Detailed Project Descriptions

Overview of the Digital Girls Program

GIRLS, DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY AND POPULAR CULTURE: FROM PLAY TO POLICY INTRODUCTION AND OBJECTIVES
It is almost a commonplace of media/ technology research that there appears to be a “digital divide” between girls and boys concerning their engagement with computers, the Internet, and technological games (Turkle,1995). It may not be so much a matter of who uses the computer as how it is used (Cassell 1998; Jenkins,1992; Luke, 2000; Orleans and Laney, 2000). While teachers can try to have impact on in-school use, the fact remains that children and youth have a growing “digital” life outside of school, one that teachers need to know more about. A concomitant concern is that digital play and leisure activities may or may not directly relate to the development of skills that are valued in today’s society. For example, playing certain video games may prepare boys for future careers as pilots, engineers, computer programmers and so on. Conversely, girls’ computer play, on and off the Internet, is often seen as reproducing established gender stereotypes of fashion doll play, shopping, chatting and providing girls with knowledge of no apparent value (this has been contested by scholars such Bryson & de Castell, 1995). One might also wonder how differences in digital socialization affect future patterns, expectations, and abilities in adulthood—from work to consumerism to parenting to health and physical fitness to how personal and cultural identities develop. An additional concern is that net pornography and cyber-stalking in chat rooms have increasingly rendered the Internet a potentially unsafe-space for girls, at least in the public’s mind. Consider, for example, the moral panic in the UK in August, 2002 when it was discovered that two missing ten-year old girls who were found dead had apparently been using a chat room just hours before they disappeared. Another example is the recent media attention to pro-anorexic websites where it is feared girls are being encouraged to starve themselves. Media hype aside, the research community and educational policy makers have not paid enough attention to studying how girls actually use the Internet in their free time. This proposal brings needed attention to new technology as a pervasive aspect of girls’ lives and focuses on the spontaneous or voluntary digital behaviours of Canadian and British girls who are between the ages of 9 and 14, an age range which will allow us to look at the developmental spectrum from “tweens” through to early adolescence. The implications for social and educational policy and curriculum will be far reaching.
This programme of research will investigate:

#Girls’ computer use and “techno play”, both on and off the Internet and world wide web, and the ways in which girls are consumers and inventors in their use of software and operating systems.

#Ethical issues regarding creative uses of the Internet: How do girls exist as poachers or legal users of images? How do girls enter computer systems (as hackers or as legal users)?

#Methodologies: What innovative and ethcial cyber-based approaches to research can best access the complexity and social meanings of the experience of using technology?

#Sexuality, bodies and identity in cyberspace: What are the ways that social and cultural identities such as ethnicity, race, class, sexuality need to be factored into an understanding of girls’ use of technology? Are there interesting patterns or differences between two cities (Montreal, London)?

#Policy issues on safety on the Internet: How can girls themselves participate in the policy-making process and how can their contributions influence public policy?

#Digital literacy and education: How can research on girls and technology be situated within the broader range of research on girls’ culture and teaching methods and curricula in schools?

CONTEXT
Our focus is on pre-adolescent to young adolescent Canadian and British girls and their use of computers outside of the classroom in their leisure time. As a recent study by the Media Awareness Network (2001) points out, 81% of Canadian children and youth use the computer at home, making David Sefton-Green & Buckingham’s (1998) coined term “digital bedroom” of particular relevance. What interests us more than the physical location of the machine in the home, be it bedroom, living room or hall, is the girls’ mindset of playing on the computer as a popular culture activity in a private space — whether they are connected to the Internet, on the world wide web, off-line, playing computer games, or using graphics programmes. Overall, we are interested in girls’ non-web and web play in order, ultimately, to inform education and communication policies , practices, and curricula.

Central to our interest in girls’ digital play is the emerging body of literature on Girlhood Studies. For more than a decade, this work has been particularly attentive to the ways in which girls’ “free time” and private space literacy-use has been central to social and public constructions of identity, body, and sexuality. This has resulted in work relevant to this proposal on girls and women’s magazines, the romance novel, soap operas, and series fiction(Christian-Smith 1993, 1990; Currie, 1999; Gilbert & Taylor, 1991; Inness, 1998; Mazzarella & Pecora, 1999; McRobbie,1991; & Walkerdine, 1997, 1990).

This scholarship is complemented by an emerging body of literature on girlhood within a human rights framework, represented, for the most part, in the body of ‘grey literature’ (donor reports, government reports) produced by the UN agencies, FAWE, & CIDA. Within this work, there is an increasing attention to looking at ways of ensuring the participation of girls in policy-making related to their own lives. The recent Girls Education Movement (GEM) initiated by UNICEF, for example, places youth participation at the centre of the policy-making process. The place of technology within this work is key.

THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES
Our team is both international and interdisciplinary, permitting us to draw on several perspectives that help to make our approach unique, especially in its simultaneous consideration of theories of human development, cultural studies, international development, curriculum studies, textual studies, and media literacy. Our goal is to explore non-hierarchical ways of working with girls as active participants in the research process, an approach to research involving children that is highlighted in the previous work of the team in relation to popular culture (Buckingham & Sefton-Greene, 1994; Buckingham, 1993; Mitchell & Reid-Walsh, 2002; Weber and Mitchell, 1995; Weber & Tardif 1992). We are particularly interested in extending our previous research into an examination of how girls’ knowledge of digital technology can contribute to the range of policy debates that affect them. How, for example, do they view the idea of a “net nanny” (and the various protective devices)? How do they view the adult strictures about not revealing personal information on the web? How do they view the “cyber” moral panics that parents have about engaging in stereotypical feminine behaviour on line? What awareness do they have of cyber-stalking? Conversely, how does the Internet operate for them as a private/public space for accessing information about bodies and sexuality? In a recent textual study of the information on safe sex available on the websites of popular girls’ magazines such as Seventeen, we were struck by the ways in which the public space of the web might actually serve to provide a rich private space for girls to access important information (Mitchell & Reid-Walsh, 2002). In some contexts, the web may feel or in fact be more private for girls than their own rooms. How do the girls themselves regard these private/public spaces? In posing such questions, we draw on the work on multi-literacies and on literacy as social practice (e.g. Hamilton, Barton & Ivanic, 2000) to examine the emergence within girlhood of a particular digital literacy, one that is framed within a social landscape of redress in relation to gender inequalities and that includes technical knowledge and social uses of technology along with moral and ethical decision-making.

We focus on the non-school use of digital technology for a variety of reasons, not the least of which relates to a shift to modes of learning outside formal learning settings, something that Tobin (1998) observes of teen boys’ home computer use (127). A complementary shift in what constitutes “play” is described by Luke (2000) as a “whole new cultural realm of play and sociality which go beyond the phenomenal world of place and the linearity of analogue time” (80). We view this play as a mode of learning, and note that the links between technology, popular culture, and play in a private or domestic space appear most obviously during early adolescence. This is the age group when many girls begin to engage in earnest with popular culture media—watching videos, listening to music, reading magazines and romance fiction (Christian-Smith,1990; Tapscott, 1998). Girls are often doing a number of popular culture/ media activities at once; for example, engaging in apparently “redundant” activities such as logging on to a game show’s web-site and playing along while watching the show. Or they may simultaneously engage in disconnected activities, such as playing a computer game while also talking on the telephone or watching music videos on television. Instead of viewing their behaviour as cognitive dissonance, it appears more likely that they are simply enacting their own version of “convergence”—integrating functions even before new technology has brought these different media together digitally.

Our theoretical analysis will also relate to the work on human development where psychologists and literary scholars have identified the pre-teen and early teen age years as a time of positive character and identity development for girls (see for example, Christian-Smith, 1990; Cherland,1994; Gilligan 1992, 1993; Hancock, 1989; hooks, 1996; Reynolds, 1990). Too often, this developmental perspective is missing in scholarship on technology and popular culture in relation to girlhood.

Categories developed by Sefton-Green & Buckingham (1998) are useful for mapping out techno play off the web: 1) use or consumption, such as playing with computer games 2) web-based toys (pets, dolls) 3) digital accessories (eg. cameras and DVD players) 3) creative consumption—the taking of existing commodities and reassembling them to create new meanings, and 4) creative uses—art forms such as graphics, photography, animation, music, fiction and creative non-fiction such as autobiographies, and diaries. Like Bryson and de Castell (1995), we consider this type of creation “production.” To these off-line uses, we can add Internet-based engagement to include activities such as surfing the web, game playing, communicating, looking at consumer products and actual shopping, virtual doll-play, web-page construction, and narrow casting or transmitting, one’s creative products online.

Through their location and choice of activities, girls are engaging in a virtual domestic culture that feminist cultural studies critics such as McRobbie and Garber (1991), and Griffiths (1995) call “bedroom culture” and consider to be a characteristic of younger teen and pre-teen girls who stay home as opposed to “going out.” As Dwyer (1998), points out, this staying home is not just a feature of age but is also inflected by culture, something she found, for example, in her work with adolescent Muslim girls in London. While the activities that scholars typically explore have included girls looking at magazines and catalogues, talking on the telephone, playing games, collecting and playing with dolls, and so on, we are interested in studying how girls within the multicultural contexts of Montreal, Canada and London, England engage in the digital counterparts of these activities.

Our work is also informed by researchers who have been probing such issues as the assumptions around the gender divide (Abbott 1998; Cassell 1998; Gilmour1999; Jenkins 1992, 1998b; Rothchild 2000; Turkle 1988, 1995), children and computer games (Friedman, 2000; Kinder 1991; Macnamee, 1998; Nixon, 1998; Orr Vered, 1998), and girls and computer game play (Gilmour, 1999; Gorriz and Medina, 2000). Drawing on our previous work on popular culture (e. g. Mitchell and Reid-Walsh, 2002, Weber and Mitchell, 1995, 1996), we are particularly interested in how a study of girls’ everyday informal uses of the Internet might serve to provide a way to understand how the private space of web-use feeds into an analysis of the Internet as a public space. Using participatory approaches, we would like to highlight the idea that children’s and youth’s voices – and here specifically girls’ voices – need to be recognized within a policy-making framework in relation to their own bodies and sexuality. This is a feature of the emerging work on children’s media rights as it is being explored in the UK, notably by one of our team members, David Buckingham. How can we situate this policy work on children and technology within a Canadian context?

In Canada, women and technology is a burgeoning topic, as we see, for example, in the work of Shade (1996, 1997), Crow & Langford (forthcoming), and Ellen Balka (1996a, 1996b). This research on women begins to rectify the gender imbalance in studying technology. The work of Bryson and de Castell within the context of their “gentech”project on women and girls (2000) and girls and computer games (1998) is most notable and particularly relevant to the proposed study, along with the recent work involving children and gaming by Kline (2000a; 2000b), and ethnographic domestic uses of technology by boys and girls by Shade (2002-2005).

RELATION TO ONGOING RESEARCH
The proposed research represents a logical continuance, or rather, a convergence of a number of strands of our individual and collective research on digital technology, popular culture/media culture, education, and girlhood. There are long standing associations between and amongst members of the team. For example, individually and collectively, we have been studying various aspects of children and girls as consumers of popular culture for over ten years. Methodologies for studying children’s popular culture are highlighted, for example, in Weber and Mitchell (1995, 1996, 1999) and in Mitchell and Reid-Walsh (2000, 2001, 2002). Buckingham has written extensively on children’s uses of the Internet as popular culture not only as a play space, but also in relation to protective spaces (Sefton-Green and Buckingham,1998) and in relation to moral panics and the use of the V-chip (Buckingham, 1993). In the context of a series of graduate courses on children and technology and technology and popular culture, Weber (in progress) is collecting compelling data on the power of popular imagery to “digitally socialize” gendered patterns of behaviour in early adolescence. Members of our team have also been involved in the use of the Internet as a research site: Weber and Mitchell are co founders of the Image and Identity Research Collective, and co designers of the www.iirc.mcgill.ca website, a creative tool for establishing a framework for exploring image-based research. Mitchell, as part of GAAP (Gendering Adolescence and AIDS Prevention, has developed a site www.utgaap.info. Reid-Walsh has long been interested in the Internet as a research and communication tool with applications in the humanities (Reid-Walsh and Mitchell, 2001; Reid-Walsh, 2002). METHODOLOGY AND RESEARCH DESIGN
Our research design adapts and combines certain elements of ethnographic and narrative approaches developed by Weber (1996) and Mitchell & Weber (1999), cultural studies methods pioneered by Buckingham (1998, 1994), and historical textual inquiry methods of Mitchell and Reid-Walsh (2002, 1998). The proposed methodology includes ethnographic and participatory process techniques for gathering information and a mode of textual analysis that applies literary/ cultural approaches to analyzing girls’ responses (as Tobin 1998, does with children’s talk) and for analyzing creative artefacts. In focusing on girls’ on-line and off-line activity, we will draw on a number of child-centred participatory techniques such as focus groups and advisory groups. In addition, one of the overarching aims of the study is to develop innovative and ethical methods suited to web-based research, both in the information gathering and analysis stages. The challenges and questions we set for ourselves include:

#Adapting existing ethnographic tools to the web, for example, conducting virtual interviews through web-based forms;

#Developing research methods that draw upon the special features of the web. For example, in terms of information gathering, one source of information about how girls view a website would be their comments in a “guest book.” How can these comments be analyzed ethically?

#In terms of analysis, exploring how to approach and critique products such as websites. Since they often include multi-media, simply analyzing the text and/or images is not enough.

#Developing an interactive girl-centred website, both as a tool for the research and as a product of the study.
We have organized the program into four complementary studies. Each study will be headed by one member of the team, although all team members will have involvement in each study. Our web “expert” and collaborator, Michael Walsh, will be involved in the studies that most call on his expertise. Each study will also involve at least one graduate student acting as Research Assistant (RA). The first three studies are highly related, nesting into each other neatly. These studies will access and research girls’ experiences in a variety of ways: the use of logs, net-based interviews, face-to-face group interviews (focus groups), cyber workshops, and participatory creation and involvement with a website.

Studies Include:

Being Cybergirls: Everyday experiences with technology
This study involves girls participating in individual net-based interviews and journaling so that we get a more intimate look at the their everyday use of technology for play and leisure. Cyberdolls
The cyberdolls project is a UK-based study investigating girls’ interactions with new media, looking specifically at discourses around fashion and young teen girls. As part of the study we ran a workshop in which twenty-six girls aged 12 – 13 researched and discussed online fashion, particularly dollmaker sites. The girls then produced their own interactive fashion design webpages, making decisions about body shapes, types of clothing and audience. Click here to see the website (link here). Digital Girls Research Network: Establishing global connections for education
This project brings together girls, teachers, curriculum developers, and researchers in face-to-face and cyber workshops in order to explore and test our emerging theoretical interpretations. Digital Hope
Digital Hope is an international project which aims to engage youth imaginatively, poetically and digitally with the theme of ‘what do you hope for?’ We wish to take this theme and explore the idea that the internet can offer hope and provide a ‘future looking’ space. For more information, please see our project description (link here). Knowing Cybergirls: Studying girls’ leisure and play experiences
In this project, we use artefacts from digital play culture to access girls’ views and provoke memories and evocative experiential descriptions. Girls have the opportunity to meet to talk about how they use the Internet, how they got started, how the use of Internet is regulated in their homes, what uses they make of the net and computers (e.g. computer games), how they handle and download information, the kinds of information they seek, data about websites they like and dislike (including their own web pages), chat room behaviours, fears and joys, and so on. Within these categories we are interested in knowing about both their creative production activities (signing guestbooks, participating in creating their own creative art works, designing their own websites), as well as their activities as consumers. We also examine the ways in which girls’ everyday uses of the Internet serves to provide them with information about body, identity and sexuality. Virtual Girls Website: Participatory process and the development and use of an interactive website
Another project is represented by this website. It acts as both a research tool and a way to transmit our results. We are studying the development and use of this website as an instance of adults and girls working as co-investigators, and as a site for drawing upon and studying the knowledge and critical “digital literacy” of the participant girls. COMMUNICATION OF RESULTS
As mentioned above, one of the outcomes will be a book written by the co-investigators and collaborator on methodologies for working with girls in relation to digital technology. We will also submit a series of articles for publication to national and international journals, and present our findings at a number of national and international conferences, including the Canadian Women’s Studies Association, the American Educational Research Association, Canadian Association for Computing in the Humanities, and the annual conference on media and technology held at the Centre for Childhood and Media Studies, University of London. Given our commitment to public policy, we propose to work closely with the media and to draw on our professional and institutional linkages to ensure that the results of our study reach the appropriate policy levels both nationally (eg. Media Awareness Network) and internationally (eg. UNICEF). Similarly, drawing on the success of previous documentary video projects, we plan to distribute our documentary to a variety of organizations and venues including local and international film festivals, groups for girls and parents, and policy groups. Finally, we intend to use the web-site itself as a communication tool both for academic audiences but also for girls themselves.