youth, identity, and digital media
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my report in Media 304: Media and Identities at the College of Mass Communication, University of the Philippines Diliman - PhD Media Studies programTRANSCRIPT
Youth, Identity, and Digital Media
Chona Rita R. Cruz (CINDY) 86-16518PhD Media Studies
• Facebook• Twitter• Tumblr• Instagram• BLOGS• Flickr• About Me / Gravatar• Soundcloud / LastFM• Deviant Art
Introducing Identity
• Identity Formation: The Psychology of Adolescence
• Youth Culture and the Sociology of Youth• Social Identity: The Individual and the Group• Reclaiming Identities: Identity Politics• The Modern Subject: Identity in social Theory
PART I: OVERVIEWS• “Imaging, Keyboarding, and Posting Identities:
Young People and New Media Technologies” by Sandra Weber and Claudia Mitchell
• “Consumer Citizens Online: Structure, Agency and Gender in Online Participation” by Rebekah Willett
• “Questioning the Generational Divide: Technological Exoticism and Adult Constructions of Online youth Identity” by Susan C. Herring
“Imaging, Keyboarding, and Posting Identities: Young People and New Media Technologies”
Four Case studies that highlight the roles that digital media can assume in the construction of youth identities
Adolescence and Identity Processes
• Key period in identity formation• Identity crisis• A time of visible and invisible becoming –
biological changes, transitions to more adult roles, formation of significant peer relationships
• Characterized by the need to situate onself, to find out who our friends are, to take one’s place in society, to belong and yet not belong
Digital Production and “Identities-in-Action”
• Young people’s interactive uses of new technologies can serve as a model for identity processes.
• “Identities-in-action” – multifaceted, in flux, incorporating old and new images
• Digital production - interactive consumption that is embedded in production
• Youth digital productions are mostly viewed or consumed by youth audiences (producers)
Producing Identities: Four Cases
• Personal Website and Friendship: Situating Personal and Social Selves
• Why I love My Cell Phone: Seeing Voice• In My Room: Power Point Projections• Our Collective Selves: Participatory Video
“Consumer Citizens Online: Structure, Agency and Gender in
Online Participation”
Identity within the context of online consumer cultures
Young People as Consumers
• Young people are using media to mark their identities
• Children and young people are increasingly being targeted by marketers in commodified spaces online
• Young people can be seen as “bricoleurs”, appropriating and reshaping consumer culture as they define and perform their identities
Consumerism and the Reflective Self• The Web provides a space for writing activities
that presents new opportunities for the construction of identity and realization of agency.
• It also provides immediate and direct access to ideological influences that position online writers as consumers, as objects of consumption.
• Agency in defining identity through choices• Limit in choices offered as one is positioned to
identify oneself in terms of consumption
Girls Online• One of the ways identity has been traditionally
defined and constructed is through gender.• Fashion and beauty / body image• Dressing for Success – self-esteem, confidence
and dress• Children and young people as both producers
and consumers (dual positions) – producers of meaning with the agency to resist, redefine and recontextualize; and consumers being positioned by cultural products and discourses.
“Questioning the Generational Divide: Technological Exoticism and Adult Constructions
of Online Youth Identity”
• The internet generation: socializes more online, downloads more entertainment media, and consults the Web for a wider range of purposes
• Adult constructions of digital youth: Millenials, Generation X, ascribed characteristics
• Media production and advertising: packaged and produced by adults for Millenials; money spent on them, not by them; provide role models on which to base their behavior and self-image
• Media commentary: represent young media users as vulnerable and in need of societal protection and direction; misrepresentation of young people due to adult values and fears.
• Media Research: exoticization due to adult experiences and perspectives; adults control public discourses about youth; technological determinism.
• Youth Perspectives: how does the internet generation view digital media?
PART II: CASE STUDIES
• “Producing Sites, Exploring Identities: Youth Online Authorship” by Susannah Stern
• “Why the Youth Social Network Sites: The ♥
Role of Networked Publics in Teenage Social Life” by danah boyd
• “Mobile Identity: Youth, Identity, and Mobile Communication Media” by Gitte Staid
“Producing Sites, Exploring Identities: Youth Online Authorship”
• Adolescent Development and Identity• Personal Home Pages and Personal Blogs Defined• Listening to Youth Authors– “It made my brain feel happy”: Why young people create
personal sites– “Laying it all out”: Online Expression for Self-Reflection,
catharsis, and Self-Documentation– “My Page is for Me”: Conceptualizing Audience– “A nice, shiny me”: Presenting Selves Online– “Doing a freak show online?” Online Authorship and Social
Validation– “Hey, this is who I am!” Self Realization through Online
Expression– “It’s more of a Picasso”: The risks and disappointments of
online expression– “I am only a first draft”: Self and Site in Process
“Why the Youth Social Network Sites: The ♥
Role of Networked Publics in Teenage Social Life”
• Facebook• Twitter• Instagram• Flickr• Tumblr• BLOGS• About.me• Soundcloud / LastFM• LinkedIN
• Practices of teenagers on social network sites: MySpace
• Friendster, Facebook• The Making of Social Network Sites• Profiles, Friends, Comments• Initiation: Profile Creation• Identity Performance• Writing Identity and Community into Being• Privacy in Public: Creating MY Space
“Mobile Identity: Youth, Identity, and Mobile Communication Media”
• The Mobile Phone and Identity• Mobility and young people• The mobile phone in contemporary youth culture• The importance of the mobile• Use and adaptation• The Perception of Presence in Shared Space– Being simultaneously present in several spaces– The mobile as personal log– The mobile as data double
• Social Learning
PART III: LEARNING
• “Leisure is Hard Work: digital Practices and Future competencies” by Kirsten Drotner
• “Mixing the Digital, social, and Cultural: Learning, Identity, and Agency in Youth Participation” by Shelley Goldman, Angela Booker, and Meghan McDermott
“Leisure is Hard Work: digital Practices and Future competencies”
• “Where do we want to go with this?” Digital Production and Joint Learning Processes
• “You see things progress”: Definitions of Knowledge
• “I found it so chaotic”: Means of Learning• “The expression is all that matters”: Modes of
Literacy• “Like a roller coaster”: Learning as a social
practice• “We all made decisions”: Social roles and rules
of power
“Mixing the Digital, social, and Cultural: Learning, Identity, and Agency in Youth
Participation”
• Working together and coming apart: Adultism• Critique and Questions: What did they learn?• Taking Charge: Producing “Set Up”• Digital Media, Social Technology and Learning:
The Broader Youth Media Context• Mixing it Up: Everyday Digital Media and the
Cultural Technology of Policy-Making.
References
• Buckingham, David (ed.). Youth, Identity, and Digital Media.
• “Technology: Social Media”, The Colbert Report.
• Promotional videos, Starcraft II: Heart of the Swarm
• Google Glass Parody video