Blog Archives

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Euan Brown

Euan Brown studied at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Euan primarily works in illustration and digital art, and hopes to become an illustrator and comic book creator. Euan is interested in online creative content and the value of online discussion. At Youth and Media Euan has created illustrations that were then paired with YaM reports, briefs, and slides.

Sandra Cortesi

Sandra Cortesi is a Fellow at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University and the Director of the Youth and Media project. She is responsible for coordinating the Youth and Media's policy, research, and educational initiatives, and is leading the Digitally Connected collaboration between the Berkman Klein Center and UNICEF. At Youth and Media Sandra works closely with talented young people and lead researchers in the field as they look into innovative ways to approach social challenges in the digital world. Together with Berkman Klein Center’s Executive Director Urs Gasser and the Youth and Media team, she focuses on topics such as inequitable access, information quality, risks to safety and privacy, skills and digital literacy, and spaces for participation, civic engagement, and innovation. Sandra supports the following Berkman Klein projects and initiatives: Youth and Media, Student Privacy Initiative, Digital Problem-Solving Initiative, Digital Literacy Resource Platform (DLRP), Harmful Speech Online, and Coding for All. See publications here.

Urs Gasser

Urs Gasser is the Executive Director of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society and Professor of Practice at Harvard Law School. Urs has written and edited a number of books on digital technology and is the co-author (with John Palfrey) of Born Digital: How Children Grow Up in a Digital Age. His current Youth and Media research projects explore how youth engage with emerging technologies (such as AI), how we can build healthy communities and deal with cyberbullying, and how we address some of the opportunities and challenges that emerge when youth engage with the digital economy (e.g., how youth participate in online activities that cultivate social, cultural, and economic capital).

Maya Malik

Maya Malik, MSSW earned their Masters of Science in Social Work from the Columbia School of Social Work, focusing on International Social Welfare and Rights for Immigrants and Refugees through program design, research, and evaluation. Mx. Malik  previously worked as a Training and Communications Coordinator for the Women’s Health Unit (WHU) at Boston Medical Center supporting the multi-state, NIDA funded, HEALing Communities Study. Throughout their academic career, Maya has taught low income youth of color in different communities in the United States and India utilizing arts-based learning techniques and created interactive educational programming to address the negative effects of poverty, trauma, and structural oppression on attainment for students in marginalized communities. Maya is entering McGill School of Social Work’s doctoral program this fall to research how to utilize arts based Youth-Led Participatory Research (YPAR) methods to work with young Black American girls who have been justice-involved to improve educational intervention programs. Here you can find blogs written by Maya about their time working in rural India.

Rebecca Smith

Rebecca Smith is an artist and animator currently based in Boston, MA. Born and raised in the north shore of Massachusetts, she graduated from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design with a BFA in animation in May 2019. She has been inspired all her life by visual media including art, film, and fashion, and has a passion for storytelling.  She brings these inspirations together in her animation, which uses bright colors and contrasting textures to tell stories about coming of age and finding a place in the world.  She focuses primarily on 2D-animated and character-based work, but also uses mixed-media techniques that fuse digital and traditional media. Her work has been featured in several shows at MassArt including the ReStore show (2017), the Animation Sophomore/Junior Show (2017), the Animation All School Show (2018), and Squealing Pegs (2017&2018). Outside of MassArt her work has shown in the MAST film festival (2019).

Claudia Thomas

Claudia Thomas studied animation at Massachusetts College of Art and Design. She is an animator and illustrator who works digitally in both 2D and 3D. She is fascinated by the endless artistic possibilities created by digital media and the Internet and hopes to explore them in her work. At Youth and Media, she creates illustrations and animations to accompany reports and other media. See some of her illustrations at https://www.claudiathomas.art.

 

 

 

 

 

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About Youth and Media

Youth and Media at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society

By understanding young people‘s interactions with digital media, the Youth and Media project — in collaboration with other partner institutions such as UNICEF, the Digital Asia Hub, and FIR — aims to gain detailed insights into youth practices and digital fluencies, harness the associated opportunities, address challenges, and ultimately shape the evolving regulatory and educational framework in a way that advances the public interest.

Sponsors

Information about past and current sources of funding is available here.

[Extended Version. Last updated: April, 2021]

Led by Principal Investigator Urs Gasser, together with Youth and Media (YaM) Director Sandra Cortesi and Alexa Hasse, supported by Berkman Klein Fellows and Faculty Associates Lionel Brossi, Andres Lombana-Bermudez, and Leah Plunkett, in cooperation with the Cyberlaw Clinic, YaM encompasses an array of research, advocacy, and development initiatives around youth (age 12-18) and digital technology. Interacting closely with other teams at the Berkman Klein Center, YaM draws on the knowledge and experiences of individuals with various backgrounds, including psychology, ethnography, sociology, education, media theory, and the law. Building upon this interdisciplinary approach, YaM invites and amplifies the voices of youth throughout the research process, aiming to develop contributions that reflect and address young people’s needs, perspectives, experiences, and interests. The team’s work builds upon an evidence-base that offers unique insights into the creative, educational, and revolutionary possibilities of youth activity in the digital space while addressing the genuine concerns that come with living life online. For additional information about Youth and Media, please visit www.youthandmedia.org. See also, www.digitallyconnected.org and www.conectadosalsur.org.

As an ambitious project, YaM embraces the core pillars of the Berkman Klein Center, which can be summarized as follows (for more information, please see http://brk.mn/yam_2017-2018overview):

Study: Over the past academic year, YaM has researched topics related to youth and digital life, with results shared in four published reports:

  1. ““Youth and Digital Citizenship+ (Plus): Understanding Skills for a Digital World” disentangles the contested notion of digital citizenship, mapping out over 30 different frameworks from around world, and analyzing the evolution of the concept of digital citizenship and its relationship with other skill-related terminology;
  2. “Youth and Artificial Intelligence (AI): Where We Stand” takes a closer look at AI-based technologies and their impact on young people’s lives in domains such as education, health and well-being, entertainment, and the future of work;
  3. “Youth and the Digital Economy: Exploring Youth Practices, Motivations, Skills, Pathways, and Value Creation” — a shared project between the Berkman Klein Center and the Nordic Centre, led by Berkman Klein Faculty Associate Christian Fieseler — analyzes how youth exercise their agency and participate in economic activities online, discusses power dynamics and youth positionality in online platforms, and includes three case studies on aspirational labor, virtual collaboration, and capital-enhancing activities; and
  4. “Youth and Cyberbullying: Another Look,” which presents an aggregation and summary of recent, primarily academic literature on youth and cyberbullying and serves as an addendum to “Bullying in a Networked Era: A Literature Review.”

In addition to these four reports, the YaM team has intensified its efforts to explore the intersection of youth, digital technologies, and well-being through a suite of efforts. Additionally, expanding the team’s previous work in Latin America, two YaM members participated in a book project — in close collaboration with several other institutions — “Youth, Digital transformation and new forms of inclusion in Latin America” (Jóvenes, transformación digital y formas de inclusión en América Latina), as editors of sections on Privacy and the Digital Economy.

Educate: The YaM team continued to work on the design of open access learning resources and expanded its repertoire to include both group and individual activities. In collaboration with BKC affiliates (Susan Benesch), fellows (Sunoo Park and Jenn Halen), and the First Draft team at Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, the team has been developing new learning experiences and playlists on information verification, cryptography, counterspeech, and artificial intelligence. Additionally, YaM transformed 24 of their existing learning experiences about privacy, advocacy, and online presence into group activities, and adapted older learning experiences implemented in the United States for a more global audience.

Build: The YaM team expanded the scope and reach of the Digital Citizenship+ Resource Platform (DCRP) by adding new resources and thematic areas. Additionally, the team continued to support RErights.org — a child-centered initiative led by Amanda Third at Western Sydney University in partnership with Digitally Connected and UNICEF’s Voices of Youth that enables adolescents (ages 10 to 19) to discuss and share their ideas and experiences regarding the digital age. Insights on young people’s access to and use of digital technologies were collected using a process designed by the RErights.org team and UNICEF and later included in UNICEF’s The State of the World’s Children and its companion report.

Connect: In close collaboration with the Conectados al Sur network, the YaM team co-hosted Conectados al Sur: Costa Rica in January 2018, which centered on digital transformation issues and new challenges for the inclusion of youth. For additional information, please view (1) an overview: http://brk.mn/cascroverview (2) an agenda: http://brk.mn/cascragenda (3) pictures: http://brk.mn/cascrpictures, and (4) videos: http://brk.mn/cascrvideos. Additional network building efforts include The “Global Symposium on AI and Inclusion” in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (see the talk on AI and Youth) and the “Inclusion in Action” workshop in Bogotá, Colombia. Moreover, team members participated in national and international conferences such as Digital Media and Learning (Irvine, California), the Scratch conference (Cambridge, MA), the Connected Learning summit (Cambridge, MA, USA), UNICEF’s Empowering Children in a Digital Age symposium (Washington, D.C., USA)., Ceibal Winter School’s Rethinking Education in the Age of Digital Technology (Punta del Este, Uruguay), the Swiss Media Forum (Lucerne, Switzerland), the Red Cross meeting (Aarau, Switzerland), RightsCon (Toronto, Canada), and the Internet Governance Forum (Geneva, Switzerland).

Some selected press coverage from this year includes: [2019] Wired, Urs Gasser about why AI Innovators Should Be Listening to Kids and why input from the next generation is crucial when it comes to navigating the challenges of new technologies, [2018] Migros-Magazin, “Sandra Cortesi über das Potenzial der Digitalen Welt,” [2017] O Globo, “We still need to better understand how to create and use artificial intelligence systems, says researcher,” and [2017] La Nación, “Cómo mejorar la relación que padres e hijos tienen alrededor de la tecnología.” More media mentions available here.

About the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University
The Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University is dedicated to exploring, understanding, and shaping the development of the digitally-networked environment. A diverse, interdisciplinary community of scholars, practitioners, technologists, policy experts, and advocates, we seek to tackle the most important challenges of the digital age while keeping a focus on tangible real-world impact in the public interest. Our faculty, fellows, staff and affiliates conduct research, build tools and platforms, educate others, form bridges and facilitate dialogue across and among diverse communities. More information at www.cyber.harvard.edu.