The aesthetic production and distributio

The aesthetic production and distribution of image/subjects among online youth Leander, Kevin, and Amy Frank. 2006. The aesthetic production and distribution of image/subjects among online youth. E-learning 3 (2): 185–206.

Cited in Connected Play: Leander and Frank (2006) use the metaphor of lamination to explain the iden- tity work in youths’ remixing of digital media and how these new assemblages help the youth position themselves in social online affinity spaces. They emphasize that, in laminates, “one can continue to find the traces of social, cultural, and personal resources, and continue to recognize tensions and contradictions among these resources” (187). At the same time, through the compression of multiple layers (a characteristic of how something becomes a laminate), laminated artifacts take on properties distinct from their constitutive elements. Further, different aspects of these artifacts can be highlighted by different communities, facilitating the fore- grounding of certain identities with some people and other identities with others. Thus, both the process of making these digitally layered objects and the objects themselves draw together personal (psychological), social, and cultural elements to make something unique.