NEW BOOK: Disconnected - Carrie James: Youth, New Media and the Ethics Gap
Young people are more connected to one another than ever before. Via Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and a host of apps and other digital technologies, they can share photos, music, and moment-to-moment thoughts and ideas about their lives. They can also learn and exchange ideas about larger events in their own communities and in the wider world.
Given these exciting affordances, it’s critical to examine how young people are thinking about, and engaging with, digital and social media. Further, given the networked nature of online spaces - and the capacity to spread digital content quickly - the extent to which youth, and adults, are attuned to the moral and ethical implications of their online choices is a vital area of inquiry.
In her recently published book, Disconnected (The MIT Press, 2014), Carrie James explores how young people approach online dilemmas of privacy, property, and participation. How do youth think about their own privacy and that of others as they post photos and comments in networked publics? To what extent do they think about appropriation of digital content (music, text, video) with attention to its ethical implications? How do they respond to routine displays of disrespect and incivility that characterize dialogue in many online spaces? Based on qualitative research carried out as part of the Good Play Project, Disconnected is an account of how youth, and the adults in their lives, think about— and often don’t think about — the moral and ethical dimensions of these kinds of situations. She finds that while youth are perpetually connected, wired, or online, their thinking about online situations can often be glaringly disconnected from the ethical dimensions. In other words, youth (and adults for that matter) are often not alert to the distant, potentially far-reaching, implications for others of the things they post and circulate online.
James’s account points to the critical role of adult messages — messages that emphasize personal safety over ethics and citizenship — in the ethical disconnects and blind spots that surfaced in her research. In discussion strategies for closing the digital ethics gap, she offers a vision of "conscientious connectivity” —an approach to online life that is mindful of the moral and ethical dilemmas that can surface in networked publics. As part of this vision, she describes ethical thinking skills, sensitivity, and agency as key features of an ethical disposition towards online life.
