«Prosuming» across Cultures: Youth Creating and Discussing Digital Media across Borders

Abstract

The Scratch Online Community enables young people to share their creative digital projects internationally with a level of ease that was impossible only a few years ago. Like all creative communities, Scratch is not just a space for sharing products, work, techniques and tips and tricks, but also a space for social interaction. Media literacy educators have unprecedented challenges and opportunities in digital environments like Scratch to harness the vast amount of knowledge in the community to enhance students’ learning. They also have challenges and opportunities to implement a form of digital media literacy education that is responsive to social and cultural representation. One role of digital media literacy is to help young people to challenge unfair and derogatory portrayals of people and to break down processes of social and cultural «othering» so that all community members feel included and safe to express themselves. This article considers how online community spaces like Scratch might draw on social interaction to enhance intercultural understandings and learning through dialogue and creative practice. The article uses statistics to indicate the amount of international interaction in the Scratch community. It then uses qualitative analysis of forum discussions to analyse the types of intercultural interaction that occurs..