Analyzing peer pedagogies on digital platforms: techniques for investigating Minecraft Let’s Players on YouTube

‘Let’s Play’ videos are a massively popular YouTube genre featuring recordings of game play in which a video game player records both their on-screen play and a complementary voice-over commentary. This interactive workshop introduces participants to analytical techniques for studying how children learn abut Minecraft from Let’s Players, established in Dezuanni’s forthcoming book Peer Pedagogies on Digital Platforms: Learning with Minecraft Let’s Play Videos (MIT Press, 2020). Dezuanni will outline the key components of the approach and then participants will work together in groups to conduct a case study of a Minecraft Let’s Player. Each group will use one of four analytical components to contribute to the overall group findings. This will be a rapid process, but participants will gain insights into the benefits of analyzing peer pedagogies, and will consider how the approach may be applied to similar examples. The workshop’s approach assumes ‘pedagogy’ may be used to describe a broad set of relational practices that occur between people when knowledge and skills are being shared. A peer pedagogies framework enables analysis of how children participate on digital platforms by forming close connections with other participants, including how they may develop para-social relationships with internet celebrities. In this context, ‘peer’ highlights how the pedagogical relationships that form on digital platforms are not based on age, but rather on shared passions and interests. The four analytical processes to be addressed in the workshop include: Micro-industry analysis, Genre and stylistic analysis, Micro-celebrity and audience practice analysis, and Pedagogical analysis.