"Screen Time" in the Age of Covid-19: Reports from the Home Front (Part Two)

Liana Gamber-Thompson: I loved reading your description of Lucca’s summer and how her love of gaming helped her navigate quarantine emotions and connect with friends. Your reflections were especially timely because over the weekend, we jumped off the precipice of a new gaming/literacy journey for my son; Wesley just celebrated his seventh birthday, and we got him a Nintendo Switch, a grand, quarantine-y gesture of unusual scale. He’s been exploring the forests of Pokémon: Let’s Go, Pikachu! all weekend, snapping up new Pokémon and battling trainers to his heart’s delight. On the parent front, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little wary. It feels like we’ve entered a new dimension (of owning a gaming console) that we’ll never be able to come back from. I always said I’d wait until he was older. 

Yet, in keeping with the spirit of open mindedness I promised at the very end of my intro and building on your touching observations on how gaming can lead to confidence and collaboration, I’m suppressing the urge to panic. I’m already seeing some hopeful glimmers for how the Switch might be a good supplement to his other regular activities like reading physical books, daily swimming, and watching seemingly endless episodes of Wild Kratts on the iPad. 

First, best I can tell it seems like text-based adventure games (like the Pokémon game Wesley is playing) a la Legend of Zelda have won out in popularity over the arcade style games of my youth. While I have had to answer, “What does this say?” a bit more than my liking, I see Wesley making a concerted effort to sound out words and sentences on his own within the game. He’s at a point in his literacy development that he will spend hours flipping through encyclopedic reference books on animals and dinosaurs but isn’t quite confident enough to explore chapter books on his own, despite our having read every single Magic Treehouse book ever written together. I see that connecting his reading to the game play might just be the confidence boost he needs and might plant the seed for a love of narrative fiction that is largely overshadowed by his perfectly acceptable but singular love of nature anthologies. 

Secondly, like Lucca, he’s already delved into the collaborative side of gaming. The morning after he received the Switch, he had a playdate with his classmate, Sean, who is by comparison a seasoned gamer. On a FaceTime call, Sean patiently explained the ins and outs of the Pokémon game and played alongside him after helping him through the seemingly epic setup. It felt nice to see them engaging in a form of cooperation that is almost entirely absent from his remote learning experience. Because his teacher is prevented from facilitating breakout rooms for privacy reasons, he rarely gets 1:1 or small group interaction with his peers while learning from home. As such, the social aspect of gaming was a draw for us as we weighed the decision to purchase the Switch at what felt like a potentially premature age. 

You said something really powerful in your intro, Jessica, when you described Lucca’s gaming kicking into warp speed during quarantine. You said that, despite your decades of professional and scholarly training and your knowledge of “video gaming as [a] valuable, productive, and rich literacy space,” you still felt the weight of parental guilt. That feeling is so real. And it is so strong. 

The parental guilt comes from many directions. Part of eschewing screen time is about anticipating judgment from other parents; no one wants to seem like the negligent one among their parental peers. What’s more (and perhaps I’m just easily swayed), my social media echo chamber reinforces a particular path to parental piety via depictions of perfectly curated play spaces with nothing but neutral, wooden, educational toys. The toys are always wooden! Of course, that vision of what an idealistic childhood looks like is shaped largely by privilege and whiteness, and I think it’s important to keep coming back to that point across this conversation (especially one in which I’m describing the Sturm und Drang of buying my kid a 300 dollar Nintendo). 

The guilt is further codified by recommendations from medical experts. Until now, the American Academy of Pediatrics has recommended no screen time for children under two (except for video chats) and just one hour a day of “quality” programming for preschoolers. To say the least, those recommendations are purely aspirational if not downright impossible these days. Still, making a conscious break from conventional wisdom and medical advice about what’s good for kids can be agonizing, even if, like with Lucca and Wesley, we can see the good in it. I read a nice blog post by Laura Wheatman Hill over on JSTOR recently in which she reminds us that, in the 18th century, reading too many novels was considered dangerous, raising the potential for one to dissociate from reality. So, who knows. Maybe we’ll look back on this time period one day and wonder just why we were so worried about the dangers of Pokémon. 

Jessie Early: Reading your words about Wesley and his newly opened Pokeman and your internal, sometimes external, dialogue questioning this parenting choice, made me smile. I feel less alone in trying to navigate this time as a working parent. Your experience helps me realize how, on top of all the juggling and stress of what we are managing right now, so many parents are feeling extra pressure to somehow get this time “right”, even though none of us know what we are doing or have ever lived through a global pandemic. 

I, too, feel inundated with social media messages from parents who are backpacking with kids on weekends and making painted rocks to gift to trees and nooks and crannies throughout the neighborhood. I’ve read about “doom scrolling” , the act of endlessly scrolling social media looking for bad news. Instead, I scroll for articles and experts to reassure me that what I’m doing as a parent is ok. I jumped for joy after reading the  New York Times piece Just Give Them the Screens (for Now). As my husband often tells me, “You can search for anything to tell you what you want to hear.” We all need some reassurance right now.

I also think about Wesley with his Pokeman and Lucca with her Royal High and wonder if part of our uncertainty in allowing our kids to dive into these digital worlds is a lack of familiarity? These are not the same worlds we entered as children. Give me Donkey Kong and Pac Man and I would be good to go! However, as you point out, Pac Man is lacking the complexity and collaboration and storytelling of current games. Wesley and Lucca, in their digital endeavors, grant us a chance to try to silence our internal dialogue to step back and observe. I teach a class on research methods for pre service and inservice English language arts teachers, where I ask them to step back from their teaching practice and notice and document what is happening more closely to inform their practice. This act of observation more often than not, leads teachers to slow down, reflect, and revise their teaching for the better. As teachers and as parents, the act of decentering our expertise, or admitting we are lacking any, is vulnerable and scary.  

I have been sitting next to my twin 9-year-old sons as they navigate online school from home and one of the things that strikes me is how their classmates are using the chat space and time before and after the office Google Meet with their teachers to set up digital video gaming playdates. I heard one kid shout out from his little box on the screen this morning, “Who wants to meet up in Roblox after PE today?” I wonder how teachers and parents can take up these digital spaces our students and kids are diving into right now and blend them into the formal curriculum or or honor them in family conversation?  

What if students could spend time designing avatars for their online school spaces and creating instructional videos to share their expertise (either digital or non) with one another? What if they got to draw and write and create new chapters or characters or worlds for the games they are playing in their free time during their class time? For kids who do not play these games, they could design and create ones that fit their interests and play, either digital or real time. There are teachers out there, many in the National Writing Project, doing this work like Joe Dillon from NWP sharing his work teaching high school students to write code for video games with Scalable Game Design and NWP Blog Radio’s blog radio show Addressing Skepticism Around Using Video Games for Learning



I also recognize the reading transition you describe Wesley facing in moving from picture books to chapter books. My twin boys experienced this as well and  I didn’t know what to do until we discovered graphic novels! I brought home books like Dave Pilkey’s DogMan series and Aaron Blabey’s The Bad Guys series and Abby Hanlon’s Dory Fantasmagory and Nate Evan’s Tyrannosaurus Ralph and they started reading again. The mix of the visual and the textual on each page helped bridge the gap between the genres they had been experiencing (picture books) and the ones they were moving toward (chapter). I also see, from what you share about Wesley’s gaming, how video games do this too. These digital spaces allow kids to enact, build, and follow stories with characters and drama and story all with a sense of ownership and control.

Jessica Early, Professor of English at Arizona State University, is a scholar of English education and secondary literacy. She is the director of English Education and the Central Arizona Writing Project, a local site of the National Writing Project, at ASU. She began her career in the field of education as a high school English language arts teacher.  

Liana Gamber-Thompson  is Digital Project and Operations Manager at EdSurge, an award-winning education news organization that reports on the people, ideas and technologies that shape the future of learning. EdSurge is now part of the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE). Previously, Liana was a researcher on youth and politics at USC, Community Manager at Connected Camps, and Program Associate at the National Writing Project. She is co-author of By Any Media Necessary: The New Youth Activism and holds a Ph.D. in Sociology.

"Screen Time" in the Age of Covid-19: Reports from the Front Lines (Part One)

Liana Gamber-Thompson: I’ve tried to write this no fewer than ten times. With a three-year-old who has been largely free-ranging since her preschool closed for the year and a six-year-old remote learning his way through first grade, a good chunk of my brain space is generally occupied by trying to get someone back on a Google Meet, cutting crusts off PBJs, and discovering new household surfaces that have been graffitied. The remainder of my attention goes to trying to perform my full-time job to fidelity, which consists of fielding client calls and hosting live webinars for hundreds of viewers from my bedroom, all while trying to appear professional from the shoulders up. Along the way, I catch snippets of my partner, a 9th grade English teacher, translating James Baldwin’s GoTell It on the Mountain into Spanish on the fly and eking out virtual class discussions from our kids’ treehouse, which might be the quietest spot in the vicinity. 

To put it mildly, it’s a lot, and grabbing any significant chunk of time to write is a Sisyphean task. Still, my family and I are among the lucky ones. Henry asked Jessica and me to reflect, not only on our experiences as parents, but also on the impact of COVID-19 on school and learning, especially as it relates to what I think most people recognize as an across-the-board re-orientation toward screen time. Like many parents, we are absolutely fumbling our way through remote learning. But when I really reflect on my personal experiences of trying to keep learning going, I also realize there is a lot I take for granted. With our relative flexibility to work from home, an at-home stash of newer iPads and laptops, access to stable wifi, and enough books in the house to fill twenty Little Free Libraries, our kids will be fine. But the harsh reality is that many families aren’t fine when it comes to both access and a safe and productive space to learn. 

In my days as a media scholar, I focused on young people’s political and performative use of media, often looking to the explosion of mobile access in the late aughts as proof enough of the democratizing effects of technology. The Digital Divide was real, but it was decreasing; and safe in that knowledge, I focused almost solely on the creative output of young people. But working and learning in the COVID-19 world has underscored the essential nature of a reliable internet connection and access to devices, and despite large scale efforts by private telecom companies and state governments to provide hot spots to all students, many gaps remain. Just last week, photos of two Salinas, CA students sitting outside a Taco Bell with their laptops were circulated widely online. They were reportedly using the restaurant’s wifi in order to participate in remote learning, and the inequities exposed by the snapshot received widespread condemnation from educators and tech leaders alike. 

Photo Credit: Luis Alejo/Twitter via CNN

Successful learning outcomes during COVID-19 are about more than putting laptops or hot spots in the hands of students and their parents, though. The issue of access is multidimensional and sometimes surprising. For example, my colleague Tony Wan, Managing Editor at EdSurge, recently reported that a major factor hindering students’ learning is actually their inability to find a quiet place to work (relatable!). Other pain points of remote learning include lack of tech support for students and generally poor communication between schools and parents about learning schedules and plans. 

We’ve certainly been privy to these struggles in our own home. Our first day of distance learning was nothing short of disastrous when we tried to use the school-issued Chromebook to access my first grade son’s Google Meet. In an effort to ensure all students had access to technology, his school, a racially and economically diverse Title 1 school in suburban Los Angeles, issued devices of varying make and quality to all students before the first day of instruction. Unfortunately, while the devices might have been suitable for casual web browsing, they were not equipped to support a video call of 25 students. The result was a lot of angry and frustrated parents and six-year-olds who couldn’t access their class. Because it’s 2020 and adding insult to injury is now the norm, a neighborhood wildfire coincided with the first day of school. Amidst the tech stress of the first day, a fellow mom texted me jokingly supposing the overworked fans of the first grade laptops, which we later learned were 7 years old, were somehow responsible for the fire. 

But in all seriousness, our response to this problem was to provide our son with a newish Mac I had inherited from a former job. The wildfire mom drove straight to Best Buy that day to purchase her daughter a new Chromebook. But what about the parents who can’t afford to buy a new laptop? Or parents whose first language is not English who might be trying to troubleshoot with school IT staff? Or for those who are working on the front lines, unable to spend an hour of their day setting up a district email for their student, which, I kid you not, required parents to input a child’s first name, middle initial, student permanent ID, and lunch number, just to access live instruction. These are the sticky situations parents and educators, who are also working with limited resources, keep finding themselves in, and all these little inconveniences add up to one giant headache. 

Before this introduction devolves into one long diatribe about the personal hellscape that is keeping two kids alive and schooled during a global pandemic, I want to zoom out a bit to make two key points that I hope to expand on in my conversation with Jessica. First, I want to make it clear that the huge headache I describe is 100% a structural failure. My academic training is in Sociology, and if there is one thing it taught me, it’s that we are so often blind to the effects decades or centuries-old institutions and policies have on our everyday lives. In the case of COVID-19, remote learning has further exposed the impact of long term underfunding of schools and the often devastating marriage between property taxes and K-12 funding.

In America especially, our tendency is to personalize structural inadequacies into individual, moral failures, and I see that playing out in the series of difficult decisions being made by parents and educators during COVID-19. Families and school districts with access and resources might be experiencing daily chaos, but they again come out on top as they develop creative solutions to ensure their students succeed (I hesitate to bring up the exhausted topic of “pandemic pods,” but they are a good example of how those with generational wealth and white privilege continue to use the system for their advantage). 

Secondly, if there was ever a time when grace was called for, it’s now. Part of the storyline of parents leveraging their privilege to help their own kids come out on top is the normalization of micromanaging teachers’ instructional choices. We’re in the third week of school, and already I’ve been on the receiving end of concerns from fellow parents that our kids’ teachers aren’t employing differentiation, “flipped classroom” strategies, or inventive multimedia nearly enough. While some teachers are taking to virtual teaching with ease, learning multiple new platforms while trying to meet the needs of diverse learners is a real challenge. As parents, we need to be sensitive to the epic task in front of teachers right now. Not only are they being forced to reimagine teaching as they know it, but being married to a teacher has shown me how they are simultaneously facing myriad behind-the-scenes pressures around testing and assessment, attendance, mandated synchronous instruction, and so forth. We cannot place our 2019 expectations on 2020 learning. 

When it comes to using media for learning, politics, and expression, I’ve always been an optimist. In almost everything I’ve ever written or published, I look to the creative and liberatory uses of media, and I still do. Strangely, in my life as a parent, I’ve taken a much more cautionary approach to screen time, limiting it only to weekends in pre-quarantine times. Now, of course, those limitations have gone out the window, and I’ve been trying to reflect more on why I was so hesitant to allow screen time in the first place. Part of that re-assessment has been seeing firsthand that effective classroom instruction can take place with the wide range of tools at our fingertips, even if figuring it out is messy. Because of it, my geeky school-age learner is largely thriving. My greatest hope, though, is that as many learners as possible have those same experiences and opportunities, even if the path to equity is a tumultuous one; if anything, I hope this situation proves that something beautiful can still grow from rocky, rocky soil. 

Jessica Early: 

I have been quarantining with my husband, 11-year-old daughter, 9-year-old twin boys, and our two guinea pigs since March 6th. We live in Arizona, where the Covid numbers were late to expand, but by mid June had exploded, to land us with the horrid distinction of a world hotspot. As a family, we have taken a cautious and privileged approach to this time. My husband is a self-employed, professional artist and I am a professor at Arizona State University, but have been granted accommodation to work from home to help care for my kids. We remain at home almost exclusively, except for a once-a-week grocery run and frequent bike rides. 

In between dish washing and meal making, I spent the summer in my role as director of English Education and the Central Arizona Writing Project, a local site of the National Writing Project, working to support teachers in an unprecedented and traumatic time and to prepare myself and others to transition to teaching writing and reading in virtual or hybrid teaching spaces. Needless to say, with three kids, two full-time jobs, record breaking summer heat in the desert (52 days over 110 degrees so far - and no rain), and a global pandemic, we have a lot on our plate. Like working parents everywhere, my husband and I have spent our days trying to support the well-being of our kids and ourselves while also trying to get our work done and maintain a 24/7 occupied household.

When I was invited to contribute to Henry’s blog to reflect with Liana on our experiences as parents during Covid-19 and on school and learning and how it relates to screen time, the one thing that came to mind was my eleven year old daughter. Nothing has informed my teaching, thinking, learning, and parenting more than Lucca, and her nonstop video gaming throughout our quarantine. I first have to confess that a huge part of me feels uncomfortable and vulnerable admitting that my daughter has been glued to her iPad all summer. Even though I have spent the last 20 years researching and teaching literacy practices in school, after school, and community settings and know video gaming as valuable, productive, and rich literacy space, I was certain that Lucca’s intense devotion to gaming represented some failure on my part as a parent. Regardless of my insecurity around screen time and parenting, this pandemic summer has afforded me the chance to step back, notice, and learn first-hand from my daughter’s literacy endeavors. I have seen how her screen has become a space to form a supportive and valuable peer community, to learn and practice sophisticated and transferable literacy skills, to make sense of broader social issues like the pandemic and Black Lives Matter, and to process uncertainty and fear.

When the pandemic hit here in March and schools in Arizona went online, Lucca went from being an outgoing 5th grade soccer player, “A” student, and avid reader to  completely shutting down in almost every way. She struggled with anxiety, couldn’t sleep alone, rarely talked, and seemed generally depressed. She put on her headphones, turned on her iPad, and started playing a Roblox game called Princess High. This game, from what I can tell, is about the creation of Avatar identities through themed fashion outfits and trading and earning diamonds to purchase fancier and more desirable attire, including magical halos and wands and oversized digital stuffed animals. I found the game choice surprising because Lucca had never been interested in fashion or looks in her daily life. My husband and I worried about her screen time and withdrawal from our family, but we also knew that anything normal was upended and we weren’t sure what to do. So, we observed closely, checked in often, and let her be.

Over the summer months, Lucca played hours and hours of Roblox. Jake and I frequently asked her about the game and she shared the ins and outs of her play. She created her own Avatar, a wide-eyed pink lipped brown haired beauty who constantly changed and traded outfits and wings and halos. As weeks passed, she started playing with a friend of a friend, Penny, from her soccer team and the two became gaming buddies. They Facetime and game simultaneously so they can talk and play together for hours and they have become close friends even living apart and never spending time together in person.

As the weeks passed, Lucca and Penny began gaming with new friends from Sweden and Australia and Canada who they grew to know through shared Avatar conversations. Through their gaming, they discussed their experiences with the pandemic from their different countries and with the Black Lives Matters movement and protests. Many of her gaming friends dressed their Avatars in Black Lives Matter T-shirts. Lucca talked about how in Sweden the Covid cases were growing and her friend was worried and in Canada her other gaming friend was having playdates and life seemed normal. She also learned about new shampoo she wanted to try and how to dye her hair with lemon juice.

Lucca and Penny started a YouTube channel about the game using their Avatars as the hosts. Within weeks, they taught themselves how to make and edit sophisticated videos with voice overs with credits and music. They started collecting followers, including grandparents, parents, and other gamers around the country and the world. Lucca wanted to celebrate when she reached 200 followers. I made brownies and got her hot cheetos. She started asking Jake to help her design digital “merchandise” for Avatars that she could sell for digital coins within the game and a logo to use for her YouTube channel. At one point during the summer, I asked Lucca if I could play the game with her. I spent  an hour beside her trying to figure it out while she rolled with laughter watching me try to navigate this unfamiliar space, which was her expert territory. 

As the summer went on, Lucca started coming out of her shell. She went on bike rides and started baking cookies and swimming. She asked more and more questions about Covid and wanted help understanding the possibility of a vaccine and how science around vaccines works. Many of her questions were sparked by conversations she was having in her game. She also started expressing her fear about transitioning to middle school and how she wished she could go back to 5th grade. 

We spent the last weeks of summer rearranging rooms, building desks, and creating spaces for each of us to work and learn comfortably. My husband ordered each of us wireless headphones and blue light blocking glasses. We picked up each of the kid’s laptops from their schools, I brought my office desk chair from work home, and we ordered pencils and highlighters and glue sticks and Post-It notes. Even with preparation and support, the transition and practice of daily online schooling has been a rocky and tiresome adventure. With glitches in internet connectivity (on our end and the school’s), new learning platforms to navigate, classmates constantly “spam chatting” in the Google Classroom chat spaces, and meeting and working with new teachers and schedules and classmates, the first weeks of school have been unlike any other. 

Lucca is making the transition from elementary to middle school with grace and courage and confidence. She sets her alarm each morning to wake up on time, takes a shower, brushes her hair and logs on to class. She follows her schedule and takes notes and does her work. She comes out of her room to ask for help and food. During lunch she logs on to Roblox and plays or texts Penny to check in about her day or goes for a swim in the pool. She still has meltdowns and longs to play on her soccer team again and have sleepovers with friends, but she’s ok. She’s really ok. 

I don’t want to portray screen time as a cure-all for Covid blues. I know some families who are struggling to care for children suffering from serious mental health challenges at this time and, in no way do I want to communicate that gaming is the route to curing mental health challenges, which  need professional attention and care. There are a lot of ways Lucca received support over the summer from us beyond allowing her to stay glued to her game. She began learning Italian with my husband through a language app. We made her exercise daily. I read to her at night because she didn’t want to read on her own, and we joked around with her and constantly engaged her in conversations about her interests. I recognize the privilege that goes with all of this, with her iPad and internet access and comfort and safety of our home and food to eat and the attention of two parents at home all day every day. However, even with all of that, the world, for Lucca and kids all over this country and globe, has felt scary and out of control during the pandemic. While the world outside was spinning, the online spaces Lucca navigated over the summer were her own. 

In the following conversation with Liana, I wonder about the ways we can think about the value of letting go or, as she writes, “throwing out the window” our preconceived notions of what is ok when it comes to screen time, but still provide the support, gentle oversight, and observation to understand what our kids are doing and gaining or needing in these digital spaces? I also wonder, as a teacher educator and writing scholar, how the various kinds of digital play our kids take part in may be tapped into during formal school literacy learning as a way to draw from and honor their expertise and lived experiences while living in a pandemic?

Jessica Early, Professor of English at Arizona State University, is a scholar of English education and secondary literacy. She is the director of English Education and the Central Arizona Writing Project, a local site of the National Writing Project, at ASU. She began her career in the field of education as a high school English language arts teacher.  

Liana Gamber-Thompson  is Digital Project and Operations Manager at EdSurge, an award-winning education news organization that reports on the people, ideas and technologies that shape the future of learning. EdSurge is now part of the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE). Previously, Liana was a researcher on youth and politics at USC, Community Manager at Connected Camps, and Program Associate at the National Writing Project. She is co-author of By Any Media Necessary: The New Youth Activism and holds a Ph.D. in Sociology.

Unequal Struggles and Impossible Digital Choices for Parents During Covid-19 (Part Three)

C, M. Hoffman, cc

S. Craig Watkins: Meryl, thanks for these great examples of how we look toward a more inclusive post-COVID future.  I agree that we need to develop ways to empower parents and other caregivers who are on the frontlines of social change.  Community-based organizations will always be critical in the struggle for social and economic justice.  As I think about social justice the implications for parents are significant. Parents are a vital resource in their children’s lives and to the extent that systemic forms of inequality, namely racial and gender, undermine adults they also undermine the families and children that they care for.  I vividly remember meeting the parents in our research for the Digital Edge and thinking how resourceful they were in the struggle to keep their families afloat. Our field work began just as the Great Recession was coming from its peak.  As economic data would later reveal the recovery for those in poverty was slow in coming, at best.  Whether it was immigrant parents or a working poor African American parent, they spent every day fighting for their children and their families.  The occupations they held, usually low-status and low-income, seldom offered them dignity or opportunity.  And yet, they worked in those jobs, relocated to neighborhoods, and did other things to try and improve the life chances of their children. These parents understood the value of education more than anyone, even though many of them never reached high levels of educational attainment.  When I think about the challenges parents face today, especially those heading resource-constrained households, I often think about the parents we met and how little support they received.  

If we learn anything through this current and unprecedented crisis it is the need to make sure that families, especially the most vulnerable, are stable. Without familial stability, children are at greater risk for poverty, immobility, and health problems in their adult lives.  One area of change that is desperately needed is the creation of a policy apparatus that is truly family-centered.  So much of the financial mitigation policy efforts that we see happening in the U.S. in response to COVID (and the Great Recession) is about saving corporations that are so-called, “too big to fail.”  But there is no greater institution in the modern world than our families.  The lack of family friendly policies-- paid sick leave, childcare, health care, guaranteed income--continues to undermine the lives of working poor adults and the young people they care for.     

A future challenge is cultivating a policy discourse that is sensitive to the needs of vulnerable families.  Many of our elected officials and policy makers simply don’t get what it's like to try and keep a family together when you are paid poverty wages, do not have access to healthcare, and send your children to schools that are ill-equipped to prepare your children for the world of tomorrow. Thus, policy mechanisms that are designed to support parents and their desire to ensure that their children have access to social, educational, and economic opportunity is a critical feature of any social justice future.  

Sonia Livingstone: I find it fascinating that we all research families’ lives in a digital world but, although the media themselves love to point to their own importance in shaping children’s experiences and life chances, we find over and again that the fundamentals of structural inequality matter hugely, and so for the most part, socio-economic divides shape digital divides. As Craig says, it is crucial that educators, social workers, policy makers and community workers keep this in mind when working with families instead, as so often happens, of somehow becoming overly focused on popular expectations of “silver bullet” technological solutions, or distracted by families’ particular, and supposedly problematic, uses of technologies.

Nonetheless, digital technologies make a difference, entering into families’ possibilities, and becoming the focus of parents’ hopes and fears for their children in ways that often compound but sometimes alleviate experiences linked to poverty, marginalization, mental ill-health, racism, or disability. Just reviewing our discussion across these three posts, we have noted that digital technologies enter as actors into families’ lives by introducing a series of specific safety, informational, and privacy risks. More positively, we have also suggested that, if parents and others (policy makers, educators…) could throw off misleading discourses relating to screen time, digital natives and the rest, they could embrace and support parents’ investments, energies and expertise regarding digital technologies in ways that are, thus far, undervalued and underexploited, and thereby further children’s interests for the better. As Meryl eloquently argued, this should be done not (or not only) parent by parent, as individuals, but by recognizing parents as a collectivity, and parenting as a phenomenon that society as a whole should invest in – and everyone could benefit.

Without exaggerating the role of digital technologies, we end our book on Parenting for a Digital Future with six recommendations for how society can better support parents – 1. Make room for parents’ voices in policymaking, including in relation to provision of digital resources; 2. Ensure that public and media discourses offer parents a realistic (rather than a contradictory, or simplistic) vision of their role; 3. Recognize the already-significant contribution of parents to their children’s learning, digital and otherwise, rather than endlessly rehearsing deficit accounts of parents; 4. Takes steps so that professionals who support parents are well-informed regarding the latest research and guidance on digital technologies; 5. Build in attention to parents and parenting when designing and governing the digital environment; 6. Resource research on diverse families and take the findings into account when formulating policy for families and education.

Meryl Alper: Thank you Craig and Sonia for summarizing and synthesizing our discussion as we find ourselves looking for ways to “build back better” (to echo a popular phrase among various political leaders at the moment) with respect to the recovery and reconstruction of social institutions and digital infrastructures that support children and families in the wake of the pandemic. 

Rebuilding for youth and their communities will require nothing short of a radical reexamination of supposedly-democratic schooling. To this end, I wish more people knew the story of Reggio Emilia, an Italian city destroyed by fascist forces that after World War II completely reoriented itself to center early childhood education as its highest public priority. Out of literal wreckage and destroyed buildings, the citizens of the town (led by the Italian Women’s Union) rebuilt the working-class village around the site of a school they physically constructed together. The new school and others built in the area were driven by parent cooperatives who insisted that their children be raised with high expectations of citizen responsibility and participation. Children not only needed to be listened to by adults and their peers, but they had a right to. Further cultivated by educator Loris Malaguzzi, Reggio Emilia has become a global educational philosophythat emphasizes the responsibilities that adults have to actively respond to children as they co-construct their ideas and knowledge.

In contrast, instead of centering children, families, and public schools in the U.S. pandemic response, our leadership prioritized business interests (and unequally for that matter), as Craig notes. Going forward, we will need digital tools and environments that are explicitly designed not to surveil and monetize children’s participation, but to put children in charge of their own learning in an open-ended manner. And lastly, we deserve leadership at the very top of our government system that does not stand to financially benefit from the privatization of education, and even better, has actual classroom experience (even if for right now, that means teaching over Zoom).

Bios

Meryl Alper is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Northeastern University, where she researches the social and cultural implications of communication technologies, with a focus on disability and digital media, children and families’ technology use, and mobile communication. She is the author of Digital Youth with Disabilities(MIT Press, 2014) and Giving Voice: Mobile Communication, Disability, and Inequality(MIT Press, 2017), which was awarded a 2018 PROSE Award Honorable Mention from the Association of American Publishers and the 2018 Outstanding Publication in the Sociology of Disability Award from the American Sociological Association. In her research and teaching, Dr. Alper also draws on over 15 years of professional experience in educational children’s media as a researcher, strategist, and consultant with Sesame Workshop, PBS KIDS, Nickelodeon, and Disney.

Sonia Livingstone is a professor in the Department of Media and Communicationsat the London School of Economics and Political Science. Taking a comparative, critical and contextualised approach, her research examines how the changing conditions of mediation are reshaping everyday practices and possibilities for action. She has published 20 books on media audiences, especially children and young people’s risks and opportunities, media literacy and rights in the digital environment. Her new book is “Parenting for a Digital Future: How hopes and fears about technology shape children’s lives” (Oxford University Press, with Alicia Blum-Ross). Sonia currently directs the Digital Futures Commission(with the 5Rights Foundation) and the “Global Kids Online”project (with UNICEF), among other projects. She blogs at www.parenting.digital.

S. Craig Watkins is the Ernest A. Sharpe Centennial Professor at the University of Texas at Austin.  He is the author of six books including The Digital Edgeand Don’t Knock the Hustle.  Craig is also the founding Director of the Institute for Media Innovation, a boutique hub for research and design. Among other things, the Institute is currently working on projects that address technology and mental health, bias in the deployment of artificial intelligence, and the social, racial, and economic aspects of a post-COVID world.

Unequal Struggles and Impossible Digital Choices For Parents During Covid-19 (Part Two)

G. White, CC By SA 2.0

Sonia Livingstone: Craig’s question - how do we design ways for parents and guardians who manage resource-constrained households to access vital social and informational networks – is a crucial one. In some ways, access to digital resources create new workarounds that can empower families. But as we have all three argued, in many ways they intensify the inequalities that many families face and, therefore, the urgency of finding new educational and policy solutions.

Our lives during the pandemic have already gone through several significant stages. At first, confusion and disbelief, relieved only by the misconception that the pandemic would be quickly over. Then an overwhelming concern for our personal circumstances, accompanied by anger and frustration with politicians and those with the power to address the problem, as recognition of the likely duration of the pandemic began to sink in. Then, a (perhaps belated) analysis of the societal costs and their unfolding geopolitical consequences. I remember in the early months of 2020 noting how little attention was paid to children and young people. Indeed, in some quarters, they were blamed for their (supposed) bad behavior in spreading the virus to others while (supposedly) avoiding it themselves. Only those of us specifically attuned to research and advocacy for young people observed the growing evidence of the adverse mental health consequences of isolation and anxiety, the increased risk of being victims of family breakdown or abuse, and the catastrophic and deeply unequal costs of school closures – for children’s education most obviously, but also for their friendships, community belonging and participation in the wider world, and their future life chances.

Even when the losses suffered by children during the pandemic are noticed, they are too often treated as a homogenous group (“children”). And the assumption is easily made that everything could be put right if only society could return to life as it was before. But as Craig has argued, inequality and injustice differentiates children’s experiences, with some much harder hit than others. Like Craig’s Digital Edge project, we too found that, in the case of the ethnic minority families, most of whom lived on a very low income, digital technologies seemed to offer a workaround to the structural disadvantages they face, and to map some practical steps they could take to benefit their children (often involving an investment in technology that is disproportionate to their income).

I also appreciate Meryl’s point that life before COVID-19 was already highly problematic for many families, and so it hardly provides an occasion for nostalgia or a vision of the life we hope to return to “when this is all over.” In part inspired byMeryl’s research, Alicia Blum-Ross and I, in our “Parenting for a Digital Future” project, also interviewed some families with children on the autism spectrum. And informed by Craig’s work on the Digital Edge project (as we both participated in Mizuko Ito’sConnected Learning Research Network), we also interviewed a good many families from, as we say in the UK, diverse ethnicities and cultural origins.

Although I strongly agree with Meryl’s critique that it is unsustainable – indeed, unconscionable - to leave these families during COVID-19 with no alternative than an ICT-mediated reality, in interviewing both groups of families in our London-based research, we were struck by the strength of parents hopes for a digital future for their children. In relation to the families of children with special educational needs and disabilities, we analyzed this in terms of parents’ talk of aspecial affinitybetween their child’s capabilities, as they see them, and the distinct affordances of digital technologies. For example, parents told us how they valued the visual natureof digital media learning, or how their children preferred the asynchronous communicationof some messaging services, by comparison with the intensity of face-to-face communication. This special affinity is reflected directly, for instance, in promised routes to a digital future, such as theMicrosoft Autism Hiringprogram, and indirectly through cultural representations of ‘on the spectrum’ geeky software engineers (think of Big Bang Theory or Silicon Valley), leading parents to hope that, for their child too, “geeks will inherit the earth.” 

But, of course, the future is inherently unknowable, and so these parental strategies, whilst borne of need and, often, of the lack of any viable alternative, are nonetheless risky and uncertain. We’ll need to revisit this discussion in a few years or even decades to see whether– bear fruit. Or, will they turn out to illustrate what Lauren Berlant has called “cruel optimism,” meaning that parents would have done better to place their hopes and investments in something other than digital technology, for this may not only disappoint but may even impede children’s life changes. More urgently, we need to build strong alternative pathways for these children and their parents, to reduce the allure of such a risky “digital future.”

S. Craig Watkins: Meryl and Sonia raise some interesting questions about parenting in the context of COVID and the degree to which systemic forms of racism and inequality underscore the extraordinary challenges that many families face.  Meryl, you are right: the brutal nature of capitalism leaves families on the margins with only bad choices.  For example, work in “essential jobs” that heighten your risk of virus exposure or struggle to provide shelter and food for your children.  Meryl and Sonia, I think we would agree that the challenges that we and others have alluded to such as unequal learning opportunities or increasing household stress in the context of COVID could have been predicted by our research.  Did it really take a global pandemic and the murders of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Eric Garner and others to recognize the unprecedented forms of inequality that shape our lives today?

Sonia has made a few references to mental health, something that I have been thinking about a lot in my current research.  Over the last year my team and I have been speaking with young people and mental health professionals about the state of mental health.  We were experiencing a mental health crisis before COVID and we know what the pandemic has done for mental health.  We have done parents a great disservice by blaming the mental health challenges their children face on smartphones and social media. If only the problem was that simple. Let me be clear: these technologies have certainly been designed to absorb our attention and keep us scrolling. But the mental health crisis among young people--pre and post-COVID--is a result of factors far more complicated than smartphones.  The conditions that underlie the mental health conditions of children and teens--a lack of support, strained personal relationships, poverty, discrimination, and a sense of hopelessness--are rooted in the sharp realities of structural inequality.  To the extent that we blame the youth mental health crisis on technology alone, we undermine the development of solutions that help families and societies respond in more effective ways. 

We can only hope that out of the ashes of COVID and a public reckoning with systemic racism that we can build and sustain the momentum for substantive change. This is an opportunity to realize a new vision for society, one that takes the challenge of building a more equitable future head on.  Sonia and Meryl:  As we look toward a post-COVID society, what kind of solutions for families would you like to see gain more traction? 

Meryl Alper: We cannot wait for this indefinite pandemic to end to make, as U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren champions,“big, structural change.”Online and offline, we need to enable resource-constrained households to more fully tap into networks of connections, resources, and information that make it possible for them to advocate collectively on behalf of their children. I strongly agree with Craig that any such initiatives have to be culturally specific and lead from within. I am thinking of an autism services resource fair for parents that I attended last year in a predominantly Latinx immigrant community in Boston, one that is currently one of the main epicenters of COVID-19 in the state of Massachusetts. While these sorts of fairs happen with great regularity in mostly white, suburban neighborhoods, until the neighborhood group organizing it received a grant from a national foundation, there had never been one locally that was fully bilingual in Spanish and English, that fed families food donated from neighborhood Colombian and Dominican restaurants, and that featured autism advocates with shared experiences of racial discrimination in education and healthcare. In this vein, I really admire the work ofRicarose Roque, whose Family Creative Learningworkshopsleverage the strengths that minoritized parents with little background in technology can bring to support their child’s digital learning.

Individual solutions alone though will never solve systemic problems. Hands-on, in-person workshops that provide opportunities for technological tinkering are a non-starter during the pandemic, which has removed the possibilities of parentsbuilding supportive networks through everyday interactions at sites like child care centers. Taking up Craig’s question, about how to build a more equitable future moving forward, any investment in reconstructing a better post-COVID-19 society must center the needs of those most severely affected. Personally, I would like to see greater public investment in high-quality broadband internet access—whichVikki Katzhas beenchampioningfor years now—so that all children have the potential to do their homework at home without having to work from theparking lot of a Taco Bellto access wi-fi. I would love for there to be guaranteed paid family leave in the U.S. that allows more than just the most privileged mothers and fathers to build the kind of relationships with their children that pay dividends later on. In the U.S., there are also decades of housing segregation to reckon with and correct so that all children get to socially, emotionally, and cognitively benefit from racially integrated neighborhoods and schools. There should also be greater regulatory pressure across all branches of government placed on big tech companies like Facebook and Alphabet, who have enabled informational ecosystems that regularly expose minors to misinformation, disinformation, andadult content masquerading as child-friendly.

Speaking to Sonia’s most recent book, spanning both families of children with disabilities and ethnic minority families, I have to see those categories in my work as overlapping and through anintersectional lens. The dream of someday joining a program like Microsoft’s Autism Hiring Program (which has truly changed the lives of some autistic people and their loved ones) or becoming a “geeky” software engineer is one that is inherently raced, classed, and gendered. Yes, technology can provide immense sensory pleasure for these young people and open up new possibilities for socializing remotely with friends through online gaming and video chat. But it was only the parents of Black and Latinx autistic boys and girls that I talked to in my research who were afraid of police officers seeing their child as a mortal threat and treating them as such, like 15-year-oldStephon Watts. I am energized by BIPOC disabled people and parents of disabled children like artist, scholar, and activist Jen White Johnsonutilizing and developing resources through social media platforms like Twitter and Instagram; for example, coalescing around hashtags like#BlackDisabledLivesMatterto engage in advocacy. And touching upon the themes that both Sonia and Craig raise about mental health, teenagers, and technology, this is another conversation within which disability communities should be centered and consulted.

Bios

Meryl Alper is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Northeastern University, where she researches the social and cultural implications of communication technologies, with a focus on disability and digital media, children and families’ technology use, and mobile communication. She is the author of Digital Youth with Disabilities(MIT Press, 2014) and Giving Voice: Mobile Communication, Disability, and Inequality(MIT Press, 2017), which was awarded a 2018 PROSE Award Honorable Mention from the Association of American Publishers and the 2018 Outstanding Publication in the Sociology of Disability Award from the American Sociological Association. In her research and teaching, Dr. Alper also draws on over 15 years of professional experience in educational children’s media as a researcher, strategist, and consultant with Sesame Workshop, PBS KIDS, Nickelodeon, and Disney.

Sonia Livingstone is a professor in the Department of Media and Communicationsat the London School of Economics and Political Science. Taking a comparative, critical and contextualised approach, her research examines how the changing conditions of mediation are reshaping everyday practices and possibilities for action. She has published 20 books on media audiences, especially children and young people’s risks and opportunities, media literacy and rights in the digital environment. Her new book is “Parenting for a Digital Future: How hopes and fears about technology shape children’s lives” (Oxford University Press, with Alicia Blum-Ross). Sonia currently directs the Digital Futures Commission(with the 5Rights Foundation) and the “Global Kids Online”project (with UNICEF), among other projects. She blogs at www.parenting.digital.

S. Craig Watkins is the Ernest A. Sharpe Centennial Professor at the University of Texas at Austin.  He is the author of six books including The Digital Edgeand Don’t Knock the Hustle.  Craig is also the founding Director of the Institute for Media Innovation, a boutique hub for research and design. Among other things, the Institute is currently working on projects that address technology and mental health, bias in the deployment of artificial intelligence, and the social, racial, and economic aspects of a post-COVID world.

Unequal Struggles and Impossible Digital Choices for Parents During COVID19 (Part 1)

Sonia Livingstone: This is an extraordinary time for parents trying to ensure their children learn and gain a good education, while also working, and worrying about the family’s income, health and a host of everyday practicalities during COVID-19. Among the problems they need to tackle are how tomaximize the opportunities and minimize the risksof the digital technologies they are able to access. Of course, achieving such a balance has long been a concern of parents, but this is hugely exacerbated at a time when, it seems, so much of our daily lives has gone online. This includes, for many, their children’s education, contact with friends and relatives, access to information, and much of their entertainment, all of which are fast becomingdigital by default. Also to be contended with is that many commercial and institutional services, including most forms of welfare and support, are now functioning only online, and that isolation is difficult for many, resulting in adverse consequences for mental health.

I’m especially interested in the ways that life online brings its own problems.Digital inequalitiesare heightened, and lack ofmeaningful accessor digital skills matters more than ever. Reports suggest that online risks of harm of all kinds have increased – from scams and cybercrime to bullying and sexual abuse. Less obvious perhaps but also of growing concern is the fact that life online means ever more of our daily activities and interactions aredigitally tracked, with our personal data being collected and aggregated by others and possibly hacked or exploited. COVID-19 is far from the only “digital” problem of the recent period: the challenge ofmisinformation or false informationremains largely unmet, with many parents and children struggling to locate or evaluate reliable information regarding news, learning, health, finances, or other significant matters. All this contributes to a climate of confusion, mistrust, and tension.

On a more positive note, I suggest that this unprecedented turn to the digital has laid to rest some myths that have undermined parents in recent years. Three myths have been of particular concern to me in my own research on “Parenting for a Digital Future.”

The first myth is that “screen time” matters. In fact, thedemise of screen timehad already been announced by a series of high-level expert pronouncements, including from the American Academy of Pediatrics who originally invented and promoted the notion of screen time 30 years ago. Reviews of the available evidence have been increasingly critical of the quality of that evidence as well as the conclusions popularly drawn from it, that namely that what matters is the amount of time children spend with one screen or another rather than the quality of the content that they engage with, the context in which they watch, or the social connections that mediated engagement makes possible. Still, as we found our in-depth qualitative research with parents, even though the academics and other experts were voicing doubts, for parents, screen time has been a rod for their backs, asource of conflictin its own right, and a source of guilt and shame regarding their parenting practices and their seeming laxity in “controlling” or, worse, “policing” their children’s activities. But since COVID-19, the mass media and public opinion has radically shifted, and it is at last acknowledged that technology, perhaps like books or bicycles, can be good or bad for children, depending on how they are used and by whom.

The second myth that my research contradicts, and that I believe we now should lay to rest, is that parents know nothing about the digital world and the children know everything. The idea ofdigital natives and digital immigrants. This idea has been extraordinarily successful, and it has had the advantage of recognizing that, perhaps for the first time in history, children genuinely have knowledge of value in the wider society, well beyond the small private sphere in which they are often sequestered. But it also had two adverse consequences. First, it hasallowed policymakersto rhetorically celebrate children’s digital expertise with the effect of undermining the case, or perceived need, for educational support or, indeed, regulation of the digital realm. Second, and receiving less attention still, it has led many to undervalue the contribution that parents could make to the children’s development and digital literacy. As I saw clearly in our “parenting for a digital future” research,parental interests and expertiseregarding digital technologies, while of course heavily stratified by class and other forms of inequality, is nonethelessroutinely underestimatedby schools and other societal institutions, as well as by themselves. With appropriate encouragement and guidance, parents could harness their digital knowledge gained through our personal interest to benefit their children. Indeed, many are trying to do exactly this, with some success.

Third, it has been often said in recent years that young people prefer the online world to the offline world, that they would rather talk to their friends online than engage with a person in front of them, and there is no natural limit on their desire to go digital. Life during COVID-19 has clearly proved the falsity of such a myth. For young people as for the rest of us, the task of balancing online and offline remains critical and difficult, and the value of seeing friends face-to-face, of going out into the world, into the community, and engaging there freely with others, is as vital to them as for everyone. The “COVID generation,” so-called, is becoming angry, let down by the generations in power on this as in other matters. We may expect them to take increasingly to the streets, and to digital public spaces, as the actuality and perception ofgenerational injusticegrows.

Meryl Alper: These are indeed isolating times for so many families; a stretch of months (though it feels so much longer) during which technology has been a lifeline for connecting with friends, extended family, community, and the broader public. This dependency on social media and digital platforms, as Sonia notes, has also created new possibilities for those who seek to further surveil, sow conflict among, and physically and emotionally harm young people, particularly those from poor and minoritized communities. I additionally appreciate Sonia’s work to illustrate that various myths about children, youth, and media were false long before COVID-19 and should not be perpetuated going forward: beliefs in the utility of “screen time” as a concept, the idea that children can fend for themselves online and well intentioned adults have nothing to contribute, and the notion that adolescents and teens choose media over people when most are just finding ways to bond and thrive through whatever form of sociality is available and useful to them.

Particularly within the U.S. context, I have been thinking a lot about how the “choices” parents are being offered right now for managing their household’s health and well-being (and sometimes that of their own older parents), their family’s media use, and their children’s education (i.e., “Zoom school” and “learning pods”) are not really choices at all under the conditions of capitalism, neoliberalism, and “rugged individualism.” As they stand, the institutions and infrastructures are not built for marginalized parents to make mistakes just like any other parents because the systems are not designed for interdependency and collective care across families and within communities. Moreover, the illusory nature of choice is only now being discovered by some (primarily white)families when other parents (especially Black and brown caregivers) have not been under any such illusion.

Distance learning in the pandemic has enabled some students with disabilities to thrive while it has set others back significantly.In my work, I am especially interested in how children with disabilities and their families—across race, ethnicity, and social class—have been making the most of sometimes fairly awful (and illegal) learning conditions for their child, and to what extent digital media and technology have helped or hurt them in their efforts to thrive. Over the past seven years, I have been conducting ethnographic research in the homes of over 60 children ages 3 to 13 on the autism spectrum in Boston and Los Angeles (remotely starting in April 2020) by interviewing parents, observing kids engaged in their media habits and rituals, and asking them to explain the appeal and challenges of technology to me. What I have found so far is that for many families of disabled children in the COVID era, being cut off from various forms of institutional support and caregivers turning to technology to provide some form of relief is not an unfamiliar experience.

Take Sofia Acosta (pseudonym), a five-year-old non-speaking Latina girl on the autism spectrum with a deep love of the classic storybook character Clifford the Big Red Dog. When I visited her Boston apartment in July 2019, her mom April explained that Sofia was stuck at home and not attending summer camp, that her days at home lacked structure, and that she was usually up all night for those reasons, combined with the fact that she had a naturally dysregulated sleeping pattern. Watching media, and especially Clifford videos on YouTube, was the only thing that helped keep Sofia calm and maintain control of her body. While staying home, having no summer camp options, and passing time on structureless days was new for many families in July 2020, my visit with Sofia was a year earlier. She was not attending camp because local programs for autistic kids were too expensive. She was not leaving the apartment much because her home was in a predominantly Black and Latinx neighborhood with very little green space and Sofia’s senses got easily overwhelmed on mass transit. And she was spending so much time using media as a coping mechanism because she was on a never-ending wait list for speech and behavioral therapy services that might have given her important communicative and expressive tools.

Many people have made excruciatingly hard choices and major sacrifices to incorporate social distancing and self-isolation into their vocabularies and lifestyles post-COVID-19. Interlocking forms of structural inequality have meant, though, that Sofia and the Acosta family were already intimately familiar with being socially distanced and heavily technologically mediated. Disabled adults, youth, and their loved oneshave been telling us for a long timehow unsustainable it is to leave families with no other options but to turn to media and technology to offset undue caregiving responsibilities that are actually failed societal and moral obligations.

S. Craig Watkins: In the work that we did for the Digital Edgethe core focus was on addressing the inventive ways Black and Latinx youth navigate social, educational, and digital inequality.  The Digital 'Edge' is a recognition of the tension that shapes how people of color engage technology.  On the one hand, "edge" represents the cutting edge or the ways in which Black and Latinx youth have been leaders, innovators, and early adopters, especially when it comes to social and mobile media. Black youth were the first among their generational counterparts to adopt Twitter at scale, leading to the rise of the highly influential Black Twitter.  But "edge" in this context also points to marginalization and inequality.  Thus, even as Black and Latinx youth have asserted a strong presence in the digital world, they do so under social, educational, and economic constraints not of their own making.

As we did the research for the Digital Edge we also explored the home life of students and this gave us an opportunity to learn more about their parents. The educational levels among many of the parents were quite low, thus severely restricting their employment prospects.  Most of the parents in our sample worked in low-skill, low-wage occupations.  Still, the parents that we met were extraordinarily savvy and had a sharp understanding of society.  

Many of these parents made enormous sacrifices to ensure their children had access to computers, the internet, and mobile devices.  And although consistent and robust access to these technologies were often marred by economic precarity, parents felt it was important that their children had internet connectivity even though it was difficult to afford. Over the years research has shown that the presence of a child in the home is a strong predictor of whether technology will be in the home.  

I've always been struck by the "technology dilemma" that parents grapple with.  Even as they may have some concerns about screen time  or more specifically the kind of content their children are exposed to, most parents tell us that they believe they must make computers, internet, and mobile devices available to their kids.  They understand in some opaque way that mastery of these technologies is now required to find opportunity in the economy of tomorrow. When it comes to providing their children access to technology, parents feel as if they are damned if they do and damned if they do not.

We learned that parents in low-wage occupations have the same concerns as parents in high-wage occupations.  All parents want their kids to be safe, happy, and able to access good schools and meaningful opportunities to pursue the aspirations.  But not all parents have the full stack of resources--money, good schools, extra-curricular activities, robust social supports, or a stay-at-home parent-- to bolster their children's life chances.  Likewise, not all parents have access to the social and informational capital that deepens their knowledge, parental efficacy, and ability to support how their children navigate the digital world.  Meryl, I really appreciate your assertion that parents who care for kids with learning disabilities struggle to find the adequate social and technological supports to engage their children’s potential for learning and development.  I also like how you draw similarities between the challenges they face, “being socially distanced and heavily technologically mediated,” and the challenges millions of families with kids restricted to their homes for learning and recreation now face.

We must figure out more effective ways to support parents and their efforts to support their children.  This includes finding culturally relevant ways to introduce parents to ideas and potential strategies they can employ in their efforts to equip their children with the resources to participate in the connected world.  Now more than ever, young children must learn how to protect their privacy and data rights while also increasing their accumulation of social, civic, and educational capital via digital technologies. As Sonia and Meryl note, one of the outcomes of COVID is the increased reliance on social and digital platforms. Among other things, this means that we are all subjected to more surveillance, scams, and disinformation campaigns as Sonia explains.  

Sonia’s point that we should forever do away with the “young people as digital natives” and “old people as digital immigrants” perspective is well taken.  The framework overlooks the fact that parents have a lot to offer young people including experience, wisdom, and the importance of empathy in the connected world.  Most parents are looking for answers instead of fear mongering and misinformation.  More affluent parents have access to the social and informational networks that enhance their capacity to support how their children navigate the digital world.  But many parents do not have access to these resources, hence their ability to support their children's digital activities face severe challenges.  

I'll end with this question: how do we design ways for parents and guardians who manage resource-constrained households to access the social and informational networks that empower their desire to support their children's participation in the connected world and secure pathways to opportunity? 

Bios

Meryl Alper is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Northeastern University, where she researches the social and cultural implications of communication technologies, with a focus on disability and digital media, children and families’ technology use, and mobile communication. She is the author of Digital Youth with Disabilities(MIT Press, 2014) and Giving Voice: Mobile Communication, Disability, and Inequality(MIT Press, 2017), which was awarded a 2018 PROSE Award Honorable Mention from the Association of American Publishers and the 2018 Outstanding Publication in the Sociology of Disability Award from the American Sociological Association. In her research and teaching, Dr. Alper also draws on over 15 years of professional experience in educational children’s media as a researcher, strategist, and consultant with Sesame Workshop, PBS KIDS, Nickelodeon, and Disney.

Sonia Livingstone is a professor in the Department of Media and Communicationsat the London School of Economics and Political Science. Taking a comparative, critical and contextualised approach, her research examines how the changing conditions of mediation are reshaping everyday practices and possibilities for action. She has published 20 books on media audiences, especially children and young people’s risks and opportunities, media literacy and rights in the digital environment. Her new book is “Parenting for a Digital Future: How hopes and fears about technology shape children’s lives” (Oxford University Press, with Alicia Blum-Ross). Sonia currently directs the Digital Futures Commission(with the 5Rights Foundation) and the “Global Kids Online”project (with UNICEF), among other projects. She blogs at www.parenting.digital.

S. Craig Watkins is the Ernest A. Sharpe Centennial Professor at the University of Texas at Austin.  He is the author of six books including The Digital Edgeand Don’t Knock the Hustle.  Craig is also the founding Director of the Institute for Media Innovation, a boutique hub for research and design. Among other things, the Institute is currently working on projects that address technology and mental health, bias in the deployment of artificial intelligence, and the social, racial, and economic aspects of a post-COVID world.

Launching our Popular Culture and Civic Imagination Toolkit

Welcome to our Popular Culture and Civic Imagination Toolkit! Here we tap the stories, TV shows, games, movies and folk stories we love (and love to hate) to activate our imaginations as we work through the social challenges our communities face. Our playful easy to do activities engage popular culture, imagination and issues of collective concern, tackling questions like: How do we want to live with one another? How do we resolve conflicts in our community? How do we know what’s fair for us and for others? How do we work together to solve big problems? 

​The toolkit is intended for a broad age group - parents and children (5+), peer-groups, those working in educational settings and really anyone interested in watching, remixing, creating, and having fun with popular culture!

 Our number one goal here is to help adults and children (and others) to have fun around shared media experiences, moving us beyond the negative focus on “screen time” to a more generative mode of co-creating our culture. These activities are shaped by concepts such as perspective taking and emotional intelligence, but more broadly, designed to help young people to think about how they live in communities and physical spaces with other people, how they work together to achieve a social order that is fair to all, how they might learn to appreciate each other’s different perspectives and experiences, and how they might look at their physical surroundings, both places and things, in new, even magical, ways. We also see these activities as an childhood entry into media literacy (understood not as a school subject but as part of our everyday lives as media consumers and fans.) 

​Each activity in the toolkit can be completed as a stand-alone unit. Unless otherwise noted, these activities here emerged from brainstorming sessions with the members of the Civic Paths research group.

 This is a work in progress and we welcome feedback and new activity suggestions! Do you have activities that you would like to submit to the Toolkit? Please, reach out to us via this form.

​You can also download the printer friendly version of this toolkit here.

Rethinking "Screen Time" In the Age of Covid-19 (Part Three)

Sangita Shresthova: Yes, screentime is an incredibly blunt, and largely ineffective tool for navigating children engagement with media. As Susan pointed out “screens” are just a piece of hardware. I would add that “time” measures duration and tells us nothing about what is actually taking place. Clearly. we need more nuanced approaches that take into account everything that has been brought up in our exchange.  And, we need them now more than ever.

This summer, I got quite excited about the possibilities of online interest-based learning for young children when my son took several classes though Outschool (outschool.com).

The classes (taught over zoom) were generally small (ranging from 4-6 kids) and short (15-30 minutes, over several days or weeks). The offerings were staggeringly diverse, with classes on almost any topic imaginable (from butterflies to photography, from drawing superheroes to Bollywood dance).  While somewhat uneven because some instructors were more experienced than others, the classes all helped my son connect learning to a subject area that interested him. He learned a lot and enjoyed it. 

Perhaps it was this positive experience that made the first days of distance-learning kindergarten such a shock over the past week. Responding to critiques of how distance learning happened in public schools this spring, California has passed legislation mandating duration of instruction for every grade level. For kindergarten it is 180 minutes. To meet this mandate, my son’s school leaned into “screentime” and implemented a three hour zoom call, which the teacher now has to fill with programming. It is early days yet, so I am working hard to keep an open mind about how this may play out. And yet, seeing my son stare vacantly at the screen as he moved into hour two on day two, I can’t help but think that there are better ways to do this.

I know that many educators and parents are in the thick of it right now. We are all navigating uncharted territory and the desire to hold on to the “old” normal as a measuring stick is overwhelmingly tempting. It is also dangerous as it obscures the fact that we are living through, what might be, a once in a life-time opportunity to re-evaluate our assumptions about media in our children’s lives.

Henry Jenkins: In Susan’s story, her son’s comment, “you should watch it,” was an invitation into his world, sharing his new favorite program with her and thus opening up a channel of communication. My experience has been that those invitations are most apt to occur when the family has created a history of such open conversations through the years and developed a shared understanding of media content as a resource around which the family might come together and work through its differences. This is very different from advice that parents should surveil their children, looking at their internet history behind their backs, say, or otherwise go where they have not been invited. The first is about building trust and respecting your children’s growing agency to make meaningful choices. The second represents a lack of trust and respect and is apt to further unravel communication within the family over time. 

Our children need adults who will watch their backs, not snoop over their shoulders. They need mentorship as they confront some of the challenges of the digital world and as they construct their own identities in relation to the culture around them. But they are only going to accept our advice when they actively seek it out rather than having it imposed upon them. Child development literature suggests that children adventure a bit further from their parents’ orbit each year they grow older but that this stepping out is inconsistent, that they also seek out their parents’ hands when they feel uncomfortable. A wise parent looks for those openings to provide the support they need. They let go of some control over their kids and instead empower them to stand on their own feet. The indirectness of conversations around television make it an effective middle ground for both letting go and providing support.

Sangita’s story shows something else. Restricting or imposing a specific quantity of “screen time” for children is misguided. Our relations to media should be understood in qualitative rather than quantitative terms. Research on fandom shows that the average fan consumes less television than the general population, not more. Fans actively choose what to watch; they pay close attention as they watch; and watching springboards them towards other social and creative experiences. There are times in the life of a fan when their relationship to the medium is more intensive than others: they are absorbing a new program; they are working through some emotional crisis; they are feeling bored or lonely, so a regular time table does not serve us well if the goal is to ensure a more valuable engagement with the media in our lives. So if the changed circumstances surrounding COVID-19 and Zoom-based learning are forcing us to relax our quantitative control, we should be having the kind of conversation amongst parents and educators we are modeling here regarding what we think a valuable relationship to media might look like.

The Civic Imagination Project has been exploring how adults might learn a more playful way of thinking through the future together. Instead of becoming bogged down in frustrations over our current problems we need to stop and ask each other what kind of world we would want to share together if anything were possible. Then we can think from a fresh perspective about how to achieve that.  Adults need permission to play together.  Children are already playing with the contents of their culture, including media content. Play is how children learn. They don’t need to reclaim a sense of imaginative possibilities as adults do, because they haven’t lost them. They need to learn how to direct their imaginations towards fairness and caring in the world around them. They need to learn how to connect what they see on the screen to what they observe about their surroundings. This playful engagement with media content should be as much a part of media literacy as developing a skeptical understanding of who makes media and what interests are served by its production and distribution. 

In a few days, we will be sharing on this blog some new resources that parents can use to foster civic imagination through playful engagement with the media content that their children already care about. We see these exercises as offering parents some concrete models for how they might introduce these kinds of constructive relationships to popular culture into the context of their own family life, respecting each family’s values, but also respecting each family member’s emotional and social needs. And then we will have some more perspectives to share through two more conversations. So don’t touch that dial!

Susan Kresnicka: You are absolutely correct, Henry. My family has a history of tapping entertainment as an expanded vocabulary, and it's proving more helpful than ever in this uncertain and stressful moment. We need every recourse we can find to raise, express, and process the sprawling range of thoughts and feelings this era is provoking.

I agree, Sangita, that when kindergarteners are being asked to participate in 180 minutes of Zoom instruction each day, indeed, there must be a better way. And tired, trivializing, derogatory assumptions about media – and the judgment they can provoke – seem likely only to obscure it. I look forward to learning more about the Civic Imagination toolkit and how it can help parents forge a new, healthier path.

 BIOS

Henry Jenkins is the Provost’s Professor of Communication, Journalism, CInematic Arts and Education at the University of Southern California and the founder and former co-director of the MIT Comparative Media Studies Program. He has been a dedicated advocate for media literacy education, recently receiving the Jesse McKanse award for his life-time contribution to this field, including the publication of Confronting the Challenges of a Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century which helped to launch the MacArthur Foundation’s Digital Media and Learning Initiative. Subsequent work here included Reading in a Participatory Culture and Participatory Culture in a Networked Society. His other work on children and media includes The Children’s Culture Reader and From Barbie to Mortal Kombat: Gender and Computer Games. He is currently writing a book which examines children’s media of the 1950s and 1960s in light of shifting understandings of childhood in Post-War American culture. His most recent books include Participatory Culture: Interviews, Popular Culture and the Civic Imagination: Case Studies of Creative Social Change and Comics and Stuff.

Sangita Shresthova is the Director of Research of the Civic Paths Group based at the University of Southern California. Her work focuses on intersections among online learning, popular culture, performance, new media, politics, and globalization. She is also one of the authors of Popular Culture and the Civic Imagination: Case Studies of Creative Change (2020) and of  By Any Media Necessary: The New Activism of Youth (2016), both published by NYU Press. Her earlier book on Bollywood (Is It All About Hips?) was published in 2011 by Sage. She is one of the creators of the Digital Civics Toolkit (digitalcivicstoolkit.org), a collection of resources for educators, teachers and community leaders to support youth learning. Her own artistic work has been presented in academic and creative venues around the world including the Schaubuehne (Berlin), the Other Festival (Chennai), the EBS International Documentary Festival (Seoul), and the American Dance Festival (Durham, NC). She enjoys engaging with diverse communities through her workshops, lectures and projects. sangitashresthova.com

Susan Kresnicka

Founder and president of research firm KR&I, Susan is a cultural anthropologist with over 18 years of experience in the commercial sector. Specializing in foundational research to establish core human drivers for consumer behavior, Susan has led large-scale, multi-modal research projects for a range of industries. A student of fandom for more than a decade, Susan has conducted fan research for a variety of iconic entertainment IP brands, sports teams, and brands built around passionate hobbyists. Whether she is studying fandom or another topic, Susan specializes in tying consumer behavior to core human needs, allowing clients to establish more enduring and meaningful bonds with the people upon whom their commercial success relies. Susan holds an M.A. in social anthropology from The University of Texas at Austin, sits on the professional advisory board for UCLA’s Master of Social Science program, and regularly speaks publicly on fandom, gender, morality, identity, and the value of anthropology in business. Her work has been covered in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Forbes, Variety, and more. kresnickaresearch.com 

Rethinking "Screen Time" in the Age of Covid-19 (Part Two)

Sangita Shrestova:  I was struck by Henry’s observation that parenting through media calls for a different set of parenting skills.  In reading what has been said so far, I am starting to see some of the contours of what such skills might need to be. Clearly, there is a lot to be said for a mindset that appreciates, rather than denigrates, the important role that popular culture plays in children's lives. We also need to be able to recognize the opportunities for discussion that TV shows, and other media content provide. And, we need to have the tools to encourage the imagination at opportune moments. For me, this all begins with a need for open-minded listening, which was so poignantly captured in Susan’s recounting of the conversation she had with her friend’s daughter about Disney princesses. As Jackson Bird, a trans-activist and former staff member of the Harry Potter Alliance, once said in an interview, “We need to learn to listen, to really listen.” On some level, this may seem to be an almost banal observation, and, yet, I see again and again, that we (adults) often do not really tune into what children are saying, and just as importantly, what they are not saying (but are communicating in other ways) about their relationship with popular culture. 

I am particularly tuned into the non-verbal aspects of “listening” because of my own background in dance and performance. I also spent years working with Bollywood dance fans, whose imagination is activated when they re-choreograph the dances contained in Hindi films. For these dancer fans, choreography becomes the space where the imagination is activated. This is where they engage, critique, re-interpret popular culture content.  I realize that this may be too far afield, but I actually have been thinking a lot about the performative and embodied possibilities for parenting through media, particularly at this moment when our physicality is limited in such profound ways and where I see so much desire for imagined and actual co-presence. Henry described action figures as “authoring tools” for re-imagined stories. I am really interested in encouraging improvised and staged performances inspired by popular culture as moments that allow us to embody and share our imagination.

Henry Jenkins: Amidst the many great questions that Susan posed for us, the one that struck me the most was the question, “When do we feel pride about our relationships to popular culture?” As a culture, we are programmed to feel shame and guilt, but rarely pride. Watching television, one of my mentors used to say, was like masturbation. We all do it sometimes, but we don’t like to talk about it, and never in front of the neighbors. I used to wear a button that said simply “I Love TV” and people would struggle so much to figure out what TV stood for, because it couldn’t possibly mean television. Why would you wear a button proclaiming your love for television?  

I think this is part of the hidden curriculum of the concept of “screen time.” We start from a logic which says this is something we should minimize because it has no intrinsic value and in many cases, is associated with some social harm, if nothing else because it takes time away from other, more valuable activities we should be engaging with, and “Aren’t you ashamed to let your children watch television instead of reading books or socializing with their friends or playing outside?” Well, Covid-19 is shifting our priorities on some of those other things, leading many people around the world to the conclusion that maybe it is better -- for now at least -- for children to socialize with friends (or go to school) through a screen. 

“Screen time” talk starts from a series of normalized assumptions about what it means to consume media. The first of those assumptions is that what happens on screens is completely separate from the other activities in our lives. So, in Sangita’s example above, television is assumed to be a mental activity (of a relative low order) which has little or nothing to do with our physical bodies (or more accurately, it involves bodies at rest rather than in movement.) I wonder if the people who make this mind-body distinction have ever seen children watching (or perhaps playing with) television. They are rarely sitting still, they are only sometimes giving it their full attention, it IS integrated into a range of other activities, and they are often physically moving around in one way or another while they are “watching” the show. One reason they watch the same programs over and over is that they catch different bits each time, though the other reason is that the ritualized nature of certain moments are comforting and familiar. We know that children learn stories through their bodies and their voices, and contrary to our high-low culture assumptions, this is as true for television as it is for children’s books.

“Screen Time” talk assumes that television is socially isolating, ignoring all of the signs that television content becomes a social currency that enables conversations with others and that cutting kids off from shows that are part of the shared mythology of their peer group is going to be far more socially isolating than allowing them the time to watch the show itself. And of course, much of what kids do with screens already involves real time or asynchronous social interaction with others with whom they are chatting or playing games or just hanging out on Zoom.

“Screen Time” talk assumes that watching television is less apt to spark the imagination than reading a book. The logic goes that we have to construct in our mind’s eye the physical world where the story takes place and television’s visuals give us that information too easily. Fair enough, but books often tell us what the characters are thinking and feeling, where-as television requires us to interpret implicit social cues and thus fosters emotional intelligence through perspective taking. 

“Screen Time” talk assumes that television is a site of pure consumption (often understood in passive terms) whereas the research suggests it is often a site of active cognitive interpretation and the starting point for a range of other creative and expressive activities for our children (go back to what I said about action figures as authoring tools.) 

“Screen Time” talk assumes too often that everything kids do with screens is more or less the same, rather than focusing on the range of activities in children’s lives, and what aspects of those activities get conducted on screens under what circumstances, and how those aspects are connected integrally to things that children are doing when they are not focused on screens. 

What I am calling for is that we move beyond the fragmentation and border policing that regulating “screen time” requires and begin to think about our children’s lives in a more holistic manner.

Susan Kresnicka: Funny, as I was reading through the deconstructions of 'screen time' we've been listing in this dialogue, I noticed for the first time how tellingly shallow the term itself is. (I suspect I'm way late to this realization!). We don't call it 'content time' or 'story time' – we've named it after the most superficial and non-dynamic attribute we could identify: the cold, hard, physical screen. Speaks volumes...

I've been incredibly grateful for this conversation over the last few days. It's been a difficult week for my family, with the start of this weird, virtual school year. My son, entering his sophomore year in college, is deeply resentful that we haven't agreed to let him move halfway across the country to live in an off-campus apartment while the school grapples with the intersection of a pandemic, an impulse-driven quasi-adult population, and its own financial realities. My daughter, starting her senior year in high school, has a heightened sense of anxiety surrounding this significant year. At varying moments, this week brought tears, cold silence, door slamming, and awkward dinners. Do you know where we found relief this week? TV. And not because we curled up in front of our respective devices and watched our own things to zone out. Content offered relief during this fraught week because, at moments when we felt disconnected from one another, it created an opportunity to reconnect. After a particularly tense few days, our son began to shift (slowly) into acceptance about the college decision. The very first signal that this shift was underway was when he told me how much he was enjoying watching The Boys. "What do you like about it?," I asked. "Well, it's about this guy whose girlfriend gets killed by a superhero and how he changes as a result. You should watch it." It was the first uncharged conversation we'd had in days, and it served as an invitation: "I'm moving past my anger," he implied, "and I want you to understand the ideas that are speaking to me in this difficult moment." I learned long ago that if my children tell me I should watch something, I should. I'm now on S1E5 of The Boys, and my son and I have a new point of connection to draw upon as we work through this. With my daughter, content has been our relationship salve for years. At the end of a truly wrenching tear-filled night this week, as we tried to patch ourselves (and each other) up, she asked if I would stay in her room and watch TV with her. We crawled under the covers, held hands, and watched Hugh Laurie demonstrate the tension between exceptionalism and human connection in an episode of House ("Sometimes, you just have to watch an episode of House," she told me.)

In my research and in my own life, I see time and again how shared content experiences – whether synchronous or not – help us forge, maintain, deepen, and repair social bonds, including those with the people we love most. When we dismiss and demonize entertainment media, we conveniently ignore this crucial function. An incredibly insightful friend once told me, "You can't understand something if you are judging it." I believe that this chronic cultural judgment of entertainment media, hypocritically embraced and lauded as a measure of responsible parenthood, cuts us off from a full understanding of how entertainment operates in our lives, including its potential for strengthening our relationships with our children

Rethinking "Screen Time" In the Age of Covid 19 (Part One)

This is the first of a series of exchanges where parents, teachers, and researchers share their insights about children and media in the era of Covid-19. How does the concept of “screen time” break down as we are all forced to conduct schooling, work, social relations, and every other aspect of our lives on line? Why is there a residual guilt that many parents are feeling about leaving their children alone with screens under these circumstances? How are people coping with the challenges of working, parenting, and home-schooling within the same limited real estate and same limited time frame? And how might we take advantage of this moment of profound disruption and discomfort in order to construct a new and perhaps better relationship with media in the context of our family life?·  

Sangita Shresthova: As I started to think about media, parenting, and imagination in this moment, I was drawn to a seemingly common-place conversation I had recently with a friend, who is also a parent. We were chatting about current events, supporting each other through our concerns about our own parents, and commiserating on the challenges of having our children be at home all the time, when she suddenly exclaimed almost breathlessly that she felt she was doing one thing right in the midst of all this - she had pretty much eliminated all "screentime" for her kids. As a media scholar with an enduring commitment to the participatory and creative possibilities of media, I felt my body tense up immediately. She went on to explain that she had pretty much banned all shows, all media, all facetime, from her kids day.  “Media is bad for them”, she argued. She then asked me how I was approaching this problem.

“Well”, I responded, “I find measuring screen time useless”. To me, the question isn't whether my five year old son is using a "screen". Rather I am interested in how he, my partner, and I are able to engage with media. My friend was clearly taken aback and shifted topics abruptly, leaving our conversation awkwardly unresolved. I never got to say all that I wanted to say on this topic.

So, I am going to use this blog conversation as an excuse to connect my personal experiences with parenting and media to my work on participatory culture and the civic imagination. 

As a media scholar and practitioner whose work focuses on participatory cultures (think Bollywood dance fandoms), connected learning (think Lego clubs) and participatory politics (think Facebook supported DIY facemask making), I have a deep appreciation for how media can be helpful to communities, educators and others. Of course, I also realize that the challenges that surround our current media landscape and popular culture narratives are very real. In fact, our current work on the civic imagination explores how we may tap, complicate, and remix such narratives to ignite creativity to imagine how we may be able to tackle these, and other, issues.

The work and research I do has helped me take a more nuanced approach to thinking through media in my son’s life. This has been even more true over the past few months when my son’s life outside the home pretty much ceased to exist. Though handling all this is, by no means, easy, making sense of the ways that we can use media to connect, imagine, and learn has helped me and my family stay afloat.

For me and my family, the first days of California's shut down in March triggered a profound sense of isolation and disconnect. Like everyone, we had been abruptly severed from our daily routines. We also felt so, so far away from my family in the Czech Republic, which under normal circumstances was "just a few hours of flight time" away. In fact, we had suddenly woken up to the diasporic person's worst nightmare as the many miles that separate us from our loved ones had become an insurmountable distance overnight. 

I was struggling. My son was struggling. My partner was struggling. Emotions were high. And, then, unexpectedly, Czech public broadcast television (Czech TV) came to our rescue. 

Within days of the lockdown being implemented in the Czech Republic, Czech TV launched a Učí Telka, daily classroom based program for kids in grades 1-5. Pulled together overnight, the program was a valiant effort to provide continuity to children in the country who had, like my son, suddenly had to transition to being at home and not going to school. The build-it-on-the-fly ethos of the program was openly acknowledged by the moderators, teachers and students who were all learning how to do this while on air.  As my son and I tuned in asynchronously everyday, we saw children like my son trying to keep their masks on. We also saw the teachers muddling through how to teach for a TV audience. We saw this confusion transform into resolve as the weeks went on. We too soon found our rhythm.

We learned how to complete the daily lessons. We enjoyed the TV show recesses.  By the time the program ended in mid June, we felt connected to the imagined community that had formed around it.

Czech TV school is only one example of the many ways in which media has helped my family connect over the past months. There are the daily Facetime/Whatsapp storytelling calls that allow my son to spend time with his grandparents. There are also many shows that have sparked his imagination by connecting him to new ideas and information. The Smurfs, a cartoon centered on the village life of small blue creatures, taught him about appreciating every member of the community and inspired him to create imaginary scenes that push past the stories themselves. Wild Kratts, an animated  television series that follows the wild life focused adventures of two brothers, inspired “what if” conversations about the animals, the brothers, and, most importantly, the antagonist Donita. I could go on.

In thinking my experiences, over the past weeks, I am really excited about this exchange. For me, parenting with and through media in the midst of a pandemic is about identifying opportunities for creative exchange, as well as, inspiring a sense of connection and community at this otherwise profoundly isolating time. Media has helped my family feel connected. It has encouraged dialogue, and has inspired our imaginations at a time when we  desperately need to find ways to feel even a little hopeful.

Henry Jenkins:    Sangita's phrase here, "parenting through media," captures something essential about the relationship to "screen time" we want to foster. Most of the time, people who mumble about reducing their children's "screen time" imagine parenting by media: that is, the media functions as an electronic babysitter, they imagine shifting their attention elsewhere and leaving their children to be a feral child of YouTube. This is something all parents do from time to time and they should not feel guilty for doing so if the alternative is to become overwhelmed and lash out emotionally at the children who, under the current circumstances, are constantly under foot.

But parenting through media requires a different set of parenting skills. First, the ideal may be some form of co-viewing where the parent and child are watching a program which provides each of them some degree of pleasure. The parent has the remote in their hand and is willing to stop, rewind, focus on specific details, and ask their children questions designed to prompt their own mental processing of the narrative. Children acquire skills by making sense of complex narratives, taking the perspectives of nuanced characters or distinguishing fiction from fact. They are best able to develop these skills if parents learn to "read" television the way they might read a picture book, even getting playful in asking questions that might take you well beyond what is on the screen. Such exchanges may form the basis for the development of media literacy skills within the home.

But, as Shelby Anne Wolf and Shirley Brice Heath discuss in their study of children's relationship with fictional characters, The Braid of Literacy, children's creative engagement with imaginary worlds ideally does not stop when the parent turns the television off. Again, writing specifically about printed books (and drawing sharp lines away from media and popular culture), Wolf writes about her daughter, "To Lindsey, reading was action and each part must be played. The words of the story were meant not to lie on the page but to leap off and rock back and forth in life." My experience as a parent was more or less the same except what excited my son was content he absorbed from television and films on VHS tapes. 

Listen closely and you will hear phrases from the show enter their everyday speech. You will see them embody the character's personality using whatever props they have at hand. If they have action figures or other toys, they may expand the saga through introducing their favorite characters to characters from other series. I see action figures as authoring tools which empower users to reimagine and retell the stories that matter to them.  When this happens, its clear that something has caught the child's imagination, that the program is providing them with resources to work through some of the emotional conflicts or social challenges they are facing at that moment of their development.

When my son was five or so, we developed the practice of trading stories. Some nights we would read him children's books or we would make up our own stories that incorporated his circumstances into the narrative. On other nights, we would ask him to make up stories. He would dictate and we would record on the computer every word he said. The challenge was to let the story remain his -- to let him work through whatever residue he had from the day and tap whatever resources he might draw from the culture around him. His stories were full of Pee-Wee Herman and He-Man, seemingly contrasting figures of masculinity which he drew upon to make sense of his own identity. 

Those first stories are shapeless blobs which suck in details from all directions and are mostly descriptive or list-like. But in this process, you were hear how the child is making sense of the media they are consuming and how it relates to other life events. We would print out the stories, he would draw pictures or create collages of images cut from magazines and catalogues, and we would send them to his grandparents for their birthdays or holidays. He would have that chance to feel like an author of the culture around him. He would claim for himself the right to push beyond the ending or ret-con the core events in the character's life. It certainly mattered where his stories started so choose wisely what you introduce into your children's life, but know that when the child gets his hands on the story material, he will reshape it like Play-Doh to make it into the kind of story the child needs in their life at that moment. 

As he grew older, we found that the characters on television allowed him to work through, in an indirect way, the issues he faced in his own life. As a family, we have remained committed to Survivor, which gave us a shared set of reference points for talking though social interactions with others at a time when he struggled with social anxiety and had trouble reading how other people related to him. We could talk through what kinds of social interactions produced positive and negative results, understanding the risks of different strategies and recognizing the choices that leaders made in relation to their communities. In his early 20s years, being able to talk about issues in the context of television provided a helpful buffer that would have been harder if we were talking about real people in his life. Perspective taking is a core aspect of emotional intelligence and so being able to step back, lower the risks, and explore different ways of working through problems in social interaction proved extremely valuable for him and for us. Sometimes, we realized he was talking about characters on the screen as a way to talk indirectly about his relationship with us and this made the social distance television provided crucial for avoiding more intense conflicts.

Coming back to where I started, I see these examples as suggestive of what happens when we parent through media, when we use it as a resource in our interaction with children, when we bring it under our control and engage with it on our own terms. Right now, the closure of most real world spaces forces us to work and socialize through technology, so prohibitionist responses make no sense, if they ever did. How do you restrict "screen time" when Mom and Dad spend their entire day working via Zoom Calls and when schooling online remains the safest way to protect your child from the pandemic? No, the goal is not to restrict "screen time" but to use “screen time” in a way which makes sense in the context of your own family life.

Susan Kresnicka: At a family dinner a few years ago, I asked my daughter’s best friend about her Disney fandom. I had known about her love for all things Disney (especially the Princess movies) for quite some time, and, as I was in the middle of conducting a year-long study of fans and fandom, I just couldn’t pass up the opportunity. About 12 years old at the time, she described expansively the themes she saw in the movies, considering what they suggested about gender, family bonds, and individuality. She spoke about the close friendships she had made with other fans she had met online and the way her experience as a fan was helping her reflect on her own potential. I was fascinated and overjoyed by the conversation. Towards the end, my daughter’s friend uttered, what seemed to me, a surprising statement: “No one has ever asked me about any of this before.” When I inquired as to whether she ever discussed her fandoms with her parents, she told me, “No, they just call it ‘all that teeny bopper stuff’.”

That discussion has stuck with me. Time and again, my work affirms how deeply we value the entertainment we love, how much meaning it brings to our lives, and how fulfilling it can be to share our entertainment fandoms with our loved ones. Additionally, as a parent, I couldn’t imagine not sharing with my children something so important to them. My daughter’s friend’s parents had missed out on the enriching experience I had with their daughter because they considered her Disney fandom ‘frivolous.’

Frivolous. Waste of time. Mindless. Boob tube. Rotting your brain. As we know, the criticisms typically leveled against entertainment run the gamut from being dismissive of the real value it offers to fearful of the perceived damage it can cause – especially among children. And while boundary-setting around media and entertainment plays an important role in parenting, exclusively focusing on control obscures the bigger picture. Not only will our tech-savvy kids eventually find work-arounds, but such strict policing may be implicitly teaching our children that media consumption can be inherently shameful, something to hide. And, if children feel they need to conceal their entertainment and media consumption from their parents, how likely is it that they’ll seek us out when their favorite content inevitably provokes questions and concerns?

When we don’t appreciate the role of media and entertainment in our own lives, we are less likely to appreciate the role it plays in our kids’ lives – and we are more likely to miss out on invaluable opportunities to connect with them. To talk openly and meaningfully, to learn what they care about, to understand their everyday experiences, and, importantly, to help them process their encounters with media.

So, what would a more open and mindful approach to parenting around media and entertainment look like? How can we help our kids reflect and think purposefully about the content they encounter? First of all, ‘media literacy’ may sound like a topic for the school classroom, but I believe that’s a misconception. The best opportunities for this kind of ‘coaching’ happen outside of school, at home, where kids consume content in everyday life. Furthermore, the last thing we want to do is turn this kind of critical thinking and learning into a homework exercise. If kids see ‘understanding media’ as a threat to their enjoyment of it, they’ll be less likely to embrace it. Finally, like so many things, our kids learn how to relate to media and entertainment by watching us. If we don’t model a mindful approach at home, will our kids really believe it matters?

With that in mind, we can begin by asking ourselves how entertainment and media operate in our own lives:

• When and why do we engage with it?

• How do our media choices relate to our feelings? Our social relationships? Our understanding of who we are?

• How might these answers shift depending upon the type of media or entertainment genre we’re considering?

• About which types of media experiences do we feel the most pride? Judgment? Guilt? Ambivalence? Connection to others? Isolation? 

Beyond reflecting upon the role of media in our own lives, I’ve always found one question incredibly powerful in helping develop a more mindful approach to media: why does this content exist? When we stop for a moment and ask ourselves – and teach our children to ask – this question, we immediately create distance from the content. We frame it as an object of inquiry and curiosity rather than something we mindlessly absorb. Likewise, when we pose this question to our kids about their favorite entertainment, we open up a dialogue and opportunities for connection.

With the door open, we can also create more moments of connection over specific content. We can share shows and movies that convey the values and ideas we most want our children to embrace and, perhaps, even share with their children one day. In my research on family fandoms – fandom that is shared by children and parents (and sometimes even grandparents and extended family) – a shared love for specific content creates an array of benefits for all involved: the transmission of important values, a focal point for shared ideas and experiences, a way to make memories together, and opportunities for ritual and symbolic representation of that which bonds us together. 

My work has taught me that media and entertainment consumption helps us meet core human needs for self-care, social connection, and identity. In many instances, our children are already receiving these benefits from their favorite content. Demonstrating to our kids that we care about how entertainment makes them feel, how it helps them belong, and how it helps them understand and express who they are is a great privilege. And it’s an undertaking that can strengthen family bonds and empower our kids to develop critical thinking skills that will serve them throughout their lives. Rather than operate narrowly as a site of anxiety, media and entertainment can become a springboard for powerful connection and expansive thinking.

BIOS

Henry Jenkins is the Provost’s Professor of Communication, Journalism, CInematic Arts and Education at the University of Southern California and the founder and former co-director of the MIT Comparative Media Studies Program. He has been a dedicated advocate for media literacy education, recently receiving the Jesse McKanse award for his life-time contribution to this field, including the publication of Confronting the Challenges of a Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century which helped to launch the MacArthur Foundation’s Digital Media and Learning Initiative. Subsequent work here included Reading in a Participatory Culture and Participatory Culture in a Networked Society. His other work on children and media includes The Children’s Culture Reader and From Barbie to Mortal Kombat: Gender and Computer Games. He is currently writing a book which examines children’s media of the 1950s and 1960s in light of shifting understandings of childhood in Post-War American culture. His most recent books include Participatory Culture: Interviews, Popular Culture and the Civic Imagination: Case Studies of Creative Social Change and Comics and Stuff.

Sangita Shresthova is the Director of Research of the Civic Paths Group based at the University of Southern California. Her work focuses on intersections among online learning, popular culture, performance, new media, politics, and globalization. She is also one of the authors of Popular Culture and the Civic Imagination: Case Studies of Creative Change (2020) and of  By Any Media Necessary: The New Activism of Youth (2016), both published by NYU Press. Her earlier book on Bollywood (Is It All About Hips?) was published in 2011 by Sage. She is one of the creators of the Digital Civics Toolkit (digitalcivicstoolkit.org), a collection of resources for educators, teachers and community leaders to support youth learning. Her own artistic work has been presented in academic and creative venues around the world including the Schaubuehne (Berlin), the Other Festival (Chennai), the EBS International Documentary Festival (Seoul), and the American Dance Festival (Durham, NC). She enjoys engaging with diverse communities through her workshops, lectures and projects. sangitashresthova.com

Founder and president of research firm KR&I, Susan Kresnicka is a cultural anthropologist with over 18 years of experience in the commercial sector. Specializing in foundational research to establish core human drivers for consumer behavior, Susan has led large-scale, multi-modal research projects for a range of industries. A student of fandom for more than a decade, Susan has conducted fan research for a variety of iconic entertainment IP brands, sports teams, and brands built around passionate hobbyists. Whether she is studying fandom or another topic, Susan specializes in tying consumer behavior to core human needs, allowing clients to establish more enduring and meaningful bonds with the people upon whom their commercial success relies. Susan holds an M.A. in social anthropology from The University of Texas at Austin, sits on the professional advisory board for UCLA’s Master of Social Science program, and regularly speaks publicly on fandom, gender, morality, identity, and the value of anthropology in business. Her work has been covered in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Forbes, Variety, and more. kresnickaresearch.com 

A Personal Statement: How Good Intentions Can Produce Harmful Effects

Over the past weekend, I have been trying to address a bruising controversy brought about by choices I made regarding this blog. In the process, I have caused emotional and reputational harm to several female BIPOC scholars.  What started with the best of intentions has had negative impacts on multiple fronts. More care should have been taken at every stage of the process.

Here’s what happened:

Billy Proctor and I had been discussing plans for the blog this fall. When I did a series of Zoom book clubs over the summer, many had expressed interest in learning more about Black comics. I had been hearing about a wave of new titles released over the past year. Due to the lockdown and some current transportation issues, I had not been able to go to my local comic shop since March and I wanted to know, myself, what I should make sure to read from this new and emerging work. As always, I wanted to use this blog to amplify emerging voices in the field -- in this case, especially Black comic scholars. So, we decided to try to pull together a series. I only briefly discussed the mechanisms for doing so, figuring we would dig into those questions more fully later. But from the first, I had vaguely signaled that we would need a diverse group of editors to make this project viable.

After our initial discussion, my attention was drawn elsewhere leaving Proctor to act on these plans. He was only vaguely reporting what was happening and I was distractedly waving him forward, trying, as always, to do too many things at once. I own my failure to oversee this properly. But I also want to make clear the disconnects in the process. Proctor drafted a call for papers which he posted on several comic studies listservs. I did not review or even know about the CFP before it was posted and not being a subscriber to these lists, I was not aware of what was happening until there was significant pushback against these plans. I also did not read or even know about the reframing of the project, though I had been consulted about expanding the remit to allow other BIPOC participants. When I learned of the criticisms on Friday afternoon, I was sympathetic with many of the critiques of what had happened. The initial approach was deeply flawed and the hasty response to the criticism had only made things worse.

I started working behind the scenes to find a way to substantively address the concerns. Specifically, there was a call for Black scholars to be the curators for such a project, which I acknowledge should have been the case from the start. As I heard of the pushback, I reached out to try to identify some early career Black scholars who might want to take ownership over this project, offering them complete control over the content and contributors and asking them to totally reframe the series to reflect their own perspectives. For technical reasons, I would need to facilitate the actual posting. Otherwise, I was ceding my platform to them. When Billy had told me he had heard from other BIPOC scholars who wondered if the blog might also provide space for them to write about comics by, for and about their communities,. I wanted to also facilitate their participation, but again, I was only vaguely following how he was going to do so. After some false steps, Billy identified someone who volunteered to take ownership over this second series.  As of now, my plan has been to run two series, first one under Black editorship on Black comics, and a second under BIPOC leadership dealing with “multicultural” comics.

In the midst of coming up with these plans, Billy Proctor accidentally posted one email from a back and forth exchange around these topics onto a Comic Studies list-serve. Proctor inappropriately characterized Samira Nadkarni who had been a leading critic (among others) of the original plans and further evoked Rukmini Pande, who has been a key figure critiquing racism in fandom studies. There has been an outpouring of outrage over what Billy said and the fact that he felt comfortable using such a negative characterization in my presence. I am deeply sorry for my role in this exchange. I have publicly apologized on the comic studies list where the email was posted and I also personally apologized to the women involved.  Billy Proctor has since stepped down as Associate Editor of this blog and will have no involvement with any future series we may launch, behind the scenes or otherwise. 

Let me be clear where I stand. I admire Rukmini Pande's contributions to the field enormously. She has transformed fan studies (and to a degree, fandom) by her willingness to challenge orthodoxies, to question our historic silence about race, to model what transformative scholarship might look like, and to call out normalized practices that reflect white supremacist logics that have gone unexamined and unquestioned for two long. I am just getting to know Samira Nadkarni through this exchange but I also deeply appreciate her critical voice in raising questions around the initial framing of this project.  I appreciate her willingness to call me out, even though her critiques have not always been easy to hear. Both women have suffered previous harm as a consequence of other public discussions over racism in fandom studies, and I am sorry that my poor choices may have contributed to further wounding them.

There is very little I can say -- the email in its tone and in its substance was inappropriate. I am horrified that this email was distributed on a public list -- not because it is embarrassing to me but because it did public damage to the women referenced in the exchange. I try to promote the work of younger scholars in my field and even where this is not possible, to above all, do no harm. And in this exchange, I failed at that basic expectation. 

I have read various assumptions being made on Twitter about what I did or did not say to Billy Proctor in response to that email. One of the ways whiteness reasserts itself is through what gets said amongst white people in private conversation. Our mutual support for each other shores up the existing conditions of systemic and structural racism and misogyny. When things get said in our presence and we remain silent or we offer words of encouragement, we become complicit in those attitudes. We say things in private we would NEVER say in public and doing so makes them impossible to combat or challenge the casual racism and sexism that run through everyday conversations even among well-meaning people who are otherwise working for social justice.  I have seen people read Billy’s email as suggesting we were circling the wagons against the BIPOC women. For my part, I was seeking out advice from senior BIPOC women so I could get insights on the best way to de-escalate this situation and figure out how to shift the editorship around this project to empower younger BIPOC scholars. Aware of some of the history, I was trying to find ways to avoid harm to the people involved.

As I was working to quickly address the core concerns that had been raised, I also allowed a sense of defensiveness to enter our exchange without fully realizing it myself. I work hard to hear, respect, and act on criticism, but I do have some feelings to work through when I am publicly called out. I should have slowed down to process those feelings. Instead, a certain degree of distrust entered my language and it enabled Proctor to write what he did. Systemic racism runs deep, it can reassert itself in unexpected ways, it transmits itself through unexamined assumptions and we need to correct each other when racist modes of thought enter our conversations.  We need to guard against our raw emotional responses which often surface unprocessed assumptions. I let everyone down by not making the right choices in the moment as I was trying to resolve a complex and tangled set of concerns. For this, I am really and truly sorry. I will do better.

Structural racism enters the conversation in other ways also. Because of structural racism,  Billy Proctor was already in my social circle and Samira Nadkarni was not. Because we knew each other, Proctor volunteered to help me with the grunt work on the blog, when others — for a multitude of reasons — would not have felt comfortable doing so. Because we were both white men, I felt comfortable in my interactions with him. Because I knew him, I did not want to harm him even as it was clear that his mistakes were making it impossible to continue to stand behind what he had done.  The social patterns created by structural racism also mean that I was more likely to respond defensively to Samira Nadkarni criticizing our project because I did not already know her. I recognize that such an impulse is wrong, because it contributes to those lacking access and power not being taken seriously when they risk speaking out. As a personal blog rather than a publication with an organization behind it, I have been personally trying to identify younger scholars to promote. But this means that, again, those people already inside or adjacent to my circles have structural advantages in getting asked to contribute. One reason I wanted us to have a call for papers was because I recognize this issue and wanted to expand access and identify new contributors not already in my network. As a consequence, I feel even worse that these efforts to reach out were so badly handled.   Again, I want to do better.

I owe this apology not simply to the women who were unfairly evoked in this specific incident but more broadly to young women, especially women of color, in the academic world, who so often are struggling to find their own voice as scholars, who are so often mischaracterized and dismissed when they pose important critiques of institutional, systemic and structural racism and misogyny. I admire these women’s courage in calling out senior scholars and entrenched assumptions in their fields. I would hate if anything I have done here has the effect of discouraging them from full throated participation in the core debates of their chosen fields. We need your contributions, even if it can be sometimes hard for older white male scholars, myself among them, to hear and process your critiques.  We all need to do better.

Where does this leave the two series? I honestly do not know. I am still working with some younger scholars who wanted to participate in overseeing them and still hoping to develop a framework under which they might move forward. I still believe something positive can come from this, but I want to go slow and find the most constructive way that this blog might address these topics. Whatever happens, I will be as open as possible in soliciting participation so that involvement goes beyond my pre-existing networks. I welcome any and all constructive feedback on the best way to proceed.

Identity, Power, and Soiled Storytelling: Examining the Contemporary Politics of Authorship through American Dirt (3 of 3)

Identity, Power, and Soiled Storytelling: Examining the Contemporary Politics of Authorship through American Dirt (3 of 3)

Olivia González

For Whom is Embodying a Cultural Bridge a Mechanism of Oppression and Liberation? 

Cummins’ reported motivations for authoring American Dirt further highlight the privileged position from which her novel was written and read. In explaining her decision to write American Dirt, Cummins has repeatedly claimed that she aimed to act as a “bridge,” presumably between Mexican migrants and an Anglo-American readership. For example, in the author’s note of American Dirt, Cummins claimed that she was “worried that, as a non-migrant and non-Mexican, I had no business writing a book set almost entirely in Mexico, set entirely among migrants”; however, she ultimately chose to write the book because “I thought, ‘If you’re a person who has the capacity to be a bridge, why not be a bridge?’” (p. 382). Additionally, in interviews addressing the controversy around American Dirt, Cummins has rearticulated this rhetoric, sharing that she wrote the novel with the hope that it “would be a bridge” (cited in Boyagoda, 2020). While Cummins’ efforts to serve as a cultural bridge have been commended by some of her supporters, putting her rhetoric in conversation with Moraga & Anzaldúa’s (1981; 1983) Bridge highlights the damaging effects and distance from which Cummins wrote about and aimed to “bridge” her subjects and readers.  

As the anthology’s title signals, Bridge (1981; 1983) interrogates and reimagines the bridges that have historically been built along the backs of women of color by those with varying levels of privilege and power (including, but not limited to, white men and women) in their attempts to explore and understand those situated as “Other.” Presented in the opening of the anthology, “The Bridge Poem”—penned by acclaimed Black poet Kate Rushin—highlights the burdens that embodying a bridge imposes on Black women as they are expected to connect, educate, and translate across difference.Through this work, Rushin expresses her fatigue and frustrations as a bridge, declaring: “I've had enough / I'm sick of seeing and touching / Both sides of things / Sick of being the damn bridge for everybody / …I'm sick of filling in your gaps / Sick of being your insurance against / The isolation of your self-imposed limitations” (Moraga & Anzaldúa, 1983, p. xxi). Bridge (1981; 1983) explores interventions in the building of these bridges, highlighting the liberatory power deployed when women of color develop their own bridges to one another: “bridges of consciousness” connecting them in solidarity (Moraga, 2015, p. xvi). As Moraga (2015) shares in the preface to the fourth edition of Bridge, the first edition (1981) of this anthology was the product of “women of color, who had been historically denied a shared political voice, endeavor[ing] to create bridges of consciousness through the exploration, in print, of their diverse classes, cultures and sexualities” (p. xvi). Thus, as Moraga & Anzaldúa (1983) claim, constructing these bridges of solidarity emerges through women of color “naming our selves and by telling our stories in our own words” (p. 23). 

I argue that in authoring American Dirt—a work that is not rooted in her personal experiences with oppression or liberation, and a work not designed to connect herself to women of color in solidarity—Cummins, and her rhetoric around “bridging,” are ultimately, like the book itself, hollow and harmful. In authoring an apolitical and impersonal work, Cummins not only fails to construct the bridge of consciousness envisioned in Bridge, but reproduces the toxic notion that bridges between those with oppressive power and women of color must be constructed in order for the former to learn and comprehend the humanity of the latter. Further, Cummins appears unaware of where the burdens of her attempts to be or build a bridge fall. As Cummins (2020) reveals in American Dirt’s afterword, her novel was made possible by migrants and deportation victims who “patiently” taught her about things “I never would’ve understood without their insight” (p. 385). Therefore, while Cummins’ attempts to be a bridge may reflect a “social justice” ethos (Markowicz, 2020), she failed to build a bridge along her own back; instead, (re)constructing them on the backs of those who “patiently” taught, and translated for, her.

For Whom are Borderlands Stories Profitable? 

Lastly, as many American Dirt critics have highlighted, Cummins’ success in selling American Dirt represents the inequities embedded within mainstream cultural production structures in the U.S. For example, responding to Cummins’ lamenting that “I wished someone slightly browner than me would write it,” other writers have reminded her that authors who are “browner” than her have written stories about their experiences (Grady, 2020a).However, many of those stories have not received the same visibility or capital; “authentic stories by Mexicanas and Chicanas are either passed over or published to significantly less fanfare (and for much less money)” than American Dirt (Bowles, 2020). Thus, as her critics suggest, Cummins’ early acclaim epitomizes the lack of equitable opportunities for Mexicanas and Chicanas to tell and sell their own stories within present publishing structures in the U.S.

Indeed, as many writers of color have discussed, the U.S. publishing industry has sustained a “historic and systemic whiteness” (Ho, 2016), with industry gatekeeping positions dominated by cis-het, able-bodied white women. As a survey by Lee & Low Books (2020) revealed, as of 2019, 76% of literary agents and publishing and review journal employees working in the U.S. were white, while only 6% identified as “Hispanic/Latino/Mexican.” Further, the majority of Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) folks represented in publishing houses hold positions with little to no gatekeeping power, constituting nearly half of interns (49%), while remaining chiefly excluded from executive (22%), editorial (15%), and marketing and publicity (26%) positions (Lee & Low Books, 2020). 

These substantial inequities in publishing power consistently produce a lack of opportunities for authors of color to publish and sell their work. As established publishing industry professionals have asserted, addressing inequities within the industry requires addressing representation in all gatekeeping positions, not simply seeking out “diverse” authors (Ho, 2016). For example, according to accomplished editor Sulay Hernandez, “the majority of books that are published in the US are not by people of color. The majority of high-profile authors are not people of color,” but changes need to be made to not only ensure that “more voices of color [are] being published” but that “more voices of color [are] being published well. And, very importantly, selling well” (cited in Masad, 2016). Thus, disrupting publishing industry inequities requires addressing the dearth of employees of color in all gatekeeping positions, with a particular focus on marketing and publicity, as these divisions substantially determine authors’ ability to sell their work (Ho, 2016).

Thus, with Latinxs and Mexicans occupying only 5% of marketing and publicity positions in the U.S. (Lee & Low Books, 2020), Mexican, Latinx, and Chicanx writers must fight to market themselves, and get stores to sell, and readers to buy, stories that may be considered marginal or “niche.” As Marcela Landres claims, the lack of Latinxs in “key” publishing positions is a primary contributor to the “paucity of published books written by Latinos” (cited in Cubias, 2015). And as Bowles (2020) shares, he has “seen my Chicana and Mexicana colleagues struggle to get their stories told, to get their manuscripts into the hands of agents and past the publishing industry’s gatekeepers;” thus, they remain “horribly underpaid” and “suffer marginalization in the US market.” 

Meanwhile, Cummins received a million-dollar advance from Flatiron Books for the rights to American Dirt, a film production deal with Imperative Entertainment, and enjoyed substantially effective pre-release publicity and marketing. Despite the widespread backlash that the novel received after its publication, American Dirt’s sales continued to grow to over 362,000 copies by July of 2020 (Milliot, 2020), and maintained a place on the New York Timesbest-sellers list for twenty-six weeks straight. I argue that this success further demonstrates the privileges that Cummins was afforded in telling and selling this story. Unlike so many women of color striving to publish their own stories, Cummins was not rejected or silenced by dominant publishing structures, was not “horribly underpaid,” and did not struggle to have the story she told marketed and sold well. 

Conclusion

Ultimately, I posit that critiques of American Dirt must be guided by a politics of authorship that recognizes the inequities represented by, and reproduced through, Cummins’success in telling and selling this story. Engaging with work fromMoraga (1983; 2015), Anzaldúa (1983; 1987), Moraga & Anzaldúa (1983), and Hurtado (2020), and examining the broader sociocultural and political economic contexts in which American Dirt was produced and published, reminds us that women writers of color contend with mechanisms that silence and delegitimize their storytelling, have historically been tasked with serving as cultural bridges, and are consistently denied opportunities to tell and sell their own stories in the U.S. publishing industry. Thus, while Cummins has now publicly claimed her identity as a Latina, I argue that as the author of American Dirt, she was ultimately read and afforded the same privileges as a white writer. 

But American Dirt as a phenomenon speaks beyond one particular story and storyteller; it reflects, and has helped reify, a publishing system that privileges and perpetuates whiteness. This is particularly evinced by the success with which Cummins was able to tell and sell a story filled with harmful, stereotypical portrayals of Mexicans and migrants, whichwere unquestioned by publishers but quickly recognized and critiqued by Mexican and Chicanx writers and readers. Further, as reflected in Cummins’ representations of, and rhetoric around, “brownness,” Black and Afro-Latinx writers and immigrants are erased from Cummins’ conceptions of authorship and immigration respectively—contributing to the continued exclusion of Black immigrants from narratives about the United States’ southern border and the atrocities afflicted by its Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Thus, Cummins not only benefits from the whiteness of the U.S. publishing industry, but simultaneously reinforces the anti-black racism and nativism pervading narratives about immigration in the United States writ large. 

So what does this mean for other authors and scholars writing in the U.S. publishing industries or academia? To address (note: not answer) this question requires that I interrogate my own power and privilege. While I am highly critical of Cummins, hearing her trepidations about authoring American Dirt—“I don’t know if I’m the right person to tell this story” (Alter, 2020)—sunk like a rock in my own chest; I know these fears, they flood my mind with every research project that I pursue. Like Moraga (1983) in her piece “La Güera,” I find myself asking: as a white Chicana, “what is my responsibility to my roots—both white and brown, Spanish-speaking and English?” (p. 34), and what does it mean for me to claim the label of woman of color? Like Moraga, I recognize that I have to “look critically at my claim to color” and “must acknowledge the fact that, physically, I have had a choice about making that claim, in contrast to women who have not had such a choice, and have been abused for their color” (p. 33–34). Thus, I offer the following considerations:

To writers who are looking to tell stories with or about communities of color, but have—like myself—benefited from whiteness: Interrogate your power and privileges, and situate this in your own work; rejecthetero-masculinist tendencies to feign objectivity through distance.Seek out silenced storytellers—versus stories—and give them your ears, your heart, and your platform. Listen to, celebrate, and honor them. And ask not just “who am I to tell these stories?” but “who am I to hear them?” We are not entitled to their knowledge, their stories, their perspectives; they are not yours, nor mine to hold in my güera hands or heart.

And so I write this for the mujeres de color

escribiendo sobre su esperanza y su enojo, su alegría y su dolor

Proclaiming with tongue and heart, key and pen

voces que otras no quieren oír, realidades que no ven.

Olivia González is a doctoral student at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism and a former Ronald E. McNair scholar. Working at the intersections of critical media industry studies and education studies, Olivia’s research examines the politics of race and gender within contemporary structures of media education and production. Her current work and dissertation center on the storytelling practices and professional socialization of aspiring film and television creators of color.

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Martin, R. (2020, January 24). 'American Dirt' author Jeanine Cummins answers vocal 

critics. NPR. Retrieved fromhttps://www.npr.org/2020/01/24/799164276/american-dirt-author-jeanine-cummins-answers-vocal-critics

Masad, I. (2016, April 18). Read between the racism: The serious lack of diversity in book 

publishing.VICE. Retrieved from https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/9aex3p/read-between-the-racism-the-serious-lack-of-diversity-in-book-publishing

McGinty, P. (n.d.). Review of American Dirt. Retrieved from 

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250209764

Milliot, K. (2020, July 10). Print units post surprising increase in first half of 2020. Publishers 

Weekly. Retrieved from https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/bookselling/article/83829-print-units-post-surprising-increase-in-first-half-of-2020.html

Moraga, C. (1983). La güera. In C. Moraga & G. Anzaldúa (Eds.), This bridge called my back: 

Writings by radical women of color(2nd ed., pp. 27–34). New York, NY: Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press.  

Moraga, C. (2015). Catching fire: Preface to the fourth edition. In C. Moraga & G. Anzaldúa 

(Eds.), This bridge called my back: Writings by radical women of color(4th ed., pp. xv–xxvi). New York, NY: Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press.  

Moraga, C. & Anzaldúa, G. (2015). This bridge called my back: Writings by radical women of 

color. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

Moraga, C. & Anzaldúa, G. (1983). This bridge called my back: Writings by radical women of 

color. New York, NY: Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press.  

Moraga, C. & Anzaldúa, G. (1981). This bridge called my back: Writings by radical women of 

color. Watertown, MA: Persephone Press.

Moreno, E. (2019, December 14). Re: Pendeja, you ain’t Steinbeck: My bronca with fake-ass 

social justice literature [Blog comment]. Retrieved from https://tropicsofmeta.com/2019/12/12/pendeja-you-aint-steinbeck-my-bronca-with-fake-ass-social-justice-literature/#comment-53524

Nielsen. (2011, May 20). The Oprah effect: Closing the book on Oprah’s book club. Retrieved 

fromhttps://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/article/2011/the-oprah-effect-closing-the-book-on-oprahs-book-club/

oprahsbookclub. (2020, January 21). Our next book club selection is “American 

Dirt” by @jeaningcummins. It’s a heart-wrenching page-turner, and you won’t be abel to put it down. Download your copy on @applebooks and #ReadWithUs: apple.co/americandirt #AmericanDirt @Glatiron Books @Oprah. [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/oprahsbookclub/status/1219620561086631937?lang=en

Oprah Magazine. (2020, March 4). Oprah discusses American dirt controversy with 

author Jeanine Cummins. Oprah Magazine. Retrieved from https://www.oprahmag.com/entertainment/books/a31227918/oprah-american-dirt-jeanine-cummins-controversy-video/

Pablo. (2020, January 22). Re: Pendeja, you ain’t Steinbeck: My bronca with fake-ass 

social justice literature [Blog comment]. Retrieved from https://tropicsofmeta.com/2019/12/12/pendeja-you-aint-steinbeck-my-bronca-with-fake-ass-social-justice-literature/#comment-53524

Pineda, D. (2020a, January 29). As the ‘American Dirt’ backlash ramps up, Sandra Cisneros 

doubles down on her support. Los Angeles Times. Retrieved from https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/books/story/2020-01-29/sandra-cisneros-breaks-silence-american-dirt

Pineda, D. (2020b, February 12). #DignidadLiteraria invites Oprah ‘on a mission to repair’ after 

‘American Dirt’ fracas. Los Angeles Times. Retrieved from https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/books/story/2020-02-12/dignidadliteraria-pens-a-letter-to-oprah-winfrey

Reichard, R. (2020, January 30). Sandra Cisneroes calls critics of highly controversial ‘American 

Dirt’ novel “exeagerados.” Remezcla. Retrieved from https://remezcla.com/culture/sandra-cisneros-calls-critics-american-dirt-exagerados/

Rodriguez, J. (2020). Why American Dirt matters to all of us. Lunch Ticket. Retrieved from  

https://lunchticket.org/why-american-dirt-matters-to-all-of-us/

Sehgal, P. (2020, January 17). A mother and son, fleeing for their lives over treacherous terrain. 

The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/17/books/review-american-dirt-jeanine-cummins.html

Toto, C. (2020, February 30). American Dirt: 'Cancel culture' embraces book burning in 

the digital age. The Hill. Retrieved from https://thehill.com/opinion/technology/481147-american-dirt-cancel-culture-embraces-book-burning-in-the-digital-age

Tyrer, J. (2020, February 28).Re: Pendeja, you ain’t Steinbeck: My bronca with fake-ass 

social justice literature [Blog comment]. Retrieved fromhttps://tropicsofmeta.com/2019/12/12/pendeja-you-aint-steinbeck-my-bronca-with-fake-ass-social-justice-literature/#comment-53524

Varela, J. R. (2020, February 2). 'American Dirt' is a bestseller because it reflects guilty liberals' 

quiet beliefs about migrants. NBC News. Retrieved from https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/american-dirt-bestseller-because-it-reflects-guilty-liberals-quiet-beliefs-ncna1127366

Von Essen, L. R. [reading_while]. (2020, January 21). This is disappointing given how much of 

the book community has spoken out against this novel's disingenuous portrayal of the immigrant experience. There are so many marginalized voices you could be lifting instead. [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/reading_while/status/1219657189641662464

Winfrey, O. [Oprah]. (2020, January 21). Like so many of us, I’ve read newspaper articles and 

watched television news stories and seen movies about the plight of families looking for a better life, but this story changed the way I see what it means to be a migrant in a whole new way. [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/Oprah/status/1219618257411493890

Wood, J. (2019, January 28). Writingabout writing about the border crisis. The New Yorker. 

retrieved fromhttps://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/02/04/writing-about-writing-about-the-border-crisis

Identity, Power, and Soiled Storytelling: Examining the Contemporary Politics of Authorship through American Dirt (2 of 3)

Identity, Power, and Soiled Storytelling: Examining the Contemporary Politics of Authorship through American Dirt (2 of 3)

Olivia González

Silencing, Censorship, and Identity “Policing”?: Interrogating Cummins’ Concerns

Like several of her supporters, Cummins has suggested that identity politics, silencing, and censorship are responsible for the backlash that American Dirt has received. For example, Cummins has maligned critiques of American Dirt that are centered upon her identity, claiming that while she is a privileged, white, U.S. citizen, “I am also Puerto Rican” and “that fact has been attacked and sidelined by people who, frankly, are attempting to police my identity” (Martin, 2020). Additionally, Cummins has expressed concerns over cultural appropriation conversations that go “too far toward silencing people” (Alter, 2020, para. 17–18), and suggested that“telling people what stories they are allowed to write” is a “dangerous sort of slippery fascist slope” (Conroy, 2020).However, through engaging with Chicana feminist scholarship, I argue that these claims are not only unfounded but also—communicated from Cummins’ now substantial platform—mislead the public about which writers are prevented from telling their own stories. As work by Cherríe Moraga, Gloria Anzaldúa, and Aída Hurtado reveals—contrary to claims about contemporary “cancel culture”—efforts to silence and censor storytelling are not new phenomena, and it is women of color whose stories and storytelling have consistently been silenced and censored, and for whom writing is a powerful tool in the pursuit of liberation.

While first created in considerably different social and political contexts, Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa’s (1981) widely acclaimed anthology, This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color (hereafter referred to as Bridge) embodies a powerful work through which the controversy surrounding American Dirt can be productively read. As discussed and demonstrated in Bridge, writing can play a powerful role in mujeres of color’s development and expression of a feminist politic that is shaped by their embodied experiences. Specifically, as Moraga (2015) suggests, Bridge presents U.S. women of color’s “theory in the flesh”—a politic formed through exploring, recording, and honoring their complex, even contradictory, lived experiences as women at the “crossroads” of multiple, intersecting identities (p. xxii). And according to Moraga (2015), it is through writing about these experiences—“telling our stories in our own words” (p. 19)—that women of color can “bring into consciousness what only the body knows to be true” and pursue the liberatory potential of their “theory incarnate” (p. xxiv). Thus, as Moraga & Anzaldúa (1983) discuss in the anthology’s second edition, Bridge—comprised of art, essays, poems, and other writings by women of color—contains “non-rhetorical, highly personal chronicles that present a political analysis in everyday terms" (p.xxiv). 

Similarly, in her text Intersectional Chicana Feminisms, Aída Hurtado (2020) asserts that Chicanas “use writing as the most powerful weapon at their disposal to voice their feminisms, to fight injustice” (p. 93). And as discussed and demonstrated in Bridge, Hurtado (2020) affirms that this writing can take many forms, voices, and tongues. According to Hurtado (2020), Chicana feminist writers insist that “we use everything,” from poetry to social science, “whatever it takes to voice a reality that has never been properly addressed” (p. 59). Additionally, Hurtado (2020) cites Chicana poet Elba Sánchez, who claims that her tongue is “‘a gift, my power,’” through which she “‘names injustices I witness, a veces en voz de poeta, a veces en mi native lengua pocha, from my pocha perspective’” (p. 93). 

Moreover, in her work “Speaking in Tongues: A Letter to Third World Women Writers,” Anzaldúa (1983) claims that writing is a mechanism through which mujeres de color “reclaim” their voices and tongues, and negotiate their survival and selfhood. In particular, according to both Moraga & Anzaldúa (1983), Third World women—a term used by U.S. women of color to “align ourselves with countries bearing colonial histories and still suffering their effects” (Moraga, 2015, p. xxv)—"wield a pen as a tool, a weapon, a means of survival, a magic wand that will attract power, that will draw self-love into our bodies” (p. 163). Thus, Anzaldúa (1983) shares that she herself writes to “record what others erase when I speak, to rewrite the stories others have miswritten about me, about you…To discover myself, to preserve myself, to achieve autonomy” (p. 169). 

However, Anzaldúa (1983) also emphasizes that mujeres of color must contend with mechanisms that silence them and delegitimize their voices and tongues, revealing that the difficulties and “dangers we face as women writers of color are not the same as those of white women” (p. 165). For example, through her work Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, Anzaldúa (1987) decries the “tradition of silence” that suppresses her many voices as a queer Chicana: “my voice: Indian, Spanish, white” and “my woman's voice, my sexual voice, my poet's voice” (p. 59). Additionally, Anzaldúa (1987) describes the burdens of translation that she endures when speaking in her “‘home’ tongues,” such as “Standard Mexican Spanish” and “Spanglish” (p. 56)—a process that renders her multilingual tongue “illegitimate” (p. 59). 

Drawing from these works, and examining the sociocultural and political contexts in which American Dirtwas authored and acclaimed, I argue that identity “policing” and “cancel culture” are not the driving forces behind the novel’s negative reception. Instead, I posit that American Dirt must be critiqued through a politics of authorship that is guided by three critical questions: For whom are stories about the U.S.-Mexico borderlands political and personal? For whom is embodying a cultural bridge a mechanism of oppression and liberation? And for whom are borderlands stories profitable?

 For whom are stories about the U.S.-Mexico borderlands political and personal?

Despite its engagement with topics bearing highly politicized tenor in current U.S. discourses—including the “norteño president” and his rhetoric about “bad hombres” (Cummins, 2020, p. 235)—many reviewers have characterized American Dirt as apolitical. Some have criticized American Dirt for being “determinedly apolitical,” decrying Cummins’ failure to address the political factors fueling the “forced migrations ” she depicts (Sehgal, 2020, para. 15), and her attempts to separate “‘policy issues’” from “‘moral and humanitarian concerns’” (Arce, 2020). However, other reviewers, such as John Grisham (n.d.), have praised American Dirt for being apolitical, applauding that “its message is important and timely, but not political.” Similarly, some positive reviews of American Dirt have alluded to the novel’s political implications while refraining from labeling it a political piece. For example, Sarah Blake (n.d.) claimed the book is “urgent and unforgettable, [it] leaps the borders of the page and demands attention, especially now,” while Stephen King (n.d.) deemed American Dirt “an important voice in the discussion about immigration and los migrantes… put[ing] the lie to the idea that we are being besieged by ‘bad hombres.’” 

I argue that reviews praising American Dirt as an apolitical work highlight the privileged position from which Cummins wrote—and was read and reviewed—compared to mujeres of color writing about and from the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. Specifically, through juxtaposing responses to American Dirt with responses to recent writing by Chicana and Mexicana authors, and drawing from Moraga (1983; 2015), Anzaldúa (1983; 1987),Moraga & Anzaldúa (1983),  and Hurtado’s (2020) claims about both the power and difficulties that women writers of color navigate, I highlight the distance from which Cummins authored American Dirt, and the dangers posed by the novel’s positive reception as an “apolitical” piece. 

For example, like American Dirt, Mexican immigrant writer Valeria Luiselli’s (2019) Lost Children Archive—a novel tracing a woman’s journey as she embarks on a road trip from New York to Arizona with her family and documents the child refugee crisis along the southern U.S border—explores issues tied to the U.S.-Mexico borderlands through a fictional narrative. However, unlike American Dirt, Lost Children Archive was substantially shaped by Luiselli’s personal experiences, including Luiselli’s own road trip from New York to Arizona with her family, and her work as an interpreter for child migrants in federal immigration court (Wood, 2019). And in further contrast with American Dirt, Luiselli’s work has been repeatedly deemed “political.” In particular, reviewers have called Lost Children Archive a work that “drifts almost dreamlike between the personal and political” (Greenblatt, n.d.), is “both personal and global, familial and political” (McGinty, n.d.), and is “political without being propagandistic” (Malone, n.d.).

While Lost Children Archive does address the political forces fueling the injustices it depicts, these reviews highlight that even as a work of fiction, Lost Children Archive is a powerful reminder that for women writers of color, “the political is profoundly personal” (Moraga, 2015, p. xxi). Juxtaposing these reviews with those celebrating American Dirt for being “apolitical” thus illustrates the privileged distance from which Cummins wrote her work, including her limited personal stakes in the discourses and policies shaping the lives of the migrants she aimed to portray. Thus, I argue that praising American Dirt as “apolitical” does more than address Cummins’ lack of engagement with policies or partisan politics; this label reveals—and rewards—Cummins’ distance from the subjects of her story. 

Further, like Lost Children Archive, Myriam Gurba’s critique of American Dirt was intimately shaped by her personal experiences, and received responses that deviated substantially from American Dirt. Throughout her review, Gurba grounds her critiques of the novelin her personal experiences and affective responses as a Chicana “living en el Norte.”Forexample, Gurba compares Cummins to a college roommate who wore Gurba’s clothes as an “ill-fitting Mexican costume,” and describes her visceral reactions to Cummins’ reported efforts to give a face to the “‘faceless brown mass’” at the southern border, which “pissed me off so bad my blood became carbonated.” While Gurba has been praised by many readers for her incisive and personal writing, others have criticized the personal nature, as well as the language and tone, of her critique.

For example, as Gurba shares in the opening of her work, she originally wrote her review of American Dirt at the request of Ms., a feminist magazine.However, Ms. later denied Gurba (2019) the opportunity to publish her finished critique, as its editors suggested that she “lacked the fame to pen something so ‘negative.’” Gurba subsequently published her review online via the academic blog Tropics of Meta, where several readers similarly critiqued Gurba’s tone, as well as her use of language and personal stories. For example, readers suggested that Gurba was 

“negative,” “mean,” “vulgar,” and “whin[y].” As one reader stated, Gurba is “mean y harsh,” and her writing is “an over-worked exercise in meanness,” and “pierde fuerza in being so vehemente, y sobre todo in being so vulgar” (Moreno, 2019).

Some readers also criticized Gurba’s use of Spanglish in her review, asserting that it was unimpressive, “poorly-used” (Pablo, 2020), and that “Spanglish es solo un inglés malo y un castellano peor…” (Leftbanker, 2020), Further, according to several readers, through grounding her review in her personal experiences, Gurba diminished the credibility of her arguments. As one reader claimed, the “worst” parts of Gurba’s review are “about Gurba,” and not truly “about the book” (Tyrer, 2020). And others “challenge[d]” Gurba to write a new, positive and impersonal critique: “to take yourself out of the picture…and find something, anything positive about this book from another person’s perspective” (Julia, 2020). 

These responses to Gurba’s work thus illustrate the silencing, delegitimizing mechanisms and dangers with which contemporary women writers of color penning personal, multi-lingual works (Anzaldúa, 1983; 1987) must still contend. Using what some of her critics seem to suggest is her “lengua pocha” and “pocha perspective,” Gurba wields her writing as a “weapon” to fight the injustices she sees reflected in, and reproduced by, American Dirt (Hurtado, 2020, p. 93); to “rewrite the stories others have miswritten about me, about you” (Anzaldúa, 1983, p. 169). However, in doing so, Gurba and her voice and tongue were deemed illegitimate by many readers, as well as threatened by others—Gurba received death threats in response to her piece (Grady, 2020b).

Thus, I argue that juxtaposing responses to Gurba’s review, as well as to Luiselli’s Lost Children Archive, with those celebrating American Dirt for being “apolitical” suggests that, while Cummins has now publicly claimed her identity as a Latina, she was read and reviewed as—and held the privileges of—a white woman writer. Cummins was not only able to tell and sell a story about highly polarizing, politicized topics without being considered political in the process, but was rewarded for doing so in a system that continues to discourage mujeres of color from telling their own stories and speaking in their many voices and tongues.And I posit that reviews celebrating American Dirt for being “apolitical” help sustain this system, as they suggest that stories about immigration and the U.S.-Mexico borderlands can, and should be, told from a “neutral,” impersonal perspective; a dangerous precedent that heightens women of color writers’ risk of being deemed “mean,” “negative,” “whiny,” or “propagandistic” in drawing from their personal experiences and writing “our stories in our own words” (Moraga & Anzaldúa, 1983, p. 23).

Olivia González is a doctoral student at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism and a former Ronald E. McNair scholar. Working at the intersections of critical media industry studies and education studies, Olivia’s research examines the politics of race and gender within contemporary structures of media education and production. Her current work and dissertation center on the storytelling practices and professional socialization of aspiring film and television creators of color.

Identity, Power, and Soiled Storytelling: Examining the Contemporary Politics of Authorship through American Dirt (1 of 3)

Identity, Power, and Soiled Storytelling: Examining the Contemporary Politics of Authorship through American Dirt (1 of 3)

Olivia González

Who am I to tell their stories, if I cannot tell my own?

Of uncertainty, ambiguity—what are you? Where do you call home? 

I straddle the line between neighboring worlds, un pie plantado en cada lado. 

Soy Mexicana like my papá. And like my mama, I am Anglo. 

But blurring the borders of these worlds is unacceptable. I am pushed out and in. 

Painted with the labels of others, I am “Gringa.” “Pocha.” “Exotic.” “Foreign.”

My tongue twists to speak their languages, but theirs only twist to spit:

“You’re a Hispanic, aren’t you? You don’t look white.”

“No eres una Mexicana auténtica. Eres gringa. You’re not a real Mexican. You’re a white chick.”

But in these discursive borderlands, my güera hands hold privilege and power. 

And through my access to higher education, my own voice can be made even louder. 

So I take up this platform and pass it to las mujeres: Chicana, Latina, y Mexicana.

To amplify the stories of those seeking la liberación, justicia, y esperanza.

—"¿quíen soy yo?”, Olivia González

Introduction

As I leaf through the pages of Jeanine Cummins’ American Dirt, I oscillate between feeling engrossed and repelled; navigating a simultaneous sense of intimate closeness with, yet distance from, the characters. Published in January 2020, American Dirt traces the fictional journey of Lydia, a Mexican bookstore owner, and her young son, Luca, as they flee cartel-bred and led violence in their hometown of Acapulco, Mexico, and attempt to emigrate to the United States. In a multitude of jarring moments, I find myself rubbing my eyes and cheeks to remove the saline stains that have appeared there—tears that fell as Luca’s formed atop a dusty northbound train passing a town near Jalisco.

I am shocked and angered by every moment of my own sorrow. These feel like the tears of a traitor, of a woman transfixed by a spectacle of suffering about those in Mexico and the borderlands—about those like her own familia. I feel a deep part of me ache, struggling to process the haphazard similarities: of the journey that my own papá made around the same age as Luca’s character, traveling from a town in Jalisco across the border into an unfamiliar and unwelcoming land. But as I swallow the lingering sting of sorrow in the back of my throat, I recall that this isn’t my papá’s story. Nor is it my own. In fact, according to myriad critics, it isn’t anyone’s story. As critics have suggested, Luca and Lydia’s narrative is a “hollow, harmful” fiction (Bermudez, 2020a), soiled by its non-Mexican and non-migrant author’s telling and selling of a story that—not rooted in her own experiences, and inaccurately depicting the experiences of her subjects—does not belong to anyone.  

Since its publication, American Dirt has garnered considerable attention and controversy, landing squarely in the center of debates about authorship and appropriation. American Dirt initially received substantial pre-release acclaim from various critics and creatives, such as authors Stephen King and Sandra Cisneros, and actresses Salma Hayek and Yalitza Aparicio. However, criticisms of the noveland of Cummins have since surged and widely circulated, with audiences and authors alike decrying American Dirt as an exemplar of cultural appropriation, and a formidable reminder of extant inequities in the U.S. publishing industries. Some early supporters of the book have thus rescinded their praises, while others have sustained their support—joining Cummins in defending her work, and critiquing the role that “cancel culture” and identity politics have purportedly played in fueling the backlash the book has received. 

As many of those caught in, or reporting on, this controversy have acknowledged, these diverging responses to American Dirt revolve around an increasingly contested question in contemporary discourses: who gets to tell and sell what stories? As a doctoral student researching the storytelling practices of minoritized filmmakers, this question permeates my own writing and reckonings with my power and positionality. Thus, I find myself tangled in complicated ties to Cummins. While I agree with the aforementioned criticisms of American Dirt, I see some of my own anxieties about identity, power, and authorship reflected in a key question that Cummins has repeatedly raised: who am I to tell their stories?

Simultaneously, as a white Chicana born to an Anglo-American mother and a Mexican immigrant father, I have also struggled to make sense of my authority as a critic of Cummins’ work. My childhood was filled with my papá’s stories of his own childhood in Mexico where his family made do with little means, of his journey to the U.S., his experiences teaching himself English to survive an Anglo-American school system, and his forced internalization of the “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” narrative. These stories are not my own; I was born in the U.S. and raised in a California suburb, I had the luxury of learning English at a very young age, and I have spent the past seven years in higher-education classrooms where my time has been spent critiquing ideologies like the “bootstraps” narrative, rather than living them for hope and survival. However, as celebrated Chicana feminist scholar Cherríe Moraga (1983) describes in reference to her Chicana mother, my papá’s stories “crept under my ‘güera’ skin” and his life “into my heart” (p. 28), shaping who I am and how I engage with other stories about immigrants and the U.S.-Mexico border. And yet, contending with the norms of the academic spaces that I inhabit—in which the autobiographical may be considered illegitimate for straying from norms of “neutrality” or objectivity—I find myself questioning what role my güera heart, skin, and voice can and should play in my analyses ofAmerican Dirt. I question: who, and how, am I to critique this story?

Through this work, I take up these questions, and embrace my angry, aching güera heart and pocha tongue to examine American Dirt and what it tells us about the contemporary politics of authorship. Specifically, I examine discourses around American Dirt—including arguments posed by Cummins and her critics and supporters, and my own reactions to the novel and the controversy surrounding it. I inquire: What do the debates about American Dirt tell us about identity, power, and literary production and reception in the United States? What do these debates reveal about the current politics of authorship in the U.S.? And what implications do the creation, reception, and critiques of American Dirt have for audiences and authors, and for students and scholars, such as myself?

 “Timely” Page-Turner or “Trauma Porn?”: Debating American Dirt

Before its official release, American Dirt garnered substantial acclaim and anticipation. With waves of positive pre-release reviews and reports of a “bidding war” ending in a million-dollar publishing deal, critics deemed American Dirt one of, if not the, “most anticipated release of 2020” (Varela, 2020, para. 2). In the months leading up to the book’s publication, handfuls of writers produced glowing advance reviews, calling American Dirt “extraordinary”(Stephen King, n.d.), “important and timely…rich in authenticity” (John Grisham, n.d.), and“relevant, powerful, extraordinary” (Kristin Hannah, n.d.). Additionally, renowned media executive Oprah Winfrey selected American Dirt to join Oprah’s Book Club—a “coveted and exclusive fraternity” known for bolstering attention and sales for the books inducted as its members (Nielsen, 2011, para. 1). Transmitting the decision via Twitter, Winfrey described American Dirt as “a heart-wrenching page-turner” (oprahsbookclub, 2020) that “changed the way I see what it means to be a migrant in a whole new way” (Winfrey, 2020).  

However, following American Dirt’s release and its selection for Oprah’s Book Club, both Cummins and Winfrey were quickly met with backlash and a widespread call to boycott the book. Twitter users, many of whom identified as Mexicans and immigrants, critiqued the novel’s inaccurate and stereotypical portrayal of its subjects—calling American Dirt, and Winfrey’s decision to promote it, “disappointing” (von Essen, 2020). Others claimed that through this book, Cummins—who had primarily publicly identified herself as white and her family as “mostly” white “in every practical way” (Cummins, 2015) prior to publishing American Dirt—was engaging in cultural appropriation and “brown-face” (Rodriguez, 2020, para. 2). And many Twitter users critiqued the book and the praise it was receiving in relation to the realities of a publishing industry dominated by white authors and critics—an industry that is “so out of touch—that so rarely supports immigrants to tell our own stories—eager to make money off of our suffering with a cheap, stereotypical thrill” (Bermudez, 2020b). 

Additionally, Mexican, Latinx, and Chicanx writers’ critiques of American Dirt—many of which had been published before the novel’s release, but were buried beneath a mountain of positive pre-release publicity—began widely circulating among this ever-expanding chorus of critiques on Twitter. For example, Chicana writer Myriam Gurba’s review of American Dirt, which was originally published in December of 2019, came to the fore of the debates. In a piece titled “Pendeja, You Ain’t Steinbeck: My Bronca with Fake-Ass Social Justice Literature,” Gurba (2019) describes American Dirt as a “trauma porn that wears a social justice fig leaf,” and critiques Cummins’ decision to write it—highlighting that while Cummins herself acknowledged that she “lacked the qualifications to write Dirt…she did it anyways. For a seven-figure sum.” And as Gurba claims, Cummins’ lack of qualifications is evident in the book, which reads like it was written by someone who is neither Mexican nor an immigrant. According to Gurba (2019), this is particularly evinced by the novel’s protagonist, Lydia, in whom readers see Mexico “through the eyes of a pearl-clutching American tourist.” 

Similarly, Mexican American author David Bowles (2020) penned a lengthy critique of American Dirt, calling ita “harmful, appropriating, inaccurate, trauma-porn melodrama.” Like Gurba, Bowles published his piece online before American Dirt’s official release, and highlighted the various ways in which Cummins’ perspective as a non-Mexican and non-migrant author lead to inaccurate and stereotypical portrayals of Mexico. Additionally, as Gurba and Bowles’ critiques circulated in the months following American Dirt’s release, they collaborated with immigration journalist and writer Robert Lovato to create a movement named #DignidadLiteraria. Announced on January 26thvia Twitter, #DignidadLiteraria called on the U.S. publishing industry to interrogate and bolster its support for Latinx stories and storytellers. The movement also penned a letter, signed by 142 writers, to Oprah Winfrey, imploring her to remove American Dirt from her book club (Pineda, 2020b). 

However, Winfrey and other early supporters, such as Sandra Cisneros, have “doubled down” on their support for American Dirt (Pineda, 2020a, para. 3), questioning or critiquing the backlash the book has received. For example, Cisneros has reaffirmed her belief that American Dirt is “the great novel of las Americas,” and called critics of the work “exagerados” (cited in Reichard, 2020). Additionally, Winfrey has denied #DignidadLiteraria’s request to remove American Dirt from her book club, claiming that doing so would suggest that “anybody is subject to being rescinded, silenced, erased” (cited in Associated Press, 2020, para. 6). 

Some conservative columnists have also defended Cummins, deeming her avictim of “cancel culture.” For example, in an article titled “American Dirt: ‘Cancel culture’ embraces book burning in the digital age,” Christian Toto (2020) claims that “identity politics” helped fuel the “fury” toward Cummins and American Dirt, and critiques the notion that “only Latino artists can tell stories from their community from a pre-set narrative.” Similarly, New York Post columnist Karol Markowicz (2020) has attributed what she described as “frothing-at-the-mouth criticism” of American Dirt to issues of “political correctness” and “cancel culture.”  Markowicz (2020) suggests that critiques related to Cummins’ identity as a white woman who “wrote about something other than her own lived experience” represents “something strange and ugly,” and asserts that efforts to “cancel” Cummins are fueled by a “trial-by-mob culture.”

Olivia González is a doctoral student at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism and a former Ronald E. McNair scholar. Working at the intersections of critical media industry studies and education studies, Olivia’s research examines the politics of race and gender within contemporary structures of media education and production. Her current work and dissertation center on the storytelling practices and professional socialization of aspiring film and television creators of color.



Desert Island Comics (Issue 2) Andrew Edwards

It would be easy to choose five comics written by Alan Moore to fill this list. After all, I decided to do my PhD on his work, but it feels a lot like cheating to just rattle of what I think are his five best works (From Hell, Watchmen, The League of Extraordinary Gentleman, Miracleman and Swamp Thing, if you’re interested). So I thought it would a bit fairer, and more interesting, to choose my top five single issue comics instead (mostly), and focus on some obscure choices to throw into the mix too. 

Sandman #14

My first experience of reading Sandmanwas buying #1 and #2 when they were first published. I bought them on a school trip to London, along with Black Orchid#1-3 and the trade paperback of Frank Miller’s Dark Knight Returns. I religiously bought Sandmanas a monthly comics throughout its entire run, but it’s some of the early issues that stay in my memory the most clearly, and none more so than #14’s ‘Collectors’. I was disturbed by the concept – a serial killer convention – and various moments that have imprinted themselves on my memory ever since. It’s the contextualisation of the serial killer within the quotidian convention that disturbed me then, and still does now. It feel like an uncomfortable possibility. I re-read it a few days ago, for the first time lord-knows-how-many years, and it’s power remains undimmed. I’d place it in Gaiman’s top 10 works easily.

Ghosts #107

Sticking with horror, this issue is one from childhood that I randomly bought from a newsagents in, I think, Bala in North Wales, sometime in the early 80s. Trips to places were my opportunity to call in to random newsagents who often had piles of older American comics cluttering up their shelves, although I distinctly remember this comic being on a spinner rack, probably the first one I ever saw.

I was a reader of British humour comics The Dandy and The Beano, alongside the occasional American comic that I could find on trips (DC dominated my finds). Ghosts#107 was the first non-humour, non-superhero comic I’d ever read and, boy, did it make its mark on me. It was a three part tale of a medieval crown that made its way through history causing tragedy for those who wore it. The stories were scripted by Robert Kanigher, with art by Howard Bender, Rodin Rodriguez and Adrian Gonzales. For a kid used to the slapstick comedy of humour comics, and superhero battles, this comic introduced me to the way that the sweep of history, and historical artefacts, can profoundly influence and change lives. It’s worth checking out the back issue bins for.

Watchmen #4

OK, so an Alan Moore-scripted comic has made it on to my list despite my self-imposed restrictions, but I’ve limited myself to a single issue. And what an issue it was! I first read Watchmenin single issue form, in one sitting, in the late eighties, and #4 really brought home to me just how different this series was going to be. I would have been around 13 or 14 when I read it, and it was the first time that I became consciously aware of how narrative and structure can be used for effect. I showed me that narratives didn’t have to start at point A and move chronologically through B, C, D etc. You could skip, repeat, move backwards and forwards, and experience the use of time in comics in new and exciting ways. All these years later, it is still my favourite issue of the series.

Marvel Superheroes Secret Wars #2 (UK Edition)

Ok, ok – I can almost hear some of you sniggering at the back… For its time, and for an 11 year old boy like I was, this was incredible. My only previous exposure to superhero comics was the odd DC I randomly found on trips from home. I’m not referring to the US version either, but the Marvel UK version. Here I discovered the X-Men, Avengers, Dr Doom, Magneto and more. I loved the bizarre portraits of Marvel heroes created by the Secret Artist, and enjoyed the reprints of John Byrne’s Alpha Flighttoo; both first appeared in #2, which is why I’ve chosen this particular issue. This was the gateway to American super heroes, and American comics, and for that I’ll always be grateful.

Brief Interlude

It’s clear that nostalgia is currently dominating my thinking. Perhaps it’s because I’m getting older, and perhaps its heightened by the new changes we are all experiencing in real life. I do also love modern comics, but it’s the comfort that memories of childhood and comics that have influenced my choices. Even then, another day may have seen me choose something by Harvey Pekar, or Art Spiegelman’s Maus, or even the Giffen - Dematteis Justice League. It was hard to narrow this list down to five, let me tell you. However, in breaking all previous conventions in this list, here’s my final choice.

Black Hammer

I’ve only recently read (binged) all of these comics by Jeff Lemire and artist Dean Ormston, and while I haven’t processed my thoughts on them in any intellectual or critical way, I can say that I loved them on the level of my gut reaction. I found them captivating because it tickles the parts of me that love superhero comic history, alternative worlds in science fiction, Twin Peaks level weirdness, and older and disillusioned heroes struggling to make meaning for their lives and their world. It’s a stone cold contemporary classic that you are compelled to keep reading to find out what happens next.

Dr Andrew Edwards is a writer and scholar. His research interests include comics and graphic novels, science fiction, horror, intertextuality, and representations of gender. He is currently working on a number of writing projects. He is also an Academic Skills Tutor at Wrexham Glyndwr University. He can be followed on Twitter: @AndrewEdwards88  

Desert Island Comics (Issue 1) Joan Ormrod

Image designed by Rutherford.

Like many comics readers, I love hearing recommendations from other scholars and fans. It’s never healthy for the bank balance, but as Henry once said to me, “it’s expensive if you do it right.” (He was referring to superhero comics, but the sentiment is true for the medium in general, I’d say). Over the past two weeks, I’ve been involved in the virtual book-club on Henry’s new monograph, Comics and Stuff, and let me tell you: it’s a dangerous place to be! With so many references and recommendations flying around, I found myself heading frantically to online shops afterwards. (I know, I know, a first-world ‘problem’ to be sure.) One thing is abundantly clear: we’re gonna need a bigger house!

To RSVP for the final panel on Tuesday June 30th at 10 a.m (Pacific ST)/ 18:00 (British ST), head here to register for the Zoom link. We would be honored if you would join us.

When Julia Round and I ran a series on British Comics late in 2019 on this website, I began asking contributors to discuss some of their favorite comics, comic strips, and/ or graphic novels. In today’s first installment, we have Dr Joan Ormod sharing some of her favorites (and it’s great to see Bryan Talbot’s Alice in Sunderland in there, which is one of Henry’s case studies in Comics and Stuff).

—William Proctor, Associate Editor.

Joan Ormod

It’s tough deciding on the top five comics and so I tried to have a reasonable spread of comics that have inspired or awed me. The choices are in no particular order but can be viewed in linear time. So, some of the first comics I read to the latest. One thing I noticed is the necessity of the words and images working together and the first of these choices illustrates this really well.

1.     ‘Sandra of the Secret Ballet’ – art by Paddy Brennan, story unknown

Sandra Wilson appeared in Judy from issue #1 (16/01/1060) and for most of the 1960s to the 1980s, the latter in reprints of the earlier stories when Judy merged with Emma. She was a great role model for girls in that era as she was brilliant dancer, created ballets and had adventures (not for her a husband two children and domestic bliss).  

Her first adventure was to be kidnapped by Nina Sierra, a famous ballerina, who spirited orphans away from their abusive homes and trained them to become ballet dancers.  Ok so in the post Jimmy Savile era there would be all sorts of social services and police investigations going on but this was the innocent 1950s.  The stories and the images worked organically – Paddy Brennan was, in my opinion, the best artist at representing ballet. Ron Smith who drew the much more famous Moira Kent, just couldn’t get the feet and the positions right.  It is such a shame that the writer was unknown, but they obviously knew what would appeal to young girls – a secret castle on a secluded island, loads of orphan girls who were fabulous dancers and a heroine who toured the world, saved her ballet teacher from ritual sacrifice in Spain and foiled numerous evil plots.  

There was also a cast of visitors to the castle from Boris Rambine (modelled on Boris Karloff) who hypnotised the girls, a princess in hiding and a Billy Butlin clone who wanted to turn the castle into a holiday park.  Somehow the series lost its magic when Sandra graduated and became a star.

I have included a few pages of Sandra stories. From #30 (06/08/1960), pages 2 and 3 – this is the story that introduces Alicia, queen of an Eastern European country, who happens to be a brilliant dance in hiding in the castle.  

Brennan is a master of the black and white on the comics page and his drawings of the secret passages make you believe this is a real place.

The second story is the culmination of Sandra’s journey to Spain to save her dancing teacher, Nina Sierra from being forced to dance to death in the Ritual of the Flaming Sun.  Gypsies in this story come from a long line of gypsies in British children’s literature.  They were an exotic and ancient people with strange and sometimes cruel customs. Sandra, of course, saves Nina Sierra by taking her place and dancing through the night.  Spain at this time was also an exotic destination as package holidays were only just becoming possible for mass tourists.  Brennan’s use of tonal line work gives this story its atmosphere.  Somehow, when his work was colored, for reprints in the 1980s, it lost some of its magic.

What I said earlier about the organic nature of stories and art can be seen in some of the Sandra stories with artwork by a different artist.  They just weren’t the same.

2.     Lois Lane – art Kurt Schaffenberger, stories diverse

I included Lois Lane because of the art by Kurt Schaffenberger which fit the sappy stories so well.  His style was clean and uncluttered and he seemed to take some of the idiotic stories seriously.  Schaffenberger was one of the writers and artists who transferred to DC after Fawcett was closed when they lost a court battle against DC for copyright to Captain Marvel (now called Shazam).  Some of the Lois Lane stories were written by Otto Binder, also from Fawcett and that innocent vibe from Captain Marvel comes through in a lot of these stories.

Superman and Lois Lane’s relationship was quite toxic. She was always being tested by Superman and punished for the most slight of reasons.  It was similar to the sex comedies of Rock Hudson and Doris Day (without the sex, of course) in a battle of the sexes.  Lois loved Superman but not Clark, Clark loved Lois but wouldn’t reveal he was Superman until she showed him she preferred him. The colour was startling on the news rack and much more glamourous than the UK comics which were often in black and white inside.

The editor of this series, Mort Weisinger, always had the most alluring premises.  This cover from Lois Lane #44, October 1963 shows Lois and Lana Lang, her rival, tricking Superman into taking a lie detector.  When I saw this cover in a newsagent window, I had to have the comic to find out whom he preferred.  In 1964 comics were sold by the yard and you took pot luck which ones were available in any shop.  Unfortunately, by the time I saved enough money to buy it, it had been sold and I never saw it again, until a few years ago when I managed to get a copy. You got your money’s worth too.  There were three stories in each issue.  Here’s the first page with Schaffenberger’s signature telephone panel.  He was also allowed to sign his name – a practice that few artists were allowed to do until Marvel opened up the way for artists and writers to get credits.

3.     Wonder Woman – art and stories George Pérez

I spent several years writing a book on Wonder Woman, a character who fascinated me as she was different from every other female character I’d encountered.  I had a sneaky liking for the early 1960s stories on Paradise Island when she was written by Robert Kanigher and drawn by Mike Esposito and Ross Andru.  But she never really came to life until the title was taken over by George Pérez in the 1987 post Crisis reboot under Karen Berger’s brilliant Vertigo line.  For the first time the Wonder Woman I imagined became real. She was a naïve, kind and empathic person who was often bewildered by the cruelty and suffering she encountered in man’s world. 

The stories by Pérez were sensitive and beautifully drawn but the characters came to life when he worked with Mindy Newall. The best of these was ‘Chalk Drawings’ (#46 September 1990) in which there is little superheroic action.  In it, Vanessa, Wonder Woman’s young friend, attends the funeral of her best friend, Lucy Spears, a girl who has it all but who commits suicide.  The story explores some of the toxic themes surrounding fame, fandom, beauty and consumerism.  Lucy’s parent don’t understand why she committed suicide but the subtext tells it all, when someone has it all and its just never enough.  Jill Thompson’s sensitive artwork was just right for this story.

4.     Here – Richard McGuire

Richard McGuire’s ‘Here’ first appeared in Art Spiegelman’s Raw v.2, n.1, 1989.   At first glance ‘Here’ (1989) appears an unremarkable (and rather confusing) account of the history of a space, rendered in a clean line style, each page consisting of 6 panels.  However, the aim of Raw was to produce commix that pushed the boundaries of the medium and challenged the reader.  ‘Here’ is certainly a challenging read for there is no clear cause and effect to direct the narrative and no protagonist to incite action.  Rather, McGuire uses 36 panels to show the formation of the world, to reflect on evolution, vast time spans encompass the rise and decline of human cultures down to the lifespan of a human being.  This comic is as much about time as ‘here’. It is impossible to describe a specific story from the comic but I love it because it show the potential for the form to express more than simple stories.

McGuire claimed he conceived the idea when he saw all the screens open on an Apple computer – a few pages show how this is reflected in the construction of the panels.  He spent several years developing his original six pages into a book. The book does expand the ideas but, in my opinion, its nowhere as powerful as the comic.  You can get the full six pages here 

There is also a film produced by art students attempting to adapt the comic into a film:

An article by Chris Ware on the book Here; and a film of the book. 

5.     Alice in Sunderland, Bryan Talbot

Every Desert Island castaway needs a book that will keep them engrossed for many years (and doesn’t it feel like we’re in that situation at the moment when we are in lockdown?  The one that I would still keep coming back to is Alice in Sunderland by Bryan Talbot.  Like ‘Here’, Alice in Sunderland is more than just an exploration of Alice in Wonderland.  It is about telling stories and is described by Talbot as ‘an entertainment’. He starts off in the Sunderland Empire introducing the reader to his stories.  They span the history of the North East (which naturally draws me in since that’s where I come from), folk tales and legends such as the Lampton Worm (a precursor of Jabberwocky), the history of comics all wrapped into the story of the genesis of Alice. His art styles are gloriously diverse and experimental. His tales something like the Borges ‘Garden of Forking Paths’ with infinite possibilities and often ventures into cul-de-sacs and alternate storylines.  

I enjoyed this so much that after reading it I tried to find some of the places in Sunderland.  I have one disagreement with Bryan and that is in his affirmation that Bede lived in Sunderland.  He lived for most of his life in Jarrow St. Paul’s monastery.  Nevertheless, this book would keep me occupied for many years just in awe of its rich imagery and stories. 

This page shows the complexity of the images as it collages photos, drawings and paintings on the page and shows the plasticity of the comics form.

This page is a mixture of different Bryans as audience member, as actor, as artist.  It captures the fantastic nature of Alice in Wonderland’s dream world.

Returning to my original statement, it was only when I began to compile these comics that I realised how much I enjoy a comic where the art and story work well together.  They are also inspirational.  The list is unadventurous – Alice in Sunderland would likely feature in several top ten lists of any comics reader.  But I make no apologies.  The first two are comics I grew up with and inspired me to think beyond what was expected of me as a girl.  Wonder Woman was meant to inspire women to become empowered.  The last two are inspirational because they prompt me to think and wonder.

Dr Joan Ormrod is a senior lecturer in the Department of Media at Manchester Metropolitan University.  She specializes in teaching subcultures, comics, fantasy and girlhood.  She has published widely on these topics and she has edited books on time travel, superheroes and adventure sports. Her latest monograph, Wonder Woman, the Female Body and Popular Culture was published in February 2020 and is available now.  Joan is the editor of Routledge’s Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics and she is on the organizing committee of the annual conference of Graphic Novels and Comics.  She is currently researching girlhood and teenage comics in the UK 1955-1975.

Thematic, a Music Marketplace for Influencers and Producers: Digital Labor and the Creative Class (3 of 3)

Thematic, a Music Marketplace for Influencers and Producers: Digital Labor and the Creative Class (3 of 3)

Edward B. Kang

User Interfaces: Interactive Library vs. Isolated Metrics 

In this brief section before the conclusion, I navigate the user interfaces of Thematic afforded to both Music Artists and Content Creators to simply exhibit how this inequality between the two groups is embedded into the platform itself. Returning to Terranova’s idea of the translucent commodity, the labor that shines through the platform is truly spectacular for the Content Creator. The main page shows “Recent Pickups” to display songs that were recently used in influencer videos, “Selected for [Content Creator]” and “Top Projects for [Content Creator]” to direct the Content Creator to other songs and playlists based on their previous downloads, “Staff Picks” to let the Content Creator know what the Thematic team is currently backing, and “New Music”, which speaks for itself. Upon clicking the “Browse Music” tab, there is a seemingly endless list of songs, each with their own beautiful album cover provided by Music Artists, which can then be filtered according to genre, community, vocal, tempo, and mood. The “Projects” tab allows the Content Creator to create personal playlists, and the “Downloads” tab lists recent downloads. For the Content Creator, Thematic serves as an easy-to-use, beautiful, and interactive library and personal storage of free songs. 

Music catalogue for Content Creators (hellothematic.com)

Filters for searching music (hellothematic.com)

The interface for the Music Artist is in comparison quite dry. Once logged in as Music Artist, the user no longer has access to any parts of the vast library of music, which even the general unregistered visitor can browse, and only has access to two pages: the submission portal through which the Music Artist submits music to be reviewed by Thematic’s A&R team, and the statistics page, which shows the specific metrics of the number of times their songs were used and the number of views of the videos their songs are featured on. In contrast to the democratic rhetoric of community that Thematic employs in its promotion, Music Artists have no real access to the broader community that their music and Content Creators operate in. They are closed off behind walls of numbers that don’t necessarily directly translate into other forms of valuable quantification like revenue or social media following. The labor that shines through here is anything but spectacular, with most of the services offered being relegated to algorithms. This is not to say that the maintenance and development of algorithms is not labor-intensive, but it pales in comparison to the coupling of both the human-intensive labor of curation, quality control, and organization with algorithmically derived personal picks for Content Creators. With these additional absences of avenues for engagement with the broader community shown through the design of the actual user interface, the uneven terms of participation between the Music Artist and Content Creator as well as the contradictions between promotion and actual user experience become ever more apparent. 

Tracking page for Music Producers

Conclusion

“From the very beginning, I’ve always wanted to empower and give back to creators,” Michelle Phan told us. “Since uploading my first video 12 years ago, I’ve experienced lawsuits and seen first-hand what happens when big music labels come in and make copyright infringement claims.” 

“I understand intimately the challenges facing creators today. Through Thematic, I hope to protect creators and artists and provide a platform where they can connect, safely and free.” (Resnikoff, 2019) 

While I don’t intend this paper to be a direct challenge against Michelle Phan’s motives, I do think that in her efforts to empower Content Creators, such as herself, she overlooks some of the pressing ramifications that those efforts can entail for Music Artists. As I showed through my examination of the forward-facing promotional materials, to the underlying contractual agreements, and finally to the separate user interfaces themselves, the terms of participation on Thematic are not always communal and democratic nor are they mutually beneficial for both Music Artists and Content Creators. Although the broader social conditions in which the cultural industries operate that Terranova, Hesmondhalgh, and McRobbie, among others, have outlined, may have normalized such precarious work to a certain extent, as an influential figurehead of a rapidly growing platform like Thematic that stands to advocate for the democratic production of culture on digital platforms, Michelle Phan has the power to at least begin to veer us in a direction that resists or circumvents those oppressive social conditions. 

Finally, even though I take in this present paper a critical stance towards Thematic, I acknowledge that at the time of writing, the platform is still in public beta testing, and there is thus ample opportunity for improvements to be made. Especially as the platform garners more serious investors, for which the recruitment process has just ended, and the platform inevitably moves from a free one to a paid, most likely subscription-based one, it will be imperative for the Thematic team led by Michelle Phan, CEO Marc Schrobilgen and COO Aubrey Marshall, to be adamant in their support for the increased protection of Music Artists on the platform. This may take the form of technical interventions I suggested earlier to more safely deliver the music content uploaded, a broader application of the approval feature that allows Music Artists to also have a say in which videos their music can be featured, easier access for Music Artists to engage with the broader community, and an overall re-evaluation of the separate Artist and Creator Agreements that more thoroughly hold Thematic responsible in protecting and crediting Music Artists. It may also take the form of introducing new services altogether such as the feature for Content Creators to also provide their video-making services to Music Artists who want content released under their name – i.e. lyric videos or music videos. There are indeed many practical ways for the Thematic team to truly better democratize the platform. To this end, I want to conclude on a more hopeful note and write that, moving forward, I trust Phan and her team will take these many possibilities into consideration, and truly use Thematic to build, in their own words, “a community for the community” (Thematic). 

References

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McRobbie, A. (2016). Be creative: Making a living in the new culture industries. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. 

Resnikoff, P. (2019, June 7). Thematic Surpasses 1 Billion Song Plays for Repped Artists.

Retrieved from https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2019/06/06/thematic-billion-plays/. 

Sennett, R. (2008). The craftsman. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Sinnreich, A. (2010). Mashed up: Music, technology, and the rise of configurable culture. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press.

Sinnreich, A. (2013). The piracy crusade: How the music industry’s war on sharing destroys markets and erodes civil liberties. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press. 

Sinnreich, A. (2019). The essential guide to intellectual property. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. 

Srnicek, N. (2017). Platform capitalism. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons.

Terranova, T. (2012). Free Labour. In T. Scholz (Ed.), Digital labor: The internet as playground and factory (pp. 67-114). Abingdon, UK: Routledge. (Original work published in 2000)

Thematic. (n.d.). Retrieved from: http://hellothematic.com/. 

Thompson, E. P. (1971). The moral economy of the English crowd in the eighteenth century. Past & Present, (50), 76-136.

Weiss, G. (2018, July 2). Michelle Phan's Latest Startup Helps Creators Find Free Music For

Their YouTube Videos. Retrieved from:  https://www.tubefilter.com/2018/06/28/michelle-phan-thematic-music-youtube-videos/. 

Thematic, a Music Marketplace for Influencers and Producers: Digital Labor and the Creative Class (2 of 3)

Thematic, a Music Marketplace for Influencers and Producers: Digital Labor and the Creative Class (2 of 3)

Edward B. Kang

*Contracts: Intellectual Property, Precarity, and Expropriation 

Thus far, my questions primarily concerned the forward-facing aspects of Thematic. What does it claim to do? How is it promoted? Who is it promoted to? In this section, I take as my focus, the underlying agreements and contractual terms that govern the actual rules of operation on the platform. What does using Thematic actually entail? For the Music Artist? For the Content Creator? To what extent is Thematic legally bound to the promises they make on their site? Who gets paid? What are users giving up in exchange for access to the platform? Are there consequences of using Thematic that extend beyond the platform? Does Thematic take responsibility for misuse? I will inevitably touch on all of these necessary and important questions by the end of this paper, but I begin, here, with this generic but powerful line taken from their general Terms of Use agreement: 

All intellectual properties featured on and incorporated into the Website are owned and controlled exclusively by Thematic and/or its licensors, which includes materials protected by copyright, trademark, patent laws and state and federal intellectual property laws. (Thematic, “Terms of Use”, 2019) 

The ramifications of such a statement are far-reaching. Thematic’s primary currency is intellectual property – the music uploaded by Music Artists – so understandably, there’s a lot of it on the site. Apart from the small number of songs actually uploaded by the Thematic team (Michelle Phan produces some of her own lo-fi hip-hop beats), the majority of the tracks that populate Thematic’s vast collection are created and uploaded by independent music producers who sign up for Thematic as Music Artists. This means that by agreeing to use Thematic, those Music Artists are sharing the exclusive rights to their works with both Thematic and Content Creators. This sharing of intellectual property rights, however, is not reciprocal, as Music Artists have no rights to the videos of Content Creators that their music is featured on since the videos exist on channels external to Thematic. If we take a look at the separate user agreements, the uneven terms of participation become more apparent. 

Under the Grant of Rights of the Artist Agreement, it reads: 

… you hereby grant Thematic, and its licensee Creators respectively, a non-exclusive worldwide right and license, on a royalty free basis, to make copies of the Works, and use, license, copy, transmit, broadcast, stream, and publicly perform such Works… Notwithstanding any term of this Agreement, each Creator shall have the right to stream, download and utilize such Works and use all Credit information in Creator Videos and meta data, on a royalty free basis in each case… (Thematic, “Artist Agreement”, 2019). 

The key here is “royalty free” – this directly bars Music Artists from effectively monetizing on Thematic the works they upload to the platform. Read in conjunction with the “free promotion” offered by Thematic in its marketing materials, it’s easy to see that Music Artists are essentially paying for that free promotion by relinquishing the rights to all avenues of possible royalty-related compensation on Thematic. There is, however, an ambiguous component under the Grant of Rights that claims Thematic will collect the Gross Revenue, defined as “all revenue remitted by YouTube and/or Instagram and received by Thematic exclusively in connection with the exploitation of the Works (e.g. their recording and publishing components) on YouTube and/or Instagram” (Thematic, “Artist Agreement”), and transfer it to the Music Artist’s account. I say this is ambiguous because not only is there no option to link any kind of bank account, ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers), or BMI (Broadcast Music, Inc.) membership details when signed in as Music Artist, but there are also no mentions of “splits” agreements (industry jargon for how royalties/revenue will be split) between Music Artist and Content Creator. Splits agreements are important here because it has already been established that all of the music on Thematic is royalty-free, which means that the revenue defined by Gross Revenue is primarily dependent on the revenue generated by the video itself, and not by the copyrighted music. This too, however, is unclear because if we recall from earlier, one of the first things marketed towards Content Creators on Thematic’s landing home page is “no rev-shares”. How, then, is revenue split between Music Artist and Content Creator? What is the source of Gross Revenue for Music Artists if not from video and also not from royalties? Thematic suggests the Content ID feature for YouTube, which allows “copyright owners who meet specific criteria” (YouTube Help), to claim and monetize off their intellectual property on that specific platform, but what about for Instagram, the other platform that Thematic allows Music Artists’ music to be featured on? The platform thus does not actually provide a regulated monetization model of its own and outsources this key function to either the stringent qualifications for Content ID on YouTube or Facebook’s Rights Manager for Instagram, for which it also provides no reference or guide. Exactly how this lean platform logic (Srnicek, 2017) operates is left for the users to figure out on their own. In light of this ambiguity, there have yet to be any discernible reports of Music Artists successfully using Thematic as a means of effective revenue despite its industry-wide use as a music market for Content Creators. 

In fact, even Thematic doesn’t see direct monetization as its primary offering – in response to the question “What value do I get from submitting music to Thematic?” in the Artist Help Center, they write: 

Our primary conversion metric for artists is in the value of the promotion and audience reach… That new audience can then be monetized via music streams & downloads, merchandise sales, and live events. 

… Thematic is meant to get artists' music in front of influential creators (who are often paid for their promotion) who will in turn share the music to their engaged audiences. You can even think of the music as "product placement" within these tastemaker videos - but the artist (aka the brand) is securing that placement for free. (Thematic, “Artist Help Center”) 

Although the primary selling point to Music Artists is consistently framed under promotion, based on the Artist Agreement, Thematic actually does not guarantee and sufficiently enforce credits and acknowledgments to Music Artists by Content Creators: 

…no inadvertent failure by Thematic or any Creator to provide such Credit, and after our receipt of formal notice shall constitute a breach hereof, Artist’s only remedy shall be to notify Thematic in writing, and upon which notice Thematic shall use good faith reasonable efforts to cure such failure. (Thematic, “Artist Agreement”, 2019)

Even promotion, which is inherently dependent on proper credit, is apparently not guaranteed. Read next to the barring of royalty-based revenue, the ambiguity of platform-generated revenue, and the lack of guarantee for proper artist credit, the Music Artist unambiguously takes on a precarious position by choosing to participate in the Thematic community. 

McRobbie (2016) thoroughly recounts these developments in the cultural industries, unpacking how the creativity dispositif (Foucault, 1980) or passion ‘ethos’ (p. 74) promoted by the creative economy draws upon neoliberal ideologies to direct individuals to tolerate such precarious positions enticed by the celebratory rhetoric of the ‘dream job’ or ‘pleasurable work’: 

I argue that the call to be creative is a potent and highly appealing mode of new governmentality directed to the young in the educational environment, whose main effect is to do away with the idea of welfare rights in work by means of eclipsing normal employment altogether… this mode of neoliberal governmentality is also a general and widespread process of precarization.(p. 14)

Reframing the creative economy as a mode of labor reform, she points to the current movement as one in which the discursive prioritization of creativity specifically strips the creative class of previously hard-won social welfare and job security benefits. She thus directs us to the brainchild of late capitalist neoliberalism, ‘self-invented work’, emphasizing that “in this rhetorical world it is business and entrepreneurship that now count… [There] is an anticipation of reward and a series of invitations to take part, all of which go some way towards making risky jobs with uncertain outcomes nevertheless appealing and exciting” (p. 61). In foregrounding this entrepreneurial venture capitalist mindset – voluntarily embracing precarity and risk in the present with hopes of greater returns in the future – as an integral component of the workings of the current cultural industries, McRobbie provides a generative starting point from which we can unpack the Music Artists’ precarious position within the Thematic community.

The Music Artist is essentially operating within this same investment logic of high-risk-high-returns. There are no guaranteed rewards in exchange for uploading and providing the rights to their songs on Thematic. It is rather the “anticipation of reward” (p. 61) that Thematic offers and the Music Artist accepts. Perhaps as McRobbie somewhat satirically writes, “the seemingly exciting compensation for work without protection is the personal reward of ‘being creative’” (p. 35). And while this personal reward as Hesmondhalgh reminds us, should not always be discounted, he also points out “that it is in the realms of intellectual property that a more convincing critique of contemporary capitalism might be mounted, rather than unpaid labour” (2010, p. 279). Following this, if we move beyond Terranova’s critique of free labor and acknowledge that Music Artists are, in classic Marxist terms, alienated from the products of their labor (Marx, 1976) – intellectual property – it becomes easier to see how Thematic may indeed be pushing expropriative terms on to Music Artists who do choose to opt in. In fact, looking at Thematic’s response to two similar questions on the Artist Help Center that read, “Can I choose which creators use my music?” and “Can I choose which videos my songs appear in”, it becomes apparent that Music Artists actually have no control over the specific uses of their songs either: 

We currently do not provide a content filtering option for our artists unless you are interested in exploring a paid placement. Any creator in Thematic is allowed to use the music in Thematic in their videos. (Thematic, “Artist Help Center”)

Without additional payment, for which they evaluate all tailored promotions on a “case-by-case basis”, Thematic thus does not even guarantee any form of basic quality control for Music Artists – their music can be used by “any creator” registered with Thematic. Even here, the uneven terms of participation surface, as all music submitted to Thematic is reviewed by the A&R team – i.e. quality control – before it is uploaded to their royalty-free collection available to Content Creators. Content dictates music. There are a few Music Artists who are granted the “Approval” feature, which means their songs can only be used in videos upon their approval, but Thematic unabashedly states that this feature is reserved for “Top 40” artists who are commercially signed to major record labels, effectively excluding the vast majority of all Music Artists on the platform. In this way, the Music Artist, like McRobbie’s artist subject does indeed become a “symbol of labour reform, someone willing to ‘live on thin air’” (p. 86). 

Finally, before I move on to the next section, I also want to briefly mention the lack of protection for the Music Artist in the Artist Agreement against uses of the song beyond intended contexts outlined in the agreement. Although the Artist Agreement does explicitly state that Thematic only sanctions use of any uploaded songs by Content Creators in their content on either YouTube or Instagram, the technical method of delivery of the songs – providing direct downloads to the master tracks as either MP3 or WAVE files – is one that exposes the songs to numerous methods of potential repurposing, none of which can be directly monitored or regulated by Thematic. Considering how easy it is to sign up and download these tracks, the tracks are effectively available as high-quality free audio on the Internet. What can Thematic do other than say “you can ONLY use our music in your YouTube and Instagram videos” (Thematic, “Creator Help Center”)? Is it on the burden of Music Artists to constantly monitor the Internet to see if their music starts to appear, most likely without credit, on other platforms like Vimeo? How does Thematic prevent the use of these audio files in other music projects? It is common industry knowledge that in the hands of a skilled technician, these high-quality music uploads provide valuable source materials to cut close-to-untraceable samples for “original” music. The only measure Thematic takes in trying to prevent such uses is to say it is prohibited in their agreements, without implementing any technical infrastructures to actually forbid them. In this way, Thematic fails to reasonably offer even the little protection that current intellectual property law, which on the most part actually does not benefit independent musicians (Demers, 2006; Sinnreich, 2013), does provide to music producers not backed by major record labels: the right to control the uses of their original songs. 

By examining the contractual terms to which all users of the platform must subscribe, I sought to bring to our attention the inevitably precarious position that the Music Artist is expected to tolerate in the Thematic community. While it is true that the Music Artist voluntarily opts in under these terms, the argument can also be made that the broader social conditions that glorify high-risk work in the cultural industries outlined by McRobbie, among others, play a significant role in pressuring the Music Artist to have little choice but to accept these terms in fear of obsolescence. Even if we try to take a more open-minded approach as urged by Hesmondhalgh, in the absence of guaranteed revenue, recognition and thus opportunity, or protection from misuse or theft provided by Thematic, I find it difficult to push for alternative forms of overall well-being that participation in Thematic provides for Music Artists. To this end, an inspection of these expropriative contractual terms further exposes the lopsided conditions of participation between Music Artists and Content Creators discussed throughout this paper. 

Bio

Edward B. Kang is a PhD student at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism and Assistant Editor for the International Journal of Communication. His research engages the cultural and infrastructural dimensions of digital media and digital surveillance technologies with a specific focus on the relationship between sound/music, identity, platform logics, and platform anatomies. He is thus interested in navigating the socialities that emerge at these knotty intersections of technology and culture. Apart from his own research, he has served as a committee member for Annenberg’s annual Communication and Cultural Studies graduate student conference Critical Mediations, as well as led Music Production workshops for Annenberg’s Critical Media Project with California Humanities. 

Thematic, a Music Marketplace for Influencers and Producers: Digital Labor and the Creative Class (1 of 3)

The following paper was written for my Fall Seminar on Fandom, Participatory Culture, and Web 2.0. I have decided to share this particular paper here because of this blog’s ongoing interest in issues of fan labor and creator rights, because it is timely given the ongoing roll out of this particular platform, and because it does such a fine job combining legal and technical tools to understand what is at stake for participants at various levels.

—Henry Jenkins

Thematic, a Music Marketplace for Influencers and Producers: Digital Labor and the Creative Class (1 of 3)

Edward B. Kang

Introduction

Hi Edward Kang, 

My name is Stephanie and I'm on the team here at Thematic. I wanted to reach out and personally welcome you and tell you that we're so excited to have you be a part of our community! We can't wait to see the videos you create.

If you have any questions or feedback, please don't hesitate to email me.

Best,
Stephanie

This was the welcome email I received from Stephanie Leyva, the community manager of Thematic, when I registered for the platform as “Content Creator”. I then signed up for the platform with a different email as “Music Artist”. I received nothing. 

Founded by YouTuber Michelle Phan along with Chief Executive Officer Marc Schrobilgen and Chief Operating Officer Aubrey Marshall, Thematic launched in 2018 as a “free peer-to-peer music marketplace that seeks to help content creators find music for their videos while concurrently promoting aspiring musicians” (Weiss, 2018, para. 3). It reads on their home page: 

Thematic is all about connecting creators and music artists. You need great songs to soundtrack your videos. Music artists need promotion. Thematic makes it happen. Simple. With songs curated by content type and theme, you’ll spend less time searching for that perfect song and more time creating. Safe. All of our songs are pre-cleared so you are able to fully monetize your videos without worrying about licenses, claims, or disputes. Collaborative. During our public beta, you’ll have access to Thematic for free – no membership fees, no licensing fees, no rev-shares. (Thematic) 

The site quite markedly mobilizes the democratic rhetoric of participatory culture (Jenkins, 2006) to frame the platform as a “safe”, “simple” and “collaborative” space that serves both the interests of Content Creators and Music Artists alike. Content Creators have access to pre-cleared high-quality music for free, and Music Artists get exposure and promotion – it’s meant to be a win-win situation. The “you” in their promotional text (quoted above), however, which directly speaks to the content creator, perhaps hints otherwise. In fact, all of the resourceful things that “you” get, come at the expense of their– “Music Artists’” – labor. “Pre-cleared” songs with “no licensing fees” and “no rev-shares” (revenue shares) can only be achieved if Music Artists surrender significant portions of their rights and ownership of the music they create. Departing from Jenkins’ understanding of participatory culture, then, which explicitly emphasizes the generative potentials of collaboration made possible by the diverse skills and voices accessible through digital user networks, Thematic strategically seems to only mobilize the democratic rhetoricthat accompanies participatory culture without actually allowing for a bi-directionally generative and participatory community to manifest on its platform. It thus ultimately advocates for a digital marketplace in which the generative potentials of collaboration are vastly unequal for the participating members. 

There have been numerous studies since the advent of Web 2.0 that have interrogated these very questions and concerns of uneven participation and digital labor that lie at the intersections of digital technology and the creative industries (e.g. Andrejevic, 2009; Andrejevic et al., 2014; Banet-Weiser, 2012; Baym, 2018; Bruns, 2006; Hesmondalgh, 2010, 2011; Jenkins, 2006; McRobbie, 2016; Sinnreich, 2010, 2013, 2019; Terranova, 2012 etc.). Many of these works have rigorously tried to trace the exploitation-cooperation continuum of arguments that occupy these discussions, while also positioning themselves within it to better nuance and contribute to the complex conversations that are required to parse the entangled web of relationships found at this intersection. 

Jenkins’ (2006) canonical text, Convergence Culture, for instance, elaborates on the notion of participatory culture, further expanded in Spreadable Media: Creating Value and Meaning in a Networked Culture (2013), to describe the productive negotiations and increasingly collaborative and interactive relationships forged between media consumers and producers. It thus critically acknowledges the unequal power dynamics that inevitably emerge in these producer-consumer relations, but ultimately seeks to look beyond a solely economic model of profit, foregrounding the generative potentials of a community of participants, allowing us to focus on the diverse skills, motivations, and incentives of the various players that comprise the network of participants. Nancy Baym (2018) also contributes to this discussion as she explores the newfound intimacy between music artists and their fans afforded by the rise of digital communication platforms as well as the demands and resources of the gig economy that have come to increasingly define the creative industries. In so doing, she offers a nuanced account of the new forms of labor imposed on musicians today by the evolving conditions of the music industry. 

Other scholars like McRobbie and Andrejevic, for instance, contrastingly position themselves closer to the other end of the spectrum. McRobbie (2016) examines the increasing precarity of the gig-economy in correlation with the neoliberalist entrepreneurial ideology that has become part and parcel of working in the cultural industries (elaborated upon later on), while Andrejevic (2009) observes the expropriative data mining practices of digital platforms by pointing out that users’ “free participation is redoubled as a form of productive labor captured by capital” (p. 419), thus shifting the focus away from “user-created content [to] user-generated data” (p. 418). As more and more such studies in the fields of cultural studies, critical information studies, communication studies, and the digital humanities, among others, have come to take this intersection of digital technologies and the cultural industries as their focus, a spectrum comprised of numerous scholarly voices has formed to better nuance and understand both the generative and oppressive potentials of digital communities. In my examination of Thematic as a platform born out of these dynamic interactions between the digital and the cultural, I thus also seek to put myself in conversation with these various scholars. 

I begin by conducting a critical discourse analysis of the Thematic website to examine the way in which the platform is promoted to both Content Creator and Music Artist. In so doing, I specifically shed light on the necessary free labor and uneven terms of participation hidden behind Thematic’s strategic use of democratic rhetoric to frame the space as “safe”, “simple”, and “collaborative”. Once the discursive regime and theoretical frameworks within which Thematic operates are established, I dig deeper into the underlying agreements that range from its Terms of Use to the specific Music Artist and Content Creator Agreements to unearth the lack of protection and expropriative terms that Music Artists subscribe to in their choosing to join Thematic. Finally, I compare the distinct user interfaces of Artist and Creator through a platform analysis to further emphasize this inequality. Ultimately, I hope to shed light on the dependence of Thematic as a representative platform that strategically siphons the neoliberal ideology of the new cultural industries and the outmoded regime of current intellectual property law to mobilize the free labor of its users for its own sustenance, all the while masking these expropriative terms under a democratic and participatory rhetoric of community. 

 “Try Thematic”: Free Labor, Labor as Spectacle, and High-Quality Work

Tiziana Terranova (2012) was one of the first scholars (originally published in 2000) to apply a labor framework to the digital economy, presciently claiming that most of the value in digital spaces is generated by the “voluntarily given and unwaged, enjoyed and exploited” (p. 68) – i.e. free – labor of users. In what is perhaps her most referenced line, she writes that “free labor is the moment where this knowledgeable consumption of culture is translated into excess productive activities that are pleasurably embraced and at the same time often shamelessly exploited” (p. 74). Reductively put, voluntary user activity on a digital platform essentially redoubles as productive activity – labor – vital to the platform’s fundamental maintenance. She does not, however, limit her discussion of labor to that of only the users, and in a comparably less referenced segment of her seminal text, also points to the spectacle of labor that shines through the translucency of commodities in the update culture of the digital economy: 

It is not enough to produce a good website; you need to update it continuously to maintain interest in it and fight off obsolescence… It is the labor of the designers and programmers that shows through a successful website, and it is the spectacle of that labor changing its product that keeps the users coming back. The commodity, then, is only as good as the labor that goes into it. (p. 93) 

By foregrounding both the labor of users in keeping a site alive through their consumptive labor –  “the cumulative hours of accessing the site (thus generating advertising), writing messages, participating in conversations” (p. 94) etc. – as well as the continuous labor of updating these sites required by designers, Terranova points to the digital space-commodity as inherently dependent on a spectacle of rigorously co-operative labor.

Thematic is not exempt from this dependence. Even before one decides to use Thematic as either a Music Artist or Content Creator, the landing home page – i.e. the “Try Thematic” (Thematic) promotional page – cleverly interweaves the different kinds of free labor at play along with the spectacle of labor that its own team provides to urge a potential user to literally tryThematic. Each type of user is enticed with the free labor of her counterpart: “You need great songs to soundtrack your videos. Music Artists need promotion. Thematic makes it happen” (Thematic). The promotion promised to the Music Artist is unavoidably dependent on her uploading of free music to Thematic that is then used by “you”, the Content Creator, in “your” video. Free music for free promotion. It seems here that there is a logical balance of cultural exchange, in which Thematic’s specific “moral economy” (Thompson, 1971) – i.e. “the social norms and mutual understandings that make it possible for two parties to conduct business” (Jenkins, 2013, p. 52) – appears undisrupted. If, however, we examine Terranova’s take on labor as spectacle, it becomes more apparent that Thematic does not position the two parties on equal, or even close-to-equal, terms.

Revisiting the idea of the translucent commodity, a labor as spectacle framework points to the idea that the designers of a platform are also compelled to package their labor to sell to potential users. It thus doubly intensifies the labor required to keep the site alive – the free labor of user activity and the constant updates the platform requires of designers. In the case of Thematic, other than the given labor of maintaining the basic functions of the site, its “spectacular” labor is essentially the continuous update, curation, organization, clearing, and display of songs for Content Creators to browse and download: “Simple. With songs curated by content type and theme, you’ll spend less time searching for that perfect song and more time creating. Safe. All of our songs are pre-cleared…” (Thematic). As is already apparent in its rhetorical use of “you”, Thematic’s spectacle of labor, cleverly repackaged with the democratic rhetoric of “simple” and “safe”, is meant to “keep the [Content Creators] coming back” (Terranova, 2012, p. 93). So where is the labor spectacle for Music Artists? They are, after all, offering up labor-intensive products in their music that serve as the material for the labor spectacle sold to Content Creators. What is meant to bring them, the Music Artists, back? To address this question, we must briefly depart from Terranova’s framework of labor and attend to Hesmondalgh (2010) in his efforts to direct us beyond “wages as the only meaningful form of reward” (p. 278). 

Hesmondhalgh challenges the frequent conflation of free labor and exploitation in extant academic critiques by pointing out that “most cultural production in history has been unpaid, and that continues to be the case today” (p. 277). In speaking directly to Terranova’s discussion of the unpaid labor necessary to functionally maintain the Internet, he writes: 

But it may be said in response that those who undertook such unpaid digital labour might have gained a set of rewards from such work, such as the satisfaction of contributing to a project which they believed would enhance communication between people and ultimately the common good; or in the form of finding solutions to problems and gaining new skills which they could apply later in other contexts. (p. 278) 

In this way he emphasizes the danger of reducing meaningful compensation for work to simply wages, emphasizing that “it would surely be wrong to imply that any work done on the basis of social contribution or deferred reward represents the activities of people duped by capitalism” (p. 278). Although Terranova also acknowledges that “free labor… is not necessarily exploited labor” (2012, p. 93), she explicitly contains it within her description of the construction of early virtual communities where the pleasures of communication and exchange were the fruits of that labor, thus eliding a more nuanced discussion of how such pleasures or non-financial motivations might be meaningful in other contexts. 

To further elaborate on such non-economic forms of compensation Hesmondhalgh moves away from discussions of free labor and shifts his focus to the precarity of the cultural industries: 

Many workers tolerate poor pay, long hours and difficult conditions in order merely to gain jobs with very poor levels of security and protection. In other words, to achieve the possibility of self-realization through creative work seems to require what some recent critics, as I pointed out earlier, have called self-exploitation. (2010, p. 281)

He evidently acknowledges, here, the appropriation by those who hold power in the cultural industries of the “self-realization” aspect of creative work to force workers into tolerating precarious working conditions. That being said, he also further highlights in his book with Sarah Baker, Creative Labour(2011), the importance of high-quality work in these industries as a potentially significant motivator for creative workers. Understood both in terms of Sennett’s (2008) craftsmanship as well as the “opportunities for workers to do work that they consider to be of social, cultural, and political significance” (Hesmondhalgh & Baker, 2011, p. 21), high-quality work as such a form of meaningful wage-alternative compensation thus forces us to rethink and more rigorously define how exactly self-exploitation manifests in these contexts. In urging us to think about the actual lives of the workers and the meaning they attribute to their work, he reminds us that “to treat these positive components of creative work as mere sugar coatings for the bitter pill of precariousness is surely too dismissive of the genuinely positive experiences that some creative workers have in their jobs and careers” (2010, p. 282). 

At this point we can return to the question: what brings Music Artists back? When understood through Terranova’s framework of labor as spectacle, Music Artists were evidently sidelined in our discussion of Thematic’s promotional landing page, and even, unexplainable with regards to why they would “Try Thematic”. But if we re-examine their position under Hesmondhalgh’s lens of high-quality work, and thus foreground the particularities and diverse motivations of individual Music Artists, it allows us to bring them back into the conversation. This is not to say, in any way, that Hesmondhalgh urges us to see the Music Artist and the Content Creator as operating on equal terms within the Thematic community. Rather, the concept of high-quality work allows us to better frame and situate Music Artists’ participation on the platform beyond an exploitation framework, thus very much in line with Jenkins’ take on participatory culture, and at least speculate in similar fashion to Hesmondhalgh and Jenkins, as to what their incentives might be in the explicit absence of labor as spectacle. Perhaps, the mere satisfaction of receiving credit on well-made YouTube videos is enough, or perhaps they make music anyways as a pleasurable hobby and want to donate the products of their hobbies, similar to what Kücklich (2005) calls playbour, to the creative community accessible via Thematic. While it is difficult to pinpoint what individual Music Artists seek to gain from their participation in Thematic without actually speaking with each individual Artist, Hesmondhalgh reminds us that we should not be too quick to dismiss their activities as self-exploitation (which is, of course, not to say that we should rule it out altogether) and acknowledge the potentially other more meaningful forms of compensation that their participation might entail: “which political projects may best enhance human well-being and social justice with regard to work?” (2010, p. 282) To this end, by putting Hesmondhalgh’s framework of high-quality work and his consequential push to look beyond wage as meaningful compensation for labor in conversation with Terranova’s understandings of free labor and labor as spectacle, it becomes possible to sketch a comparably more coherent, albeit not complete, map of the imbricated relations between Thematic, Content Creator, and Music Artist laid out in Thematic’s promotional materials. 

Bio

Edward B. Kang is a PhD student at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism and Assistant Editor for the International Journal of Communication. His research engages the cultural and infrastructural dimensions of digital media and digital surveillance technologies with a specific focus on the relationship between sound/music, identity, platform logics, and platform anatomies. He is thus interested in navigating the socialities that emerge at these knotty intersections of technology and culture. Apart from his own research, he has served as a committee member for Annenberg’s annual Communication and Cultural Studies graduate student conference Critical Mediations, as well as led Music Production workshops for Annenberg’s Critical Media Project with California Humanities

Comics and Stuff: A Virtual Book Club

Comics and Stuff: A Virtual Book Club

Please join me and a range of interesting guests for what we hope will be a lively discussion of my book, Comics and Stuff, and more broadly, of comics, comic studies, and living with our stuff. Each sessions will feature voices from multiple disciplinary backgrounds whose work as scholars and artists helped to shape this book.  Those attending any given Zoom session will get the most out of the experience if they have read the relevant passage from the book, but, of course, we welcome people who are encountering these ideas for the first time.

What’s the Big idea?

For most of their history, comics were widely understood as disposable―you read them and discarded them, and the pulp paper they were printed on decomposed over time. Today, comic books have been rebranded as graphic novels―clothbound high-gloss volumes that can be purchased in bookstores, checked out of libraries, and displayed proudly on bookshelves. They are reviewed by serious critics and studied in university classrooms. A medium once considered trash has been transformed into a respectable, if not elite, genre.

Contemporary culture is awash with stuff. Contemporary graphic novels give vivid expression to a culture preoccupied with the processes of circulation and appraisal, accumulation and possession. By design, comics encourage the reader to scan the landscape, to pay attention to the physical objects that fill our lives and constitute our familiar surroundings. Because comics take place in a completely fabricated world, everything is there intentionally. Comics are stuff; comics tell stories about stuff; and they display stuff. In this book, stuff refers not only to physical objects, but also to the emotions, sentimental attachments, and nostalgic longings that we express―or hold at bay―through our relationships with stuff.

Host—Henry Jenkins, Provost’s Professor of Communication, Journalism, Cinematic Art, and Education at the University of Southern California, is the author or editor of 20 books on various aspects of media and popular culture. Among them are Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, Popular Culture and the Civic Imagination: Case Studies of Creative Social Change, and Comics and Stuff. 

Moderator—Drew Morton is an Associate Professor of Mass Communication at Texas A&M University–Texarkana. He is the author of Panel to the Screen: Style, American Film, and Comic Books During the Blockbuster Era (University Press of Mississippi, 2016) and cofounder and coeditor of [in]Transition, the award-winning journal devoted to Videographic Criticism. He is currently editing an anthology on the Watchmen sequels.  

Audience Chair—William Proctoris Principal Lecturer in Comics, Film and Transmedia at Bournemouth University. He is the co-editor of the books Transmedia Earth: Global Convergence Cultures (with Matthew Freeman) and the award-winning Disney's Star Wars: Forces of Production, Promotion, and Reception (with Richard McCulloch). William is a leading expert on the history and theory of reboots, and is currently preparing his debut monograph on the topic for publication, Reboot Culture: Comics, Film, Transmedia for Palgrave Macmillan. He has also published widely on a broad array of subjects including Batman, James Bond, Stephen King,  Star Trek, Star Wars, and other forms of popular culture. William is also co-editor on the forthcoming edited collection Horror Franchise Cinema(with Mark McKenna) and he is associate editor of the website Confessions of an Aca-Fan. 

Weds. June 17 10-11:30 a.m. (Pacific)

How to Look at Stuff

(Introduction, Chapter One)

In this session, we will discuss, among other things, how the features of comics as a medium create particular relationships to the objects that are being depicted; what comics scholars can learn from earlier moments of art history about the relationship between material culture and visual representation; how new configurations of knowledge and expertise are forming online as collectors come together to discuss meaningful “stuff.” 

Nick Sousanis

Nick Sousanis is an Eisner-winning comics author and an associate professor in Humanities & Liberal Studies at San Francisco State University, where he runs an interdisciplinary Comics Studies program. He is the author of Unflattening, originally his doctoral dissertation, which he wrote and drew entirely in comics form. Published by Harvard University Press in 2015, Unflattening received the 2016 American Publishers Association Humanities award for Scholarly Excellence and the 2016 Lynd Ward prize for Best Graphic Novel. Sousanis’s comics have appeared in Nature, The Boston Globe, and Columbia Magazine. More at http://www.spinweaveandcut.comor Tw @nsousanis

Lisa Pons

Lisa Pon is a historian of European art, architecture and material culture made between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, and professor of art history at USC.  Her research and teaching focus on the mobilities of art, artistic authority and collaboration, and the Renaissance concept of copia or abundance.  Her most recent book, Printed Icon:  Forlì’s Madonna of the Fire, examined an early print on paper that did not burn in a fire in 1428, and the consequences of that survival.

Will Straw

Will Straw is James McGill Professor of Urban Media Studies at McGill University in Montreal.  His interests include magazine history, theories of collecting and the culture of the urban night. 

Tuesday June 23rd 10 a.m. (Pacific)

Collecting Stories

(Chapters 2-5)

In this session, we will discuss how contemporary graphic novels have explored themes of collecting and accumulation; how collecting comics has been a central aspect of how comics artists orient themselves to their medium’s history; why artists are motivated to pay special attention to the material objects with which they populate their worlds; and how shared experiences of collecting helps to bridge between writers and readers of comics.

Bryan Talbot

Bryan Talbot has written and drawn comics and graphic novels for over 40 years, including Judge Dredd, Batman, Sandman, The Adventures of Luther Arkwright, The Tale of One Bad Rat, Alice in Sunderland,Dotter of Her Father’s Eyes(written by Mary Talbot and the winner of the 2013 Costa Biography Award)and five volumes of his Grandville series of steampunk detective thrillers. He is published in over twenty countries, is a frequent guest at international comic festivals, and has been awarded an honorary Doctorate in Arts and an honorary Doctorate in Letters and elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. http://www.bryan-talbot.com

Lincoln Geraghty

Lincoln Geraghty is Professor of Media Cultures in the School of Film, Media and Communication at the University of Portsmouth, UK. Major publications include Living with Star Trek: American Culture and the Star Trek Universe(IB Tauris, 2007), American Science Fiction Film and Television(Berg, 2009) and Cult Collectors: Nostalgia, Fandom and Collecting Popular Culture (Routledge, 2014). 

Jared Gardner

Jared Gardner is Professor of English and director of Popular Culture Studies at Ohio State University, where he spends all the time he can at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum. He is the author and editor of a few books on comics, including Projections: Comics and the History of 21st-Century Storytelling.

Bart Beaty

Bart Beaty  is the author, editor, and translator of more than twenty books in the field of comics studies, including Twelve-Cent Archie (2015) and Comics versus Art (2012). He is the general editor of the Critical Survey of Graphic Novels (2012; revised 2018–2019) and the lead researcher on the What Were Comics? project (whatwerecomics.com).

William Proctor

William Proctor is Principal Lecturer in Comics, Film and Transmedia at Bournemouth University. He is the co-editor of the books Transmedia Earth: Global Convergence Cultures (with Matthew Freeman) and the award-winning Disney's Star Wars: Forces of Production, Promotion, and Reception (with Richard McCulloch). William is a leading expert on the history and theory of reboots, and is currently preparing his debut monograph on the topic for publication, Reboot Culture: Comics, Film, Transmedia for Palgrave Macmillan. He has also published widely on a broad array of subjects including Batman, James Bond, Stephen King,  Star Trek, Star Wars, and other forms of popular culture. William is also co-editor on the forthcoming edited collection Horror Franchise Cinema(with Mark McKenna) and he is associate editor of the website Confessions of an Aca-Fan. 

Tuesday June 30 10 a.m. (Pacific)

Object Lessons

(Chapters  6-8, Epilogue)

In this session, we will discuss how scrapbooks helped to inform the aesthetics of women’s graphic storytelling practices; the ways the depiction of “stuff” in graphic stories has been tied to family history and more generally, aspects of the past that sit uneasily in the present; the different kinds of stories women and artists of color have told about their relationships to the material world.

Rebecca Wanzo

Rebecca Wanzo is professor and chair of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Washington University in St. Louis. She is the author of The Suffering Will Not Be Televised: African American Women and Sentimental Political Storytelling (SUNY, 2009) and The Content of Our Caricature: African American Comic Art and Political Belonging (NYU 2020). Her essays have been published in journals such as American Literature, Camera Obscura, differences: a Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies,  The Journal of Popular Culture, Women and Performance, and numerous edited collections. Her research interests include popular culture, African American literature, critical race theory, and feminist media studies. 

Hillary Chute

Hillary Chute is Distinguished Professor of English and Art + Design at Northeastern University. She is the author or editor of six books on comics, including, most recently, Why Comics? From Underground to Everywhere(Harper, 2017). She is a comics and graphic novels columnist for the New York Times Book Review. 

Joyce Farmer 

Joyce Farmer has been a cartoonist since the series, Tits and Clits (1972-1987). Controversial at first,  she is now considered a pioneer of underground comix.  Her graphic memoir Special Exits (2010) won the Reuben and was nominated for the Eisner. The book has been translated into five languages.

For more information on registration go to the RVSP link at the following:

Part I: How to Look at Stuff

Part II: Collecting Stories

Part III: Object Lessons

Newsboys in America: An Interview with Vincent DiGirolamo (2 of 2)

What factors led to the rise of the newsboy in America?

Newspaper hawkers first appeared as a distinct urban type in New York in the 1830s. They were products of the penny press—cheap newspapers for the masses, which were themselves products of the Market Revolution—the commercial expansion of agriculture and manufacturethat transformed the American economy, polity, and culture. Newsboys facilitated the flow of goods and information across the country, and they quickly caught the eye of artists and writers who transformed them into symbols of Young America—brassy but virtuous strivers who were always on the lookout for the next main chance. Articles about newsboys appeared in the new penny dailies and the scandalous Sunday papers and flash press, as well as in Whig and Democratic journals like Knickerbocker Magazine and US Magazine and Democratic Review. They also inspired the vogue for what I call “urchin art”—genre paintings of street children by the likes of Henry Inman, J. G. Brown, and many others. These youths proved useful as workers and symbols.

Were newsboys a mostly urban phenomenon?

Newsboys were primarily but not exclusively children of the city. They also worked in small towns and rural areas, distributing local papers and the big city dailies that were shipped in. 

Poverty haunted communities of every size and locale. Sherwood Anderson, for example, grew up so poor in Clyde, Ohio, in the 1880s that he sometimes ate grass. He not only delivered the Cleveland Plain Dealerand Toledo Blade, but he also herded cows, toted water, and acquired, sold, and sublet so many jobs that he earned the nickname “Jobby.” Newsboys also trod the dusty streets and plank sidewalks of western boomtowns, cow towns, and military posts. Some boys serviced their routes on horseback. These kids were key players in the development of the urban frontier because every town needed a newspaper to stimulate settlement. 

Boys also worked for the newspaper distribution firms that supplied small towns. These youths folded, bagged, and hauled papers to the railroad depots, or rode the cars and tossed bundles to carriers waiting at the various whistle-stops. Railroads also gave rise to tramp newsboys who hopped freight and passenger cars to work the crowds at horse races, boxing matches, state fairs, and political conventions. More respectable were the uniformed train boys who sold newspapers, magazines, and other items to rail passengers. These “news butchers” represented the aristocracy of newsboy labor, yet many ended up in debt to their companies for unsold or spoiled goods. Others lost their lives in rail accidents. Their families sometimes received compensation, but a common condition of employment as a train boy was to sign a liability waiver. I found that a few girls did this kind of work disguised as boys, but they were promptly fired when their true identities were discovered.

What were some of the risks of being a newsboy and why did they develop such a reputation for being rough and tumble?

Aside from the daily risk of getting robbed, run over, or run off, newsboys had to contend with the ever-present possibility of "getting stuck"— buying more papers than they could sell. Hence their motivation to hustle and shout, “flip” streetcars and dodge oncoming traffic. Progressive Era reformers enumerated the hazards of newsboy life, dividing them into two categories: physical and moral. Physical hazards included flat feet, curved spines, sore throats, skipped meals, stunted growth, and venereal disease. The moral dangers included a propensity to smoke, swear, steal, gamble, fight, drop out of school, and fraternize with hoodlums and prostitutes. Child labor reformers felt that the excitement and relative autonomy of street hawking ruined children for steady work. All of these concerns raise questions about the differences between working-class and middle-class attitudes and values, which I try to examine fairly, without deifying reformers, demonizing publishers, or censuring parents. 

One of the first stories you share is about a news boy who jumped the gun on announcing the first shots of the Civil War by almost two weeks. This raises the question of what role newsboys played in the sensationalism of the American press or what today we might discuss as “fake news.”

The fake news of today bears no resemblance to the fake news of yesteryear when it was shouted by hungry kids who knowingly sought to make a few extra nickels by bilking a gullible public until someone got wise and thrashed them for their deception. It was a risky business, good for a fleeting thrill more than a steady income, as it would ultimately lead to a loss of credibility and customers.  So yes, some kids falsely announced the sinking of the Atlantic and the murder of General Grant, or prematurely blared the fall of Fort Sumter and the death of President McKinley. It helps to remember that news peddling was a kind show business or street theater. Growing up in Philadelphia, William Dukenfield (W.C. Fields) would juggle rolled-up newspapers to gather a crowd and then invent silly headlines like “Amos Stump Found in an Eagle’s Nest.” It was part of his shtick. Yet newsboys who later took liberties with the facts during World War I faced threats of prosecution under the Espionage Act.

It’s also true that newspapers sometimes printed false news as hoaxes. All journalism students learn about the New York Sun’s moon hoax in 1835. Edgar Allan Poe perpetrated a similar fraud in the Sun in 1844 with a story about a transatlantic balloon crossing. And the New York Herald scared the bejesus out of Gothamites with its 1874 hoax of a mass escape of rhinos, baboons, and jungle cats from the Central Park Zoo. Newspaper publishers usually defended such fictions as satires or entertainments. 

More damaging were the sensationalist reports of Spanish perfidy during the Spanish-American War. William Randolph Hearst, Joseph Pulitzer, and other yellow press lords engaged in exaggeration and outright fabrication to bolster nationalist pride and imperialist aims. The 1920s represents another journalistic low point when truth took a backseat to sales. The New York Daily Graphic specialized in doctored photographs it called “composographs.” The National Enquirer continued this tradition with its “coverage” of alien abductions and other nonsense. Even respected papers succumbed to sensationalist strategies. I remember buying a copy of the San Jose Mercury in the 1970s with the banner headline “SOVIET SUB FOUND IN BAY.” It turned out to be a bay in Finland. That was the last time I bought the Mercury, even though I had been a stringer for it in high school.

Today’s fake news, as generated on Facebook by Russian bots and right-wing hacks who make no pretense of journalistic integrity, is more insidious. It’s also the label our tweet-mad president applies to any news item he doesn’t like. These falsehoods are more injurious to democracy than any lie that ever passed the lips of a newsboy.

Most accounts of the struggles over child labor emphasize the stories of children working in factories during the Industrial Revolution. How would this story look different if we centered on the news industry?

I approached newsboys not just as objects of reform, but as complex historical actors who worked, played, swore, gambled, struck, and developed their own occupational subculture. Yet in so doing, I think I shed light on the child labor reform movement as well. Newspaper peddling challenges historians’ tendency to draw clear distinctions between child labor and adult labor, work and play, wages and profit, selling and begging, opportunity and exploitation. News peddlers blur the line between these activities. The fact that their workplace was the street also raises questions about what constitutes endangerment or supervision, not to mention employment. Newsboy labor was also much more romanticized than other forms of child labor due to the influence of novelists like Horatio Alger and artists like J.G. Brown. The newspaper industry participated in this line blurring. Many newspapers sponsored newsboy bands and commissioned newsboy marches and “galops” at a time whena “Breaker-Boy March” or a “Mill Girl Galop” would have been inconceivable. 

The other thing that stands out in studying child street laborers, especially in the Progressive Era, is the prominent role played by socialists in this reform movement. Ardent socialists such as Florence Kelley, Scott Nearing, Robert Hunter, and Upton Sinclair provided much of the intellectual energy and documentary evidence that drove the crusade. Sinclair, of course, went on to write a stinging critique of the capitalist press in his book The Brass Check.

But newspapers were not just exploiters of the children they relied on. We have to take into account that the newspaper industry was, arguably, one of the most influential child welfare institutions in the United States. Newspapers were pioneers of corporate welfare and scientific management schemes. They provided newsboys with banquets, excursions, entertainments, and educations in the form of night schools and scholarships. Indeed, one could argue that newspapers exerted a greater influence on American boys than the YMCA, Boy Scouts, or Little League Baseball combined.

Let’s focus on the boy in the newsboy. What myths about masculinity in America have clung to this figure through the years? Were there newsgirls and if so, how were they perceived?

There were always girls and women who sold papers, but the news trade was dominated by boys and it became a kind of school for masculinity. Boys learned not just how to hustle, make change, and predict sales, but also how to smoke, swear, and fight. They learned about sex on the job, dealing with the sexual advances of co-workers, customers, and bosses. The film director Frank Capra routinely fended off drunk pedophiles while working nights in Los Angeles. Girls in the news trade encountered sexual propositions and assaults as well. They were often blamed for their own troubles. “A girl who starts out selling papers ends up selling herself,” said a police chief in Buffalo, New York.  Their labor was sexualized in prose and pictures, so they were the first targets of reformers, who pressured lawmakers and publishers to remove girls from the streets.

Your book traces a history which runs for more than a century, despite some significant shifts in the news industry over that period. Why did this figure persist for so long and what led to its demise?

Despite the tremendous growth of newspapers throughout the 19th and most of the 20th century, in terms of number, circulation, capitalization, and employees, their proprietors faced the basic journalistic challenge of getting a highly perishable product to market. The cheap labor of children remained integral to this process for several reasons. First, children were abundant; the steady influx of poor immigrant families up to 1924, especially in cities, ensured an ample labor supply. Second, children proved adaptable to new modes of distribution and new sites of retail exchange, such as railroads, streetcars, bicycles, subways, automobiles, and even airplanes. Finally, the emotional appeal of needy children increased their effectiveness as hawkers and carriers, transforming each purchase into an act of charity, especially when accompanied by a tip, which in many cases made up half their earnings. 

The newspaper industry remained largely impervious to child labor reforms, even during the Progressive Era when the removal of youngsters from mines, mills, and factories often sent them into the less regulated street trades.  Despite the tireless efforts of the National Child Labor Committee and its photographer Lewis Hine, the public never really saw newsboys and newsgirls as exploited victims. NCLC investigator Edward Clopper called this misperception the “illusion of the near.” They were too close to us, he said. Conditions changed during the Great Depression. jobs were so scarce that adults now flocked into the trade. But children were still expected to “pitch in” and “help out,” or else make themselves scarce at suppertime. 

Only after World War II did the corner newsboys became less ubiquitous due to the spread of newsstands and vending machines and mandatory school attendance. Suburbanization and Schwinns enlarged the fleet of after-school route carriers in the 1950s, ‘60s and '70s. Many of my friends had paper routes then. They never earned much but they got their pictures in the paper once in a while. Adults deliverers with cars were always more reliable and became increasingly preferable after a rash of newsboy kidnappings and murders in the 1980s and '90s. Declining birthrates, increased youth hiring by fast-food chains, and the siphoning off of readers and advertisers by internet companies (that bear no distribution costs) put the final nail in the coffin of America’s newsboys.

Today, those of us who grew up in the post-war era have a certain nostalgia for kids having their own paper routes. What relationship do you see between newsboys and paper routes? How did the latter become associated with the middle class and its assumed virtues?

The contrasting cultural attributes of route carriers and street hawkers is often exaggerated. Many boys did both jobs in the 19th and early 20th centuries; they delivered (or rented!) papers to regular customers and peddled them on the side to random pedestrians. Yet carriers gradually acquired more positive reputations because they tended to rise early, keep regular hours, and go about their business quietly, while hawkers peddled erratically, often late into the night, and made as much noise as possible. When carriers started to outnumber hawkers in the 1920s and ‘30s, they became the focus of new federal regulations. In response, circulation managers emphasized that the boys’ work was a form of public service and vocational education. They started calling them “newspaperboys” and refused to use the old terms of newsboys or newsies, as these words conjured up images of street arabs and guttersnipes. The industry successfully lobbied Congress to have October 4, 1941 declared the first National Newspaperboy Day. It persuaded the U.S. Postal Service to issue a newspaperboy stamp in 1952. And it established a Newspaperboys’ Hall of Fame in 1960. These tributes were publicized annually in radio broadcasts, newspaper editorials, and galas featuring Abbott and Costello, Red Skelton, and other celebrities. So the virtuous middle-class suburban paperboy of our childhoods is not just a happy memory but the product of a public relations machine working overtime to eclipse the disorderly working-class newsboy. Nostalgia, like newspapers, is a manufactured good. 

Vincent DiGirolamo has published essays on a wide array of subjects, including child vagrants, Wobbly strikes, Ashcan artists, and Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York. His work has appeared in Labor History, Journal of Social History, Radical History Review, San Francisco Sunday Examiner-Chronicle, and several anthologies. He also co-produced Monterey’s Boat People (1984), an award-winning PBS documentary on Vietnamese refugee fishermen, and published the middle-grade novel Whispers Under the Wharf (1990). His contributions to the digital humanities for CUNY’s American Social History Project comprise essays, podcasts, and teaching modules on the Sand Creek massacre, Jacob Riis, Ellis Island, and the 1934 West Coast maritime strike. DiGirolamo has held research and writing fellowships at the Princeton University Center for Human Values, Woodrow Wilson Society of Fellows, American Antiquarian Society, Bentley Historical Library at University of Michigan, and the National Humanities Center in North Carolina. Crying the News also received support from the NEH, PSC-CUNY, and the Eugene M. Lang Foundation, as well as a 2015 Leonard Hastings Schoff Trust Publications Award from the Columbia University Seminar on the City, a 2017 Furthermore Grant from the J. M. Kaplan Fund, and a 2018 Book Completion Award from the CUNY Office of Research.