Student Inquiry in New Media

Student Inquiry in New Media :
Critical Media Literacy and Video Games

Introduction

In "Putting Multiliteracies to the Test," Bill Cope & Mary Kalantzis (2000) argue that

Meaning is made in ways that are increasingly multimodal; in which written-linguistic modes of meaning are part and parcel of visual, audio, and spatial patterns of meaning. Take, for instance, the multimodal ways in which meanings are made on the World Wide Web, or in video captioning, or in interactive multimedia, or in desktop publishing, or in the use of written texts in a shopping mall. To find our way around this emerging world of meaning requires a new, multimodal literacy. (np)

New technologies are expanding our understanding of literacy, of what it means to be literate. Now we don't speak of a single monolithic "literacy," but of multiple literacies.

This new understanding of literacy demands highly complex critical thinking skills and adaptive abilities, especially in relation to the technologies of communication. Engaging students in inquiry-based learning with new media capitalizes on students' strengths in important ways. It supports a multi-sensory approach to learning that puts more resources and tools into the hands of students. It engages students creatively and critically in the meaning-making process. Most importantly, it supports students in thinking critically about the tools of production, the tools of literacy.

Background: An Example

During the winter semester of 2005, I received an email inquiry from the student of a colleague. His instructor recommended that he contact me as a "resident authority" on video games. The student wrote that his professor, "said you could give me some advice on finding a good journal/database for my research topic, how video game violence is affecting society today. If you could respond with advice as to where I should look for information, I would greatly appreciate it." Often when I receive emails such as this from students, upon further prodding, I discover that they’ve already made up their minds: "Video games are harmless. I've played them all my life, and I'm not violent. But I can't find any research that supports my view."

In my response to the student, I pointed out that there's no shortage of research on video games and violence. I gave him suggestions on keyword searches for our library catalogue – at least a half-dozen quick discoveries of books on video games and society. In fact, I told him the topic is a bit overdone. If you search LexisNexis for "video game violence," you get 125 hits for articles just in the past 6 months. Infotrac results in 15 hits for recent academic studies in refereed publications on "violence in video games." Education Abstracts results in 20 hits. In searching the Internet, there’s an overwhelming number of articles and sites: 1,270,000 google results for "research on violence in video games" and 4,270 results in google scholar. However, as both Dill and Dill (1998) and Anderson (2004) have noted in their overviews of the research, most of the careful research on aggression and video games come to the same conclusion: viewing video violence increases levels of aggression.

Are video games generally violent? Short answer: Yes. Does playing violent video games make someone more violent? The research says so, but how can a student design an experimental study to test that thesis? They would need a very strong background in psychology and research design in order to design such a project. Rather than pursuing the violence debate, either pro or con, I encouraged the student to explore other avenues of research where he can take a more open-minded approach toward gathering data. I suggested that this student adopt an inquiry-based model of research in which he could design a study that would produce reliable results. What does he want to discover about video games? What theory does he want to test? I referred him to James Paul Gee (2003) for a different look at video games, if he wanted to defend video games or look at the role of literacy in gaming. But more importantly, I suggested that he consider looking at the rhetoric of video games, especially in terms of representation of difference. For a content analysis project, he would need to develop a coding rubric and examine specific video games through that rubric.

Once students begin discussing and analyzing the representation of gender and ethnicity in video games, they find far more engaging and productive avenues of research to pursue than the issue of violence. By building on previous studies and using empirical methods such as content analysis, case study, and ethnography, students develop--as critical readers of new media--what Douglas Kellner (2000) refers to as "critical media literacy." Critical media pedagogy, according to Kellner, provides students with "the tools to analyze critically how texts are constructed and in turn construct and position viewers and readers" (p. 197).

A Focus on Active, Primary Research

In my own classes, I have adopted this inquiry-based approach toward new media and critical media literacy, encouraging students to engage in active, primary research – not just on video games but on information technologies in general. How do male and female college students use cell phones differently? How do students in the residence halls use Instant Messenger? Is there a digital divide among students in terms of computer usage and race, gender, or class? How do students with disabilities utilize digital technologies to foster independence? In this pedagogical approach, students look for similar research studies, and then focus on a research model that they find during a review of the literature. Finally, they replicate that model in their own research in order to take a critical stance toward the media through empirical methodologies.

In order to avoid the pitfalls of statistical research or causal studies, I encourage students to focus on content analysis, case studies, and ethnographic research, in order to describe things as they are. Students may look at research on digital culture and then perform a case study on their own immediate family's use of technology, including the development of a social history of their family to get at issues of race, nationality, and class. As a group, they may then share their findings in order to construct a picture of college students at our university and draw commonalities and differences about their backgrounds. They may engage in participant-observation research on MOOs or develop profiles of classmates and their use of various functions on their cell phones, such as web browsing, instant messaging, and digital photography. Some students explore online communities or support groups. With each of these projects, they are asked to consider how their findings relate to previous findings, especially in terms of digital divide issues such as race, gender, class, and disability. They are also asked to consider an audience for their research, presenting their findings to peers and faculty at student conferences and on the web.

Implementing a Critical Media Literacy Pedagogy

In this article, I discuss one of the strands that has repeated itself over the last few years: the work of students who respond to research on video games and difference. These students engage in either content analysis of PlayStation 2 video games or ethnographic studies of minority gamers and their attitudes toward representation of minorities in video games. This work occurred over a span of three years. Each winter semester, students reflected on the work of peers from the previous year and extended the research.

I present my data in two parts: The first is a description of my own pedagogical practices in the classroom, focusing on engaging students with a research project on gender and video games. Students read and critique a simple but provocative research project by Tracy Dietz (1998), a sociologist from the University of Central Florida. I use Dietz’s article to provide students with a model both for gathering data and for presenting results. At the same time, students critique Dietz’s methodology and develop their own alternative sampling methods, coding rubrics, and interpretive methodologies.

The second part briefly examines three student projects concerning video games: two on gender and one on race and ethnicity. The first student project from the winter of 2003 replicates the work of Dietz using more current data. The second student project, a year later, uses an alternative sampling method and coding rubric, and also includes a case study of a female gamer for an analysis of audience interaction. The third student project, from the winter of 2005, uses a similar methodology to Dietz's, except that he examines representations of race rather than gender. He also includes profiles of five gamers, both male and female, of various ages and ethnic backgrounds.

By examining the pedagogical approach and exploring these three student projects, I show that an inquiry-based model encourages students to develop critical media literacies, to examine with a critical lens not only the technologies with which they engage, but also their own preconceptions about those technologies. Provided with these tools, students produce original and provocative research on video games, develop critical literacy skills, hone their understanding of research methodology and conventions of academic writing, and engage as active learners in the writing classroom.

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