The Kids Are All Right
Jonathan Alexander spoke at U.C. Irvine today about "Digital Youth," the subject his recent book. As someone who has talked about online social marketing and HIV/AIDS prevention efforts, I was particularly interested to hear about his Youth & AIDS Web Project.
Primarily, Alexander was describing how important literacy activities were in MMORPG videogame culture. Like Constance Steinkuehler, he uses World of Warcraft as his main case study. Alexander described his own fieldwork with the "Two Mikes" and his difficulties gaining mastery over game controls. Two particularly interesting observations from his talk: 1) there was some enforcement of group language norms when it came to anti-homosexual slurs and 2) attention of his fellow players was often text-based and focused on chat boxes rather than vivid graphics that were described as just "for pretty" by players.
Primarily, Alexander was describing how important literacy activities were in MMORPG videogame culture. Like Constance Steinkuehler, he uses World of Warcraft as his main case study. Alexander described his own fieldwork with the "Two Mikes" and his difficulties gaining mastery over game controls. Two particularly interesting observations from his talk: 1) there was some enforcement of group language norms when it came to anti-homosexual slurs and 2) attention of his fellow players was often text-based and focused on chat boxes rather than vivid graphics that were described as just "for pretty" by players.
Labels: digital parenting, sexuality, social marketing
posted by Liz Losh at 5:38 PM
2 Comments:
It's interesting to see the return of text in harder core design and tech applications. Although I am just a techie wannabie, I recently abanonded Dreamweaver (where I had mastered some fairly nice visual effects) for Textpattern, where I am essentially stuck with very simple text-only applications until I can learn some CSS. But I like the greater functionality and interactive potential I get with a database-driven system. And type is "pretty" too!
I really loved going through your power point presentation on social marketing and AIDS and Alexander's Youth & AIDS website. You've probably heard about the UCLA Biomedical Library's efforts to digitize AIDS posters: http://digital.library.ucla.edu/aidsposters/
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