Beyond the Screen: Examining the Participatory Challenges of Computational Crafts DIY Youth Communities

Principal Investigator:
Yasmin Kafai

Recent research on new media has focused on understanding how young people are adopting sophisticated tools and methods for responding to media through creative production, including youth’s playing and making of video games, creating videos and animations, and contributing to and participating in massive virtual communities. While these activities have received considerable attention, current research tends to overlook dimensions of digital media that impact youth’s activities beyond the screen: namely, those aspects of media construction and design that dovetail with hands-on crafts, physical construction and design, and material play. Our working group will focus on one particularly promising application of tangible media texts called computational crafts and examine electronic textiles (e-textiles).

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