Guest editorial: Playful literacies across ages and contexts: new horizons for pleasure, affect, and living texts

Ehret, Christian; Flint, Tori K.; Lammers, Jayne C.; Magnifico, Alecia Marie; Mora, Raúl Alberto

doi:10.1108/etpc-06-2023-199

Cited by 1 publication

(2 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…Vickery (2022) built on that work to push on the ways we “adultify” many youth media practices like “messing around.” She argued that “playful media positions young people as experts of the development of emerging media syntax, memetic codes and amateur generic conventions” (p. 135) but that adults often center, circulate and celebrate texts that reflect adult values, discounting playful texts that are “just for fun” because they “are less likely to legitimize adult institutions and pedagogies” (p. 124). This delegitimization of play not only reveals a “distrust with youth pleasure” (p. 132) but also ignores a history of research that has demonstrated how play can be central to learning and development with equity implications (see Ehret et al , 2023).…”

Section: Digital Writing In a “Postdigital” Age: Youth As Philosopher...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Attentive to literacies research that has highlighted the importance of both youth play and pleasure (e.g. Ehret et al , 2023) and the role of platforms in shaping literacies (e.g. LeBlanc et al , 2023), we focused on the “telling case” (Mitchell, 1984) of Character AI (CAI), a chatbot that allows users to engage in dialogue with different fictional and fictionalized characters.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Digital writing with AI platforms: the role of fun with/in generative AI

Stornaiuolo,

Higgs,

Jawale

et al. 2024

ETPC

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Purpose With the rapid advancement of generative artificial intelligence (AI), it is important to consider how young people are making sense of these tools in their everyday lives. Drawing on critical postdigital approaches to learning and literacy, this study aims to center the experiences and perspectives of young people who encounter and experiment with generative AI in their daily writing practices. Design/methodology/approach This critical case study of one digital platform – Character.ai – brings together an adolescent and adult authorship team to inquire about the intertwining of young people’s playful and critical perspectives when writing on/with digital platforms. Drawing on critical walkthrough methodology (Light et al., 2018), the authors engage digital methods to study how the creative and “fun” uses of AI in youths’ writing lives are situated in broader platform ecologies. Findings The findings suggest experimentation and pleasure are key aspects of young people’s engagement with generative AI. The authors demonstrate how one platform works to capitalize on these dimensions, even as youth users engage critically and artfully with the platform and develop their digital writing practices. Practical implications This study highlights how playful experimentation with generative AI can engage young people both in pleasurable digital writing and in exploration and contemplation of platforms dynamics and structures that shape their and others’ literate activities. Educators can consider young people’s creative uses of these evolving technologies as potential opportunities to develop a critical awareness of how commercial platforms seek to benefit from their users. Originality/value This study contributes to the development of a critical and humanist research agenda around generative AI by centering the experiences, perspectives and practices of young people who are underrepresented in the burgeoning research devoted to AI and literacies.

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Section: Digital Writing In a “Postdigital” Age: Youth As Philosopher...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%