Damiana Gibbons, Appalachian State University

Truth, Authenticity, and Identity in Rural Youth Documentaries

for questions or feedback, please email me at gibbonsdd@appstate.edu

Theoretical

Framework

Youth display identities through modal choices across time and space(s) (Burn, 2010, Gibbons, 2010; Gibbons, Drift, & Drift, 2011; Pahl, 2010)

Young people make individually- or community focused media depending on whether they are urban or rural (Halverson, Lowenhaupt, Gibbons, Bass, 2009).

Rural media literacy in general has 1) a focus on local people, culture, and environments, 2) a focus on sustainability of rural areas and people, and 3) a focus on the youth developing a sense of themselves primarily through connection to community (Gibbons, 2010).

Data

Data collection
Ethnographic methods studying literacies in four youth media arts organizations across the U.S.

Data analysis
Tracing written, verbal, and multimodal language using social semiotics (multimodality) and documentary film analysis

Collection & Analysis

Research

What is truth and/or authenticity for these youth media arts organizations?

Questions

Do those youth tell those truths? How are the youth seen as authentic? How is their worth true or authentic?

Summary of

Findings

Youth created documentaries that followed the patterns set forth by the organization. In particular, their documentaries follow an expository mode (Nichols, 2001), creating an argument through their documentaries. The organizations truth is particular, contested, and local.

The youth shape truths through multimodal editing choices, and truth is made multimodally. The rural youth have individually lived social selves, but most of the workshop is about them as part of their larger social community. Authenticity is based on how well the youth tell their communitys stories: authentic to ones community.

Rural youth situate themselves as part of their community by creating complex arguments told through the media literacy practice of producing documentary films. They see themselves as rural, youth filmmakers, telling their communitys stories, their communitys truths.