to pose specific questions as a foundation for further research that intends to connect education to changing students.

4. Late modernity Modernization refers to processes in which society goes through social changes that transform the lives of individuals. The concept of 'modernity' in turn, describes the results of modernization in a certain era. Although the modernization process is characterized by gradual change and a certain direction, there are always different tendencies with different dynamics affecting one another (Van den Brink, 2007). For


example, family life inclines to an increase in quality time spent with one’s spouses, as well as with close relatives and friends. At the same time the work-domain asks for extra-hours and high efforts in career development (Breedveld et al., 2006). These two tendencies are also reflected in attempts to engage with others by means of social software, such as Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter, each with their own demanding

rhythm

(http://www.facebook.com;

http://www.linkedin.com;

http://www.twitter.com). The results of these tendencies therefore are often ambivalent. Ambivalence, together with complexity, is a characteristic aspect of our current, late modern way of living (Beck, Giddens, & Lash, 1994; Cieslik & Pollock, 2002). This can be seen in an increasing pluriformity within life domains such as education, family, work, leisure activities or healthcare. Although a certain normative consensus within each domain exists, conflicts of interest can arise between domains (Van den Brink, 2007), making it very difficult to give meaning to one’s life in a coherent manner. It gets even more complex when expectation standards in each domain rise. We have to be successful as a parent, as a friend and as a colleague, all simultaneously (Breedveld et al., 2006). Van den Brink (2007) and Elchardus and Glorieux (2002) argue that with a growing focus on consumption, an extension of education and an increasing range of career opportunities, we live in a world with abundance of choice and an increasing pluriformity. Nonetheless, this pluriformity is connected to tradition. Behind the freedom of choice, society is still quite organized. People have a want for change, individual freedom of choice and personal development. At the same time, they strive for continuity and tradition and are in need of a frame of reference. The traditional forces are usually explained by the classical modernization thesis. This thesis describes the development of societies from traditional to modern (Cieslik & Pollock, 2002). The classical modernization process resulted in a social order characterized by rationalization and the elimination of personal preferences and reflexivity (Van den Brink, 2007). In this social order worldview (Weltanschauung), social status and gender heavily defined the environmental framework for social relations and participation and the framework for taste, identity and a way of giving meaning to the world (Elchardus & Glorieux, 2002). This guiding framework resulted in security and a clear view on, for instance, education- and work-opportunities. Subsequently, local communities and family saw to it that people would stay within the confinements of their social environment.

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However, even in classical modernity a person’s social activities took place in several domains. But in contrast with late modernity, the norms within these various domains followed from tradition. The domains a person would engage in shared norms and values as a result of a guiding framework. For example, people attended a specific school and a sports club based on a particular religion or worldview (Van den Brink, 2007). The current disappearance of this guiding framework results in a multitude of possible domains to engage in. These domains reach all aspects of social life such as consumption, education, career opportunities or leisure. While the diversity in domains increases, their coherence diminishes. But where does this disappearance of guidance come from? What causes the retreat of social structures (Lash, 1994)? In the last two decades of the twentieth century, many social scientists saw the emergence of a new force in society (Beck et al., 1994). This force lets rationality disappear and negotiation and influence replace power and authority. Traditional, strong collective forms of solidarity are undermined and are being replaced by individual forms of responsibility (Van den Brink, 2007). This means that one’s actions, taste and the way one gives meaning to the world are no longer seen as exclusively influenced by ideology, social status or gender. Contemporary sociologists found educational level, media usage and social capital to be important descriptors as well (Elchardus & Glorieux, 2002). The resulting combination of descriptors leads to a field of force of restricting tradition and liberating plurality. The co-existence of these forces means that modernization consists of a realignment of fracture paths with their origins in the past, rather than a sequence of breaking points (Elchardus & Glorieux, 2002). Fracture paths are frayed and follow more or less the course of time, similar to grains in rocks. They provide a gradual fading in and out of ideas and interpretations. If this were the case, would it be possible to pose questions about the consequences of the modernization process? How do young people deal with the tension between tradition and freedom of choice? Do they use interactive media as a way out of this tension? Hence, what effects could late modernity have on the way people learn? In this article, these questions will not be answered directly. Instead, they will be examined by relating the characteristics of late modernity to youth culture and the functions of interactive media within this culture. In order to do so, we introduce the sociological concepts of social space and cultural space.


All social action is structured in spaces, around objects and in time (Berger & Luckmann, 1966). Where during the pre-internet era social action took place in physical spaces, today it takes place in both physical and virtual spaces (Van den Boomen, 2000). The whole of a person's patterns of social relations and forms of participation, can be called social space (Elchardus & Glorieux, 2002). A person’s social space is dynamic and its boundaries change during one's life span (Bourdieu, 1984). For instance, a 4 year old child engages in a social space confined by home, kindergarten, buddies from school and the sports club. A student’s social space on the other hand might consist of the university campus, ski-camp in the mountains, a favorite bar, Second Life and an occasional visit to the parent’s house. An essential part of social action is communication with others. By means of communication people discuss, evaluate and judge one another, their actions and the objects in their social spaces. Hence through social action intersubjective reality is established, by means of which people give meaning to the world around them (Berger & Luckmann, 1966). We call these patterns of values, ideas, taste and identity cultural space (cf. Elchardus & Glorieux, 2002). Whereas the notion of social space directs our attention to the social and material aspects of human actions, cultural space directs our attention to the more symbolical aspects of human actions. The question is whether and how young people use interactive media as part of their actions for shaping and maintaining their social and cultural space. This question points to respectively the social function and the cultural function of interactive media. We consider both the social and cultural functions as basic motives for interactive media use. We now turn to the way in which the development of both social and cultural space of youth is influenced by societal tendencies. We discuss the specific influence of late modernity by means of four sensitizing concepts.

5. Youth culture and interactive media: four sensitizing concepts As we discussed above, world-view, gender and social class, next to educational level, media use and social capital, are seen as strong descriptors of a person's behavior and its perception. This large number of descriptors combined with a growing diversity of domains results in a complex tissue of factors influencing people’s social activities and values and beliefs. Youth culture in late modernity, in our view, reflects this development. It consists of a mix of renewal with lines trading

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back to tradition. The main question that typifies contemporary youth culture is: how to deal with the increasing freedom of choice and opportunities in late modern society without losing connection with tradition and security? In what follows we describe youth culture in late modernity in more detail by discussing the following concepts: insecurity, reflexivity, affinity spaces, and shape-shifting portfolio people. Insecurity and reflexivity are key concepts in late modernity theory (Beck et al., 1994; Giddens, 1993). Affinity spaces and shape-shifting portfolio people (Gee, 2004) connect late modernity to present-day media use. As Blumer (1954) argues, these kinds of concepts do not provide prescriptions but are sensitizing in nature since they suggest what to look for and where to look (cf. Bowen, 2006). This means that in late modern society all social action reflects these four concepts, but that differences between individuals may appear. In order to understand how youth culture develops and what the function of interactive media is in this development, we “give the sense of the concept[s] by the use of a few apt illustrations” (Blumer 1954, p. 5). We point to questions that are important for education by means of examples from literature and current research. These examples describe how contemporary youth seem to use the social and cultural functions of interactive media to find a way in, and give meaning to their social environment. Important parts of young people’s environment are education and learning. In this context it is important to note that we refer here to education as an institutionalized form of learning, and refer to learning when also considering learning outside of educational institutions. Discussing sensitizing concepts by means of illustrations, we specify questions for education and doubts about the existence of a homogeneous net generation. 5.1 Insecurity / ontological security In the process of modernization, tradition and authority loose their influence. This gives people a broad range of unexpected possibilities in defining their social and cultural space. Prerequisite is an active attitude of people to make choices and to give meaning to their life. However, an active attitude without any frame of reference leads to insecurity (Cieslik & Pollock, 2002; Giddens, 1993). As a result of insecurity, people start to look for mutual trust and ontological security. Where in traditional society the family functioned as a main source of ontological security, in late modern society experts, next-door friends and online communities have taken over this role (Poster, 2006). Contemporary youth appear to be looking beyond


traditional references for giving meaning to the world. They do so, in different degrees, online. For instance, they join specific networks, such as game clans, or peer-directed online networks, such as Facebook. This however indicates a large diversity among youth. Every youngster might play a game once in a while, but because of the complexity and time efforts involved, only specific groups form game clans or become active uploaders to a Youtube channel (cf. Bennett et al., 2008). The shift in sources for maintaining ontological security can also be found in weblogs and Internet forums where young people search and discuss opinions and experiences rather than look for factual information (De Haan & Van ‘t Hof, 2006). This search for opinions is in line with the organization of authentic experiences in education, as is increasingly favoured by several authors (cf. Volman, 2007; cf. Roth & Lee, 2007). By searching for opinions and experiences, young people are actively working on formation of their beliefs and values. However, in late modernity belief systems are created from a diversity of experiences in a multitude of rather incoherent domains. By result these systems are no longer straightforward. Could this mean that education also has a task in providing some ontological security, for instance by encouraging students to develop their own learning goals? Or are there other options available to help young people create ontological security? According to Gee (2004) it becomes important for education in late modernity to introduce students to the identity and culture of the professions or knowledge domains for which they are educated. This symbolic frame of reference, also called epistemic frame (Shaffer, 2006; Shaffer & Gee, 2005), could help students wonder about what it means exactly to become and to be a professional, for instance a journalist. What does a journalist do? What does his social network look like? Where does he get his job satisfaction and how can he keep his knowledgeability up to date? Today, students themselves look for answers to these questions on Internet forums. However, they do so with the risk of finding only partial or wrong information on the basis of a particular opinion. Are epistemic frames valuable structures for education in learning students how to gather knowledge about professions and associated participation, skills, knowledge and attitudes? Though late modernity comes along with engagements in a multitude of less coherent domains, people, similar as in early modernity, maintain to search for securities by means of creating local cultures (Hermans & Hermans-Konopka, 2009).

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As interactive media are intensively used to connect to others, and more importantly, to create social groups and boundaries hereof, it is important to study how these local cultures are created. Also, the different types of media seem to allow for different ways of social organization. If we acknowledge the role of interactive media in the shaping of local cultures, it is to be expected that the application of interactive media in education, as a goal in itself, does not have any additional value (cf. Buckingham, 2008). Instead, before applying interactive media in education, we need to know how various types of media enable facilitation of ontological security. In what ways and by means of what interactive media do students participate in social networks beyond the borders of their traditional social space, as our examples incline? In what ways and by means of what interactive media do they develop their cultural space by looking for other's opinions, values and beliefs? In light of these research questions it is also important to study whether there are differences among students in using specific interactive media for the social and cultural function of ontological security. 5.2 Reflexivity The search for ontological security requires a reflexive attitude (Beck et al., 1994). A reflexive attitude entails an active judgement of options, possible meanings and perspectives. The principle of reflexivity is known as the Thomas theorem: “If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences” (Thomas 1928, p. 2). It means that people examine their own and others’ practices and try to give meaning to them. Their subsequent social actions are based on these interpretations. As a result of an endless stream of incoming information, modern social life asks people for a constant examination of their social practices (Giddens, 1993). This requires an active reflection about all options: what is good and what is bad in particular situations? What is wise to do and what is not? What does something or someone mean to me? Do I want to become a lifelong member of a football club, with a commitment in both bad and good times? Or do I want to play the trendiest sport of the moment, just for fun? With a growing diversity in domains and a dynamically changing social and cultural space, a person’s identity becomes less stable and more fluctuating and fragmented (Hermans, 2006). The challenge in our network-society is to create a coherent narrative about one’s identity. Nowadays friends and the Internet are sources that appear to guide our reflexivity. Profile sites such as


Facebook (http://www.facebook.com) let people play with and narrate their identities, while games give the opportunity to reflect on models of the world, power or Newtonian physics (Gee, 2008). Which evaluative criteria are part of a reflexive attitude in late modernity can be understood from Frith’s discussion of how listeners judge music. Following Bourdieu (1984), Frith (1991) distinguishes between three discourses through which critical judgments about music are made. First, the art discourse that refers to the transcendental aspects of cultural experience. Culture in this discourse rises above the ordinary. Second is the folk discourse, which refers to integration. Cultural experience in this context is about a sense of place and belonging. The third discourse is called pop, and refers to fun and routinized pleasures. Frith argues that these three discourses are not separated but rather work together in shaping taste patterns (Frith, 1991). Siongers and Stevens (2002) argue that these criteria for judgment of music can be extended to other cultural domains as well. The art discourse in their terms is about quality and seriousness. The folk discourse is about authenticity and the pop discourse is about fun. Following this line of reasoning, it appears that young people apply these discourses as part of their reflexive attitude in developing meaning and identity. Striving for seriousness and quality can, for instance, be found on web forums with game reviews such as Gamerankings or Gamespot (http://www.gamerankings.com; http://www.gamespot.com). In the endless stream of new game productions only the ones with good reviews survive. Review sites function as guides in the reflexive definition of quality. Young people today appear to have a sharp sense for things being unauthentic (Boschma & Groen, 2006; cf. Shaffer, 2006). Commercial reality TV shows, in which reality is created rather than discovered, are ruthlessly called ‘creality’ (Wijnberg, 2007). Next to quality and authenticity, every experience or product appears to be in need of a fun factor. One could relate ‘fun’ in this sense to commitment. Games, sports, websites or music do not ask for a long-term commitment and are interesting as long as they are fun (cf. Elchardus & Glorieux, 2002). From these examples it can be concluded that although the framework of discourses on art, folk and pop remains, it is applied in a very goal-oriented manner. For instance, while fun in itself is not goal-oriented, the reflexive search for things being fun indeed is. In this way the framework adds to young people's goal-oriented and practical attitudes (cf. Rubens, De Jong & Prozee, et al., 2006).

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For education, so we believe, an awareness of the broad spectrum of options to reflect on everyday life is required. Could this mean a decline in authority of teachers and the educational system? We do not think so, but rather expect that relevant authority for teachers can be found in assuring quality, authenticity and fun, in relation to the aforementioned epistemic frames. As Shaffer and Gee (2005) argue, it is in authentic situations that students are taken seriously as reflective agents and become engaged in thinking about their future career. A study in the Netherlands among 203 Vocational Education and Training (VET) students showed that actively preparing students for their in-company apprenticeship resulted in a more pro-active attitude towards supervisors and the job itself (Meijers & Kuijpers, 2007). Involving students in authentic professional situations was found to enhance their reflexive attitude. We want to stress that accounting for reflexivity within education asks for an open mind or broad worldview (Diepstraten, 2006). However, as noted by Bruner (1990), this open-mindedness goes together with accountability: “I take open-mindedness to be a willingness to construe knowledge and values from multiple perspectives without loss of commitment to one’s own values. ...It demands that we be conscious of how we come to our knowledge and as conscious as we can be about the values that lead us to our perspectives. It asks that we be accountable for how and what we know” (p. 30). The result of reflexive practices within education can create a great variation in opinions and ideas between individual students, for instance, in the meaning of professional practice or knowledge domains. When watching interactive practices of youth, it seems they use all their experiences, both local and global, to reflexively create ontological security. Weblogs are in this context an example of narrative reflection. But YouTube videos can have this function as well, for instance when events are criticized in a parody (http://www.youtube.com). By sharing and responding to other's reflections, these applications are an important mechanism of defining collective values and beliefs. In a different way, those games and applications where players have the role of constructor or producer of the (game) world, appear to let students learn and


develop their reflexivity (cf. Shaffer, 2006; cf. Huisman & Marckmann, 2005). By means of media production young people are forced to look at themselves. Furthermore, responses from audiences make students aware of others' responses (Weber & Mitchell, 2008). This suggests that different types of interactive media have particular reflexive functions in the establishment of social and cultural spaces. It is worthwhile investigating further how these media can be relevant as such in education? Should education apply YouTube videos in group discussions, or producer games in science class? What kind of media do youth prefer in light of this function? This also means taking into account different forms of interaction and reflexivity, as well as individual differences amongst youth. 5.3 Affinity spaces We have reasoned so far that youth, due to high dynamics and cross-border connections in their social and cultural space, search for ontological security and connect more reflexively to others and to content. It may appear as if a reflexive attitude is the only way for youth to prevent its social and cultural spaces becoming chaotic and unstructured. How do young people organize and give direction to their social and cultural spaces? Contemporary youth culture no longer has the form of a counter-culture (Cieslik & Pollock, 2002) based on consumption, such as hippies or punks. Instead of standing up against their parents or society, young people today are focused on actively creating their own ontological security (Cieslik & Pollock, 2002; Giddens, 1993). They do this mainly by means of both consumption ánd production. This is reflected in the high activity in downloading, remixing and uploading personal digital content such as photographs, music, videos and games. These activities allow young people to participate in specific social environments. It can be said that this participation is informed by affinity with either peers or content (Ito, et al., 2008). For instance, people play games because it is a way of connecting to their friends. Others might get involved in making online videos to show others about their hobbies (Weber & Mitchell, 2008). In this process, young people’s social and cultural space gets its shape by temporary alliances and individual meaning. Youtube (http://www.youtube.com), Myspace (http://www.myspace.com), Facebook (http://www.facebook.com) or Hyves (http://www.hyves.nl), are

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examples of the (virtual) spaces where groups of young people meet, find information and where they discuss and judge each other's efforts in giving meaning to the world. Because of the limited preservability of these shared interest groups, Gee (2004) calls them affinity spaces. An important aspect of these affinity spaces is the fact that they are not institutionalized. Affinity spaces therefore reflect the tendency that personal networks take over functions from public communities (Van den Boomen, 2000). By result, these networks become important (mediated) sources for ontological security (cf. Van den Boomen, 2000). They fit into a reflexive attitude that lets people flip from one interesting topic to the next. A good example can be found in Internet forums where anorexia patients (shortly termed “Ana”) and boulimia patients (“Mia”) help each other in making sense of their identity (Giles, 2006). These affinity spaces have literally a limited preservability because hosting providers often close down the forums as a result of controversial content or purposes. The shared interest here consists of life as Ana or Mia. A similar kind of interest can be found on forums run by Moroccan youth in the Netherlands (Brouwer &Wijma, 2006) or websites that enable girls to develop their feminine identity (Kelly et al., 2006). Discussions on these forums deal with a shared cultural background and what it means to be a Moroccan in the Netherlands. These examples show rather strong identity ties between the visitors of the forums. Instant messaging on the other hand shows the importance of weak ties (Granovetter, 1973) as well. Many young people today have over 100 ‘friends’ on their instant messaging contact-list (Duimel & De Haan, 2007; Van den Beemt, et al., 2010), but on a regular basis they chat with less than twenty of them. The sum of affinity spaces and face-to-face networks implies different levels of scale, formality and closeness, and different kinds of social networks. Together these networks form the social embedding of the individual (Van den Boomen, 2000), as such defining an individual’s social space. This social space is changing in terms of decreasing the number of real world outlets where one becomes part of a community (Williams, 2006) and an increasing use of weak ties (Diepstraten, 2006). However, educational systems rely on long-term trajectories and a subsequent commitment. Could it be that weak ties and a limited preservability conflict with these long-term trajectories? Many (young) people gather together on forums for a specific goal, be it their next holiday, comparing digital camera’s before buying one or debating about


religion and politics. With a goal-oriented and practical attitude (Rubens et al., 2006), it might be the case that young people easily switch brands or leave forums. Affinity spaces appear to be important for networking and developing opinions. They add to a vision on what is important for one’s portfolio. This resembles characteristics of present-day students who favor informal and constructivist learning (Diepstraten, 2006). By grouping themselves in affinity spaces, young people form their reflexivity. Should education acknowledge affinity spaces as part of the epistemic frame, while taking into account diversity among students? By allowing peer learning, affinity spaces make the authority of an educator no longer obvious, but nonetheless important (cf. Ito et al., 2008). Social and cultural spaces are increasingly defined around affinities. This development can be seen in the intensive use of social software or online games. Therefore, affinity spaces should not be set aside as something students deal with outside school hours. Instead, we argue that an exploration of how education can connect to the affinity spaces that students engage in is necessary. This exploration should result in ways to deal with the diversity of questions and opinions that different students are facing in their social and cultural spaces. 5.4 Shape-shifting portfolio people People's social and cultural spaces change over time, along with changes in reflexivity and affinities. In response to the sociological tendencies described above, it has been stressed that people in late modernity can be seen as shape-shifting portfolio people. Shape-shifting portfolio people: are people who see themselves in entrepeneurial terms. That is, they see themselves as free agents in charge of their own selves as if those selves were projects of business. They believe they must manage their own risky trajectories through building up a variety of skills, experiences and achievements in terms of which they can define themselves as successful now and worthy of more success later (Gee, 2004, p.105). Shape-shifting portfolio people act in a flexible way when chances appear. They value experience above credentials, combine different strategies and explore every opportunity. It appears that this description fits those students who have an

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exploring flexible attitude towards, for instance, interactive media (Rutgers, 2007). The result of this flexibility appears to be that young people develop a portfolio filled with experiences, opinions and identities. By filling their life-portfolio on the go, in situated actions full of contingency, young people develop their course of life in terms of ‘reversible transitions’ (Du Bois-Reymond, as cited in Cieslik & Pollock, 2002). In this way they become shape-shifters who reflexively define ontological security by using affinity spaces. Diepstraten (2006) shows that an important aspect of students who create their own shape-shifting biography, is a line of outer-school activities parallel to the school-trajectory. This enforces Gee’s (2004) statement of the importance of learning experiences outside school. Could this mean that education should be aware of the life biography portfolios of her students? Does it indicate that knowledge, skills and attitude, and hence career opportunities increasingly are being formed by a combination of school-credentials and outer-school experiences? If we accept the diversity in biography portfolios, it is of importance for education to be informed about the role of interactive media in making transparent and maintaining these life narratives. Similar as with the other sensitizing concepts mentioned, we can expect a variety in the extent and form of shape shifting among students. However, for all students counts that although their life biography is still influenced by traditional descriptors such as their parents' social position, people have more flexibility compared to earlier modern times. Interactive media seem to play important roles in allowing shape-shifters to look beyond traditional borders. Still, there will be a portion of students that cannot be defined as shapeshifting portfolio people. If educational practice intends to think in terms of ontological security, reflexivity, affinity spaces, and shape shifters, how can the more traditional students be reached? Who are these students? Is it relevant to engage them in interactive media and shape-shifting? Answering this question implies an investigation of the available applications while taking into account the diversity in shape-shifting characteristics among students.

6. Conclusion and discussion Contemporary Western society can be characterized by a field of force consisting of liberating plurality on the one hand, and a search for traditional securities on the


other. This field of force goes together with the simultaneous processes of globalization and localization (Hermans & Hermans-Konopka, 2009). These processes lead to personal solutions and a variety of local cultures. Accordingly, different types of media are being used in shaping life trajectories and affinity spaces. In this article we stated that the net generation debate, despite its value, has two limitations. Firstly, the debate presumes homogeneity among all contemporary youth. Secondly, the debate's focus is on the use of interactive media rather than the underlying motives. The review of existing research on interactive media use showed that instead of one homogeneous generation, there are subgroups to be found. Furthermore our review showed that the meaning and motives for media use are not studied well, nor are identity issues. In response to these limitations, we tried to describe young people's interactive media use in the context of a sociological description of contemporary Western youth culture. With this description we investigated social and cultural functions of interactive media use. We have perceived these functions as the basic motives for interactive media use. Results of this investigation are important questions that we claim should be posed first, when aiming to connect educational practices to its changing students. Youth culture in late modernity has been discussed while taking into account the ongoing traditional characteristics of society. By this account we were able to stress that societies still reflect earlier times, and thereby are not as radically different as is suggested in the net generation debate. Our sociological description was framed by four sensitizing concepts. For each concept we discussed what questions for education emerge from observing the change in youth culture. The illustrations provided should be seen as suggestions for further research rather than suggestions to be realized. Should education provide ontological security for students? If this is to be true, how can security be accomplished? Shaffer (2006) provides a possible solution in the form of epistemic frames. It would be worthwhile to investigate the notion of epistemic frames in the context of education, while looking at the potential role of different types of media in the creation of these frames. The concept of reflexivity led us to conclude that education requires an awareness of the broad spectrum of opinions, meanings and perspectives in

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everyday life. Contemporary reflexivity can lead to a great variation between individual students. Acknowledging this variation in education means accepting ambiguity in the meaning students give to, for example, particular knowledge domains or professional practices. An important question is how educational practices, particularly in mass education, can create enough space for this variety. The concept of affinity spaces showed us the conflict between on the one hand weak ties and a limited preservability, and on the other hand the long-term trajectories in education. Affinities appear to be important structures and directions for social and cultural spaces. They add to a vision about what is important for one’s portfolio. In line with authentic forms of education, we should investigate whether and how teachers can connect affinity spaces of students to the particular epistemic frames (e.g. certain domains) in education. The concept of shape-shifting portfolio people showed us how young people actively fill their life-portfolio with all kinds of experiences. What does this development mean for education? Does it mean that career opportunities are being formed by a combination of school-credentials and outer-school experiences? And what is the potential role of interactive media in developing the life portfolios of students? Furthermore, not all students will be shape-shifters. How should education approach the more traditional students? The four sensitizing concepts provide a perspective on the use of interactive media among contemporary students. The specific constellation of these concepts influences a person's social behavior and systems of values and beliefs. We distinghuished social space and cultural space as areas of participation where people develop and maintain respectively their social relations and symbolic aspects of everyday life. From an educational research perspective, it is important to know how students shape their social and cultural space around a diversity of affinities. How do students fill their portfolio? What social relations and patterns result from their interactive media use? What values and beliefs do they develop by means of interactive media? In obtaining this knowledge, it is important to clarify the function of each medium for shaping social and cultural spaces. Taken together, for each interactive medium, the research question is: what is its social function and what is its cultural function? Only by answering these questions education can fully value the functional application of interactive media,


while taking into account the diversity among users. The answer to these questions is important in creating reflexive, authentic and collaborative learning environments contributing to ontological securities and showing future directions. Investigating these questions is likely to reveal a heterogeneity (in contrast to the presupposed homogeneity) of contemporary youth in its ways of searching for ontological security, being reflexive, and engaging in affinity spaces. We want to close with emphasizing that we should empirically substantiate the social and cultural function of interactive media, before starting educational renewal. We should, for example, not put lots of effort in using games in education, if it is only for making learning more fun. This would be a too superficial account of what drives students. We should first investigate what functions games have in terms of the maintenance and development of the social and cultural space of youth. Moreover, research in this context should take into account the differences between groups of young people, rather than approaching them as one dominant group. The four sensitizing concepts, together with social and cultural space, provide a useful conceptual framework for this research. Answering the research questions should comprise both in-depth and broad investigations, for instance by means of interviews and surveys. Following the call for empirical evidence rather than assertions (Bennett et al., 2008), we have started this investigation in the Netherlands (Van den Beemt, et al., 2010). Research on the questions raised in this article requires insights from sociological, educational and media studies. With this article, we have made a first attempt to link these three scientific fields. As we hope to have pointed out education, and educational science can no longer set aside what happens in outerschool context. By means of the dialogue between disciplines, education can understand and find ways to connect to the daily lives of young people, and take into account how they think, communicate and learn.

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CHAPTER THREE

The use of interactive media among today’s youth: Results of a survey1 

Abstract The intensive use of interactive media has led to assertions about the effect of these media on youth. This paper presents a quantitative study on the position of interactive media in young people’s lives. Rather than following the assumption of a homogeneous generation, we investigate the existence of a diversity of user patterns. The research question for this paper: Can patterns be found in the use of interactive media among youth? We answer this question by a survey among Dutch youngsters aged 10 to 23. Four clusters of interactive media users, namely Traditionalists, Gamers, Networkers and Producers were identified using cluster analysis. Behind these straightforward clusters, a complex whole of user activities can be found. Each cluster shows specific use of and opinions about interactive media. This provides a contextualized understanding of the position of interactive media in the lives of contemporary youth, and a nuanced conceptualization of the ‘Net generation’. This allows for studying the intricate relationship between youth culture, interactive media and learning.

1

This chapter has been published as: Van den Beemt, A., Akkerman, S., & Simons, P.R.J. (2010). The use of interactive media among today's youth: results of a survey. Computers in Human Behavior, Vol. 26, 1158-1165. DOI: 10.1016/j.chb.2010.03.022

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1. Introduction During the last decade, games and Internet applications, together comprising interactive media, have become tools for information and communication that are used daily by the so-called ‘Net generation’ (Tapscott, 1998). This has led to assertions about the enormous effect of interactive media on youth2 (cf. Prensky, 2006; cf. Tapscott, 1998). These assertions describe today's youth as using interactive media with great intensity and skill (Bennett, Maton, & Kervin, 2008). The net generation discourse often starts from these assertions to describe the difference between contemporary youth and older generations. For instance, Tapscott (1998) and Prensky (2006) based their work on two sets of binary oppositions, between television and Internet technology, and between the babyboomer generation and the net generation (Buckingham, 2008). This stark opposition has contributed to an image of today's young interactive media users as one homogeneous group, rather than as diversified in subgroups. Often, the net generation discourse is motivated by a concern about the relationship between young people, interactive media and education (cf. Oblinger & Oblinger, 2005; cf. Shaffer & Gee, 2005). Buckingham (2008) speaks in this respect of a digital divide between in-school and out-of-school use, which he sees as a symptom of the "widening gap between young people's everyday 'life world' outside school and the emphases of many educational systems" (Buckingham, 2007 as cited in Ito, Horst, Bittanti, Boyd, Herr-Stephenson, Lange, et al., 2008, p. 4). The net generation discourse is valuable for education, because it provides a framework to pose questions and make decisions regarding the use of interactive media in learning. However, this discourse often starts from the premise of today's youth being one generation. Moreover, the discourse tends to focus on computer and internet use and skills instead of the meaning of interactive media in young people's lives (Bennett, et al., 2008; Margaryan & Littlejohn, 2008). By studying the use of interactive media and the resulting social relations, we are able to describe an important part of young people's social space. It is by and through this social space, that people develop their values and beliefs, as such informing their cultural space (Van den Beemt, Akkerman, & Simons, 2007). Investigating both young people's

2

'Youth' refers to a cohort of young people, especially those aged 10 to 25, rather than to the social construct of youthfulness. See also Buckingham (2008) for a discussion of 'youth' as a social construct.

The use of interactive media among today's youth  55

social and cultural space, in terms of use and meaning, contributes to a better understanding of youth's perspective on interactive media. In a number of studies, the premise of a skillful and homogeneous generation is seriously questioned by empirical research. According to these studies, young people have intermediate rather than high ICT-skills (Cameron, 2005; Margaryan & Littlejohn, 2008) and their internet use is characterized by "relatively mundane forms of communication and information retrieval" rather than "spectacular forms of innovation and creativity" (Buckingham, 2008, p. 14). A small number of studies pay attention to gender differences. These studies show that generally, gender differences are not very pronounced for interactive media use itself (Hargittai, 2010; Jones, Ramanau, Cross, & Healing, 2009; McQuillan & O'Neill, 2009), apart from games, which boys play two times as often compared to girls (Duimel & De Haan, 2007; Kutteroff & Beherens, 2009; Schulmeister, 2008). Furthermore, boys are somewhat more skilled in internet use compared to girls (Hargittai, 2010). Young people use interactive media intensively (Schulmeister, 2008; Duimel & De Haan, 2007). However, there appears to be a diversity in kinds of media being used, both within as well as between age categories (Duimel & De Haan, 2007; Ito, et al., 2008; Kutteroff & Behrens, 2008, 2009; Schulmeister, 2008). Because most studies focus either on one educational level, or on age groups regardless of education, it is difficult to draw conclusions about the relation between education and interactive media use. Taken together, these results show diversity among youth in the skills, the kinds of media being used, as well as in the user intensity. These results do not point in the direction of a net generation as one skillful and homogeneous group. The investigation into the net generation often begins with pre-defined classes of activities such as 'information retrieval', 'social networking', 'online gaming' or 'downloading' (Kutteroff & Behrens, 2008; Duimel & De Haan, 2007; Livingstone & Bober, 2005). Despite the usefulness of these classifications, the relationship between activities remains unclear. Investigating this relationship is valuable, since youth culture studies show that young people use combinations of available content and media to show others what they think is important (Weber & Mitchell, 2008). Profile pages for instance, often show images of their owners merged with photographs of popstars or sportsmen.This bricolage (Lévi-Strauss, 1962) of different kinds of both content and interactive media can be studied by looking for patterns in the activities. Does online gaming go together with information retrieval? Does social networking

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leave time for downloading music or films? Can a convergence of media activities be found, or is there a divergence into separated user groups? Instead of using pre-defined classes of interactive media, Ito et al. (2008) and Jenkins (2006) start their research from the user's goals. This results in the concept of participation: friendship-driven and interest-driven genres of participation (Ito, et al., 2008). This perspective allows for describing combinations of activities based on the purpose of either contact and communication or interest in specific informationdomains. This makes friendship-driven and interest-driven genres of participation useful in the study of the meaning of interactive media to young people's lives. Jenkins (2006), in his discussion of participation, uses the term 'production' for both the creation of digital products, as well as for the interactive consumption that is part of production. Consumption in this sense describes the ways in which popular images are being collected, combined, critiqued and incorporated in new content that presents the user's identity. Production leads to a convergence of media when all kinds of content types and applications are being combined. What these studies show is the importance of looking beyond activities per se, and of describing possible motivations for interactive media use. Following Ito et al. (2008), we argue that investigating solely a possible diversity of media activities would lead to a limited view of the intricate relationship between young people and interactive media. A classification of activities, however useful, describes only one dimension, without examining the premise of the net generation as a homogeneous group. We argue that more nuance in the view on today’s youth can be obtained, for instance by investigating young people's social space and cultural space. Investigating the social space entails a consideration of the various kind of social activities of youth. Looking at user patterns, that is, analyzing how youth uses different sets of media can reveal this. Investigating the cultural space entails a consideration of the values and meanings developed through these social activities. A first way of revealing this is by asking youth about their opinions about the use interactive media for contacting other people. By looking at user patterns and opinions about the use of interactive media, we expect that a second dimension, formed by user groups, will appear. Considering both the dimension of grouped activities and the dimension of grouped users allows us to study possible consequences for education of intensive interactive media use by young people. For instance, if our results would show that most students appear to be networkers with


a negative attitude towards gaming, education could consider using social software instead of games as a learning tool. We are currently investigating both dimensions by means of quantitative and qualitative research. This paper presents the results of the quantitative research which aims at describing the interactive media behavior among young people and their stated opinions about these media. In order to investigate user activities and opinions we formulated the following question: Can patterns be found in the interactive media activities of young people? In answering this question, special attention will be paid to gender and educational level in relation to user patterns, because we expect differences for these two factors. For instance, social software, such as Facebook (http://www.facebook.com), asks for a communicative attitude towards peers. Games are often complex and they ask for spatial and strategic skills. Creating interactive media content asks for a producing attitude. If the net generation exists, we will not find differences in opinions about and use of interactive media for gender or level of education. Furthermore, psychological accounts of adolescence, such as the notion of 'moratorium' (Erikson, 1968), suggest that we need to distinguish between age groups. In our study this is done by considering different educational levels. The answer to our main question forms the foundation for describing a diversity of subcultures based on the place of specific interactive media in young people's everyday life. Our analysis of user patterns will lead to new, more specific questions for further research on young people and their media behavior. With these results we wish to contribute to the net generation discourse, a better understanding of the possible meaning of interactive media for education and learning.

2. Method 2.1. Participants The participants of the study were 178 Dutch students, in education levels ranging from primary education (N = 55; 25 female; age: M = 11.24, SD = .77), secondary education (N = 94; 30 female; age: M = 14.45, SD = 1.45) to higher professional education (N = 29; 4 female; age: M = 21.86, SD = 1.25) (see Table 1). Participating schools were found through the Fontys University network. The study sample was not drawn randomly because schools participated voluntarily, often with at least one class of respondents. Because of the explorative nature of the study, and the

58  Chapter 3

intention to compare educational levels, all responding students were included in our sample, instead of drawing a random selection. The participating secondary and higher education schools have a curriculum focused on technology. As a consequence these schools have more male students, which affected the boy-girl ratio in our sample. The participating schools all had a largely white middle class population. Table1: Participants Educational Level

Age group

Primary education Secondary education Higher professional education

10-13 12-16 19-23

Total

Number of participants

Male

Female

55 94 29

30 60 25

25 30 4

178

119

59

2.2. Materials The online survey consisted of 23 questions addressing actual use of interactive media and opinions about specific media. Each item referred to one of all interactive media used in the Netherlands at the time of inquiry. In Table 2 an overview of these interactive media can be found. Examples of questions were: How often do you: - Surf the Internet - Play console games - Maintain your profile page Do you agree with the following sentences: - I like to play games together with others - I feel unhappy when I cannot play games - Sometimes I stay longer on MSN than I want to Answer categories followed a five-point Likert scale ranging from 'never' to 'every day' for activities and 'totally disagree' to 'totally agree' for opinions. Means of three and larger indicate, respectively, a regular use and positive opinion. Because we expected the strongest response for in- and out-group behavior, games and social software, we asked mainly for opinions on these topics.


2.3. Procedure The questionnaire was developed by incorporating key characteristics of subcultures (Brake, 1985) and existing media research (Duimel & De Haan, 2007). The survey was preceded by a 'think-aloud' session (Van Someren, Barnard, & Sandberg, 1994) with three primary education students, to control for comprehension of the questions and for the time required to fill in the survey. The results of this session led to minor adjustments in the phrasing of questions. No further reading level analysis was pursued. All respondents of the online survey received textual instructions about the survey's purpose and ways to fill it in. The instructions explained the purpose of the survey, that it would not be graded, and therefore that any answer would be right. Furthermore, the students were asked to fill in the survey at their own comfortable speed. Most schools arranged for each class to fill in the survey in a computer laboratory with internet access. The survey was held between February and April 2008. 2.4. Analytic strategy The statistical analyses were performed in several steps. First, cluster analysis was applied to explore the existence of categories of media activities. In order to do so, Ward's method with squared Euclidian distance and z-scores (Aldenderfer & Blashfield, 1984; Milligan & Cooper, 1988) was applied on the interactive media items from the questionnaire. This resulted in a pattern of related activities. Cluster analysis with the same method was applied on the cases to find a pattern of related interactive media users. With a one-way ANOVA the significant difference in means between the clusters of activities and users was checked. Levene's test of homogeneity of variance showed a p < 0.05 for two clusters. Because of this violation of homogeneity of variance, the Welch F-ratio is reported in the results section. Furthermore the Games-Howell method was used for post hoc comparisons. Following existing research (Duimel & De Haan, 2007), application use of at least once per week is considered as 'regular' use. Categories of opinions were derived from cluster analysis on variables, applying Ward's method with squared Euclidian distance and z-scores. Again a oneway ANOVA was applied. Because the assumption of homogeneity of variance was violated, the Welch F-ratio is reported and the Games-Howell method was used for post hoc comparisons. In order to enhance the description of each user cluster, we

60  Chapter 3

analyzed specific correlations between opinions. These correlations, when of relevance for the interpretation, will be discussed for each cluster separately.

3. Results Our data show a diversity in the use of interactive media applications. All respondents reported making use of at least one application once per week or more. This means that there are no non-users in our sample. Myspace, wikis, podcasts, Second Life and Skype were reported by respondents to be rarely used. On the other hand, the more basic internet applications, such as e-mail, chat applications such as MSN, or surfing the web, were used by more than two-thirds of our respondents. 3.1 Diversity in interactive media use and users Cluster analysis applied on the use interactive media applications revealed four significant clusters in the behavior of our participants. These clusters are an indication of diversity in interactive media use. One cluster (see Table 2) consists of e-mail, surfing the web, searching for information and MSN. Because these are traditional, more basic internet activities, focused on the consumption of information we labeled them 'browsing'. A second cluster, consisting of gaming activities, is a form of interest-driven participation (cf. Ito et al., 2008) where users play a certain role on a virtual stage. We labeled this cluster 'performing'. A third cluster can be called friendship-driven, and consists of all kinds of social networking activities. We labeled this cluster 'interchanging'. The last cluster consists of a larger number of activities, all of them comprising some form of content production in line with Jenkins (2006). We labeled this cluster 'authoring'. Together, the four clusters of activities form a dimension of interactive media use ranging from consumption (browsing) to production (authoring). A second round of cluster analysis was applied to investigate how the clusters of activities related to individual participants in our sample. This resulted in four clusters describing types of media users. We labeled them according to the main activity group in each user cluster: Traditionalist, Gamer, Networker and Producer.

The use of interactive media among today's youth  61 Table2: Clusters of activities, Mean standardised score (and SD) within cluster Cluster Traditionalist N=41

Gamer N=64

Networker N=32

Producer N=21

Traditional Search E-mail MSN Surfing the web Watching videos Reading news sites

2,22 (1.20)

3.92

(1.14)

3.45

(1.12)

4.34

(1.02)

Gaming Large pc games Small pc games Online games Casual online games Portable games Console games Mobile games

2.42

(1.37)

2.35

(1.33)

1.71

(.87)

3.21

(1.53)

Networking 1.14 Maintaining Hyves profile Looking at profile pages Leaving a scrap Uploading photo to Hyves Maint. weblog at Hyves Reading weblogs Maintaining weblog other than profile

(.42)

2.02

(1.07)

3.12

(.90)

3.42

(1.60)

Producing 1.34 Skype Uploading videos Uploading photos other than to profile Looking at photo-album Google Earth Google Docs Looking at Myspace Uploading to Myspace Downloading podcasts Making music on pc Reading Wikipedia Downloading music Downloading films Habbo

(.58)

1.69

(.74)

1.49

(.63)

2.55

(1.36)

Activities

N = 158; Cluster analysis: Ward's method, Squared Euclidian distance, Z-scores; 1 = Never, 2 = Less than once a week, 3 = once per week, 4 = more times per week, 5 = daily.

These four clusters of respondents form a second dimension, this time of interactive media users ranging from consumers (Traditionalist) to producers (Producer). A one-way between subjects ANOVA was conducted to compare the activity clusters for each user cluster. The results show that all four clusters of users have significantly different mean scores on all four activity clusters at the p < 0.05 level,

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indicating that groups of users engage with different intensity in these activities: browsing, F(3,154) = 74.93, p < 0.001; performing, F(3,154) = 17.59, p < 0.001; interchanging, F(3,154) = 68.14, p < 0.001; authoring, F(3,154) = 64.65, p < 0.001. Welch F-ratio showed a significant difference between activity clusters for all user clusters, which confirms the ANOVA results: browsing, F(3,66.21) = 99.19, p < 0.001; performing, F(3,64.11) = 19.68, p < 0.001; interchanging, F(3,58.81) = 162.00, p < 0.001; authoring, F(3,62.27) = 37.14, p < 0.001. As Table 3 shows, post hoc comparisons for browsing activities (p < 0.05) indicated that all four user-clusters engage with significantly different intensity in this type of activity: Traditionalists (M = 2.22, SD = .52), Gamers (M = 3.92, SD = .70), Networkers (M = 3.45, SD = .72) and Producers (M = 4.34, SD = .55). For performing activities, post hoc tests indicated that Traditionalists did not differ significantly from Gamers in using games, as is represented in Table 3 by the '='-sign. However, the other user-cluster combinations were indicated to engage with significantly different intensity in performing: Traditionalists (M = 2.42, SD = .82), Gamers (M = 2.35, SD = .73), Networkers (M = 1.71, SD = .55) and Producers (M = 3.21, SD = .87). Analyses of interchanging showed that Networkers (M = 3.12, SD = .48) and Producers (M = 3.42, SD = 1.29) did not engage with significantly different intensity in this activity. Traditionalists (M = 1.14, SD = .27) and Gamers (M = 2.02, SD = .76) (p < 0.01) were indicated to engage with significantly different intensity in interchanging. Finally, for producing activities, post hoc tests indicated a significant difference between Gamers (M = 1.72, SD = .33) and Producers (M = 2.54, SD = .57), and a non-significant difference between Traditionalists (M = 1.34, SD = .26) and Networkers (M = 1.46, SD = .24). Taken together, these results suggest that a relation exists between membership of a certain user group and kinds of activities people participate in. The intensity of participation applies especially to browsing activities. Specifically, our results suggest that Traditionalists and Gamers both engage in a similar way in performing activities, while Networkers appear to engage significantly less in performing activities. Networkers and Producers are most active in interchanging, while Traditionalists and Gamers are significantly less active with interchanging. Finally, our results suggest that only Producers are significantly active with authoring. This makes Producers the most dedicated users of their own applications, next to being the most intensive users of all kinds of interactive media.

The use of interactive media among today's youth  63 Table3: Summary of post hoc results for groups of activities Activities

Cluster

Traditionalist

Gamer

Networker

browsing

Producer Networker Gamer Producer Networker Gamer Producer Networker Gamer Producer Networker Gamer

> > > > < = > > > > = >

> >

>

>

> >

=

>

perfoming interchanging authoring

'=' indicates no significant difference between cluster means, '>' indicaties horizontal mean significantly larger than vertical mean, '