Disconnected: Youth, New Media, and the Ethics Gap
with Carrie James
Tuesday, January 20, 2015 at 12:30 pm
Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University
Fresh from a party, a teen posts a photo on Facebook of a friend drinking a beer. A college student repurposes an article from Wikipedia for a paper. A group of players in a multiplayer online game routinely cheat new players by selling them worthless virtual accessories for high prices. In her book, Disconnected, Carrie James explores how young people approach situations such as these as well as more dramatic ethical dilemmas that arise in digital contexts. Based on qualitative research carried out as part of the Good Play Project, Disconnected is an account of how youth, and the adults in their lives, think about— and often don’t think about — the moral and ethical dimensions of their participation in online communities. In this talk, James will share key insights from the book and related work on supporting meaningful and civil dialogue online.
About Carrie
Carrie James is a Research Director and Principal Investigator at Project Zero, and Lecturer on Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Her research explores young people’s digital, moral, and civic lives. She co-directs the Good Play Project, a research and educational initiative focused youth, ethics, and the new digital media, and the Good Participation project, a study of how youth “do civics” in the digital age. Carrie is also co-PI of Out of Eden Learn, an educational companion to Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Paul Salopek’s epic Out of Eden walk. Her publications include Disconnected: Youth, New Media, and the Ethics Gap (The MIT Press, 2014). Carrie has an M.A. and a Ph.D. in Sociology from New York University.