Affinity Online. Mizuko Ito

Connected Learning Research Network and headed by Mizuko Ito and Katie Salen at the University of California, Irvine. Members of the Leveling Up research team include Adam Ingram-Goble of MINDBODY, Inc., Ksenia Korobkova of UC Irvine, Yong Ming Kow of City University of Hong Kong, Crystle Martin of El Camino College, Rachel Cody Pfister of UC San Diego, Matthew H. Rafalow of YouTube, Amanda Wortman of UC Irvine, and Timothy Young of Twitch. Members of the Media, Activism, and Participatory Politics (MAPP) project led by Henry Jenkins at the University of Southern California (USC), and part of the Youth and Participatory Politics Research Network (YPP), have also contributed case material. Neta Kligler-Vilenchik of Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Sangita Shresthova of USC represent the MAPP researchers contributing case material.

      This book is the result of a collaborative process of joint analysis and writing that built on our earlier experiences in the Digital Youth Project (Ito et al. 2010). Research protocols and codes were coordinated across the diverse case studies, and the insights and themes in this book grew out of iterative shared analysis. Unlike a traditional edited volume in which case studies are broken out chapter by chapter, in this book each chapter includes examples from multiple cases. In other words, it is a co-authored volume to which all authors contributed throughout the book. Each chapter has one or more lead authors who took responsibility for the writing, but every chapter incorporates material and input from a wide range of co-authors and the case studies they represent. Individual researchers who led on specific case studies have written brief case overviews and learner stories that are broken out from the main text. The full range of people who have contributed to this project and this book are mentioned in the acknowledgments. The case studies interspersed through the book are presented in a more traditional single-author format, written by the authors who led on the fieldwork for the case.

      The case studies and approaches that the co-authors brought to the writing have been diverse, but we have agreed on certain conventions to provide some consistency:

       Chapter 1 provides background on how the project was organized and an overview of the cases. More detailed case reports on the five individual research studies conducted by members of the Leveling Up team between the years 2011 and 2013 are provided online at http://clalliance.org/publications/.

       The case studies were conducted using different data collection methodologies, and we have varying degrees of contextual information about our participants. In every case, if we know the information, then we have indicated age, gender, location, and what each participant self-identified as his or her racial or ethnic identity. If this information is not indicated, it means that we did not know the information for this participant because of the constraints of the particular case study. For example, in some of the studies that focus on online affinity networks, interviews were conducted over the phone or through online chat. In most cases, we derived this information from self-reports in background questionnaires we administered after most of our formal interviews. Although race is not always an analytic category relevant to our description, we thought that if racial or ethnic identity were to be mentioned for some number of participants, then we needed to be consistent in our treatment and indicate racial identity for all respondents for whom we did have this information.

       In referring to the online affinity networks studied, we have chosen to use the real names of the communities, except in instances in which the communities were relatively small and identifying the community would increase the likelihood of participants being identified, such as in the cases of the Wrestling Boards and Sackboy Planet.

       We have used pseudonyms in most cases when referring to our research participants. In some cases, our participants chose these pseudonyms. For adult participants, we offered the option of using their screen names or their real-life names. We believe that giving participants this choice allows for public recognition and honors the positive reputations that they have developed through their online affinity networks. When real names or screen names are used, we indicate this by notes to the text.

      1

      Introduction

      Amy was 17 years old when she was interviewed as part of Pfister’s (2014, 2016) study of Ravelry.com, an online community for knitters and crocheters. Amy is an avid fiber crafter and pattern maker, and she is also active on Hogwarts at Ravelry, a group within Ravelry focused on Harry Potter–related creations (the case study appears at the end of chapter 4). Amy first learned to crochet from her grandmother and picked up knitting with her sister. Eventually she started to look online for designs and inspiration, and one of her friends introduced her to Ravelry. There she found a wealth of resources, new designs, and kindred spirits, including the subcommunity of Harry Potter fans. One of Amy’s hat designs, inspired by a hat in the sixth Harry Potter movie, has been “favorited” by 1,100 people and is in the queue of more than 400 people as something that they would like to make. She has begun selling her patterns on Ravelry and, with the support of her father, is planning to launch a blog and expand her business online. Her passion for the fiber arts has even sparked a similar interest in her parents. Her mother has started to crochet, and her father has picked up knitting.

      Although Amy’s story has much that is familiar to earlier generations, it is worth noting some important differences. In an earlier era, Amy would have pursued her interest in knitting and crocheting with her family, friends, and possibly eventually a local knitting circle or related group. She may have been able to find others in her Colorado community who could have introduced her to the intricacies of pattern design, but it is unlikely that she would have found a critical mass of knitters who are also Harry Potter fans. While she might have designed a Harry Potter–inspired hat based on her personal interest, she would not have connected with thousands of other Harry Potter fans who also appreciated her design. It is also unlikely that she would have been able to sell and market her designs, given the niche nature of the audience and the lack of distribution channels in local communities. The online affinity network of Ravelry, and opportunities for online distribution and sales, vastly expanded Amy’s ability to pursue a specialized interest, develop expertise, and connect this interest to future opportunities.

      Young people such as Amy are growing up in an environment of abundant connection to information, knowledge, and social interaction that offers new opportunities for learning and pursuing interests. Activities such as quickly googling for information, posting questions on specialized online forums, or publishing creative work online are now commonplace. It is easy to forget that it has been less than a decade since these kinds of interactions became widespread in the United States. And while these practices have been spreading with breathtaking speed through the everyday social exchanges of teens, our schools, policies, community institutions, and workplaces have been slower to respond. Many young people are taking to digital tools and networks to connect with communities of interest, gain specialized skills and expertise, and engage in shared projects and causes, but in our research we found relatively few instances of young people connecting these activities to economic opportunities or school. Examples such as Amy’s, in which parents are actively supporting the connection between online interests and other opportunities, were relatively rare. The majority of young people we spoke to did not find ways of connecting the learning in their online affinity networks with in-school, civic, or career-relevant opportunities.

      These findings are consistent with findings from our prior fieldwork in 2006–2007 for the Digital Youth Project, which cast a wide net in documenting young people’s new media practices during the first large wave of social media adoption in the United States. We documented how gaming and social media were becoming primary vehicles for social hanging out, and we also found many examples of young people mobilizing online tools and networks to “geek out” with others online and go deep into areas of interest. While we recognized how these settings were enabling new and powerful forms of interest-driven, informal, and social learning, we also noted how relatively few young people were taking full advantage of the learning potential of digital networks. Even fewer were going on to connect their informal learning to future opportunity in academic, civic, and career-relevant settings. This disconnect between the tremendous