Cultural coding and de-coding as ways of participation: digital media for marginalized young people

ABSTRACT

Like literacy itself, access to digital media both reflects and shapes the ways people play and learn, and more generally, how individuals and groups perceive themselves, relate to others, treat things, and occupy space. We see both opportunities and risks in today's infatuation for all things digital. As organizers of the IDC 2009 workshop on "Digital Technologies and Marginalized Youth: Reducing the Gap", our focus is on the empowerment and integration of marginalized youth. We look at how marginalized youth adopt digital media and what's in it for them. We summarize all the accepted position papers in an attempt to draw lessons useful to researchers, educators, and practitioners. To conclude, we draw from Paulo Freire's "pedagogy of the oppressed" as a useful framework to rethink some of the prerequisites that may help marginalized youth to find their voices while, at the same time, speaking the tongue of others (in particular those in power). Getting "lost in translations" is what paves the ways to many youngsters social exclusion.

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  K. Computing Milieux
  K.3 COMPUTERS AND EDUCATION

Additional Classification:
  K. Computing Milieux
  K.4 COMPUTERS AND SOCIETY
      K.4.2 Social Issues

General Terms:
Design, Human Factors

Keywords:
Paulo Freire, digital divide, empowerment, inclusion, marginalized young people, participation