1GyAp2x

Introduction 25struction of technological systems have posited that when new technologiesenter the social stage, there is a period of flexibility in which differentsocial actors mobilize to construct the new meaning of a technologicalartifact (Bijker, Hughes, and Pinch 1987). Through time, and throughcontestations among different actors, the meaning and shape of an artifactis gradually stabilized and black boxed. Though the meaning of a technologicalartifact can later be reopened with the introduction of new facts ornew social actors, generally there is a period in the historical evolution ofnew technologies in which there is heightened public debate and socialnegotiations about a technology’s shape and meaning. The new media thatwe are examining in this book, and the related generational struggles overthe shape of culture, norms, and literacy, are emblematic of this momentof interpretive flexibility. While what is being defined as “new medialiteracy” is certainly not the exclusive province of youth, unlike in the caseof “old” literacies, youth are playing a more central role in the definitionof these newer forms. In fact, the current anxiety over how new mediaerode literacy and writing standards could be read as an indicator of themarginalization of adult institutions that have traditionally defined literacynorms (whether that is the school or the family).Researchers have posited a variety of ways to understand and define newmedia literacy. For example, David Buckingham comes from a tradition ofmedia education and considers new media literacy as a twist in the debatesover media literacy that have been, until recently, focused on television(Buckingham 2003; Buckingham et al. 2005). Kathleen Tyner (1998) considersmedia literacy as well as technical literacy in her discussion of literacyin a digital world. James Paul Gee (2003) sees gaming as representingnew modes of learning of certain semiotic domains, and in his recent workon twenty-first-century skills Henry Jenkins (2006) applies his insightsabout active media participation to an analysis of new media literacy. Oneof the more general statements of literacy that is pertinent to consideringnew media literacy is The New London Group’s (1996, 63) work on multiliteracies.It sees a growing palette of literacy forms in relation to an“emerging cultural, institutional, and global order: the multiplicity of communicationchannels and media, and the increasing saliency of culturaland linguistic diversity.”Our work is in line with this general impetus toward acknowledging abroader set of cultural and social competencies that could be defined as