Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century

Olsen, Norma

IL-21st-century learning
IL-Media Literacy
IL-participatory culture

Jenkins, H., Purushotma, R., Robison, A. J., Weigel, M., & Clinton, K. (2007). Confronting the challenges of participatory culture ; media education for the 21st century. Digital Kompetanse, 2(1), 23-33. Retrieved from https://www.macfound.org/media/article_pdfs/JENKINS_WHITE_PAPER.PDF

In this article Henry Jenkins, director of the Comparative Media Studies department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, looks at the development of these skills through the lens of participatory culture. Participatory culture, as defined by Jenkins, is a “

“Culture with relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement, strong support for creating and sharing one’s creations, and some type of informal mentorship whereby what is known by the most experienced is passed along to novices. A participatory culture is also one in which members believe their contributions matter, and feel some degree of social connection with one another…” (3)

Since participatory culture already defines the youth today, he encourages creating a more systemic approach to media literacy that can foster these skills and cultural competencies that can promote not only individual expression, but community involvement. He develops a new frameworks for literacy through the lens of participatory culture.

Jenkins identifies 11 crucial media literacy skills that individuals will need to participate in the new media culture:

• Play—the capacity to experiment with one's surroundings as a form of problem-solving
• Performance—the ability to adopt alternative identities for the purpose of improvisation and discovery
• Simulation—the ability to interpret and construct dynamic models of real-world processes
• Appropriation—the ability to meaningfully sample and remix media content
• Multitasking—the ability to scan one's environment and shift focus as needed to salient details
• Distributed Cognition—the ability to interact meaningfully with tools that expand mental capacities
• Collective Intelligence—the ability to pool knowledge and compare notes with others toward a common goal
• Judgment—the ability to evaluate the reliability and credibility of different information sources
• Transmedia Navigation—the ability to follow the flow of stories and information across multiple modalities
• Networking—the ability to search for, synthesize, and disseminate information
• Negotiation—the ability to travel across diverse communities, discerning and respecting multiple perspectives, and grasping and following alternative norms.

As he explains each of these skills and competencies he offers a suggestion of what might be done to make the teaching and practice a systematic exercise and natural process of education.

The 21st-century presents an ever-changing landscape when it comes to Internet technologies Educators today confront the challenge of preparing youth to not just be knowledgeable, but to be knowledge-able. In this landscape, educators must look into the horizon and foresee the impact that Internet technologies and inform their teaching practices. This article offers a perspective that teacher librarians can use to support teachers and students prepare for what lays ahead. Technology is a tool; we define its potential by envisioning its use and charting that path.