From differentiated use to differentiating practices: negotiating legitimate participation and the production of privileged identities

Abstract

Prevailing approaches for studying relations between digital media and social inequalities focus on ‘differentiated uses’ of digital media. Since differences in access do not fully account for differences in use, many scholars have proposed that differences in digital skills, or related concepts such as literacies, help explain the discrepancies. By implication, interventions aimed at equalizing digital access and skills should help ameliorate gaps in use and hence lessen social inequalities. The contention of this article is that these well-intentioned efforts oversimplify and distort relations between digital media and social inequalities. My argument is based on an in-depth ethnographic study of the launch of a well-resourced public middle school in New York City that attempted to reform public schooling in inclusive ways in light of the rise of digital media. I argue that while the intervention helped mitigate differences in access and skills, it did not ameliorate differences in purportedly beneficial uses. Moreover, and paradoxically, the intervention helped remake some of the very social divisions that concern digital inequality scholars. To overcome this seeming paradox, I propose an alternative approach for studying relations between digital media and social inequalities, one focused on ‘differentiating practices’. Such an approach directs attention toward the role of digital media in negotiations over legitimate participation in the social practices that make and mark social difference in situ. Doing so offers scholars a way to situate their accounts of differentiated use while gaining clarity about when and how digital media contributes to the production of privilege.

Keywords:

• digital inequality
• digital divide
• education
• young people
• identity
• practice theory

Acknowledgement

This article has benefited immensely from close readings by Paul Duguid, Dan Perkel, Jeffrey Lane, Lissa Soep, Rebecca Black, attendees of the 2011 Digital Media and Learning Summer Institute, and two anonymous readers for Information, Communication & Society. The research was supported by the Digital Media & Learning Research Hub at the University of California, Humanities Research Institute.

Notes on contributor

Christo Sims is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of California, San Diego and a researcher for the Digital Media and Learning Research Hub at the University of California Humanities Research Institute. Much of his work focuses on youth, digital media, and the processes by which structures of power and privilege are made and remade today. He is one of the co-authors of Hanging out, messing around, and geeking out: Kids living and learning with new media (MIT Press, 2010). [email: [email protected]]

Notes

1. To protect the privacy of study participants, the names of all persons and organizations have been changed.

2. In total, I interviewed 43 students, parents/guardians of 25 students, and 5 educators. I also conducted 13 ‘media tour’ interviews with students who were especially involved in media production activities.

3. For an account of how the school came to be as diverse as it was, see Sims (2012).

4. These are the ethnic and racial labels ascribed by the Department of Education, not the identifications routinely expressed by students and families.

5. For a more detailed review of theories of practice, see Holland and Lave (2001, 2009), Reckwitz (2002), and Schatzki, Knorr-Cetina, and Von Savigny (2001). For studying and theorizing practice in relation to media technology and consumption, see Couldry (2004) and Postill (2010).