Query on supportive teen online affinity groups
Dear AoIR colleagues, I am seeking to expand my knowledge of teen online affinity networks for a new project I am scoping out, and was hoping to tap your wisdom. We are looking to partner with youth online community organizers and influencers to promote positive social support and mental wellness through digital channels. The goal is to work with networks involving teens (ages 13-18) who experience disproportionate amounts of discrimination, trauma, and stress, and are not currently well-served by more conventional mental health services. We’re particularly interested in serving girls of color and subgroups (eg. immigrant, Latinx, and Muslim teens), and LGBTQIA+ teens. Two questions: • Do you know of online groups, communities, networks, or influencers who serve these groups of teens, and who might be possible partners for this kind of effort? • Are there channels and forms of teen online participation that might be fruitful avenues for reaching vulnerable teens? For example, young women of color in college might form GroupMe or FB groups for social support, but I’m not certain if a similar practice exists at the high school level. The project is U.S. focused but I’d be interested in examples from outside the U.S. as well. I would be super grateful for any suggestions and advice, including literature to read and general feedback. Thanks so much for considering. Best, Mimi Ito Professor | UC Irvine @mizuko Director | Connected Learning Lab CEO | @connectedcamps http://www.itofisher.com/mito New Book! Affinity Online: How Connection and Shared Interest Fuel Learning <https://nyupress.org/9781479852758/affinity-online/>
Hi Mimi, I have a suggestion for your second question but not your first. Over the last five years, my colleague Katie Davis and I, along with our students, have been researching a group of millions of overwhelmingly female and nonbinary teens who contribute to online fanfiction repositories, often rewriting mainstream stories to reflect their own lived experience. In the process, these frequently marginalized teens develop identity, improve their writing skills, and find community and support. The numbers involved are staggering. On one fanfiction site alone, young people with a median age of 16 have published over 61.5 billion words of fiction in the past twenty years. For contrast, the Google Books English fiction corpus, covering the past five centuries, contains 80 billion words. But what's even more interesting is how these young people are both teaching and learning from each other, via a process facilitated by networked publics that we've come to call *distributed mentoring*. Fanfiction has frequently not been taken seriously, but Katie and I believe it's become a crucially important outlet for marginalized teens in particular. If this is interesting to you, we have a webpage <https://depts.washington.edu/hdsl/research/distributed-mentoring/> on our research and a book <http://ceciliaaragonauthor.com/writers-in-the-secret-garden/>, *Writers in the Secret Garden*, coming out from MIT Press in August. Best regards, Cecilia -- Cecilia R. Aragon, Professor Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering, University of Washington, Seattle http://faculty.washington.edu/aragon | @craragon <https://twitter.com/craragon> New book *Writers in the Secret Garden <http://ceciliaaragonauthor.com/writers-in-the-secret-garden/>* available for preorder <http://amzn.com/026253780X> from MIT Press On Fri, May 31, 2019 at 9:19 AM Mizuko Ito <mito@itofisher.com> wrote:
Dear AoIR colleagues,
I am seeking to expand my knowledge of teen online affinity networks for a new project I am scoping out, and was hoping to tap your wisdom.
We are looking to partner with youth online community organizers and influencers to promote positive social support and mental wellness through digital channels. The goal is to work with networks involving teens (ages 13-18) who experience disproportionate amounts of discrimination, trauma, and stress, and are not currently well-served by more conventional mental health services. We’re particularly interested in serving girls of color and subgroups (eg. immigrant, Latinx, and Muslim teens), and LGBTQIA+ teens.
Two questions: • Do you know of online groups, communities, networks, or influencers who serve these groups of teens, and who might be possible partners for this kind of effort? • Are there channels and forms of teen online participation that might be fruitful avenues for reaching vulnerable teens? For example, young women of color in college might form GroupMe or FB groups for social support, but I’m not certain if a similar practice exists at the high school level.
The project is U.S. focused but I’d be interested in examples from outside the U.S. as well.
I would be super grateful for any suggestions and advice, including literature to read and general feedback. Thanks so much for considering.
Best, Mimi Ito Professor | UC Irvine @mizuko Director | Connected Learning Lab CEO | @connectedcamps http://www.itofisher.com/mito
New Book! Affinity Online: How Connection and Shared Interest Fuel Learning < https://nyupress.org/9781479852758/affinity-online/>
Thanks so much for the heads up on your work Ceclia. I look forward to digging into it and getting the book. Particularly interesting for our search is what you note about the high number of nonbinary teens and the median age of 16. And of course the positive social support and mentoring. And thank you to all who responded privately as well!
On May 31, 2019, at 5:47 PM, Cecilia Aragon <aragon@uw.edu> wrote:
Hi Mimi,
I have a suggestion for your second question but not your first. Over the last five years, my colleague Katie Davis and I, along with our students, have been researching a group of millions of overwhelmingly female and nonbinary teens who contribute to online fanfiction repositories, often rewriting mainstream stories to reflect their own lived experience. In the process, these frequently marginalized teens develop identity, improve their writing skills, and find community and support.
The numbers involved are staggering. On one fanfiction site alone, young people with a median age of 16 have published over 61.5 billion words of fiction in the past twenty years. For contrast, the Google Books English fiction corpus, covering the past five centuries, contains 80 billion words.
But what's even more interesting is how these young people are both teaching and learning from each other, via a process facilitated by networked publics that we've come to call distributed mentoring.
Fanfiction has frequently not been taken seriously, but Katie and I believe it's become a crucially important outlet for marginalized teens in particular. If this is interesting to you, we have a webpage <https://depts.washington.edu/hdsl/research/distributed-mentoring/> on our research and a book <http://ceciliaaragonauthor.com/writers-in-the-secret-garden/>, Writers in the Secret Garden, coming out from MIT Press in August.
Best regards, Cecilia
-- Cecilia R. Aragon, Professor Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering, University of Washington, Seattle http://faculty.washington.edu/aragon <http://faculty.washington.edu/aragon> | @craragon <https://twitter.com/craragon>New book Writers in the Secret Garden <http://ceciliaaragonauthor.com/writers-in-the-secret-garden/> available for preorder <http://amzn.com/026253780X> from MIT Press
On Fri, May 31, 2019 at 9:19 AM Mizuko Ito <mito@itofisher.com <mailto:mito@itofisher.com>> wrote: Dear AoIR colleagues,
I am seeking to expand my knowledge of teen online affinity networks for a new project I am scoping out, and was hoping to tap your wisdom.
We are looking to partner with youth online community organizers and influencers to promote positive social support and mental wellness through digital channels. The goal is to work with networks involving teens (ages 13-18) who experience disproportionate amounts of discrimination, trauma, and stress, and are not currently well-served by more conventional mental health services. We’re particularly interested in serving girls of color and subgroups (eg. immigrant, Latinx, and Muslim teens), and LGBTQIA+ teens.
Two questions: • Do you know of online groups, communities, networks, or influencers who serve these groups of teens, and who might be possible partners for this kind of effort? • Are there channels and forms of teen online participation that might be fruitful avenues for reaching vulnerable teens? For example, young women of color in college might form GroupMe or FB groups for social support, but I’m not certain if a similar practice exists at the high school level.
The project is U.S. focused but I’d be interested in examples from outside the U.S. as well.
I would be super grateful for any suggestions and advice, including literature to read and general feedback. Thanks so much for considering.
Best, Mimi Ito Professor | UC Irvine @mizuko Director | Connected Learning Lab CEO | @connectedcamps http://www.itofisher.com/mito <http://www.itofisher.com/mito>
New Book! Affinity Online: How Connection and Shared Interest Fuel Learning <https://nyupress.org/9781479852758/affinity-online/ <https://nyupress.org/9781479852758/affinity-online/>>
Mimi Ito Professor | UC Irvine @mizuko Director | Connected Learning Lab CEO | @connectedcamps http://www.itofisher.com/mito New Book! Affinity Online: How Connection and Shared Interest Fuel Learning <https://nyupress.org/books/9781479852758/>
Hi Mimi (Cecilia, and AoIR), Thanks for your great research focus on teen online affinity networks. I'm wondering if you might like to focus on questions of exploring 'building out' youth online communities to promote positive social support and mental wellness through digital channels. World Univ & Sch seeks to build online high school degree communities (potentially International Baccalaureate-centric - e.g. https://wiki.worlduniversityandschool.org/wiki/WUaS_International_Baccalaure... ) first in the US in English and then also in each of ~200 countries' official / main languages, and as we eventually license (BPPE) and accredit too. And as a wiki, World University and School is also seeking to explore related questions with regards to online teen 'Universitian' (wiki-editors, teachers and learners) at World University and School, in all kinds of wiki subjects - e.g. https://wiki.worlduniversityandschool.org/wiki/Subjects - again for wiki-open teaching and learning. (I don't know the teen Wikipedia communities in these regards). So, teens in African countries, for example, would be central to this in some years, after the English-speaking (MIT OCW-centric online High School - https://ocw.mit.edu/high-school/ - again potentially I.B.) begins to grow. Conceptually, such teen groups and channels would be in something like Google Education, and even Google + Plus (if it was re-vamped for this, for example). I think these would areas that address both of your questions: Two questions: • Do you know of online groups, communities, networks, or influencers who serve these groups of teens, and who might be possible partners for this kind of effort? • Are there channels and forms of teen online participation that might be fruitful avenues for reaching vulnerable teens? For example, young women of color in college might form GroupMe or FB groups for social support, but I’m not certain if a similar practice exists at the high school level. World University and School is seeking in particular to study academically questions of online mental wellness for teens, - e.g. https://wiki.worlduniversityandschool.org/wiki/Psychotherapy (again in potentially all countries' main languages) and with regards too to young women of color in high school. And, further, World University and School is seeking to create a realistic virtual earth with avatar bots (am thinking Second Life in Google Streetview so where 10-person Google Hangouts' participants could become realistic avatar bots of teens, and in a 'digital gaming' like way too). I'm not yet clear how the digital teen space in such a single realistic virtual earth (think Google Streetview / Maps / Earth / Tensorflow with avatar bots / Translate) will be different from the adult space here, and even re my related actual-virtual comparative ethnographic research on Harbin Hot Springs, and in planning for a realistic virtual Harbin at the cellular and atomic levels too (~ http://tinyurl.com/p62rpcg ~ https://twitter.com/HarbinBook ~ http://bit.ly/HarbinBook ~). Thank you so much, Mimi, for digging in on this, and looking forward in many ways to communicating further about teen online affinity networks ... to promote positive social support and mental wellness through digital channels. Best, Scott - Scott MacLeod - Founder & President - http://worlduniversityandschool.org - https://twitter.com/WorldUnivAndSch - World University and School - like Wikipedia with best STEM-centric OpenCourseWare - incorporated as a nonprofit university and school in California, and is a U.S. 501 (c) (3) tax-exempt educational organization, both effective April 2010. On Fri, May 31, 2019 at 5:48 PM Cecilia Aragon <aragon@uw.edu> wrote:
Hi Mimi,
I have a suggestion for your second question but not your first. Over the last five years, my colleague Katie Davis and I, along with our students, have been researching a group of millions of overwhelmingly female and nonbinary teens who contribute to online fanfiction repositories, often rewriting mainstream stories to reflect their own lived experience. In the process, these frequently marginalized teens develop identity, improve their writing skills, and find community and support.
The numbers involved are staggering. On one fanfiction site alone, young people with a median age of 16 have published over 61.5 billion words of fiction in the past twenty years. For contrast, the Google Books English fiction corpus, covering the past five centuries, contains 80 billion words.
But what's even more interesting is how these young people are both teaching and learning from each other, via a process facilitated by networked publics that we've come to call *distributed mentoring*.
Fanfiction has frequently not been taken seriously, but Katie and I believe it's become a crucially important outlet for marginalized teens in particular. If this is interesting to you, we have a webpage <https://depts.washington.edu/hdsl/research/distributed-mentoring/> on our research and a book <http://ceciliaaragonauthor.com/writers-in-the-secret-garden/>, *Writers in the Secret Garden*, coming out from MIT Press in August.
Best regards, Cecilia
-- Cecilia R. Aragon, Professor Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering, University of Washington, Seattle http://faculty.washington.edu/aragon | @craragon <https://twitter.com/craragon> New book *Writers in the Secret Garden <http://ceciliaaragonauthor.com/writers-in-the-secret-garden/>* available for preorder <http://amzn.com/026253780X> from MIT Press
On Fri, May 31, 2019 at 9:19 AM Mizuko Ito <mito@itofisher.com> wrote:
Dear AoIR colleagues,
I am seeking to expand my knowledge of teen online affinity networks for a new project I am scoping out, and was hoping to tap your wisdom.
We are looking to partner with youth online community organizers and influencers to promote positive social support and mental wellness through digital channels. The goal is to work with networks involving teens (ages 13-18) who experience disproportionate amounts of discrimination, trauma, and stress, and are not currently well-served by more conventional mental health services. We’re particularly interested in serving girls of color and subgroups (eg. immigrant, Latinx, and Muslim teens), and LGBTQIA+ teens.
Two questions: • Do you know of online groups, communities, networks, or influencers who serve these groups of teens, and who might be possible partners for this kind of effort? • Are there channels and forms of teen online participation that might be fruitful avenues for reaching vulnerable teens? For example, young women of color in college might form GroupMe or FB groups for social support, but I’m not certain if a similar practice exists at the high school level.
The project is U.S. focused but I’d be interested in examples from outside the U.S. as well.
I would be super grateful for any suggestions and advice, including literature to read and general feedback. Thanks so much for considering.
Best, Mimi Ito Professor | UC Irvine @mizuko Director | Connected Learning Lab CEO | @connectedcamps http://www.itofisher.com/mito
New Book! Affinity Online: How Connection and Shared Interest Fuel Learning < https://nyupress.org/9781479852758/affinity-online/>
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-- -- - Scott MacLeod - Founder & President - World University and School - http://worlduniversityandschool.org - 415 480 4577 - http://scottmacleod.com - CC World University and School - like CC Wikipedia with best STEM-centric CC OpenCourseWare - incorporated as a nonprofit university and school in California, and is a U.S. 501 (c) (3) tax-exempt educational organization. IMPORTANT NOTICE: This transmission and any attachments are intended only for the use of the individual or entity to which they are addressed and may contain information that is privileged, confidential, or exempt from disclosure under applicable federal or state laws. If the reader of this transmission is not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any use, dissemination, distribution, or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this transmission in error, please notify me immediately by email or telephone. World University and School is sending you this because of your interest in free, online, higher education. If you don't want to receive these, please reply with 'unsubscribe' in the body of the email, leaving the subject line intact. Thank you.
Mimi, Cecilia, and AoIR, Thanks for sharing your great research on teen online affinity networks. Looking forward to staying in touch about this in many ways. Thank you, Scott - Scott MacLeod - Founder & President - http://worlduniversityandschool.org - https://twitter.com/WorldUnivAndSch - https://twitter.com/WUaSPress - World University and School - like Wikipedia with best STEM-centric OpenCourseWare - incorporated as a nonprofit university and school in California, and is a U.S. 501 (c) (3) tax-exempt educational organization, both effective April 2010. On 6/1/19 4:52 PM, Scott MacLeod wrote:
Hi Mimi (Cecilia, and AoIR),
Thanks for your great research focus on teen online affinity networks.
I'm wondering if you might like to focus on questions of exploring 'building out' youth online communities to promote positive social support and mental wellness through digital channels. World Univ & Sch seeks to build online high school degree communities (potentially International Baccalaureate-centric - e.g. https://wiki.worlduniversityandschool.org/wiki/WUaS_International_Baccalaure... ) first in the US in English and then also in each of ~200 countries' official / main languages, and as we eventually license (BPPE) and accredit too. And as a wiki, World University and School is also seeking to explore related questions with regards to online teen 'Universitian' (wiki-editors, teachers and learners) at World University and School, in all kinds of wiki subjects - e.g. https://wiki.worlduniversityandschool.org/wiki/Subjects - again for wiki-open teaching and learning. (I don't know the teen Wikipedia communities in these regards). So, teens in African countries, for example, would be central to this in some years, after the English-speaking (MIT OCW-centric online High School - https://ocw.mit.edu/high-school/ - again potentially I.B.) begins to grow. Conceptually, such teen groups and channels would be in something like Google Education, and even Google + Plus (if it was re-vamped for this, for example).
I think these would areas that address both of your questions:
Two questions: • Do you know of online groups, communities, networks, or influencers who serve these groups of teens, and who might be possible partners for this kind of effort? • Are there channels and forms of teen online participation that might be fruitful avenues for reaching vulnerable teens? For example, young women of color in college might form GroupMe or FB groups for social support, but I’m not certain if a similar practice exists at the high school level.
World University and School is seeking in particular to study academically questions of online mental wellness for teens, - e.g. https://wiki.worlduniversityandschool.org/wiki/Psychotherapy (again in potentially all countries' main languages) and with regards too to young women of color in high school.
And, further, World University and School is seeking to create a realistic virtual earth with avatar bots (am thinking Second Life in Google Streetview so where 10-person Google Hangouts' participants could become realistic avatar bots of teens, and in a 'digital gaming' like way too). I'm not yet clear how the digital teen space in such a single realistic virtual earth (think Google Streetview / Maps / Earth / Tensorflow with avatar bots / Translate) will be different from the adult space here, and even re my related actual-virtual comparative ethnographic research on Harbin Hot Springs, and in planning for a realistic virtual Harbin at the cellular and atomic levels too (~ http://tinyurl.com/p62rpcg ~ https://twitter.com/HarbinBook ~ http://bit.ly/HarbinBook ~).
Thank you so much, Mimi, for digging in on this, and looking forward in many ways to communicating further about teen online affinity networks ... to promote positive social support and mental wellness through digital channels.
Best, Scott
- Scott MacLeod - Founder & President - http://worlduniversityandschool.org - https://twitter.com/WorldUnivAndSch - World University and School - like Wikipedia with best STEM-centric OpenCourseWare - incorporated as a nonprofit university and school in California, and is a U.S. 501 (c) (3) tax-exempt educational organization, both effective April 2010.
On Fri, May 31, 2019 at 5:48 PM Cecilia Aragon <aragon@uw.edu> wrote:
Hi Mimi,
I have a suggestion for your second question but not your first. Over the last five years, my colleague Katie Davis and I, along with our students, have been researching a group of millions of overwhelmingly female and nonbinary teens who contribute to online fanfiction repositories, often rewriting mainstream stories to reflect their own lived experience. In the process, these frequently marginalized teens develop identity, improve their writing skills, and find community and support.
The numbers involved are staggering. On one fanfiction site alone, young people with a median age of 16 have published over 61.5 billion words of fiction in the past twenty years. For contrast, the Google Books English fiction corpus, covering the past five centuries, contains 80 billion words.
But what's even more interesting is how these young people are both teaching and learning from each other, via a process facilitated by networked publics that we've come to call *distributed mentoring*.
Fanfiction has frequently not been taken seriously, but Katie and I believe it's become a crucially important outlet for marginalized teens in particular. If this is interesting to you, we have a webpage <https://depts.washington.edu/hdsl/research/distributed-mentoring/> on our research and a book <http://ceciliaaragonauthor.com/writers-in-the-secret-garden/>, *Writers in the Secret Garden*, coming out from MIT Press in August.
Best regards, Cecilia
-- Cecilia R. Aragon, Professor Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering, University of Washington, Seattle http://faculty.washington.edu/aragon | @craragon <https://twitter.com/craragon> New book *Writers in the Secret Garden <http://ceciliaaragonauthor.com/writers-in-the-secret-garden/>* available for preorder <http://amzn.com/026253780X> from MIT Press
On Fri, May 31, 2019 at 9:19 AM Mizuko Ito <mito@itofisher.com> wrote:
Dear AoIR colleagues,
I am seeking to expand my knowledge of teen online affinity networks for a new project I am scoping out, and was hoping to tap your wisdom.
We are looking to partner with youth online community organizers and influencers to promote positive social support and mental wellness through digital channels. The goal is to work with networks involving teens (ages 13-18) who experience disproportionate amounts of discrimination, trauma, and stress, and are not currently well-served by more conventional mental health services. We’re particularly interested in serving girls of color and subgroups (eg. immigrant, Latinx, and Muslim teens), and LGBTQIA+ teens.
Two questions: • Do you know of online groups, communities, networks, or influencers who serve these groups of teens, and who might be possible partners for this kind of effort? • Are there channels and forms of teen online participation that might be fruitful avenues for reaching vulnerable teens? For example, young women of color in college might form GroupMe or FB groups for social support, but I’m not certain if a similar practice exists at the high school level.
The project is U.S. focused but I’d be interested in examples from outside the U.S. as well.
I would be super grateful for any suggestions and advice, including literature to read and general feedback. Thanks so much for considering.
Best, Mimi Ito Professor | UC Irvine @mizuko Director | Connected Learning Lab CEO | @connectedcamps http://www.itofisher.com/mito
New Book! Affinity Online: How Connection and Shared Interest Fuel Learning < https://nyupress.org/9781479852758/affinity-online/>
_______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/
-- - Scott MacLeod - Founder & President - http://worlduniversityandschool.org - 415 480 4577 - PO Box 442, (86 Ridgecrest Road), Canyon, CA 94516 - World University and School - like Wikipedia with best STEM-centric OpenCourseWare - incorporated as a nonprofit university and school in California, and is a U.S. 501 (c) (3) tax-exempt educational organization, both effective April 2010.
Scott - Thanks so much for sharing about your work at World University and School. Looking forward to digging into your resources and seeing if we might be able to uncover ways of connecting more internationally. Mimi
On Jun 2, 2019, at 7:59 AM, Scott MacLeod <scott@scottmacleod.com> wrote:
Mimi, Cecilia, and AoIR,
Thanks for sharing your great research on teen online affinity networks. Looking forward to staying in touch about this in many ways.
Thank you, Scott
- Scott MacLeod - Founder & President - http://worlduniversityandschool.org - https://twitter.com/WorldUnivAndSch - https://twitter.com/WUaSPress - World University and School - like Wikipedia with best STEM-centric OpenCourseWare - incorporated as a nonprofit university and school in California, and is a U.S. 501 (c) (3) tax-exempt educational organization, both effective April 2010.
On 6/1/19 4:52 PM, Scott MacLeod wrote:
Hi Mimi (Cecilia, and AoIR),
Thanks for your great research focus on teen online affinity networks.
I'm wondering if you might like to focus on questions of exploring 'building out' youth online communities to promote positive social support and mental wellness through digital channels. World Univ & Sch seeks to build online high school degree communities (potentially International Baccalaureate-centric - e.g. https://wiki.worlduniversityandschool.org/wiki/WUaS_International_Baccalaure... ) first in the US in English and then also in each of ~200 countries' official / main languages, and as we eventually license (BPPE) and accredit too. And as a wiki, World University and School is also seeking to explore related questions with regards to online teen 'Universitian' (wiki-editors, teachers and learners) at World University and School, in all kinds of wiki subjects - e.g. https://wiki.worlduniversityandschool.org/wiki/Subjects - again for wiki-open teaching and learning. (I don't know the teen Wikipedia communities in these regards). So, teens in African countries, for example, would be central to this in some years, after the English-speaking (MIT OCW-centric online High School - https://ocw.mit.edu/high-school/ - again potentially I.B.) begins to grow. Conceptually, such teen groups and channels would be in something like Google Education, and even Google + Plus (if it was re-vamped for this, for example).
I think these would areas that address both of your questions:
Two questions: • Do you know of online groups, communities, networks, or influencers who serve these groups of teens, and who might be possible partners for this kind of effort? • Are there channels and forms of teen online participation that might be fruitful avenues for reaching vulnerable teens? For example, young women of color in college might form GroupMe or FB groups for social support, but I’m not certain if a similar practice exists at the high school level.
World University and School is seeking in particular to study academically questions of online mental wellness for teens, - e.g. https://wiki.worlduniversityandschool.org/wiki/Psychotherapy (again in potentially all countries' main languages) and with regards too to young women of color in high school.
And, further, World University and School is seeking to create a realistic virtual earth with avatar bots (am thinking Second Life in Google Streetview so where 10-person Google Hangouts' participants could become realistic avatar bots of teens, and in a 'digital gaming' like way too). I'm not yet clear how the digital teen space in such a single realistic virtual earth (think Google Streetview / Maps / Earth / Tensorflow with avatar bots / Translate) will be different from the adult space here, and even re my related actual-virtual comparative ethnographic research on Harbin Hot Springs, and in planning for a realistic virtual Harbin at the cellular and atomic levels too (~ http://tinyurl.com/p62rpcg ~ https://twitter.com/HarbinBook ~ http://bit.ly/HarbinBook ~).
Thank you so much, Mimi, for digging in on this, and looking forward in many ways to communicating further about teen online affinity networks ... to promote positive social support and mental wellness through digital channels.
Best, Scott
- Scott MacLeod - Founder & President - http://worlduniversityandschool.org - https://twitter.com/WorldUnivAndSch - World University and School - like Wikipedia with best STEM-centric OpenCourseWare - incorporated as a nonprofit university and school in California, and is a U.S. 501 (c) (3) tax-exempt educational organization, both effective April 2010.
On Fri, May 31, 2019 at 5:48 PM Cecilia Aragon <aragon@uw.edu> wrote:
Hi Mimi,
I have a suggestion for your second question but not your first. Over the last five years, my colleague Katie Davis and I, along with our students, have been researching a group of millions of overwhelmingly female and nonbinary teens who contribute to online fanfiction repositories, often rewriting mainstream stories to reflect their own lived experience. In the process, these frequently marginalized teens develop identity, improve their writing skills, and find community and support.
The numbers involved are staggering. On one fanfiction site alone, young people with a median age of 16 have published over 61.5 billion words of fiction in the past twenty years. For contrast, the Google Books English fiction corpus, covering the past five centuries, contains 80 billion words.
But what's even more interesting is how these young people are both teaching and learning from each other, via a process facilitated by networked publics that we've come to call *distributed mentoring*.
Fanfiction has frequently not been taken seriously, but Katie and I believe it's become a crucially important outlet for marginalized teens in particular. If this is interesting to you, we have a webpage <https://depts.washington.edu/hdsl/research/distributed-mentoring/> on our research and a book <http://ceciliaaragonauthor.com/writers-in-the-secret-garden/>, *Writers in the Secret Garden*, coming out from MIT Press in August.
Best regards, Cecilia
-- Cecilia R. Aragon, Professor Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering, University of Washington, Seattle http://faculty.washington.edu/aragon | @craragon <https://twitter.com/craragon> New book *Writers in the Secret Garden <http://ceciliaaragonauthor.com/writers-in-the-secret-garden/>* available for preorder <http://amzn.com/026253780X> from MIT Press
On Fri, May 31, 2019 at 9:19 AM Mizuko Ito <mito@itofisher.com> wrote:
Dear AoIR colleagues,
I am seeking to expand my knowledge of teen online affinity networks for a new project I am scoping out, and was hoping to tap your wisdom.
We are looking to partner with youth online community organizers and influencers to promote positive social support and mental wellness through digital channels. The goal is to work with networks involving teens (ages 13-18) who experience disproportionate amounts of discrimination, trauma, and stress, and are not currently well-served by more conventional mental health services. We’re particularly interested in serving girls of color and subgroups (eg. immigrant, Latinx, and Muslim teens), and LGBTQIA+ teens.
Two questions: • Do you know of online groups, communities, networks, or influencers who serve these groups of teens, and who might be possible partners for this kind of effort? • Are there channels and forms of teen online participation that might be fruitful avenues for reaching vulnerable teens? For example, young women of color in college might form GroupMe or FB groups for social support, but I’m not certain if a similar practice exists at the high school level.
The project is U.S. focused but I’d be interested in examples from outside the U.S. as well.
I would be super grateful for any suggestions and advice, including literature to read and general feedback. Thanks so much for considering.
Best, Mimi Ito Professor | UC Irvine @mizuko Director | Connected Learning Lab CEO | @connectedcamps http://www.itofisher.com/mito
New Book! Affinity Online: How Connection and Shared Interest Fuel Learning < https://nyupress.org/9781479852758/affinity-online/>
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Mimi Ito Professor | UC Irvine @mizuko Director | Connected Learning Lab CEO | @connectedcamps http://www.itofisher.com/mito New Book! Affinity Online: How Connection and Shared Interest Fuel Learning <https://nyupress.org/books/9781479852758/>
participants (4)
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Cecilia Aragon -
Mizuko Ito -
Scott MacLeod -
Scott MacLeod