Interview with Henry Jenkins (Part Two)

Jenkins sets up the second installment of my interview with him about The Young and the Digital with the following observation:

From the moment I read his manuscript, I knew that his chapter, “Digital Gates: How Race and Class Distinctions Are Shaping the Digital World” would be the one which generated a lot of the heat and the controversy here. Those of us who see the web as key to our vision of a more participatory culture have to be concerned with the obstacles which block many from full involvement…Watkins joins a growing number of writers who are asking in what ways our social networks online replicate — for better and for worse — our friendship networks offline, networks we know are shaped by continued segregation.

You can read the full interview here.

Interview with Henry Jenkins (Part One)

Henry Jenkins is one of the most prolific scholars and commentators on the digital world. A longtime presence and leading figure in the Comparative Media Studies program at MIT he is now a Distinguished Professor at USC. Henry also helped the MacArthur Foundation launch its ambitious $50 million initiative that examines the ways young people learn with digital media tools. With books like Convergence Culture and Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers he continues to make important statements about our shifting media, social, and technological landscape. To keep up with Jenkins these days all you have to do is read his blog, a never-ending, thought-provoking, and wide open contemplation of the social and technological changes happening in society. One reader described him and his blog best, “a beast.” His range is phenomenal and his voice often urgent.

Needless to say, I was very pleased when Henry agreed to write a blurb for The Young and the Digital. Here’s what he had to say:

“Why does Facebook have the same appeal as gated communities? Is distraction more concerning than addiction? How do video games like World of Warcraft value friendship? Bracing yet reassuring, often surprising, and always substantive, Craig Watkins acts as an honest broker, testing the contradictory claims often made about young people’s digital lives against sophisticated fieldwork.”

In a matter of days he read the entire manuscript and offered a very nice blurb. Henry also formulated some incredibly astute questions that he asked me to answer for an interview he wanted to publish on his blog.

He’s running the interview this week. You can read the first installment here.

A New Research Initiative

The digital world is constantly evolving. Soon after completing The Young and the Digital our research team began laying the foundation for new and ongoing projects. Currently, we are preparing to launch a new digital media research initiative that focuses on the use and evolution of social media platforms. We will be conducting field work, experiments, surveys, and interviews with a wide range of social media participants. The use of social media is changing even as you read this. But exactly how are social media behaviors evolving and, more important, what are the larger social consequences?

To answer these and other questions we are jumping back into the “digital trenches” to see firsthand how engagement with social media is transforming what it means to be social, digital, and alive in today’s world.

As soon as we finalize our research initiative and get our team in place we will be back with the exciting details. So, stay tune for a fuller description of the projects as well as updates, reports, and even suggestions from you on how we can refine our research efforts.