Young creators in open spaces: digital ethnography

Abstract

The goal of this paper is to analyze the creative processes undertaken in a community of teenagers participating in entertainment workshops designed to develop digital literacies. The main goal is to outline support strategies to generate digital literacy among young people who participate in social networks. We adopt an ethnographic and action research approach to explore the creative process undertaken in an informal educational environment. Methodologically, narrative reconstructions are combined with an analytical approach. The results obtained were three-fold: 1) Specific audiovisual content depends on the material and social context in which it was generated. 2) When multimodal discourses are used, their use is conditioned by the mobile applications that young people use and the need to integrate different modes. 3) The conversations and practices that take place in the workshop focus young people’s attention on creative and critical practices when using social networks such as Vine and Instagram.