Media Practice and Education

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Distributed digital capital: digital literacies and

everyday media practices

David McGillivray & James Mahon

To cite this article: David McGillivray & James Mahon (2021) Distributed digital capital: digital
literacies and everyday media practices, Media Practice and Education, 22:3, 196-210, DOI:
10.1080/25741136.2021.1899628

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MEDIA PRACTICE AND EDUCATION
2021, VOL. 22, NO. 3, 196–210
https://doi.org/10.1080/25741136.2021.1899628

Distributed digital capital: digital literacies and everyday

media practices
David McGillivray and James Mahon
School of Business & Creative Industries, University of the West of Scotland, Paisley, UK

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

In this paper, we focus on young people’s use of digital platforms, Received 26 August 2020
within the context of a ‘live’ digital media project. The study draws Accepted 4 March 2021
on Bourdieu’s notion of social practices and explores unevenness in
KEYWORDS
the possession of digital capital by young people. We use a live Digital capital; Bourdieu;
digital media project and draw on a (digital) participatory action digital inequality; social
research approach to explore the extent of distributed digital media; digital citizenship;
capital in evidence with a group of young people from dis- young people
privileged backgrounds and their creative use of digital platforms
to enact strategies to alter their future prospects. We conclude
that for those young people emerging from a challenging
habitus, support mechanisms are a crucial element in building a
bank of digital capital tradable in other areas of their lives.
Communities of practice can support those without privilege to
compete on a more level playing field with their privileged
counterparts by opening up access to educational cultural capital.

Introduction
Digital and social media platforms have become ubiquitous, providing people from across
the age and socio-demographic spectrum with the opportunity to create text, visual and
video content and publish immediately using blogs, social networks, video and photo
sharing sites. Access to these sites is invariably free, the threshold for involvement is
often low and the proposed benefits for democracy, citizenship and community are
potentially significant (McGillivray et al. 2015). There appear to be no limits to creative
expression on these platforms, with visibility for user content being guaranteed and
the ability to shape discourse in the public sphere moving from traditional media to
social media (Schäfer 2015; Poell, Rajagopalan, and Kavada 2018).
However, despite the emancipatory promise of digital and social media, growing con-
cerns about equity of access, data privacy and mental health-related effects means that
these platform architectures (Gillespie 2010) can also be viewed as tools for increased sur-
veillance, control and exclusion. Moreover, having access to digital tools and technologies
is no guarantee that people are able to access the associated social and economic benefits
(Van Dijk 2017; Van Deursen, Helsper, Eynon and van Dijk 2017; Dodel and Mesch 2018).
For example, Harris, Stalker and Pollok (2017) demonstrate that participants from

CONTACT David McGillivray [email protected] @dgmcgillivray

© 2021 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License
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 MEDIA PRACTICE AND EDUCATION 197

neighbourhoods with lower socio-economic status (SES) were more exposed to TV, elec-
tronic games, mobile phones and non-academic computer activities at home than their
higher SES counterparts. Vulnerable young people, especially those at recognised life
transitions are also most at risk of experiencing digital exclusion (White 2016) and are
amongst the least likely to be online. Having a suitable device to access the internet
must also be accompanied by the development of ‘skills, confidence and awareness
necessary to use available resources and tools in a fruitful manner’ (Gauntlett 2011, 154).
The taken-for-granted social mores of the past are subject to disruption in a multi-
channel, multi-platform age. Recent scandals about fake news, disinformation, and sur-
veillance capitalism (Zuboff 2019) reinforce the importance of digital users being able
to comprehend the impact of their online activities, not only in the present, but over
time. As the UK’s doteveryone suggests:
people with digital skills can go on Facebook; those with digital understanding know how
Facebook collects data about them. People with digital skills can shop on Amazon; those
with digital understanding know they can exercise their consumer rights on the internet
https://medium.com/doteveryone/this-is-digital-understanding-694c2140e335

People need to know when they post family images online, are offered increased
digital storage in the cloud, or switch on the location services on their smartphones
that there are impacts and effects, especially in the longer term. There is a growing
body of evidence that suggests users of digital platforms have digital blindspots which
inhibit their ability to question the implications of technology on their lives. The UK
charity, Doteveryone, has found that too few individuals have sufficient digital under-
standing to exercise their own information rights, or the impact of media manipulation
methods and techniques on their lives. Bowyer (2019) has also suggested that too few
children and young people are in a position to take appropriate steps to mitigate the
risks they might experience online, referencing an Ofcom (2017) report that suggested
over half (53%) of young people aged 12–15 who go online think they can easily
delete information that they have posted about themselves if they do not want people
to see it. Each of these reports reinforces the importance of digital understanding – the
ability to think critically about how the digital environment works, what interests are at
work within this sphere and how young people can be confident, critical and creative
(Johnson et al. 2014) – or ‘savvy’ – users of pervasive digital spaces.
In this paper, our focus is on how young people facing challenging personal and edu-
cational circumstances navigate their use of digital platforms, within the context of a ‘live’
digital media project. We are interested in the practices these young people utilise to gain
understanding and make choices about how to operate in the digital space. Situating the
study on the notion of social practices and unevenness in the possession of digital capital
requires an engagement with the work of Pierre Bourdieu. It is to this theoretical terrain
that the paper now turns.

Bourdieu, digital (media) capital, unevenness and young people

The late sociologist Pierre Bourdieu sought to explore the relationship between objective
social structures at the macro level and everyday social practices at the micro level. He
wanted to undertake an ‘analysis of the experience of social agents and the analysis of
the objective structures that make this experience possible’ (Bourdieu 1988, 782). His
198 D. MCGILLIVRAY AND J. MAHON

work considered the fields of art, education, sport and the media, especially television. He
did not develop a systematic treatment of the media as a whole, and certainly not of the
digital media space that has grown so significantly in the last two decades, particularly
since the emergence of Web 2.0 platforms. However, his work still has salience for the
field of digital media.
Bourdieu’s theory of social practice had three main components – habitus, capital and
field. The habitus was viewed as a set of durable dispositions unconsciously carried with
people, embedding certain cultural trajectories in individuals. The habitus shapes how we
act, what choices we make and how we react to given circumstances. As Bourdieu himself
stated, ‘children … will simply grow up knowing what is best, without ever bringing those
choices and judgments to consciousness. It will seem simply ‘natural’ to like particular
kinds of novels, films, meals, holiday destinations and sports.’ (Harris 2005, 38). The
habitus has structuring effects, but is also is influenced by the social space of fields
that contain specific logics and rules that differ from each other.
Capital, which comes in economic, cultural and institutionalised forms, is the currency
tradable within a specific field and differs depending on the logics or rules of that field.
The different goods, resources and values denoted by capital are unequally distributed
within fields. So, for example, educational cultural capital is valued within the educational
field, including primary, secondary and tertiary education. In these fields, possession of
the right form of capital provides an opportunity for distinction and, ultimately, positions
of influence and authority. In the last decade, there has been something of a renaissance
in the application of Pierre Bourdieu’s ideas of habitus, capital and field to the digital
(media) landscape, with adherents suggesting that there are continuities between
access, interpretations of the value of, and use of digital spaces (including social networks)
with the cultural practices of traditional media, especially when considered in relation to
the educational sphere. Proponents argue that the privileged and dis-privileged conceive
of the value of the internet in very different ways, reinforced by, and reinforcing, their
habitus and possession of educational cultural capital (Zillien and Hargittai 2009). A
body of work emerging out of Scandinavia has been particularly influential in exploring
this line of enquiry empirically (Danielssen 2011, 2014; Bengtsson 2015; Willig, Waltorp
and Hartley 2015). For example, Danielssen (2011) has suggested that, while at an aggre-
gate level, most young people are engaging with the digital realm, there are clear differ-
ences in use by socio-demographic status once you dig further. He argues, for example,
that privileged males possess more educational cultural capital, which translates into
different digital leisure culture activities, ‘constituted around the idea of spare time as a
scarce resource to be strategically invested in (digital) goods and practices with the
capacity to generate profit in the field of education and the general social field’ (68).
For these young people, online digital environments are utilised for ‘productive’ purposes,
including learning and networking that also carry value in offline spaces. Less productive,
‘fun’ or ‘entertainment’-focused digital leisure activities (e.g. gaming) are also undertaken
but ‘they do so to a moderate extent’ (Danielssen 2011, 68). In other words, access to and
use of apparently democratic, disorderly, liberating, classless digital environments fail to
take into account the ‘force of ‘the order of things’ – embodied in the class distinctive
habituses of the (dis)privileged males and habitually realised through their actions’.
Instead, ‘digital media are appropriated in ways that rather serve to reproduce such
inequalities’ (Danielssen 2011, 69).
 MEDIA PRACTICE AND EDUCATION 199

Bourdieu’s formula of social practice, constituting habitus, capital and field can be seen
by some as overly structuring (Jenkin 2002) and fixed. The habitus’ durable dispositions
indicate a difficulty in individual actors being able to alter their social positions.
However, this would be a limited reading of Bourdieu’s work on social practice. He
argued, instead, that individual actors always enact strategies as they enter and interact
with fields, where forms of capital are valued differently (Jenkin 2002). As new dynamics
are introduced to an existing field (e.g. the impact of social media platforms on journal-
ism), so actors must improvise and enact strategies, with their practice being an outcome
of the interaction rather than a product of it.
As discussed previously, there is unevenness in digital practices, particularly in terms of
age, socio-economic status, access and usage (Hargittai 2010). In the field of digital media,
Murthy (2008, 845) has suggested that membership of social media communities is ‘inher-
ently restricted to the digital ‘haves’ (or at least those with digital social capital) rather
than the ‘have nots’’. There is also evidence to suggest that the possession of digital
understanding or digital wisdom (Prensky 2009) is also differential. Dominant discourses
around digital immigrants and digital natives (Hargittai 2010) perpetuated the notion that
young people were automatically presumed to be digitally confident and capable.
However, over recent years, this notion has been challenged by evidence of differential
access and use impacted by socio-demographic status, geography and educational
attainment. In essence, the possession of digital capital – the ability to operate effectively
within the increasingly ubiquitous digital field is uneven, unequally distributed and
experienced (Robinson 2009). Nowhere is this clearer than in the sub-field of digital
media, with its purported freedom of expression, elimination of gatekeepers and fluid
identity formation. However, the digital media landscape is also characterised by concerns
over privacy, risk and security, the effects of overuse, and various other moral panics.
In the remainder of this paper, attention is paid to a creative digital media project,
#TransplantStories, which was conceived as a collaborative venture between digital
youth workers and academics to explore the reality of differential and unevenly distribu-
ted digital capital in practice. Through the vehicle of this project, we explore the extent of
distributed digital capital in evidence with a group of young people from dis-privileged
backgrounds and the extent to which creative use of digital platforms can enable strat-
egies to be enacted by individuals to alter their future prospects.

Methodology
The project #TransplantStories from which this paper draws, is situated within the sphere
of digital ethnography (Pink, Horst, Postill, Hjorth, Lewis and Tacchi 2015) but, crucially,
with a commitment to (digital) participatory action research (Mayorga 2014). Action
research approaches, building on the work of Kurt Lewin (1946), demonstrate a sol-
utions-orientation, focused on experimentation and learning, the meaningful involve-
ment of partners, stressing equality and cooperation and ‘change with others’ (Reason
and Bradbury 2008, 1). Participatory Action Research (PAR) emphasises democratic and
social justice principles, with Torre et al. (2012) suggesting that ‘PAR is an epistemology
that engages research design, methods, analyses, and products through a lens of demo-
cratic participation’ (171). Inherent to a PAR ethos and approach to method is the nature
of relationships between academic actors and research partners. In the spirit of
200 D. MCGILLIVRAY AND J. MAHON

collaboration, research partners co-constitute the research problem, the research design
and analysis of data. Even more importantly, is the cyclical process of observation, reflec-
tion, planning and action (Jensen and Laurie 2016). O’Leary (2014) suggests that PAR is
useful in addressing practical problems, generating knowledge (around digital (i) literacy
for young people) and enacting change.
The #TransplantStories project worked to these PAR principles. First, the project was
structured around a primary objective, to use digital and social media platforms to
report on an annual sporting event for people living with transplants, the Transplant
Games. Second, through the development of learning interventions to support young
people use digital reporting techniques, the project generated knowledge about digital
media (literacy). Third, it sought to enact change in terms of upskilling young people
from dis-privileged backgrounds on how to make use of digital and social media plat-
forms, safely, to produce publicly available media content. Fourth, it was participatory
in that the project involved young people as change agents, along with the institutional
actors who work closely with them – specifically youth work services. Finally, the project
followed a cyclical process by adopting observation, reflection, planning and action in its
design.
Though focused on the effects of uneven access to digital capital by socio-demo-
graphic status, the project was built on a strengths-based approach (Krutkowski 2017),
recognising the interests and skills young people entering the project already possessed.
The #TransplantStories project built on previous experience of digital media project work
involving the young people who volunteered to participate. Also, in order to foreground
the voices of young people as much as possible, the project was designed so that their
digital preferences were integrated into the learning interventions and activities included.
Ultimately, the project was shaped by the interests and experiences of 11 young people
who sourced stories, created their own content and initiated activities which were then
facilitated by adults (whether academic or practitioner partners). We also sought to
enshrine the principles of partnership and delegation of power to the young people
and their support organisations, facilitating the pursuit of their own objectives through
training and support, as opposed to manipulation, consultation or placation. The live
project #TransplantStories commenced in January 2017 and concluded in August of
the same year. It initially included 11 young people from the ages of 13–17 with partici-
pants recruited either because they had left school without qualifications, were experien-
cing learning challenges including dyslexia or had experienced confidence issues in
relation to formal education. The young people were recruited by the youth work services
section of the partner local authority. They targeted young people interested in digital
media or journalism and who they felt could benefit from training from professional col-
leagues. Crucially, each pupil recruited was allocated a mentor from their school to ensure
a better link between the project and their broader educational and career objectives.
A number of separate, but interrelated research methods were employed by the
researcher-practitioner team involved in the project. At the outset, the young participants
and their mentors participated in a group interview where they reflected on their digital
experiences. These group interviews were repeated at the conclusion of the project, at the
final debrief event. Digital field notes were collected by the researcher-practitioners at
every learning session and shared between all authors via a password protected online
space. These digital field notes related to the participants’ experience of the project as
 MEDIA PRACTICE AND EDUCATION 201

viewed by the research-practitioners. Attention was paid to the possession and develop-
ment of participant’s digital skills (interviewing, social media, editing), interpersonal qual-
ities and emotional well-being.
Mayorga (2014) has suggested that those ‘doing’ digital ethnographic research
struggle with the same challenges as their analogue predecessors in terms of gaining
access and trust from their communities. In the #TransplantStories project, these issues
were addressed by: working closely with the young people and their adult mentors to
explain the intentions of those involved in the project; working to a processual consent
model, whereby initial (formal) consent was accompanied by ongoing conversations
about consent throughout the duration of the project. Moreover, when using digital
media as a practice, consenting to the upload and curation of participant stories (in the
form of photographs, videos, tweets) was also necessary. The #TransplantStories
project was inherently public in nature which generated its own challenges in relation
to consent, awareness of audience and the (potential) ramifications of audience engage-
ment (whether sentiment is positive or not). Moreover, when undertaking digital ethno-
graphic research, the way stories are collected, analysed and shared is different (Mayorga
2014). In the remainder of this paper we discuss the insights generated from the digital
PAR, focusing on the participant’s possession of digital capital and its distribution.

‘Doing without thinking’: everyday digital practices

While the young people involved in #TransplantStories all had their own mobile devices
and were well versed in using them for communication with friends and relatives, when
observed during the project a number of disparities in use emerged. First, their level of
digital literacies, understanding or wisdom (Prensky 2009) was not as comprehensive
as it first appeared. Several examples of fear, lack of understanding, anxiety over what
to do, and concerns over the implications of their digital practices were observed
during the initial project period, in particular. Specifically, we observed a lack of knowl-
edge and understanding about where the digital content produced went and who
could see or (re) use it. Practice ranged from those with quite advanced skillsets to
those unsure of how to create, edit and upload videos. Furthermore, some of the partici-
pants had experienced online bullying in the past and were, as a result, anxious about
what others would think about their involvement in the project:
The last time I did anything on social media a group of people from my school found out and
slagged me off so I deleted everything and didn’t post anything after that. (EC, 14 years old)

The possession of digital capital is not universal or transferable in the sense that knowl-
edge of using one social media platform in a personal capacity to perform communication
functions with friends does not necessarily translate into effective use of the same plat-
form for transacting, or other professional duties (Helsper 2012). The digital inequality
and exclusion literatures confirm that users often have digital blindspots that can affect
how individuals reflect on the implications of their digital use (their digital residue) on
their lives (Van Deursen et al. 2017). We observed that many participants were focused
on the ‘doing’ of the digital rather than reflecting on the implications of that activity
(the thinking). Narratives of young people as digital natives still prevail, even in the
context of those working with vulnerable populations. One of the participant’s youth
202 D. MCGILLIVRAY AND J. MAHON

support workers suggested that ‘the young people have a much better idea of this stuff
than we have’ (MM, personal interview). While we found that the young people we
worked with were relatively well versed in the use of digital (text-based) social communi-
cation, this did not, necessarily, translate into the proficient use of the digital for learning
or professional activity. Rather, we observed a tendency towards ‘liberal’ sharing of pro-
duced content and a lack of confidence and capability in documenting the lives of others.
These tendencies were evident in a strong desire early on in the project from most par-
ticipants to ‘push’ content without asking why they were doing this, and to what potential
audience. We observed little evidence that the 13–17 year olds we worked with had con-
cerns over commercial exploitation and were content to share their data with others
without a second thought.
Participants also felt wary of communicating in the written form in contrast to their
comfort with sharing visual content. As part of the #TransplantStories project the
young people were asked to produce blog posts on a regular basis, which intensified
during the ‘live’ reporting of the Transplant Games themselves. We found that the posses-
sion of wider literacies around writing, common to those with lower levels of educational
attainment, were reproduced in the digital sphere. While the format of social media plat-
forms, including Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, depend less on text than the visual
imagery accompanying it, in any publishing environment accuracy, punctuation and
grammar remain important competencies. For example, there was a reticence among par-
ticipants to ‘go live’ with pre-prepared blog posts, reflecting wider unvoiced concerns
about visibility often overlooked when talking about young people’s use of digital
spaces. Building on the solutions ethos of PAR the project team responded to the
young people’s fears by allocating a mentor to work on their general as well as digital lit-
eracies. Digital platforms venerate instantaneity but to ensure content is publishable, care
over the final product is imperative. Brief interventions with the young people helped
them reflect and learn in this context.
An interesting feature of the project was the digital media platforms that the young
people chose to utilise to deliver the live #TransplantStories project. Focusing on a
(digital) PAR approach, we wanted to ensure young people were foregrounded as
initiators, and decision-makers, while also recognising the responsibilities of institutional
actors (the university and the youth work partners) to manage risks when exposing young
adults to digital environments. Beyond the risk inherent in infringing digital media plat-
forms’ terms and conditions (relating to privacy, data protection, and possibility of harm,
through ‘trolling’, for example), we also had to contemplate the broader ethical debates
about the implications of using digital and social media platforms. As Mayorga (2014) has
suggested, ‘one must consider whether one’s use of digital technologies is merely contri-
buting to commodification and the reproduction of social inequities’. While adhering to
age-related restrictions for use, it was decided to work with those platforms that the
young people were already using and had some capacity and expertise in, adhering to
the main tenets of PAR:
I’ve been pretty confident within Twitter and Tumblr anyway but Youtube I did have precau-
tions about that but now it’s if you want to do it, do it. (LM, 14)

As a result, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat were the chosen social platforms, and the
choice of blogging platform was Wordpress, which several young people had used as part
 MEDIA PRACTICE AND EDUCATION 203

of previous school projects. However, despite being actively involved in decision making
about the choice of platforms to use, we found that this still generated some issues.
Working on a project like #TransplantStories took the young people outside of their
area of comfort, into a quasi-professional environment where they had to think about
how their peer groups and wider social media entanglements (McGillivray et al. 2015)
would view the media content they were producing and sharing. In particular, it was
clear that for young people facing challenging personal and educational circumstances,
the school environment was ineffective at protecting them from potential online abuse:
When the teachers say ‘just tell us about it’ they don’t really think about the fact that maybe
back in their day telling the teacher was enough. It’s not enough now because there’s social
media and it’s done outside of school and not just in. (LM, 14)

Context is important here because the young people’s social media feeds were quickly
filled with tweets, posts and likes about topics that disrupted their personal online iden-
tities. As a result, we encouraged the young people to use project accounts and to use the
#TransplantStories hashtag, to distance themselves from their private lives and connec-
tions. The young people were clearly capable, but worried about previous bad experi-
ences with their peers that had subsequently stopped them being visible personally
online. Using the project #Transplantstories as a vehicle limited some of those concerns,
‘doing Transplant Games was different because it didn’t actually have me in all the twitter
posts. Most of them that were on @TransplantStories were anonymous.’ (EC, 14).

Digital disruptions: enacting strategies

As noted previously, one of the criticisms labelled at the work of Pierre Bourdieu relates to
the apparently fixed nature of the habitus and its durability. His use of words like uncon-
scious and unthinking have encouraged critics to suggest that the concept of habitus is
inherently structuralist, limiting the opportunity for individuals to employ strategies to
work with, and against, the socio-cultural contexts from which they have emerged.
However, there is evidence in Bourdieu’s writing of the ability to enact strategies that
can alter social position and impact on social practice (Jenkin 2002). Specifically, the
encounter between habitus, capital and field provides possibilities. As individuals emer-
ging from a particular habitus (where perhaps access to technology, data plans and
adult guidance on appropriate content was absent) enter the digital media field,
different forms of capital are assigned value. As young people from dis-privileged
socio-economic backgrounds interact with the digital field, the capital valued in the
offline world is less valuable. Online, there are different rules and behaviours, activities
and etiquettes. To misrecognise the cultural mores that operate in this field is to demon-
strate the absence of cultural capital in that space.
The #TransplantStories project highlighted how young people enter the digital sphere
with differential banks of capital, but deficits can be addressed through support, edu-
cation and peer learning. In this study, we worked closely with young people to help
them develop strategies to address deficits of cultural and social capital, through inter-
action with the digital environments they use. These deficits were often related to confi-
dence and self-esteem, as illustrated by one of the youth workers, ‘Giving them the
autonomy to make their own decisions and had the confidence to do it’ (MM, personal
204 D. MCGILLIVRAY AND J. MAHON

interview). While it is impossible to extract yourself, completely, from the durable disposi-
tions that impact your lives, techniques do exist to alleviate the worst excesses of feeling
like a ‘fish out of water’ (Bourdieu 1984). The secondary and tertiary education system
does little to provide the skills, understanding and critical reflection to address the pro-
blems some young people are facing. There are, however, ways for young people to
develop confidence and skills that be translated into their other personal and educational
fields. Action-focused pedagogies can help young people learn in an environment where
enjoyment is balanced with skill acquisition and critical thinking about the value of the
digital sphere. The young participants generated digital capital while having fun, evi-
denced in post-project reflections: ‘the Transplant Games was a great 3 days, where I
got to contribute to the team by creating video interviews while still having a laugh
with the other young reporters’ (LB, 13). However, to be able to enact strategies in the
future that help transform lives, the acquisition of skills and competencies is also
crucial. The young people were able to reflect on the skills they possessed by the time
the project was complete:
How to record videos, the best background, the best sound, things to ask people so it doesn’t
get boring (LB, 13)

Light and sound stuff, even now when I take pictures I check the background, also how to ask
professional questions (KC, 13)

It was great to have a platform, we had quite a large reach at one point. It was great to see
how far it could go (RA, 13)

It is important to acknowledge that possession of new skills does not necessarily lead
to change in young people’s life trajectories, unless they also build their self-esteem,
confidence and motivation to take those skills into educational and employment situ-
ations. The informal learning environment developed in #TransplantStories set out to
encourage doing and thinking, which for the youth work partners proved successful, ‘I
think the style of teaching has just suited them really well’ (LC, personal interview) and
‘The conversations the young people have already had with you guys – lecturers, pro-
fessors, doctors. It’s normalising the situation for them – for my young people’ (MH, per-
sonal interview). The normalisation of interactions with those previously viewed as
beyond their reach was a valuable outcome of the #TransplantStories project. Many of
the young people talked of improvements in their confidence from being involved in a
digital media project that reached an external audience and, in particular, their own
role in contributing to that, ‘it allowed me to develop my confidence when speaking to
people … how to guide a conversation’ (RA, 13).

Sustaining strategies: cashing in digital capital

Livingstone (2014) has argued that technology is often pushed into civic spaces such as
schools, libraries and community centres ‘guided more by enthusiasm over evidence …
although teacher training, curriculum development and parental support have been
slower and more sporadic’ (22). She also suggests that the best initiatives work on a
small scale, balancing risk proportionally with fun and everyday experiences. In the
#TransplantStories project, these principles were adopted, with value being given to
 MEDIA PRACTICE AND EDUCATION 205

working by stealth with young people over an extended period of time, addressing vul-
nerabilities associated with interpersonal and digital skill-related issues before fore-
grounding the digital. So, for example, some of the young people involved in
#TransplantStories were shy, nervous, lacking in confidence in social situations, and con-
cerned about writing or talking to camera (or interviewing) because of their pre-existing
(negative) formal educational experiences, ‘I was always bad at speaking to people. I’ve
never been good at talking to people, even family members, or close friends. It’s
always a barrier that goes up’ (EC, 14).
However, over the course of the four-month project period – with the support of insti-
tutional gatekeepers – we were able to develop strong relationships with and between
individuals to ensure that the culmination of the project was not viewed as too
onerous and worrisome. As a result, by the end of the project, most participants knew
more about literacy more generally and about digital (media) literacies, specifically. As
part of a project debrief, we asked participants to identify the knowledge and skills
they felt had been accrued over the course of the previous 10 weeks. Their responses
can be categorised into three main areas: digital skills; interpersonal skills and emotional
skills. First, participants talked of the importance of understanding more about ‘how to’
use the digital and social media platforms professionally, stating:

I know how to use lots of different social media platforms

I know how to manage sound and video quality
Tags are really important
How social media feeds off blogs
How to write a blogpost
I can edit videos
Use camera angles and framing

The young people also emphasised the interpersonal skills they had learned, both
during the instructional element of the project and in covering the Transplant Games
themselves. The participants talked of ‘meeting new people’, ‘I can successfully
conduct an interview’, ‘interview people with confidence’, ‘learned how to ask good
and interesting questions’. Finally, the young participants reflected on the impact of par-
ticipation in a digital project on their emotional well-being. They spoke of being able to
‘speak out in a crowd and give my opinion’, ‘interview people with confidence’, ‘speak out
more confidently’, ‘become more confident when approaching people’, ‘have the confi-
dence to interview lots of people with different roles’.
However, the skills and competencies described here do not necessarily translate into
forms of capital that can be traded in the educational or employment field (s). It is impor-
tant not to over-state the transformative potential of one-off digital projects and the
transferability of capital from one field to another. That said, there is evidence that
several young people involved in #TransplantStories were able to trade their digital
capital into beneficial life choices in the post-event period. As a result of involvement
in #TransplantStories, one young person won the Educational Achiever Award from the
Scottish Prince’s Trust and is now at college studying digital communications, ‘I hadn’t
really thought about being a reporter at all before but after doing the Transplant
Games I wanted to be a journalist. Next steps for me are going to college, get an HND
206 D. MCGILLIVRAY AND J. MAHON

and hopefully transfer to uni’ (EC, now 16). Another young person took the skills learned
in the project into an entrepreneurial venture selling produce online via the Instagram
platform.
It is important to acknowledge the role of institutional actors and support mechanisms
in supporting vulnerable young people to enact and sustain strategies that can overcome
the structuring effects and durable dispositions associated with their habitus. While the
individual success stories detailed are possible, the ability to transcend formative circum-
stances is always like to be limited. However, for the young people involved in #Trans-
plantStories, the support and advocacy of institutional actors played a crucial role in
sustaining the positive life trajectories developed during the project. For example, partici-
pants were able to secure educational cultural capital in the form of qualifications from
their participation that provide the basis of cultural capital tradeable into its economic
variant in the future.
Moreover, the agencies involved in the project were able to involve the young people
in leading school-related activities (e.g. newsletters, or acting as digital champions) and in
other initiatives that sought to sustain their digital practice and build resilience (e.g. cov-
ering other youth work events). As one youth worker suggested, three pupils from one of
the participating schools went back and ‘took on the responsibility of producing a news-
letter every term. They continue to do that now into third year so they train up a first year
team and now a second year team’ (LC, personal interview). At an even more mundane
level, youth work services and home-school link personnel were crucial in the young
people being able to attend learning sessions each week and to ensure that the compe-
tencies accrued were recognised and celebrated in their local setting.
It is important to recognise that a project like #TransplantStories is not without its chal-
lenges, as the young people recruited invariably had complicated lives. Three of the
young people recruited did not manage to sustain their participation in the project,
either departing in the first week or unable to contribute in the intense, ‘live’ reporting
period. Vulnerabilities like these can actually be exacerbated in PAR projects if the requi-
site support mechanisms are not in place to support participants. However, for the most
part the presence of trusted intermediaries working alongside academic partners,
ensured that ‘bumps in the road’ were managed and resolved and participation was main-
tained. Importantly, time was allocated between the fortnightly learning interventions for
the young people to apply their practice within school or community settings, including
mentoring and pastoral support. Personalised ‘brief interventions’ (Miller and Rollnick
1991) of this sort helped to avoid disengagement or withdrawal from the project.

Discussion
Young people emerging from dis-privileged social circumstances are known to access and
use the digital sphere in different ways to their more affluent counterparts (Danielsson
2011; White 2016). Much of this difference is put down to differentiation in possession
of educational cultural capital which influences the choice of digital leisure participation,
the nature and intensity of use. Just as evidence points strongly to differential access to,
and value accorded to, art and cultural activities across the social spectrum, there are also
indications that the way people use digital media platforms is also different. However, the
evidence drawn from the #TransplantStories project described in this paper is that we
 MEDIA PRACTICE AND EDUCATION 207

need to be careful not to simply read off from an individual’s cultural habitus a standard
set of dispositions towards the digital sphere. Instead of the ‘notion of rules which govern
or produce conduct’ (Jenkin 2002, 48) it is more apposite to pursue a ‘model of social prac-
tice in which what people do is bound up with the generation and pursuit of strategies
within an organizing framework of cultural dispositions’ (48). It is not possible to comple-
tely transcend your formative circumstances, and these will be reproduced in digital
media practices just as they are in other social conditions. However, we have demon-
strated that it is possible for young people to enact strategies in the field of digital
media, adapting their practice (s) to more effectively navigate and succeed in this rela-
tively autonomous field. At one level this is about understanding the ‘rules of the
game’ and exploiting the (in) visibility of the digital media space to secure credibility
for activities that would not be valued in the traditional sphere of education. For
example, in our project we found that once young people understood that they could
be influential, attract an audience and have their voices heard (and shared) by adopting
a professional digital identity then some of the personal challenges they experienced as
individuals were partly alleviated.
Our findings also talk to the importance of more informal learning environments in
enabling young people to be confident, critical and creative (Johnston et al. 2014) but
also safe and secure. While it remains important that young people are counselled of
the very real dangers of cyber abuse and have the rights to be protected by adults in
online spaces, there is also a place for creative engagement with digital platforms
where learning takes place in an environment that is fun and encourages experimentation
and reflection. When thinking about the unequal distribution of digital capital, this is even
more important. We cannot presume that all young people possess the same levels of
understanding of how to operate safely or successfully in the digital sphere (Danielsson
2011, 2014). Instead, we should start with the presumption that young people’s habitus
influences their access, use and understanding of the digital platforms they encounter.
Embedding observation, reflection, planning and action in the design of digital learning
activities can help facilitate shared decision-making, and the delegation of power (to
young people), alongside more equitable, liberating and life-enhancing outcomes. In a
digital media environment subject to criticism for the exploitation of user data, facilitating
online abuse and paying little attention to privacy and security, adopting a digital PAR
approach can at least ensure that users can navigate these challenges in an environment
that recognises the opportunities presented by digital platforms while reflecting on sol-
utions to avoid risk and danger. Providing young people with choices – not decided by
adults – is imperative, as long as the context within which these choices are made is
fully transparent and there is recognition of the responsibilities placed on adults to
ensure that risks are managed.

Conclusion
In an age of ubiquitous digital platform use, it is possible to adopt carefree attitudes
towards sharing, following, commenting, or publishing content. However, there is real
value in thinking about digital risk through practice as a progressive and fruitful means
of dealing with digital literacy issues. In this paper, we have shown how young people
can be supported to reflect on their digital practices in a safe environment where possible
208 D. MCGILLIVRAY AND J. MAHON

risks and longer-term consequences of posting, retweeting or liking can be discussed and
addressed. Increasing young people’s digital understanding, including the literacies that
help make informed choices about how to behave and practice on digital and social
media platforms is important, especially for those experiencing vulnerabilities in other
areas of their lives.
That said, while it is tempting to think that young people can transcend their formative
circumstances by their own efforts alone, navigating a complex digital media landscape,
there is also an important role for institutional actors, especially when vulnerable young
people are involved. Our findings suggest that for those less fortunate young people
emerging from a challenging habitus, support mechanisms are a crucial element in build-
ing a bank of digital capital tradable in other areas of their lives. Access to devices, aware-
ness of privacy and security and the knowledge networks to avoid digital risks is unequally
distributed. However, creating a community of practice can ameliorate these issues, neu-
tralising the advantages that those from privileged background possess from their access
to educational cultural capital.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributors
Professor David McGillivray holds a Chair in Event and Digital Cultures in the School of Business and
Creative Industries at University of the West of Scotland (UWS). His research focuses on the affor-
dances of digital culture, especially related to understandings of digital citizenship, participation
and the role of everyday digital media platforms and practices in enabling (or restricting) voices
within an increasingly saturated media landscape. He has published extensively on these themes
and been involved in research and knowledge exchange activities that take as their focus the affor-
dances of digital culture, including sub-themes of digital citizenship, digital participation, digital
storytelling and alternative/community media. He is the editor of Digital Leisure Cultures: Critical Per-
spectives published by Routledge in 2016.
James Mahon is a Lecturer in Mobile Journalism in the School of Business and Creative Industries at
University of the West of Scotland. James has worked across the world as a broadcast and mobile
journalist and is currently completing his doctoral studies on the topic of mobile journalism
practice.

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