The Making of This Book

Research, Methods, and Acknowledgments

In September of 2006 I shared an interesting conversation with a researcher from NBC Universal. Like the other major television networks, NBC was on edge as the new fall season began. The audience for the major networks had been declining for years, but the level of industry anxiety was growing more palpable. This was certainly true at NBC. In a short three-year span, the network known for top-rated shows like Seinfeld and Friends had fallen from first to last place among its “big four” comrades—CBS, ABC, and FOX. Most significant at NBC was the erosion of the most coveted demographic in television, eighteen- to thirty-four-year-olds. In years past the network’s declining audience share was attributed to the siphoning off of more viewers by cable. By 2006, however, the circumstances driving the network’s fall from grace were growing more ominous, due in large part to young people’s migration to digital.

I mentioned to the NBC Universal researcher that I was observing some interesting behaviors in one of the most wired environments in America, college campuses. The ubiquitous presence of mobile phones, laptops, and of course the iPod in young people’s lives is a constant reminder of the changes happening before our eyes. While the number of young people using the Internet and other new communication technologies is certainly notable, how the scope of their online and digital lives continues to broaden is the real story.

“Today,” I said to the NBC researcher, “you have to think of media, especially digital media, as a lifestyle.” So, while television still matters to young people, it is no longer the dominant media in their lives.

In March 2007, roughly six months after my initial conversation with the NBC researcher, the network’s audience woes turned gloomier. According to Nielsen, Americans were abandoning television in startling numbers as more than 2.5 million fewer people were watching the “big four” compared to a year earlier. During a two-week stretch that March, NBC experienced its worst ratings in more than twenty years.

It was around this time that we began studying young people’s media behaviors up close. Our immersion in the digital trenches, the spaces where young people make and remake their digital lives, was timely. According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 2006 was the tipping point for high-speed Internet connections, turning what Pew, two years earlier, called the “broadband elite” into the broadband masses. Furthermore, 2006 was the year that three of the most celebrated Web 2.0 brands—MySpace, Facebook, and YouTube—established a formidable presence in American popular culture. Inspired by the popular explosion of new Web brands and the commercial potential of what Net-entrepreneurs cleverly began marketing as Web 2.0, Time magazine named user-generated media its Person of the Year.

While much of the business news sector was celebrating the growth of the social Web, a team of researchers that I assembled began thinking about innovative ways to conduct research and fieldwork related to the rise of social and mobile media.

One of my early interviews with a high school principal established a key goal in my research. Talking about the state of schools today, she said, “When it comes to technology, we cannot be afraid to learn from our students.” I never forgot her comment. It is a core principle in my own research. Throughout this project I have learned more from children, tweens, teens, and young twenty-somethings than I will ever be able to record in this book or elsewhere. In fact, just about every step of the way on my journey toward completing this book, young people have been centrally involved as either participants in the study or in the design and execution of the study. I learned from a number of young students. Two in particular: Jessica Landes and H. Erin Lee. Jessica conducted three different sets of interviews and helped my research team set up a Facebook site to interact with users of technology. Whenever Facebook made changes in the platform, she was the first on our team to know about it. Erin was an indispensable resource. The research for this book could not have been executed without her. Erin, along with a group of undergraduate students we taught, helped to build the survey instrument we continue to use. She also leads all of our statistical analysis.

Our survey was organized into four parts. Part One, “General Media,” asked young people questions related to which media they own, use, and spend the most time with. Part Two of the survey addressed the “Internet” with a particular focus on how often they use the Internet, the range of activities and experiences they seek out on the Web, and degrees of happiness and satisfaction with their Web-based experiences. A subset of questions—on frequency of use, intensity of use, and attitude—focused specifically on social-network sites. “Music Media” was the central focus of Part Three. The questions in this section addressed how young people’s consumption of music was evolving in the age of digital downloads, iTunes, iPods, and peer-to-peer file sharing. One of my early and enduring interests involves understanding the state and fate of television as young people migrate to digital. Part Four was designed to illuminate how often young people watch television, what platforms they prefer when watching television, as well as the attitudes they possess regarding the technology. The final section of the survey, Part Five, collected some basic personal data such as gender and race.

Erin was also the teaching assistant for three undergraduate research courses that I taught. In each of those classes we worked with students to constantly refine our questions and approach to studying digital media. The classes usually consisted of about ten to twelve students and offered a hands-on research experience that introduced students to the art and science of rigorous research. Similarly, I benefited from the experience by having a structured opportunity to engage young students about the role of technology in their lives. From these structured classes we collected more than three hundred interviews. Our young researchers were required to record and transcribe some of their interviews. They were also expected to write a summary of their interviews and a report on their findings. All of our work was situated within the context of academic research. The reports by the Pew Internet & American Life Project were quite useful too. The environment was academic but based on real-life experiences, collaborative and rigorous, and challenging but encouraging.

We did another large sample of interviews, about 105, between February and April 2008. This time our team of students focused on matters related to community online. Specifically, we wanted to learn if young people use social-network sites to bridge (defined as meeting people not like them) or to bond (defined as meeting people like them). Our survey gave us some data on this matter, but we knew the in-depth conversations would provide a different dimension of data. We sought to get an even distribution of men and women as well as a racial and ethnic cross-section. Even though these conversations were potentially sensitive, we wanted them, again, to be informal and semistructured. We began with a series of questions related to general usage of the Internet. Understanding the degree of engagement with the Web was crucial in all of our conversations. We did not plan it this way, but we ended up collecting what amounts to a life history of technology use among young people. The second set of questions focused on use of social-network sites. We wanted to learn how often and why they use social sites, which sites they prefer, and why. The final section of questions were structured around the notion of community. Specifically, we wanted to know who they connect and correspond with online and to what degree these connections are tied to their off-line affiliations. We were also interested in understanding how diverse these online networks are. Instead of imposing our own definitions of diversity, we let the students define and discuss what diverse online networks mean to them.

We distributed the survey the old-fashioned way, with pencil and paper, as well as the more modern and efficient way, online. First, we visited a wide-range of classrooms that gave us a mix of majors, years in school, and race and ethnicities. Next, we generated a random sample of students and submitted a recruitment message via e-mail, Listservs, and electronic fliers. References to the survey in this book are drawn from about 560 completed questionnaires.

From the very beginning of this project my goal was to combine a mix of methods—quantitative and qualitative. Whereas quantitative methods help researchers identify trends, frequencies, and patterns, qualitative methods provide depth, detail, and color. Quantitative data tells you, for example, that teens spend an average of three hours a day online. Qualitative data provides rich detail on the kinds of experiences generated during those three hours.

A research grant from the College of Communication Office of the Dean at the University of Texas at Austin supplied some initial support to go out into the field to conduct in-depth interviews with young technology users. In addition, Mary Celeste Kearney, Laura Stein, and Stuart Kelban—members of the Undergraduate Studies Committee—provided some funds that helped with the research. These enrichment funds allowed me to put together a small team of researchers. Alyxandra Vesey was hired as a graduate research assistant. One of our first tasks was to write a literature review of the scholarly research on social-network sites. That white paper assisted the development and design of a question guide that we used as the basis for conducting in-depth interviews with young people regarding their use of social-network sites. We also recruited two undergraduate students, Jessica Landes and Cristen Radice, to help us conduct, transcribe, and analyze the in-depth conversations. Those in-depth conversations were influenced by Herbert and Irene Rubin’s book, Qualitative Interviewing: The Art of Hearing Data. We took their advice and made our interviews semistructured, conversational, and rigorous at the same time.

The question guide was built around three broad themes: 1) Internet use, 2) use of social-network sites, and 3) social impact of social-network sites. After conducting the interviews, each team member was then asked to write a quick summary of the key points and themes that emerged from the interviews. Then, we met to discuss the most important and common themes from the interviews. These turned out to be important learning and strategic sessions about social media, the rise and influence of social-network sites, and their everyday life implications. What I valued most about these sessions and, indeed, all of the research for this book, is that the young and the digital were integrally involved from the very beginning. Young people helped us design our survey and the questions for our in-depth conversations. Finally, each team member was asked to produce a final report that documented their interviews and analysis and also to submit the audio recordings of their interviews.

Blake Rebouche, another undergraduate student and gamer, helped to identify and interview World of Warcraft users.

The formation of the four-pack deserves some mention here. I met four-pack member Derrick first. During that interview we talked about growing up with computers and his use of social-network sites. As our conversation unfolded I learned a lot about Derrick, including his passion for games. I asked Derrick to identify a handful of his peers for a panel that I wanted to put together. Several young men expressed an interest before I eventually selected Brad, Trevor, and Chase, along with Derrick. Once I settled on the four-person panel, I visited with them in their residential hall. The four-pack filled out the survey and also agreed to complete media journals. Every two weeks I issued them questions via e-mail to address in their media diaries. One week, for example, the diaries may have been devoted to games, and the next week, to television. The diaries were honest, rich in detail, and provided intimate access to a group of young men who embody the rising generation of gamers. Each four-pack member submitted a total of four diaries. Each submission was followed up with a one-on-one conversation.

We also spent endless hours in the online spaces young people inhabit, looking at MySpace and Facebook profiles, YouTube videos and comments, and blogs. Our first goal was to always keep the identities of the young people we observed and the schools and residences we visited anonymous. All of the names of students, principals, and teachers, for example, are pseudonyms. Also, we knew that pictures would add another dimension of detail and depth to our work. So we recruited students to collect pictures of their peers’ apartments and dorm rooms in order to give us a fuller sense of the role, placement, and impact of technology on their environment.

The Young and the Digital was greatly enhanced by the generosity of a number of schools, teachers, and principals who welcomed me into their complex world. In order to understand young people’s engagement with technology, I knew I had to get into schools, places that are like no other when it comes to understanding young people. Observing second and third graders in class or talking with a group of seventh and eighth graders about MySpace, Facebook, or what it means to be a citizen in the digital world is always illuminating and rejuvenating.

My participation in a technology task force at one Austin-based private school has been a constant source of knowledge sharing, idea creation, and learning. Our meetings dealt primarily with what technology means for the learning environment that this particular school establishes for its students. Our conversations maintained an unswerving focus on two questions: First, how is technology going to enhance the student’s learning experience? Second, how does technology impact the community aspects of the school? The latter question relates to cyberbullying, digital citizenship, and the social and communal aspects of technology. It is one thing to read about these matters and another one to work with a school to learn and set relevant policies and boundaries that empower students’ engagement with technology.

In 2006 I was selected to join the fabulous team that the MacArthur Foundation put together to push its young people and digital initiative forward. Specifically, I want to thank Anna Everett and Katie Salen. My primary involvement was collaborating with a group of scholars and game designers charged by MacArthur to map out why and how games matter in the lives of young people. The chapter Everett and I coauthored appears in the book The Ecology of Games: Connecting Youth, Games, and Learning.

Some of the ideas for this book have been cultivated in various talks and presentations made at universities, health groups, and foundations. I want to thank Henry Jenkins for an invitation to speak and help kick off MIT’s Media in Transition conference in 2007. A couple of visits to Stanford to talk about race and new media helped me to refine many of my ideas. Howard Winant and Melvin Oliver’s invitation to speak at the University of California at Santa Barbara was a nice opportunity to meet graduate students interested in media and sociology. Likewise, meeting students and faculty in the Media, Society, and Technology Program at Northwestern University sharpened some of my ideas about race, social-network sites, and digital gates. Visits to the University of Michigan and Harvard also gave me an opportunity to talk with colleagues about the shifting landscape of new media and its relationship to young people. I am forever grateful for the invitations to speak with the Lance Armstrong Foundation Young Adult Alliance and Cleveland Clinic Children’s Hospital about youth and new media. Sharon Strover’s invitation to lecture and teach workshops on youth and digital media culture at the New University of Lisbon and Porto University has connected me to an interesting community of scholars and professionals from Portugal who are beginning to grapple with the global migration to digital.

This book has taken me on an amazing ride. I built community and shared conversations with so many people along the way that I cannot even come close to naming them all. Also, we collected so much data from interviews and the surveys that there is no way all of it could be included in the book. Therefore we have decided to start a blog as a way to keep our work alive, public, and involved in the conversations of which you are undoubtedly a part.

As always there are so many people to thank. Many of my colleagues at the University of Texas at Austin offered various forms of support, including Jacqueline Vickers, Rod Hart, Joe Straubhaar, Susan Dirks, Christine Williams, Gloria Holder, Bert Hergistad, Tom Schatz, Kathleen Tyner, and Karin Wilkins.

Many other scholars and researchers also provide intellectual community: Herman Gray, Susan Douglas, Robin Means-Coleman, Amanda Lotz, Scott Campbell, Jeff Chang, Mark Anthony Neal, E. Patrick Johnson, Barbara and Daniel O’Keefe, Noshir Contractor, Jennifer Light, Sean Zehnder, Ellen Wartella, Dawn Elissa-Fischer, Marceleyna Morgan, Harry Elam, Michele Elam, and Orlando Patterson.

My conversations with friends and teachers at Trinity Episcopal School have been a constant source of nourishment. Thank you all. Lisa Zapalac, Brenda Leaks, Karen Calvert, Donna Hallet, Rebecca McClure, Jeff Pzynski, Ron Olfers, Ben Davis, Sandy Cangelosi, Terri and Chris Von Dohlen, Jeff McMahon, Bruce Ezell, Claire Saunders, Juliet Tapia, and Liza Lee shared their thoughts, helpful books, or interests throughout my research.

Great educators and community leaders like Mark Cunningham, Sherry Watkins, Rana Emerson, Holly Custard, Malinda McCormick, and Dale Thompson were incredible resources.

As usual, my friends at Beacon Press have been outstanding, encouraging, and enthusiastic champions of this book. From the moment we talked about my ideas for this project one evening in a Boston bar, my editor Gayatri Patnaik has offered steady guidance and unswerving confidence. Despite her busy schedule, she read a very rough draft and saw promise. Likewise Joanna Green has been a great resource. Also, thanks to Tom Hallock, Sarah Laxton, Susan Lumenello, Pamela MacColl, and Caitlin Meyer for their support.

Now that I am finished with this book I may actually find the time to use Facebook and “friend” my friends.

Finally, my family has been central in writing this book. Though she is not a digital native by any stretch of the imagination, my mother, Jeweline Watkins, has forced me to think about the wider public while writing this book. The memory of my father is never far away. My wife deserves special thanks for keeping our family ready for the world. Her love, energy, and embrace is a constant source of life. My daughter, Cameron Grace, is the light of my world and her third-grade basketball and volleyball teams rock too!