Haitian Youth Document the Earthquake & Aftermath

Photo by Andrew Bigosinski, for AOL News.

Via Unicef's MAGIC Network, news today about an amazing and humbling initiative being undertaken by students of Haiti's only film school, the Ciné Institute, who are tirelessly documenting and producing an eye witness account of this week's devastating earthquake and its aftermath. Located in Jacmel, a small town south of Port-au-Prince, the film school's classrooms and most of its equipment were reduced to rubble during the earthquake. But that hasn't stopped its students -- all but one of which is currently accounted for, but all of whom have lost their homes and/or loved ones -- from banding together to produce on the ground news footage, which they have been uploading to the internet since Thursday. So far, they've been able to salvage six cameras, a few editing stations and an uploading station from the site of their former school. Working with a team in New York, they've been able to generate an impressive multi-media news stream, complete with (in some cases) english subtitles and growing attention from mainstream media outlets (some of whom are using their footage, e.g. CNN).

You can watch the videos on the school's Vimeo channel, through the school website, and on Facebook. You can also follow them on Twitter, and view some of the first images taken in Jacmal through Flickr. Their work not only provides a crucial firsthand account of the disaster's impact and aftermath in Jacmel, but also raises awareness about smaller communities and towns that are also in need of global aid, but that might not be getting as much attention as Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince. As Dana Chivvis, who did a feature on the students' efforts in a recent article for Aol News, writes:

With their lives in chaos and their buildings in ruins, the students set up a makeshift base at a radio station. With the equipment they salvaged, they have four editing stations and one uploading station. Working with a team at the school's office in New York, they uploaded Keziah's video to their Web site only two days after the earthquake.

At noon on Friday, a second video was up, and six more are waiting for volunteers to edit and produce. Fritzner Simeus's footage shows buildings stacked like pancakes on top of themselves, people freeing a man pinned under the rubble, and thousands at night lying in the grass at the airport with nothing but blankets to cover themselves.

"The idea really now is that we make the world know that Jacmel has been equally hit as Port-au-Prince and need as much support," Bigosinski said. The students have had food and fresh water, but supplies are running low. Already fuel for generators and medical supplies in the town are nearly spent.

Clearly, along with the need for support in these vital areas, the students will also need support to continue their work of covering the aftermath. They are already encountering problems with internet access, which could seriously delay their efforts to provide a key public and humanitarian service of keeping the rest of the world informed of what's going on in Jacmel. They're currently in search of a temporary donation of an Inmarsat BGAN, a lightweight, easily transportable broadband global area network (BGAN) that would enable them to upload large video files without having to rely on the limited local services currently available to them. Just one of many things that we can do to help, but one that media professionals might be in a particularly unique position to make happen.

My heart goes out to the students and teachers of the Ciné Institute, to Jacmel and to Haiti, to all those impacted or whose loved ones have been impacted by the earthquake, and to all those involved in the relief efforts.

Family Surveillance: Mobile Locators

It seems that news about new mobile locator technologies designed to help parents track their kids -- either via cell phones or some other device -- are being launched almost every other week these days. In the UK especially, news coverage of the devices and their potential "safety" value is frequent and fairly prominent. In a country where one third of under 10s allegedly have their own mobile phone, tacking on surveillance features may appear to be the intuitive next step in "remote parenting"...rather than hassle your kids with a phone call, just look up their GPS coordinates to make sure they are where they said they'd be, etc. Here are a few recent examples of mobile locators in the news:

From SourceWire, a new study by MobileLocators.com found that:

Fears about child abduction have left British mums and dads desperate to keep tabs on their youngsters – and as a result, nearly two thirds have invested in a mobile phone for their offspring.

But many parents are taking security a stage further – by turning to the very latest satellite spy technology to ensure the safety of their kids “on a day-to-day basis”.
[...]
Hundreds of mums and dads have already registered their children’s mobile phone numbers with the website http://www.mobilelocators.com to pinpoint the user’s exact location. And of the 2,100 people polled – two thirds said they would be happy to invest in the new software, no matter how intrusive.

According to the article, however, another third say they don't want their kids to become paranoid about being under constant surveillance, and question the ethics of these types of devices. Although the MobileLocators.com company head says that "concern for security outweighs the worry about the Big Brother phenomenon,” the fact that the survey also found that about a fifth of respondents would also want to use the technology to track their significant others, I'm not so sure that privacy issues are so easily dismissed.

In terms of interesting usage/family dynamics stats, the study also found that most kids get their first mobile phone at age 11 (20% vs. 16% at age ten, 14% at age 12, and 2% at age 4). Among the 43% of parents who wouldn't allow their child to have a mobile, most based this decision on the belief that "the child was “not old enough” to have one." Other reasons given were the fear that having a mobile would attract bullying or theft, that it would lead to text messaging "addictions," or it could cause a brain tumour. In keeping with the industry's emerging party line when it comes to kids and mobiles, however, MobileLocators.com suggests that not allowing kids a phone creates a "“massive” extra workload for security-conscious parents" - who now more than ever (?assuming an increase - not so sure about that) drive their kids around everywhere (20%), don't let their kids out after dark (12%), and get involved in "vetting" their child's friends (defined as "some"). In relaying these stats, however, the article fails to mention any age differences (for example, it's pretty likely the parents of any 4-year-old will drive them everywhere, mobile phone or no), differences over time, or whether these behaviours apply solely to parents who don't give their kids mobiles, or to parents generally. Needless to say, I detect a bit of fear mongering. Keep an attentive eye on the use of the term "peace of mind" within industry discourses and ads.

Case in point, a recent article in The Inquirer on a "Madeleine McCann effect" apparently taking place in the UK, linking the MobileLocators study to the recent high-profile child disappearance/kidnapping of Madeleine McCann. According this article, parents are buying phones for their kids at an increasingly young age in direct response. As for those that don't allow their kids to have a mobile, the reporter blames "that government boffin, Sir William Stewart, specifically advised parents not to give the phones to children under the age of eight." Yikes! Nevermind that a number of well respected medical associations have advised the same thing, or that the debates around mobile phones and health, mobile locators and privacy/surveillance, and even mobiles and safety are still very much in full swing.

The safety issue comes up again within another recent innovation -- mobile monitors. As reported by Actual Technology News Blog, "a handful of companies are rolling out software that they say lets parents monitor communications their kids are having on the phone and hopefully protect them from unwanted advances." Just like Internet filters before them, these products are being sold (or at least promoted) as solutions to new forms of wireless stranger danger:

"All the problems of the Internet are on the cell phone," said Bob Lotter, founder of Newport Beach, Calif.-based eAgency Mobile Solutions, which offers a cell phone monitoring service on mymobilewatchdog.com. "Cyber-bullying, unsolicited sexual advances and child pornography" are all happening on the mobile phone, he said.

While much of the attention is centered on predators using the Internet to stalk children, Lotter and other experts say cell phones are an ideal means for predators because parents often don’t check what’s going on with a child’s cell phone. It's also a device that is commonly used by children out of their parent’s watchful eye.

The article also includes the following quote, which I found particularly interesting:

According to Teri Schroeder, chief executive of iSafe.org, parents need to be aware of any two-way communications whether it's via the Internet or a cell phone. "They have to understand it's high-tech high-touch," she said, noting that text messaging is a "huge" means of communications and with things like global positioning systems built into the phone it's increasingly dangerous for children. "We now have a medium that's intimidating to the parent and challenging parenting skills," she said.

Schroeder's comments point to a pretty important and largely unspoken aspect of these mobile locators -- the lack of regulation and transparency about how the collected data is used, by whom, and what safety measures are applied to ensure that no one but the parent is able to track the kid's phone.

This leads me to another article, one which delves a little more deeply effectiveness issues of and begins to explore the impact they may have on family dynamics and "traditional" values such as honesty, responsibility and trust. It's from a story that was covered on Channel 9 WSYR news (in Syracuse) about the use of GPS locator technologies in the workplace. Perhaps because the topic is introduced in terms of adult employers tracking their adult employees, issues around privacy and the potential detrimental effects of being constantly surveilled are introduced immediately. Near the bottom of the article, the focus shifts onto parents using GPS to track their kids -- listing a number of such services, their cost and more "peace of mind" rhetoric, this time from Jack Pflanz of Sprint/Nextel. After introducing the state of the market, however, the story shifts again, this time placing the focus on one family that tried the technology and have since decided against it. Although definitely of the "human interest story" variety, this part of the article also functions quite effectively in reconnecting the parents/kids dimension of mobile locators back to the employer/employee tracking examined at the start of the article. Here's an excerpt:

Carl Loerzel gave his daughter what every teen wants: a cell phone; but then Carl told Brittany the cell phone plan would allow him to track her movements through GPS technology. "I thought about the mall trips, what if something happens, where is she."

Brittany didn’t think the technology was going to work, and would be able to do what ever she wanted. "That's not how it turned out." Brittany got caught in a lie at one point, caught being where she wasn’t supposed to be. "[My dad] knew exactly where I was; he picked me up, and brought me home. That didn't get me nowhere but grounded."

"I think she understood that, once we talked to her about it, once we got passed the yelling part of it," Carl said. Dad and daughter did a lot more talking following the incident. In fact, they've come to terms and have decided to give relying on talking and tender loving care, instead of GPS.

Brittany says she learned to be honest, and not lie. "If you lie, you're going to get in more trouble." Her dad says he now trusts his daughter a lot more.

Ok, so the way the story plays out, it does appear that having the GPS unit initiated better family communication, and so on, but I think that the important thing is that the family decided to go with honesty over tracking. I wish that the story had examined this change in opinion a little more in depth, but I suspect that it links up to some of the academic studies on parental monitoring, which argue that child disclosure is still the best way to keep track of your kids...Best in terms of the parent-child relationship, the likelihood that the child will engage in "delinquent" behaviour, and in terms of the amount and quality of information that the parent obtains about the kid when she/he is away from home.

In particular, I'm referring to two articles by Stattin and Kerr:
Stattin, Håkan and Margaret Kerr (2000). Parental Monitoring: A Reinterpretation. Child Development, Vol. 71, No. 4, pp. 1072-1085.

and

Kerr, Margaret and Hgakan Stattin (2000). What Parents Know, How They Know It, and Several Forms of Adolescent Adjustment: Further Support for a Reinterpretation of Monitoring. Developmental Psychology Vol. 36, No. 3, pp. 366-380.

Their exploration of family surveillance and parental knowledge of children's activities outside the home, have found that much of the information parents obtain about their child's whereabouts and activities come from the children themselves...and that child disclosure, as opposed to parental monitoring and control, is correlated to a number of pro-social variables (as described above -- better parent-child relationships, lower rates of delinquency, better informed parents, etc.), and is much more in line with children's participatory rights and right to privacy. As Stattin and Kerr (2000) describe:

"[H]igh parental knowledge was linked to multiple measures of good adjustment. But children's spontaneous disclosure of information explained more of these relations than parents' tracking and surveillance efforts did. Parents' control efforts were related to good adjustment only after the child's feelings of being controlled, which were linked to poor adjustment, were partialed out.

This has led them to conclude that:

"[T]racking and surveillance is not the best prescription for parental behavior and that a new prescription must rest on an understanding of the factors that determine child disclosure."

More to come!

Kids and Mobile Play: David Buckingham's Camcorder Culture

On January 30th, I attended a seminar at the London Knowledge Lab, featuring David Buckingham, who talked about the latest component of a study his Centre for the Study of Children, Youth and Media is doing on "Camcorder Cultures". His talk focused on the use of video/film within youth skate (board) culture: the film conventions found within this subcultural genre, how knowledge (both in terms of the sport and surrounding media production) is exchanged among skaters, and the complex relationship with commercial culture (including sponsors, commercialization, appropriation, etc.). A very interesting and well put-together presentation, with lots of openings for analysis and future questions about technology, performance, play, celebrity culture, digital culture and DIY media. He showed a number of clips of typical skate videos and provided a brief content analysis of a skate-video website called Skate Perception.

I was struck by both the continuities and the evolution of these videos since my earlier exposure to them in the early to mid-1990s (when they suddenly became a feature of my own peer culture), through to the late-90s (when they would often materialize in the later hours of university house parties). In many respects, a number of the predominant conventions present in the skate videos of a decade ago remain -- often filmed with a fish-eye lens, frequent use of black and white, grainy "documentary" style footage (esp. during complex tricks, which are as unedited as possible) from low perspectives, and the inevitably trendy indie soundtrack. They still follow the same format of introducing a skater (whose name appears on the bottom of the screen), followed by a montage of them performing a series of tricks (set to a particular song/band/genre), switch to the next skater, a series of their tricks, with their own song/band/genre, etc. Buckingham pointed out that the use lettering and the ways in which names appear on the screen during these intros is an important part of the production value, as is the accentuation (perhaps added in) of the sounds the skateboard makes, as it grinds, rolls, hits the pavement, etc.

There were also quite a few noticeable differences between "then" and "now" - the videos we watched were much more polished than previous, more serious in a way (although Buckingham argues that they aim to "not be too serious), without the short shots of pranks, gross-out scenes and general silliness that were often sprinkled into the videos we watched as teens (and that Anil's friends made themselves, as he described during Q&A). There's even a trend of explicit "sponsor me" videos -- made and promoted to find the skater a corporate sponsor.

The relationship between extreme sports (skating) and commercial leisure was of particular interest to me. Although he didn't delve too far into it, Buckingham pointed out that from the outset the sport has had tight links to corporate sponsorship and branding, although he presents this as a complex, back and forth (or bottom-up and top-down) exchange. I, of course, was a little more suspicious of how the videos appear to conform to previous versions, including the commercial versions we watched back in the day. I suppose the argument would be that those videos were probably already trying to appropriate and replicate what kids were doing on their own anyway. It's hard to say, and even harder to say if it matters, but I suppose I'm nonetheless troubled at the way in which the political economic relations are so overt and yet so subtle within skate culture, which appears to have internalized an attitude of ironic acceptance towards its own commodification.

Anyway, here are more links to some of the things Buckingham talked about:
Ale Ciattoni's "Sponsor Me" Video
Dogtown and Z-Boys
A recent Vans ad

My G-Life: Game Design with a Mission

Cool site alert! An article was published in the BBC news online a few weeks ago (but I only just now had the chance to research it) about a new "social networking site" aimed at enabling teens around the world (aged 13+) to learn game design/development skills and then share their final products...all under the Creative Commons license. The site is called My GLife.org, and is currently in beta-mode, operating with only a bare bones structure and no teen-designed games as of yet. Some media and marketing (?) companies have donated simple flash games as examples, though, to give visitors and potential developers a sense of what they're looking for. Here's an excerpt from the official description of the site:

Through an open architecture of websites and related wikis and blogs, MyGLife participants learn to analyze, design and build web-based games and simulations that address globally relevant and social issues of their choice and passion. Topics include climate change, ecology, water, community services, technology skills, peace and more.

[...]

MyGLife.org is comprised of an open architecture of educational, programmable websites and related wikis that offer more than 100 educational activities, simulations and tutorials to play, learn, explore and contribute new ideas online.

* PLAY to Learn invites participants to play with an arcade of games, puzzles, creative tools and scientific simulations and to think about them critically as game developers. Donated and open source customized tutorials allow participants to tinker with the underlying game code and learn programming skills.

* LEARN to Build features an extensive library of hand-picked, custom written and open source tutorials for learning Flash, HTML, Graphic Design, Wiki, Blogging and Project Development skills.

* EXPLORE Web 2.0 Resources features links to recommended online resources and lists of suggested readings that will help participants.

* CONTRIBUTE Knowledge and Support encourages participants to follow-up their learning by contributing works back to the site. Professional developers and organizations worldwide can also donate work and learn how to start MyGLife programs locally.

The project is run by an organization called World Wide Workshop, which I hadn't heard of before now, but appears to have a pretty awesome goal of spreading global participation in digital cultural production to groups that are most often excluded, in this case young people from disadvantaged communities in developing countries worldwide.

Ofcom's New Guidelines for Kids' TV

From the December 13th edition of Cynopsis! Kids, a story about Ofcom's new guidelines for children's television programming, which will apply to programs produced for both kids and teens (i.e. viewers under 18 years). According to Cynopsis!, the guidelines reflect a growing concern about game shows (and reality shows?) that involve / star child participants, following a series of "high-profile game-related debacles in kids programming in the UK this year." She writes, "Ofcom wants producers to make clear to kids and their families that they might lose, as well as explaining they should pay close attention to the related emotional angst and stresses of performing and the various issues that go with that." The organization recommends that it might be useful for producers to consult with a child psychologist for advice in dealing with the potential negative outcomes / experiences that kids might encounter. Sounds like a good place to start, anyway. Along with these recommendations, the Ofcom guidelines ask producers and broadcasters of kids' programming to comply with existing rules set forth by the Broadcasting Code, including (as cited in Cynopsis! Kids):

* Development of clear guidelines for production staff working with those under eighteen;
* Appropriate background checks on a participant's social, family, health and educational circumstances and a thorough risk assessment if necessary;
* Where practicable, ensuring there is a single, consistent point of contact with whom the participant is able to liaise throughout the production to oversee the child's welfare; and
* Careful consideration of the program format and its likely impact on the participant is recommended. For instance, springing high impact surprises on under eighteens in 'live' or 'as live' programs where conflict or highly emotional situations may be involved, could cause harm and/or distress. Similarly, in genres which involve young children in competition with others, performance anxieties and pressure to succeed may be issues.

Now I'm quite curious to find out whether Canada's Code has similar stipulations in place for game shows, reality-type competition shows and kids.

The Coolest Girl In School, or Bully w/ a Pink Bow

Another great article from YPulse this week, this time around a new Australian mobile game that's being promoted as "GTA for Girls". Here's an excerpt from anastasia's post:

Do girls need their own GTA? A female Australian mobile game developer thinks they do, which is why she created "The Coolest Girl In School." The game is provoking parental outcry Down Under. [...] [It also] Sounds like the game is full of mixed messages -- being a "mean girl" wins the game, i. e. "lie, bitch and flirt your way to the top of the high school ladder," but according to the article about the game in The Daily Telegraph, risky behaviors, i.e. drinking, drugs, etc. do have consequences. So if the argument is that Grand Theft Auto allows boys to live out their fantasies of mass murder and beating up prostitutes, than the Coolest Girl in School lets "good girls" live out their fantasies of being "bad" and popular?

For more coverage, check out Tweenage Wasteland and this article in The Ottawa Citizen by Misty Harris.

Reading the game's description and taking a step back from the controversy a little, it seems to me that we've seen all of this before...last year, in fact, when Rockstar's identically-themed Bully was released and everyone was up in arms about how it promoted bullying by "rewarding" bullying behaviours. In Bully, the player advances by spreading rumours, rebelling against teachers, pitting cliques against each other, trying to impress the cool kids, fending off constant attacks from larger bullies, dressing to impress the cool kids, going on dates with and/or merely smooching with the right people (girl or boy). If you got caught, you would get punished. Actions had repercussions -- every move you made to fit in with one group put you at odds with the others. Etc. Etc. Now, replace some of the more overt forms of physical violence with emotional or psychological violence, and what you've got sounds a heck of a lot like The Coolest Girl in School.

I played a big chunk of Bully last year for my thesis, along with another controversial game called Rule of Rose. Like Bully, Rule of Rose dealt with bullying, although the fact that it was girls doing and receiving it seemed to be enough to send that game out of the realm of public debate and into the realm of censorship. The game was banned in Europe, and had late releases in the US and Australia because of the controversy around it. Meanwhile, although Bully had originally attracted more public attention, it ultimately sort of came and went without a hitch (well, a Jack Thompson court case, but that was par for the course last year). My own opinion about both games is that not only are they not nearly as violent as most, but that they address violence in a way that could actually be much more meaningful and value-laden for young people (not children, but teens and young adults) than, say, some gangland fantasy or alien killing spree. Both games are attempts -- albeit flawed -- to delve into an enormously significant and serious issue...far from merely "promoting" bullying, they each explore bullying in complex ways that have not been discussed in the ensuing debates, which instead seem to limit themselves to whether or not the games should exist. Which brings me back to The Coolest Girl in School, which finds itself as the newest focus of this same essentializing discourse about whether games are "good" or "bad", and questions of how we can make these bad games disappear.

I'm not saying that The Coolest Girl in School will contain the same depth and intelligence as Rule of Rose, or that it will bring the player through the many layers of moral ambiguity that underlie high-school social hierarchies the way Bully did. All I'm saying is that we can't write a game off outright just because it deals with "unpleasant" issues, or addresses them in an exaggerated or unconventional way. That sort of reactionary attitude is what leads to censorship, and places dangerous pressure on the industry to limit itself to "family friendly" fare, even when designing games for adults or older kids and teens. Let's play the game first, and then have an informed discussion about it afterward.

Update: I just heard about another new game that fits this genre, called Dangerous High School Girls in Trouble. Check out Leigh Alexander's review on Playthisthing.com.

Trend Alert: From Buffy to Twilight

Interesting story from the CBC this week on Twilight, an enormously popular tween/YA book series written by a young Mormon woman named Stephanie Meyer - think Buffy the Vampire Slayer without a super-powered protagonist and even more relationship talk. From the CBC website:

Meyer’s saga — the third book was published recently — offers readers supernatural bodice rippers without much bodice ripping (more on that later). Since its 2005 debut, the series has sold upwards of 2 million books, and the latest installment, Eclipse, sold 150,000 copies on its first day alone. With a certain boy wizard in retirement, Twilight is the biggest young-adult phenom going.

Frothing with romance and gothic atmosphere, the books tell the story of Bella Swan, a regular jeans-and-T-shirts girl who moves from Phoenix, Ariz., to a drizzly corner of Washington state. It’s all doom and gloom — that is, until she encounters boy-vampire Edward Cullen on the first day of school. "He was glaring down at me," she narrates in the first book, Twilight, "his black eyes full of revulsion. As I flinched away from him, shrinking against my chair, the phrase if looks could kill suddenly ran through my mind."

The article goes on to describe the books' huge fan following, which includes swarms of vampire-attired girls showing up for book signings, and a healthy online component. The series has been optioned for film adaptations by Summit Entertainment, and two more installments are set for publication by 2009.

Disappointingly, the article doesn't make any mention of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, despite the obvious points of comparison...both in terms of themes and in terms of the substantial fan base. Ok, so Buffy was never at the same level ($$-wise or audience-wise) as Harry Potter, but still! It seems kind of likely that Twilight is tapping into some of the same audience, and at the very least extended an already established tradition of "vampire-romance" within girls' culture (from Anne Rice to Buffy and Angel to The Darkangel Trilogy).

By the way, for those of you who still miss it, Joss Whedon has been publishing a comic version of Buffy Season 8 through Dark Horse Comics. I suspect the book will eventually be made available as a graphic novel as well, so if you've missed the first few issues you might want to hold off until next spring and get the "complete season."

Marketing Research in Habbo Hotel

This story is from a couple of weeks ago, about a "new" (is it new? The Sulake website seems to imply otherwise, as in that the study is more than a year old) market research study conducted in Habbo Hotel. Business Week's Reena Jana has written a good overview of the study, linking it to larger trends within in-game market research and providing a run-down of the study's major findings and demographic data. From Jana's article:

Sulake, the Helsinki (Finland) company that created Habbo, a popular eight-year-old virtual world aimed at teens, found a way to survey more than 42,000 such consumers in 22 countries, by soliciting responses to questions about real-world global shopping preferences from Habbo avatars. Its first Global Habbo Youth Survey, conducted in association with Finnish market researcher 15/30, was published in the form of a 200-plus page report earlier this year, and it's now available to curious corporations for $5,000.

In September, Sulake will conduct a second survey, this time without an outside partner. The process of surveying teens on this massive, global scale via their avatars was so efficient, Habbo decided that there is no need for external help. "We found we could gather this data in about a week," says Emmi Kuusikko, director of user and market insight at Sulake. "It is extremely rewarding to carry out this quantitative research. The [teens] were so eager to participate. They were in their own environment, an environment they can trust."

The site solicited respondents from all across Europe, North America, and Asia by sending a message to Habbo avatars which linked to an external online questionnaire. According to the article, respondents spent an average of 33 minutes answering a variety of questions about their "backgrounds, tastes, and their shopping and media consumption habits." In exchange for their participation, respondents were "given a reward" in Habbo credits (which usually cost real money). Overall, respondents were predominantly based in the UK, but the survey managed to draw participants from around the world:

Most (8,852) came from Britain, followed by the U.S. (3,747), and Norway (3,244). The fewest responses were from Venezuela (197), Portugal (175), and Austria (90). And responses was split pretty equally between genders: 51% of survey takers were female, 49% male. Most respondents were in the 13- to 15-year-old age group (60%), followed by 16- to 18-year-olds (19%). Only 12% were 12 and under [which is odd since players are supposed to be at least 13 to play], and 10% were 19 and older.

Although these practices appear to have been going on in other environments for some time now, the article seems to treat the phenomenon as a new development in online market research:

Some trend watchers think mining virtual worlds for teen-trend data is a logical and timely market-research strategy. "The membrane between our real and our virtual worlds has become very thin, especially for teens today. Most of their social interaction takes place with a screen, whether it's on social-networking sites, instant messaging, using a cell phone to take photos or watch TV, or even just plain e-mailing," observes Robyn Waters, former vice-president of trend, design, and product development at Target and now the head of an eponymous trend-watching firm. "For this generation, interacting in the virtual world isn't just a trend. It's their life," Waters continues. "Trend watching in virtual worlds makes sense for any business in today's environment that wants to be around for the next generation."

Weird - is it just me or does this article seem preposterously out of date? Anyway, of course, there are also marketers and critics who question the validity of the data. AdAge claims that the industry is currently experiencing an "Online Market Research Crisis," and the issues around online surveys will be the focus of an upcoming conference of the Advertising Research Foundation (ARF). For example, check out this video on AdAge to hear editor-at-large Jack Neff discussing the controversy around "scientific flaws" in online survey research. Others, such as myself, have deep and ongoing concerns about the ethical standards applied in these types of studies. Is consent "informed consent"? Is the site exploiting teens' "trust" by approaching them in their "own environments"? Is parental consent addressed? What about the implications of renumeration?

You can also check out the slide show here, as well as the Sulake website for more details on their marketing and advertising activities and future plans for brand expansion.

Circuits of Cool/Digital Playground Report

I've got a more elaborate post coming up this afternoon, but in the meantime, check out this new report by MTV, Nickelodeon and Microsoft on global kids and technology. The report combines findings from a qualitative/quantitative study that included 18,000 respondents between the ages of 8-14 years and 14-24 years in 16 countries. As per the KidScreen coverage:

Perhaps the most interesting finding is that digital communication vehicles such as IM, email, social networking sites and mobile phones/texting are complementary to, not competitive with, TV. Additionally, the study is full of little info nuggets. For example, the average Chinese young person has 37 online friends he/she has never met, youth in India are most likely to see mobile phones as status symbols; and 33% of UK and US teens say they absolutely cannot live without their game consoles.

Rusak promises more extensive coverage of the report in next month's issue. Until then, here's the Viacom press release, and the MTV press release.

From Virtual Dolls to Grand Theft Auto

Last week, the game industry was all abuzz about a new study published in the Journal of Adolescent Health that found "no corresponding increase in violent or anti-social behavior" among young teens who played M-rated or violent video games (you can read some of the coverage at The Escapist or GamePolitics.com). Much less coverage was given, however, to the primary purpose of the study, conducted by Cheryl K. Olson et al. (2007), which was to explore gender differences in the game play patterns of young adolescent males and females, with a special emphasis on violent games. Among their key findings:

Of 1254 participants (53% female, 47% male), only 80 reported playing no electronic games in the previous 6 months. Of 1126 children who listed frequently played game titles, almost half (48.8%) played at least one violent (mature-rated) game regularly (67.9% of boys and 29.2% of girls). One third of boys and 10.7% of girls play games nearly every day; only 1 in 20 plays often or always with a parent. Playing M-rated games is positively correlated ( p < .001) with being male, frequent game play, playing with strangers over the Internet, having a game system and computer in one’s bedroom, and using games to manage anger.

Conclusions: Most young adolescent boys and many girls routinely play M-rated games.

Another interesting discovery, (found on p.82): "[T]wo in five boys and one in five girls like to “mod” games, e.g., by downloading new characters, weapons, clothing, or story lines from the Internet."

While gender differences persist, it would seem that they are no longer as marked as they once were (or at least assumed to be). It's worth noting, however, that there are still some noticeable differences in terms of which M-rated and other games female and male players reportedly prefer...an aspect that the study does not really explore. Check out the tables on pp.79-80, where the article provides a comparison between the "five games played most often" by the guys and girls surveyed in the study. What I found most interesting about these lists was the diversity of content and themes (genres) found in the games listed by the female players. While the guys' list was fairly predictable:

1 Grand Theft Auto (M)
2 Madden (football) (E)
3 Halo (M)
4 NBA (E)
5 Tony Hawk (skateboard) (T)
6 NCAA (E)
7 Need for Speed (racing) (E or T)
8 ESPN (E)
9 Medal of Honor (T)
10 Lord of the Rings (T)

The girls' list is much harder to define, esp. in gendered terms:
1 The Sims (T)
2 Grand Theft Auto (M)
3 Super Mario (E)
4 Solitaire (E)
5 Tycoon games (E)
6 Mario games (unspecified) (E)
7 Tony Hawk (skateboard) (T)
8 Dance Dance Revolution (E)
9 Mario Kart (racing) (E)
10 Frogger (E)

I'm also struck by the fact that although violence games and M-rated games are enjoyed by (some) players of both genders, E-rated games dominate in terms of games most frequently played by both girls and boys (if you count Need for Speed as E-rated).

You can access the full article on the journal website by clicking here. Thanks to Jade Reporting for linking to a post by Mighty Pony Girl which brought this to my attention.

Full Reference: Olson, C.K., Kutner, L.A, Warner, D.E., Almerigi, J.B., Baer, L., Nicholi II, A.M., and E.V. Beresin (2007). "Factors Correlated with Violent Video Game Use by Adolescent Boys and Girls", Journal of Adolescent Health 41 (1), pp. 77–83.