alt.cyberkids
RATIONALES
NON-PRESCRIPTION
figure 5.4.1 Jo and Peter get a little help from the technical assistants, Frankie and Diana
Though the cyberkids were made aware that they were subjects of research, my primary motivation was to create as non-prescriptive a research environment as possible; bringing the central concerns of the thesis into the sessions' discursive nexus was minimised. One of the foundations of my argument, corroborated by Williams (1999), has been that (contrary to discourses in the mediasphere) children will not necessarily seek out sexually explicit content on the net. I have reiterated that this is in itself an adult imposition, and that part of the problem with media coverage of the debate is that it brings the very elements such narratives aim to delimit to children's attention. I sought to minimise the potential proscription of findings by not rendering my research motivations explicit. I explained that these sessions would form part of my university research on how children use the net. I assured the participants that they would have full control of what they wanted to access online, but that there were technical assistants available to teach them the tools to facilitate their use and production of online texts. I use minimising here, as I do incessantly throughout the case study, as a means of refocusing on interaction in research (Alasuutari 1995: 94) - research findings can never fully escape priori research objectives (ibid.).
There are two further formative points to be made here. Though this study is, as a whole, an attempt to render visible the objectifications of the 'other' to the 'adult' norm, the extent to which children are concerned about, or aware of, their objectifications must be problematised. Similarly, the study has emphasised that the divisions between 'adulthood' and 'childhood' are far more ambiguous than discourses in the mediascape often assume; to attempt to problematise the 'other' that is childhood. Nevertheless, through the course of the research the distinctions between myself and the other of my research become more apparent than commentators such as Alasuutari would have them be (1995: 87). Most importantly, I acknowledge my own fetishizations (Zizec 1997)
of children in the very act of positioning myself as advocate on 'their behalf', children’s own fetishizations of themselves and, in turn, your own as audience.
RESEARCH CONTEXT
The rationale for constructing the case study at the cybercafé was dynamic. I wanted to secure an environment where children's net usage could be observed outside a domestic or pedagogical space, to limit external factors determining the research as much as possible (Alasuutari 1995: 86). Within sociological paradigms, access to children as research subjects has occurred predominantly through schools. The researcher is rarely able to make conclusions about children as subjects of research without seemingly implicating the form of pedagogy existent in that specific school. Davies (2000) exposition of the failings of OFSTED's school reports policy and Blunkett's tactics to cover up the full extent of funding loopholes in the secondary education system alone highlight that discussion of contemporary pedagogy is indeed a controversial matter. Messenger-Davies & Mosdell (2001) further suggest the school provides an insufficiently 'naturalistic' environment for research that specifically aims to ascertain children's consumption of media technologies (2001: 61). Findings are polluted by the existent structured pedagogy and power dynamics that underscore children’s school life. In addition, the agencies responsible for governing the school (from headteacher, to school governors, to local council and so forth) may influence research processes and findings. Particularly, I wanted to minimise the influence of orders of discourse of educational policy-makers on my own perspective as researcher.
Based on research precedents established by Furlong et al. (2000), Messenger-Davies & Mosdell argue that (in terms of their objectives regarding familial responses to television) the home provides a more appropriate context. Yet, in different ways to research situated in an educational environment but with similar outcomes, any research carried out within the domestic sphere is at greater risk of being restricted, or at least influenced, by parents. Moreover, I felt that children's exploration of the medium may be more inhibited by such an environment. Ultimately, the media controversy about children's access to the net is (either implicitly or explicitly) centred on the prospect of a child's private and solitary online interactions from a computer in her or his bedroom. The Daily Mail epitomises such discourses (Hadfield, 15 September 1995: 31; Lee-Porter, 4 September 1998: 16-17). There is no 'naturalistic' way of attaining such a context. Even if I were to make the precarious assumption that the majority of households extend to the luxury of a computer in child’s bedroom, it would be difficult to detract from direct or indirect intervention of parents and researcher in an ethical research outcome. Finally, as the findings will emphasise, and contrary to my assumptions above, the net was not yet a universal medium within most primary schools and some secondary schools in Cardiff in 2000 - when this part of the research was conducted. Access was even more limited at home. Choosing either of these research contexts would invariably have restricted the diversity of subjects for analysis.
In order to avert this, I contacted the Central Library in Cardiff. However, the library network’s reliance on Cyber Nanny™ would have imposed external restrictions on children's freedom of use. Finally, I settled on holding the sessions at the Cardiff Cybercafé. Originally, the research aimed to be unobtrusive in as far as it sought to observe regular children users of the cybercafé. However, during our first meeting, the venue's director, Paul Stokes, informed me that though children as young as three years-old have used the facilities whilst accompanied by their parents in the past, over the last year the whole client base has been transformed by the increased universalisation of home net use. Though the cybercafé used to be frequented by people of various ages and backgrounds, by 2000 that number had dramatically declined. By that point, the cybercafé tended to be almost exclusively used by either travelers, who had no home base, or teenagers attracted by the latest games and processing and network speeds. This is an interesting finding, not least because (as I explore further in SIGNIFICANT THEMES > WIRED UP?) it cannot be applied generally to the range of circumstances of the cyberkids within the current study and others, such as Furlong et al. (2000). In any case, rather than simply observing users, I would have to construct my own case study.
I had originally only contemplated having one two-hour session with the prospective children. However, the rationale behind such a case study was to observe children's online experiences with as few external determinants as possible. I felt the children would only begin to loose their inhibitions after a series of sessions. After discussing this with Paul Stokes, we decided to organise five full two-hour sessions that would work in the form of a relaxed cyberclub. Nonetheless, the cybercafé is a commercial venue. As such, its steep hourly rates for net use posed a preliminary problem. Fortunately, it was agreed that the cost of the five two hour sessions would be funded largely by the University - the cyberkids only had to meet a small part of the cost. This would enable children from a variety of backgrounds to participate.
In order to target as wide a range of people as possible, adverts for the workshops were distributed to youth clubs, community and arts centres, libraries, supermarkets and shopping centres throughout Cardiff, as well as in, and outside, the cybercafé itself. However, there were only four participants in the first session. It was hoped that the number of participants would increase to ten during the next sessions. In order to gain more participants, fliers were made and distributed during two afternoons in Queen Street (Cardiff town centre), before the second session. By the second session we had eight participants, and finally nine participants in the third session. Given the profusion of advertising for the cyberclub, it was surprising that interest in the sessions was not greater. Perhaps under twelves are unenthusiastic about using up their weekends doing something that seems inherently pedagogical. There were some parents who phoned to enquire about the classes, but to bring their children to a club on Sunday evenings was incompatible with many of their weekend plans. Perhaps this, along with the fact that the sessions began in the middle of term, when some under twelves may have already committed their free time to other pursuits, that the sessions run in the weeks before Christmas, may have all contributed to less interest in such sessions than at other times. I realised that the importance of timing in carrying out a case study must not be underestimated. Overall, this may indicate that the net was already experiencing a certain amount of ubiquity in 2000 at home and at school - this would tie in with the cybercafé's changing demographics. Yet research findings indicate the popularisation of the net had yet to gain a strong footing in Cardiff. Though the net may have become ubiquitous in some homes and schools in 2000, in others the net was still not part of their culture.
‘TRUTH’ AND ‘VENTRILOQUATION’
The rationales above aimed to maximize an experience of online consumption, interaction and production that comes closer to the paths children may weave if left to surf the web unobstructed. Yet, such a perspective is problematic in itself. The notion of 'ventriloquation' (Bakhtin, 1982 [1975]) is fundamental here. Castell & Bryson (1998) would say that such a research context may minimise ‘"ventriloquating" responses seen as "acceptable"’ to parents and teachers and draw closer towards the cyberkids ‘actual beliefs and perceptions’ (para. 11). Yet, whilst minimising the susceptibility of the child performing in ways acceptable to pedagogues or parents, I have already emphasised that the child may perform in ways s/he deems to be acceptable to the technical assistants or myself as researcher (Gauntlett 1998: para. 18).
More pertinently, Castell & Bryson (1998) assertions conform to what Berger defines as the humanistic method of research, underscored by the ‘idea that…interviewees possess the truth, that the problem is to make them tell it’ (Berger, cited by Alasuutari 1995: 53). Throughout the thesis I have sought to establish the relativism of Truth and Origin; that the self and the net has no ‘pre-exisiting essence’ outside the discourses that evoke it (Foucault citing Nietzsche, in Rabinow (ed.) 1991 [1971]: 78). From this perspective, one begins to see that Castell & Bryson (1998) remediations underplay Bakhtin’s notion of the ‘complex and multifaceted process of active…communication’ (1982: 68). For me, Bakhtin (1982 [1975]) use of ‘ventriloquation’ is similar to Wertsch’s idea of the ‘multivoicedness’ of the human mind, corresponding to the multivoicedness of both culture and communication (2005 [1991]), and a (predominantly) conscious variation on Jung’s ‘collective unconscious’ (1981) or Burstein’s ur-consciousness (2000 [1972]). To Bakhtin all utterances are characterised by ‘ventriloquation’ (1982 [1975]: 293).
That is not to say that ‘ventriloquation’, as Castell & Bryson (1998) understand it - as idealised projections - does not occur in discourses with which we articulate the self. Socratic notions of 'Truth' continue to be dominant metanarratives in Eurocentric matrices. Though one may question the legitimacy of Truth, social discourses of the self are informed by dynamics of Truth. For instance, ‘being true to one’s self’ or ‘seeing someone’s true colours’, are established actions with subtle variations throughout Eurocentric everyday culture. Our ‘dialogical’ relations to such discourses infect articulations of ourselves (Bakhtin 1982 [1975]: 50); indeed, I have already conceded to Foucault’s notion of the body as ‘totally imprinted by history and the process of history’s destruction of the body’ (Foucault 1987 [1971]: 83). As I assert in REMEDIATIONS: PT I, contingencies of the self are outstripped by the Individualist adherence to a ‘coherent self’ - 'ME', 'I'. Inadvertently, we locate each articulation of the self along the plane between being ‘true’ or ‘untrue’ to one’s ‘coherent self’.
CONSTRUCTIONISM
The establishment of this kind of workshop or cyberclub was not uncommon at the time - indeed, I acknowledge the influence the weekend cybercafé at The Performing Arts and Media College had on ALT.CYBERKIDS in MOTIVATIONS. Yet a critical perspective (the likes of which Gauntlett (1998) sheds on small-scale media effects studies) may suggest the present case study has ‘elements of artificiality’ (para. 17). According to Gauntlett, whilst ‘[s]uch studies typically take place in a laboratory, or in a 'natural' setting such as a classroom…a researcher has conspicuously shown up and instigated activities, neither of which are typical environments’ (ibid.). He argues that research subjects are often ‘observed in simulations of real life…all of which are unlike interpersonal interaction, cannot be equated with it…rendering the study invalid’ (ibid.). Alasuutari revolutionises this line of thinking by dismissing any possibility of ‘natural’, directly observable phenomena (1995: 91. In doing so, he makes only subtle differentiations between ‘organised situations and naturally occurring data’ (1995: 94). As he states, naturally occurring data,
…is not wholly unproblematic as far as research ethics is concerned. On the other hand, one should not exaggerate the ‘effects’ of recording upon an interaction situation that is specifically arranged for research purposes…In both options, one is actually gathering specimens of discourses in different contexts; it is only that in the latter case one is not restricted to naturally occurring contexts. The interaction perspective simply means that when drawing conclusions from any type of data one always considers it as a totality; as a particular kind of interaction situation, not as statements extracted from their context (1995: 95).
Nonetheless, the Moose Crossing project, began by Bruckman, serves as warning to the extent to which even reflexive studies both contrive and objectify. Moose Crossing was designed to be a 'constructionist' learning environment for children aged eight to thirteen, aiming to elicit exploration of performative identity play and community building. Bruckman summarises the idea of Moose Crossing:
On MOOSE Crossing, children have constructed a virtual world together, making new places, objects, and creatures... [Yet] the Internet provides opportunities to move beyond the creation of constructionist tools and activities to the creation of 'constructionist' cultures (3).
The actuality of Moose Crossing raises several issues, however. Firstly, such a 'constructionist' project has proved to be incompatible with the self-constituting subject of a child-centered approach to pedagogy. Here, 'the promotion of autonomy was seen as central to fostering curiosity, confidence and competence, in which play functioned as the guarantor of freedom and independence' (Burman 1994: 165). However, Bruckman's findings problematise the extent to which such a space should allow children the freedom of autonomy. She affirms that Moose Crossing is her own autocracy: she 'makes the rules' (175). A correlative MUD project, the renowned MediaMoo, 'experimented with democratic control, but that experiment failed' (ibid.):
The new council members chose a consensus-based decision making process, which proved unwieldy and vulnerable to being manipulated by minority interests. Making even minor decisions proved time consuming and difficult... Discussion of even trivial issues became heated as factions began to fight one another for purely political rather than substantive reasons (ibid.).
Hindess (1996) discussion of the tensions within liberal democracies gains momentum. Moose Crossing is an apt figuration of the aforementioned incongruities of cyberlibertarianism: in similar and different ways to the offline sphere, the net is a space where the self and the collective collide. Hindess (1996) contends that liberal identity is caught up in a double bind: whether autonomy is seen as a natural given, inhibited by democratic interests, or whether it is the product of particular social conditions it is always necessarily heteronomous, that is, subject to external law (309).
Bruckman imposes a modernist rationality on a children's performative space. In attempting to create a children-only MUD environment for 'constructionist' learning, Bruckman created a community of subjects abstract to the outside world. The extent to which Moose Crossing is a children-only environment is contentious in itself. Though Bruckman heralds children as the chief decision-makers, her professed autocratic status, together with the fact that adults are allowed to enter that space as 'helpers' (after faxing a copy of their passports for identity purposes), indeed that few checks can fully determine whether a self-professed ‘child’ is actually a 'child', undermines her purpose. In this instance, the children in Moose Crossing share an affinity with Piaget's 'epistemic subject', who is 'irrevocably isolated and positioned outside of history and society' (Burman, 1994: 154).
In the current study I attempt to create a space where children are free to perform online and offline as they wish. Yet, in similar ways to Moose Crossing, whilst that space is free from pedagogical and (relatively free) from parental discourses, it is of my own creation and subject to my own rules. A prerequisite to participation in these particular workshops is an agreement by each cyberkid and parent alike to be filmed continuously, participate in audio interviews and be open to discuss their experiences of online consumption and production. In addition, I purposefully chose a space that positioned each cyberkid outside of the normalcy of domestic and pedagogical space. What is interesting to me is the degree to which the cyberkids struggled with my own minimal determinations, indeed, how they responded to both to the existence and absence of rules.
PEER INTERACTION
figure 5.4.6 f2f interaction: a key rationale for the research context
Though not evident from the onset of the case study's choreography, it soon became clear that the unstructured interaction between the peers themselves provided a further rationale for choosing a research context other than the home or school. As mentioned above, this is an interventionist rationale that digresses from the pedagogical and domestic 'production of normalcy' in children (Castell & Bryson 1998: 240). According to Castell & Bryson (1998), problematising relations between childhood sexuality and technological access reterritorializes matrices of social identity formation:
We have discovered both in our own interviews and observations, and in the work of previous researchers (for a classic, see Whyte, 1986), that the tactic of 'queering' gender identity by intervening at the level of the school in terms of access to and uses of technologies is seen by many as quite simply unacceptable. Intervening at the level of gender identity construction troubles the illusory naturalness of 'differences between the sexes' - differences whose function absolutely depends on those differences being seen as immutable and constant. But developmentally, at least, they are not (ibid.).
Moreover, the relaxed nature of interaction effected is more akin to the types of sociality that are likely to occur in the playground, not in the classroom where a teacher would be present. An emphasis on the discourse of children's interrelations throughout the sessions highlights their own struggles with social interaction, subjectivity and identity. Foucault (1980) suggests that, ‘[f]ar from preventing knowledge, power produces it... it is in discourse that power and knowledge are joined together’ (110). By analysing children's own discursive metanarratives we may be able to find clues about whether or not institutionalised power produces the knowledge it seeks to delimit. Of consequence here, is that the social interaction that ensued between the cyberkids, assistants and I, as well as between the cyberkids themselves, actually involved all in the production, and in turn reception, of 'normalcy'. This challenges Castell & Bryson (1998) suggestion that this occurs predominantly within pedagogical environments (240). The research findings clarify that priori power relations, expectations and responsibilities largely come into play nonetheless.