Mobilizing fun in the production and consumption of children's software
By: ITO, Mizuko
.
Material type: 
ArticlePublisher: Thousand Oaks : SAGE, January 2005The Annals of The American Academy of Political and Social Science 597, p. 82-102Abstract: This article describes the relation between the production distribution, and consumption of children's software, focusing on how genres of " entertainment" and "education" structure everyday practice; institutions; and our understandings of chilhood, play, and learning. Starting with a description of how the vernaculars of popular visual culture and entertainment found their way into children's educatinal software that are drawn from ethngraphic fieldwork. The cultural opposition between entertainment and education is a compelling dichotomy - a pair of material, semiotic, technical genres - that manifests in a range of institutionalized relations. After first describing a theoretical commitment to discursive analysis, this article presents the production and marketing context that structures the entertaiment genre in children's software and then looks at instance of play in the after-school computer clubs that mobilize entertainment and fun as social resources.
This article describes the relation between the production distribution, and consumption of children's software, focusing on how genres of " entertainment" and "education" structure everyday practice; institutions; and our understandings of chilhood, play, and learning. Starting with a description of how the vernaculars of popular visual culture and entertainment found their way into children's educatinal software that are drawn from ethngraphic fieldwork. The cultural opposition between entertainment and education is a compelling dichotomy - a pair of material, semiotic, technical genres - that manifests in a range of institutionalized relations. After first describing a theoretical commitment to discursive analysis, this article presents the production and marketing context that structures the entertaiment genre in children's software and then looks at instance of play in the after-school computer clubs that mobilize entertainment and fun as social resources.
Click on an image to view it in the image viewer
There are no comments for this item.