The Twitter games: media education, popular culture and multiscreen viewing in virtual concourses

ABSTRACT

Interactive media and virtual environments give rise to transmedia and multiscreen viewing in a new popular and participatory culture. This in turn requires a new type of critical, reflective media education. This article reviews expert opinions on the educational potential of The Hunger Games (THG) and the use of Twitter during the viewing of films by young audiences. The study has the twofold goal of analysing whether the tweets include the topics of ideology and values mentioned in the selected articles and whether the conversations help build knowledge of the subjects that, according to the experts, are discussed in the literary trilogy. The method, based on discourse analysis, is twofold as well, comprising, on one hand, the discussion of 61 selected academic papers on THG and, on the other, 6000 tweets posted by youngsters while watching the films in the trilogy shown on TV. The tweets were analysed using the ‘coding and counting’ technique in computer-mediated discourse analysis. The results show a great chasm between academic or educational perspectives and what youngsters see in the films. Twitter interactions show that the virtual environments where these interactions take place are mere virtual concourses rather than affinity or learning spaces. This draws attention to the need for a new type of media education which not only includes the popular culture in formal education environments, but also uses the virtual concourses where youngsters gather around media products to transform mere coexistence into convergence of interests based on the meaning of these products.

KEYWORDS:

• Twitter
• affinity spaces
• virtual concourses
• media education
• popular culture
• transmedia

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Alfonso Gutiérrez-Martín http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2288-9459

Notes on contributors

Alfonso Gutiérrez-Martín, Ph.D., is Professor of ‘ICT applied to Education’ at the Faculty of Education of Segovia (University of Valladolid). He is a specialist of media education, digital literacy and teacher training with degrees from ‘Universidad Autónoma de Madrid’, Institute of Education (University of London) and Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (Spain). His current research interests are Digital Multimedia Technologies and Education (media education, e-learning, digital literacy, OER and MOOC, etc.). His work include organising numerous teacher training courses and symposiums, and acting as Chair of some conferences such as the ‘International Congress of FORMACIÓN Y MEDIOS’ and ‘International Conference on Media Education and Digital Competence’ in Segovia. He has also addressed conferences in different countries such as Argentina, the UK, México, Brazil, Venezuela, France, Cuba, Sweden, the USA, Germany, Lithuania, India and Hungary. [email: [email protected]].

Alba Torrego-Gonzalez is Research Assistant in the Faculty of Education at the University of Valladolid in Segovia (Spain). She holds a bachelor’s degree in Elementary Education from the University of Valladolid, a bachelor’s degree in Hispanic Studies from the Autonomous University of Madrid and a master’s degree in Secondary Education from the University of Valladolid. She is doing her Ph.D. in Media Education and Digital Discourse under the supervision of Prof. Alfonso Gutiérrez-Martín. Her current research interests are digital literacy, digital discourse and computer-mediated communication. [email: [email protected]].