Minecraft and children’s digital making: implications for media literacy education

ABSTRACT

This article aims to contribute new knowledge about the media literacies children assemble as they play the digital game Minecraft which it describes as a children's digital making platform. The article argues media literacy's tendency to use socio-cultural and humanist accounts of media participation limit its ability to fully explain digital making practices. Socio-material and performative literacy theories are used to introduce a framework for exploring digital media literacies across four nodes: digital materials, media production, conceptual understanding and media analysis [Dezuanni, M. 2015.“The Building Blocks of Digital Media Literacy: Socio-material Participation and the Production of Media Knowledge.”Journal of Curriculum Studies 47 (3): 416–419]. The article's second half outlines how the author uses digital ethnography in his home to understand children's Minecraft digital making and the article's theoretical claims are explored using empirical data. The conclusion considers the ramifications of digital making for media literacy research and practice.

KEYWORDS:

• Media literacy
• digital literacy
• games in education
• video games
• digital games
• media production
• socio-material literacies
• performativity

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Associate Professor Michael Dezuanni undertakes research about digital media, literacies and learning in home, school and community contexts. He is the Associate Director of QUT's Digital Media Research Centre which produces world-leading research for a creative, inclusive and fair digital media environment.

ORCID

Michael Dezuanni http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2278-8455

Notes

1 An ethics application for my partner (also a researcher) and I to undertake this work was approved by Queensland University of Technology.

2 Although the children all played on Babylon regularly, for this play session they wanted to start a new world.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Australian Research Council Linkage Scheme [grant numbers LP110200309, LP130100031].