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Hong Kong Conversations: Digital Natives, Media
Literacy, Rights and ResponsibilitiesThursday, July 09, 2009 at 11:11 AM EDT
Today in Hong Kong, I’ve had the pleasure to catch up with some of my
colleagues and friends who are living and working in Asia. The conversation
with Rebecca MacKinnon,
my former Berkman fellow Fellow and now assistant professor at the University
of Hong Kong’s Journalism and Media Studies
Center, resonates in particular. We touched upon several themes and topics
in which we share an interest, ranging from Chinese culture, U.S. foreign
politics, to corporate social responsibility, among many others. We then
started talking about the digital natives project(s),
and youth and new media research questions (Rebecca actually teaches “new
media†at HKU). Starting from different places and looking from different
perspectives, we concluded that two (related) sets of question will likely end
up being on our shared research agenda for the months to come.
- First, media literacy and education of digital natives. While media
education in the digital environment has become an important topic especially
in the U.K. through the work of Ofcom
and experts like Professor David Buckingham and Professor Sonia Livingstone,
it’s still in its infancy in many other parts of the world. From all
I’ve learned now in the context of our digital native project –
and
from what I know about the current state of neuroscience with regard to
cognitive and emotional development – its seems crucial to start with
media education at pre-school or primary school level at latest. If anyone has
pointers to good web resources, case studies and/or curricula in this area,
please drop me a note.
- Second, users rights and responsibilities in the digital environment. This
issue is obviously related to the first one and concerns the question as to
what extent our societies do provide mechanisms to have a discourse about our
rights, but also responsibilities (and that’s where it gets tricky from
a
political perspective) as empowered users in the digitally networked
environment. While great work has been done with regard to the
“rightsâ€-part of the discussion – largely driven by NGOs and consumer protection organizations (see
here
for a recent example) – we may need to figure out in the near future how
to address also the question of the new responsibilities as
“speakers†that are associated with the fundamental shift from
passive consumers to active users. Interestingly, the role of citizens as
producers of information has reportedly been addressed in a (if I recall
correctly: still unpublished) draft of an information freedom act in an Eastern
European country. Legislation, however, is most likely not the right starting
place for such a discussion, I would argue.
In short, more food for thought – and additional research tasks for
our digital native team. (Thanks, Rebecca, for a great conversation.)
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