Difference between revisions of "Digital Youth"

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Digital media, youth, networks, and participatory culture, constitute a complex topic that has been studied and theorized by researchers from different disciplines such as information science, anthropology, sociology, communication, law, media and literacy studies. One of the core questions that researchers have tried to answer is how the development and adoption of digital media has transformed society, culture, economy, and learning. More specifically, they have been interested in understanding how young people experiences the changes, how it adapts, and how it develops new kind of sociocultural practices. Therefore, young people are understood as having creative agency. Youth is an active participant in culture, society, and economy, and in the transformations that are taken place.
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In order to disentangle the complexity of the topic we can group some of the researchers and studies in three different perspectives:
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-Networked
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-Participatory
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-Digital lifestyles
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Each of these perspectives has an emphasis in particular key issues, challenges and trends. The networked perspective has an emphasis on the interconnection between young people, media, machines, and machines, media, and young people, and how that has changed the society, culture, and economy. From this perspective networks are understood as the dominant cultural and organization logic that structure contemporary world, particularly, the one of postindustrial societies. From this perspective the key issues are publics, many-to-many and peer-to-peer modes of communication and production, information and knowledge.
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The participatory perspective focuses on the sociocultural practices that young people is doing with digital media, their engagement with popular culture, and the communities of expertise that they are joining. Key issues are genres of participation, amateur media production, fan cultures, remix, new media literacies, learning, and participation gap.
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The Digital lifestyles perspective focuses on online everyday practices, connectivity, mobility, and uses of social media by young people. This perspective has an emphasis in empirical studies. Key issues are information seeking behavior; characteristics of the social networks (strong/weak ties), identity and taste, and individualization.
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The Digital Youth Project had also implemented the participatory perspective as part of its analytical framework. In Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out (2010), Ito et al. use the concept of "genres of participation" as a way for understanding and categorizing youth engagement with media cultures. According to them, there are two high level genre categories : friendship-driven and interest-driven. The former is related to the everyday negotiations with friend s and peers and involve practices that grow out of friendships in specific local worlds. The latter is related to hobbies, specialized activities, niche identities, and career aspirations. It focuses on practices that expand an individual social circle based on interests. As Ito et al. explain, "these genres represent different investments that youth make in particular forms of sociability and differing forms of identification with media genres." (18) The two high level genres of participation correspond to different genres of youth culture, social network structures, and modes of learning. For instance, in relation to genres of youth culture and online participation, interest-driven corresponds to geeking out, and friendship-driven correspond to hanging out. Ito et al. also identify a third genre of youth culture and online participation, messing around, that could be associated with the both interest-driven and friendship-driven. In fact, messing around could act as a transition or bridge between the two high level genre categories. The question of transition between genres is of crucial importance for understanding process of learning that bridge formal and informal contexts. In this book, Ito et al. focus on the informal contexts and leave unresolved the questions of how to the transitions between genres can happen. However, the authors are able to provide a detailed and comprehensive account of how these genres of participation happen across different contexts in which youth engage with digital media such  as friendship, intimacy, family, gaming, creative production, and work. After analyzing each context, Ito et al. conclude that young people has diverse learning opportunities through their engagement with digital media and their interaction with peers, and offer some recommendations to educators and policy makers.  They point out that,  “educators and policy makers need to understand that participation in the digital age means more than being able to access ‘serious’ online information and culture; it also means the ability to participate in social and recreational activities online”(p. 347)
 
The Digital Youth Project had also implemented the participatory perspective as part of its analytical framework. In Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out (2010), Ito et al. use the concept of "genres of participation" as a way for understanding and categorizing youth engagement with media cultures. According to them, there are two high level genre categories : friendship-driven and interest-driven. The former is related to the everyday negotiations with friend s and peers and involve practices that grow out of friendships in specific local worlds. The latter is related to hobbies, specialized activities, niche identities, and career aspirations. It focuses on practices that expand an individual social circle based on interests. As Ito et al. explain, "these genres represent different investments that youth make in particular forms of sociability and differing forms of identification with media genres." (18) The two high level genres of participation correspond to different genres of youth culture, social network structures, and modes of learning. For instance, in relation to genres of youth culture and online participation, interest-driven corresponds to geeking out, and friendship-driven correspond to hanging out. Ito et al. also identify a third genre of youth culture and online participation, messing around, that could be associated with the both interest-driven and friendship-driven. In fact, messing around could act as a transition or bridge between the two high level genre categories. The question of transition between genres is of crucial importance for understanding process of learning that bridge formal and informal contexts. In this book, Ito et al. focus on the informal contexts and leave unresolved the questions of how to the transitions between genres can happen. However, the authors are able to provide a detailed and comprehensive account of how these genres of participation happen across different contexts in which youth engage with digital media such  as friendship, intimacy, family, gaming, creative production, and work. After analyzing each context, Ito et al. conclude that young people has diverse learning opportunities through their engagement with digital media and their interaction with peers, and offer some recommendations to educators and policy makers.  They point out that,  “educators and policy makers need to understand that participation in the digital age means more than being able to access ‘serious’ online information and culture; it also means the ability to participate in social and recreational activities online”(p. 347)
  
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* [[Digital Natives]]
 
* [[Digital Natives]]
 
* [[Networked youth]]
 
* [[Networked youth]]
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* [[Youth and Participation]]
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* [[Youth and digital life styles]]

Revision as of 10:53, 20 January 2015

Digital media, youth, networks, and participatory culture, constitute a complex topic that has been studied and theorized by researchers from different disciplines such as information science, anthropology, sociology, communication, law, media and literacy studies. One of the core questions that researchers have tried to answer is how the development and adoption of digital media has transformed society, culture, economy, and learning. More specifically, they have been interested in understanding how young people experiences the changes, how it adapts, and how it develops new kind of sociocultural practices. Therefore, young people are understood as having creative agency. Youth is an active participant in culture, society, and economy, and in the transformations that are taken place.

In order to disentangle the complexity of the topic we can group some of the researchers and studies in three different perspectives:

-Networked -Participatory -Digital lifestyles

Each of these perspectives has an emphasis in particular key issues, challenges and trends. The networked perspective has an emphasis on the interconnection between young people, media, machines, and machines, media, and young people, and how that has changed the society, culture, and economy. From this perspective networks are understood as the dominant cultural and organization logic that structure contemporary world, particularly, the one of postindustrial societies. From this perspective the key issues are publics, many-to-many and peer-to-peer modes of communication and production, information and knowledge.

The participatory perspective focuses on the sociocultural practices that young people is doing with digital media, their engagement with popular culture, and the communities of expertise that they are joining. Key issues are genres of participation, amateur media production, fan cultures, remix, new media literacies, learning, and participation gap.

The Digital lifestyles perspective focuses on online everyday practices, connectivity, mobility, and uses of social media by young people. This perspective has an emphasis in empirical studies. Key issues are information seeking behavior; characteristics of the social networks (strong/weak ties), identity and taste, and individualization.

The Digital Youth Project had also implemented the participatory perspective as part of its analytical framework. In Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out (2010), Ito et al. use the concept of "genres of participation" as a way for understanding and categorizing youth engagement with media cultures. According to them, there are two high level genre categories : friendship-driven and interest-driven. The former is related to the everyday negotiations with friend s and peers and involve practices that grow out of friendships in specific local worlds. The latter is related to hobbies, specialized activities, niche identities, and career aspirations. It focuses on practices that expand an individual social circle based on interests. As Ito et al. explain, "these genres represent different investments that youth make in particular forms of sociability and differing forms of identification with media genres." (18) The two high level genres of participation correspond to different genres of youth culture, social network structures, and modes of learning. For instance, in relation to genres of youth culture and online participation, interest-driven corresponds to geeking out, and friendship-driven correspond to hanging out. Ito et al. also identify a third genre of youth culture and online participation, messing around, that could be associated with the both interest-driven and friendship-driven. In fact, messing around could act as a transition or bridge between the two high level genre categories. The question of transition between genres is of crucial importance for understanding process of learning that bridge formal and informal contexts. In this book, Ito et al. focus on the informal contexts and leave unresolved the questions of how to the transitions between genres can happen. However, the authors are able to provide a detailed and comprehensive account of how these genres of participation happen across different contexts in which youth engage with digital media such as friendship, intimacy, family, gaming, creative production, and work. After analyzing each context, Ito et al. conclude that young people has diverse learning opportunities through their engagement with digital media and their interaction with peers, and offer some recommendations to educators and policy makers. They point out that, “educators and policy makers need to understand that participation in the digital age means more than being able to access ‘serious’ online information and culture; it also means the ability to participate in social and recreational activities online”(p. 347)