Media ecologies

Young people in the United States today are growing up in a media ecology where digital and networked media are playing an increasingly central role. Even youth who do not possess computers and Internet access in the home are participants in a shared culture where new social media, digital media distribution, and digital media production are commonplace among their peers and in their everyday school contexts. As we outline in the introduction, we see technical change as intertwined with other forms of historically specific social and cultural change as well as resilient structural conditions, such as those defined by age, gender, and socioeconomic status. We emphasize that there are a diversity of ways in which U.S. youth inhabit a changing and variegated set of media ecologies. We also recognize that the ways in which U.S. youth participate in media ecologies are specific to contextual conditions and a particular historical moment. In line with our sociocultural perspective on learning and literacy, we see young people's learning and participation with new media as situationally contingent, located in specific and varied media ecologies. Before we begin our description of youth practice, we need to map what those ecologies of media and participation look like. That is the goal of this chapter.