The document discusses literacy practices in creating MySpace profiles. It presents a socio-technical model of literacy where literacy involves both technical skills like reading and writing as well as social practices. It analyzes how MySpace users engage in participatory and remix literacy behaviors by embedding various media like images and comments into their profiles. The document challenges traditional views of literacy and argues MySpace profiles require understanding new concepts of what is technical versus social and production versus consumption in the context of new media.
Copy and Paste Literacy Practices in MySpace Profile Creation
1. Copy and Paste Literacy Literacy Practices in the Production of a MySpace Profile Dan Perkel School of Information University of California, Berkeley September 21, 2006 Title: About me:
18. (dichotomy chart) Literacy with new media - socio-cultural concepts Literacy with new media - technical concepts Consumption / Production Reading / Writing
20. Participation “ [Participation] leads to a conceptualization of the imagination as collectively rather than individually experienced and produced takes into account both the relationships between individuals and media and between groups engaged with media.” (Ito, forthcoming)
21. Remix “ [America’s children] are discovering what previous generations of artists knew: art doesn’t emerge whole cloth from individual imaginations. Rather, art emerges through the artist’s engagement with previous cultural materials.… Even well established artists work with images and themes that already have some currency within the culture.“ (Jenkins 2006)
Introduced myself Last summer… 580million, into the consciousness… For those of you who don’t know… My talk today, though… Last summer, spent a couple of months doing participant observation at a summer program at an arts and technology center. Before the class, during breaks, and after class, the teenagers in the class spent a great deal of time on MySpace. At first it was only a few of them, but as the weeks went by more and more started doing it, some of the younger participants signed up on MySpace for the first time, it became the subject of conversations. It was at this time that MySpace also seemed to enter the consciousness of the American press. Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp bought the site for $580 million dollars. For much of the next eight months, it seemed like a day did not go by when there wasn’t a story about MySpace being banned in schools, about some teenager girl or boy being ensnared by an online predator, about teenagers casually posting intimate private information on the web to unknown audiences. The purpose of my talk today is not to address any of those concerns and fears. I am not in a position to judge them. Rather, I am interested in another aspect of the site: the creative construction of MySpace profiles and how it might embody significant new literacy practices.