What Librarians Need to Know about Games, Media Literacy, and Participatory Culture

From TechSource Gaming Symposium

Presenter: Henry Jenkins (Director of the MIT Comparative Media Studies Program)

Description: In a hunting society, young people learn by playing with bows and arrows. In an information society, they learn by playing with information. Right now, young people are acquiring and mastering core social skills and cultural competencies through their activities as fans and gamers. A growing body of scholarship suggests these skills may have important implications for what happens for them next -- as learners, as citizens, as workers. In this presentation, I will outline the core set of social skills and cultural competencies we identified in a recent white paper for the MacArthur Foundation, share some of the new materials being developed by Project nml to help foster new media literacy, and suggest ways that libraries can contribute to the challenge of overcoming the participation gap which separates those youth who are embracing new roles as media producers and distributors from those who are being shut out of that process.

About the Presenter: Henry Jenkins is the Director of the MIT Comparative Media Studies Program and the Peter de Florez Professor of Humanities. He is the author and/or editor of nine books on various aspects of media and popular culture, including Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture, Hop on Pop: The Politics and Pleasures of Popular Culture and From Barbie to Mortal Kombat: Gender and Computer Games. His newest books include Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide and Fans, Bloggers and Gamers: Exploring Participatory Culture. Read more.

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