TY - GEN
T1 - Blind spots in youth DIY programming
T2 - 34th Annual Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 2016
AU - Richard, Gabriela T.
AU - Kafai, Yasmin B.
N1 - Funding Information:
The data collection, analysis and writing of this paper have been supported by grants from the National Science Foundation (027736 and 450877) to Yasmin Kafai and a Postdoctoral Fellowship to Gabriela Richard by the University of Pennsylvania. The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the National Science Foundation, Pennsylvania State University, or the University of Pennsylvania. Special thanks to Radium Lee Yang for web crawler searches and to Barrie Adleberg for initial data collection.
PY - 2016/5/7
Y1 - 2016/5/7
N2 - Much attention has focused on the lack of diversity in access and participation in digital media available to youth. Far less attention has been paid to the diversity of youth creators and the content that is produced by youth. We examined the diversity of project creators, content, and comments in one of the largest youth programming sites called Scratch (scratch.mit.edu), with over 7 million registered members between ages 6-16, over 10 million posted projects and 16 million comments. We used keyword and webcrawler searches to reveal that only a small number of users (<.01 %) self-disclosed their racial and ethnic identities. Case studies further illuminated how project designs and comments delved into race, provided cultural critique or addressed racial harassment. In the discussion, we address these blind spots of diversity in massive online DIY youth communities, discuss methodological limitations, and provide recommendations for future directions in supporting diversity.
AB - Much attention has focused on the lack of diversity in access and participation in digital media available to youth. Far less attention has been paid to the diversity of youth creators and the content that is produced by youth. We examined the diversity of project creators, content, and comments in one of the largest youth programming sites called Scratch (scratch.mit.edu), with over 7 million registered members between ages 6-16, over 10 million posted projects and 16 million comments. We used keyword and webcrawler searches to reveal that only a small number of users (<.01 %) self-disclosed their racial and ethnic identities. Case studies further illuminated how project designs and comments delved into race, provided cultural critique or addressed racial harassment. In the discussion, we address these blind spots of diversity in massive online DIY youth communities, discuss methodological limitations, and provide recommendations for future directions in supporting diversity.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85014998022&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85014998022&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1145/2858036.2858590
DO - 10.1145/2858036.2858590
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85014998022
T3 - Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Proceedings
SP - 1473
EP - 1485
BT - CHI 2016 - Proceedings, 34th Annual CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
PB - Association for Computing Machinery
Y2 - 7 May 2016 through 12 May 2016
ER -