Attempt the exam essay question from June 2010.
Lesson Task:
In preparation to address this question find examples from your case study that demonstrate how the identities of young people have been 'mediated' in some way.
Wednesday, 4 May 2011
Professor David Buckingham
David Buckingham is one of the leading international researchers in the field of media education, and in research on children and young people's interactions with electronic media. Representation:
Quote:
The Media do not just offer us a transparent ‘window on the world’ but a mediated version of the world. They don’t just present reality, they re-present it.
David Buckingham 2003
Even when you watch live sport, England playing football in the World Cup, for example (and losing on penalties, probably), you aren’t really watching the match. If you are asked – ‘did you see the game last night?’ –of course you will say ‘yes’. But strictly speaking you should say – “No, I watched a mediated, constructed re-presentation of the match through the medium of live television.’
Take an example from everyday life-why do men wear ties on some occasions and not on others? At first the answer seems obvious-they do so to look formal, businesslike and professional; as though they have made an effort to look smart. But this isn’t obvious at all if we take a step back from what seems natural. Why should a piece of material worn around the neck make a man more able to do his job or attend an event or function? Well, in our society a tie has come to represent formality. The tie is a sign or a symbol. In itself it makes no difference but it carries cultural meaning- we might call these cultural meanings Connotations. Now let’s extend this-your name is a symbol, it stands in for you; when people who know you read or hear your name, they think of you. And the clothes you wear don’t just keep warm and dry they present an image of you, as you like to be seen by others. The way your bedroom is decorated and laid out has been considered carefully – not just so you are comfortable in your space but so that a range of signs and symbols reinforce your identity to yourself (and to anyone else who enters).
‘OCR Media Studies for A2’ Identity
Identity
Extract from ‘OCR Media Studies for A2’ by Julian McDougall
Identity is complicated. Everyone thinks they’ve got one.
Two names that crop up a lot in this book are David Buckingham and David Gauntlett. The reason we keep returning to their ideas is twofold. First, they are two of the most influential writers in media education, so A-level media teachers and students will be wise to make use of their theoretical contributions, whether you agree with them or not. Second, they are both concerned with the relationship between media and cultural identity, and the OCR specification places a clear emphasis on this, as we have discussed. So let’s begin our analysis of identity for this theme with a statement from each of them.
A focus requires us to pay close attention to the diverse ways in which media and technologies are used in everyday life, and their consequences both for individuals and for social groups.
(Buckingham 2008)
It is of course, the second of Buckingham’s ‘angles’ that we will be paying close attention to in this theme – the consequences of media use for social groups. Here we return to the quote from Gauntlett that started this chapter to have a look in more detail at his elaboration on the complexity of any discussion of identity.
Identity is complicated. Everyone thinks they’ve got one. Magazines and talk show hosts urge us to explore our ‘identity’. Religious and national identities are at the heart of major international conflicts. Artists play with the idea of ‘identity’ in modern society. Blockbuster movie superheroes have emotional conflicts about their ‘true’ identity. And the average teenager can create three online ‘identities’ before breakfast……Thinking about self-identity and individuality can cause some anxiety – at least in cultures where individuals are encouraged to value their personal uniqueness. Each of us would like to think – to some extent – that we have special, personal qualities, which make us distinctive and valuable to the other people in our lives (or potential future friends). But does this mean anything? Is individuality just an illusion? Maybe we are all incredibly similar, but are programmed to value minuscule bits of differentiation.
(Gauntlett 2007)
Identity is one of those words that we all take for granted. We talk about our identity in a number of different ways in everyday life – think about the debate over whether innocent people should have any reason to worry about carrying an identity card; think about yourself, and the ‘digital footprint’ this leaves for advertisers to make use of. There is a humorous cartoon in circulation with the caption, ‘on the Internet nobody knows you’re a dog’, which relates to how we can construct an alternative identity for ourselves online if we want to. These are specific examples about how information about us is shared publicly. But there are more abstract ways of thinking about identity that we also employ everyday – the clothes we wear, the media we consume, the people we like. The combination of these practices amounts to an idea we have of how others see us, described by Goffman (1990) as ‘the presentation of self’. (Relatedarticleshttp://www.essex.ac.uk/sociology/student_journals/ug_journal/UGJournal_Vol2/2009SC203_HannahHammond.pdf) If you see one of your teachers socialising, it can seem strange because you are used to seeing her demonstrating a ‘professional identity’ – a way of ‘being’ that is different to her social identity. The stakes get higher for identity when people feel marginalised, victimised or in any way prejudiced against because of their identity. Minority ethnic groups, gay people, disabled people, the elderly, the police, people from Birmingham, teenagers (and countless others – this is just a selection) may all, at times, have cause for complaint about how others make assumptions about them because of their identity. For Muslims in the UK, this might be a visable issue – people make assumptions because of appearance. For gay men, there is the issue of whether ‘straight-acting’ is a safer ‘way of being’, particularly in the workplace, as being gay is not an immediately visible trait (though there are more complex semiotic choices to be made about clothes, icons and accessories that may be visual). Children with Birmingham accents might be instantly dismissed in comparison to their peers from Kent, and assumptions made about intelligence. These examples take us into the realm of collective identity.
Youth Identity: Hyperpublic
‘Hyperpublic’ youth identity
is social networking, facilitated by sites like Bebo, MySpace and Facebook, a democratic development? Or does the corporate ownership of these sites and the way that personal information is shared with advertisers compromise this spirit? The certainty is that social networking is incredibly popular, particularly with teenagers. Boyd (2008) researched teenage use of MySpace in relation to how users engage in forms of peer-to-peer sociality, and the implications of this for youth identity. Most interestingly, Boyd explored the various different kinds of public and private space that can be understood as operating in and around MySpace. For example, the research found that the pressure to fit in with peer preferences in a public arena was intimidating, and that the conflict between peer interaction and parental surveillance added extra pressure. An obligation to participate in a public culture and an erosion of privacy emerged as key findings, as Boyd sets out here
Teens today face public life with the possibility of unimaginably wide publicity. The fundamental properties of networked publics- persistence, searchability, replicability and invisible audiences- are unfair to the adults that are guiding them through social life. Few adults could imagine every conversation they have sitting in the park or drinking tea in a café being available for hyperpublic consumption, yet this is what technology enables.
The chances are that you are in the age group Boyd observes, and that you are familiar with these features of modern life. You can, if you wish to, reach a global audience with a meme, but equally you can be the victim of more localised, unwanted online attention if caught unawares on a phone camera. Boyd is suggesting that you are unlikely to get much help from your parents or teachers if you get into trouble in the new world, and that can only be a serious problem in a democracy. On the other hand, Boyd is part of the “adult culture” that has always defined youth on its own terms. Young people rarely recognise themselves in the ways they are described by adults, a phenomenon Barham (2004) calls “ the disconnect”. So perhaps this aniety over the way you and your peers are left to your won devices to survive in social networks is not such a big deal as Boyd thinks. Herring (in Buckingham 2008), in another piece of research looking at youth identity and digital technology, found that users of MySpace were able to articulate the duality of its positive and negative aspects, and were annoyed by the parent culture assuming the worst.
A male high school student recently blogged – “STOP BLAMING EVERYTHING ON MYSPACE! America, give your children some credit. They’re relatively intelligent, and they’re pretty rebellious when they want to be. They will have their MySpace regardless of what you say, and by telling them they can’t handle it, you’re not helping the situation at all”.
Tuesday, 3 May 2011
Introducing Identity by David Buckingham
Introducing Identity by David Buckingham
Rethinking the Digital Generation
These kinds of ideas about the impact of technology tend to take on an even greater force
when they are combined with ideas about childhood and youth. The debate about the
impact of media and technology on children has always served as a focus for much broader
hopes and fears about social change.
On the one hand, there is a powerful discourse about the ways in which digital technology is threatening or even destroying childhood. Young people are seen to be at risk, not only from more obvious dangers such as pornography and online pedophiles, but also from a wide range of negative physical and psychological consequences that derive from their engagement with technology. Like television, digital media are seen to be responsible for a whole litany of social ills—addiction, antisocial behavior, obesity, educational underachievement, commercial exploitation, stunted imaginations . . . and the list goes on.
In recent years, however, the debate has come to be dominated by a very different argument. Unlike those who bemoan the media’s destruction of childhood innocence, advocates
of the new “digital generation” regard technology as a force of liberation for young people—a
means for them to reach past the constraining influence of their elders, and to create new,
autonomous forms of communication and community. Far from corrupting the young, tech-
nology is seen to be creating a generation that is more open, more democratic, more creative,
and more innovative than their parents’ generation.
For example, Marc Prensky makes a distinction between digital “natives” (who have grown
up with this technology) and digital “immigrants” (adults who have come to it later in life)
that has been widely influential in popular debate. Prensky argues that digital natives have
a very different style of learning: they crave interactivity, they value graphics before words;
they want random access, and they operate at the “twitch speed” of video games and MTV.
As a result, they are dissatisfied with old styles of instruction, based on exposition and step-
by-step logic: they see digital immigrants as speaking in an entirely alien, outdated language.
Prensky even suggests that digital natives have a very different brain structure from that of
immigrants, as though technology had precipitated a form of physical evolution within a
period of little more than a decade.
Likewise, Don Tapscott’s Growing Up Digital: The Rise of the Net Generation is based on two
sets of binary oppositions, between technologies (television versus the Internet) and between
generations (the “baby boomers” versus the “net generation”). Tapscott’s oppositions be-
tween these technologies are stark and absolute. Television is a passive medium, while the net is active; television “dumbs down” its users, while the net raises their intelligence; television broadcasts a singular view of the world, while the net is democratic and interactive; television isolates, while the net builds communities; and so on.
Just as television is the antithesis of the net, so the “television generation” is the antithesis of the “net generation.” Like the technology they now control, the values of the “television generation” are increasingly conservative, “hierarchical, inflexible and centralized.” By contrast, the “N-Geners” are “hungry for expression, discovery, and their own self-development”: they are savvy, self-reliant, analytical, articulate, creative, inquisitive, accepting of diversity, and socially conscious. These generational differences are seen to be produced by technology, rather than being a result of other social, historical, or cultural forces. Unlike their parents, who are portrayed as incompetent “technophobes,” young people are seen to possess an intuitive, spontaneous relationship with digital technology. “For many kids,” Tapscott argues, “using the new technology is as natural as breathing.” Technology is the means of their empowerment, and it will ultimately lead to a “generational explosion.”
From this perspective, technology is seen to have brought about fundamental changes in
a whole range of areas. It has created new styles of communication and interaction, and new
means for constructing community.It has produced new styles of playful learning, which go
beyond the teacher-dominated, authoritarian approach of old style education. It is creating
new competencies or forms of “literacy,” which require and produce new intellectual powers,
and even “more complex brain structures.” It provides new ways of forming identity, and
hence new forms of personhood; and by offering communication with different aspects of
the self, it enables young people to relate to the world and to others in more powerful ways.
Finally, these technologies are seen to be leading to the emergence of a new kind of politics,
which is more distributed and democratic: the Internet, for example, is “a medium for social
awakening,” which is producing a generation that is more tolerant, more globally oriented,
more inclined to exercise social and civic responsibility, and to respect the environment.
Wishful thinking of this kind undoubtedly has its pleasures, but it is important to address
some of the fundamental limitations of these arguments.
The technologically determinist stance adopted by these authors means that there are many issues and phenomena that they are bound to ignore. They tend to neglect the fundamental continuities and interdependencies between new media and “old” media (such as television)—continuities that exist at the level of form and content, as well as in terms of economics. A longer historical view clearly shows that old and new technologies often come to coexist: particularly in the area of media, the advent of a new technology may change the functions or uses of old technologies, but it rarely completely displaces them. On average, members of the “net generation” in fact spend more of their time watching television than they do on the Internet; and of course there are many members of the “television generation” who spend much of their working and leisure time online.
This relentlessly optimistic view inevitably ignores many of the down sides of these
technologies—the undemocratic tendencies of many online “communities,” the limited
nature of much so-called digital learning and the grinding tedium of much technologically-
driven work. It also tends to romanticize young people, offering a wholly positive view of
their critical intelligence and social responsibility that is deliberately at odds with that of
many social commentators. It is also bound to ignore the continuing “digital divide” be-
tween the technology rich and the technology poor, both within and between societies.
Technology enthusiasts are inclined to believe that this is a temporary phenomenon, and
that the technology poor will eventually catch up, although this is obviously to assume
that the early adopters will stay where they are. The possibility that the market might not
provide equally for all, or indeed that technology might be used to exploit young people
economically, does not enter the picture.
Finally, this account of the “digital generation” is also bound to ignore what one can only
call the banality of much new media use. Recent studies suggest that most young people’s
everyday uses of the Internet are characterized not by spectacular forms of innovation and
creativity, but by relatively mundane forms of communication and information retrieval.
The technologically empowered “cyberkids” of the popular imagination may indeed exist,
but even if they do, they are in a minority and they are untypical of young people as a whole.
For example, there is little evidence that most young people are using the Internet to develop
global connections; in most cases, it appears to be used primarily as a means of reinforcing
local networks among peers. Young people may be “empowered” as consumers, at least in
the sense of being able to access a much wider range of goods and services much more
easily. But as yet there is little sense in which they are being empowered as citizens; only
a minority are using the technology to engage in civic participation, to communicate their
views to a wider audience, or to get involved in political activity. As Mark Warschauer points
out, the potential for multimedia production—which requires the latest computers andsoftware, and high bandwidth—is generally quite inaccessible to all but the wealthy middle-
classes. Research also suggests that young people may be much less fluent or technologically “literate” in their use of the Internet than is often assumed: observational studies suggest that young people often encounter considerable difficulties in using search engines, for example, although this is not to suggest that they are necessarily any less competent than adults in this respect.
Aside from those who are denied access to this technology, there are also many who
positively refuse or reject it, for a variety of reasons. Only a relatively small proportion of
young people are driven by a desire to purchase the latest technological gadgets or participate in the latest form of online culture, and rather than being regarded as “cool,” they are still often dismissed by their peers as “geeks.” In general, one could argue that for most
young people, technology per se is a relatively marginal concern. Very few are interested in
technology in its own right, and most are simply concerned about what they can use it for.
Ultimately, like other forms of marketing rhetoric, the discourse of the “digital generation”
is precisely an attempt to construct the object of which it purports to speak. It represents not
a description of what children or young people actually are, but a set of imperatives about
what they should be or what they need to become. To some extent, it does describe a minority
of young people who are actively using this technology for social, educational and creative
purposes, yet it seems very likely that most of these people are the “usual suspects,” who are
already privileged in other areas of their lives and whose use of technology is supported by
their access to other forms of social and cultural capital.
Of course, none of this is to deny that different generations or age cohorts will have
different kinds of experiences, and that these may result in “generation gaps.” Generations
can be defined—and come to define themselves—through their relationships to traumatic
historical events, but also through their experiences of rapid social change (as, for example, in
the case of the “Sixties generation.”). Nor is it to deny that contemporary developments in
technology do indeed present new opportunities—and indeed new risks—for young people.
Some differences between generations are a perennial function of age—the interests of the
young and the old are bound to diverge in systematic and predictable ways—but others are a
consequence of broader historical developments, which include technological change.
Even so, the emergence of a so-called “digital generation” can only be adequately understood
in the light of other changes—for example, in the political economy of youth culture, the
social and cultural policies and practices that regulate and define young people’s lives, and
the realities of their everyday social environments. These latter changes themselves can also
be overstated, and frequently are, but in any case, it makes little sense to consider them in
isolation from each other.
These issues are taken up in various ways in later chapters. The authors are generally wary
of easy assumptions about the impact of technology on young people, and of the dangers
of romanticizing youth. They are also keen to locate contemporary uses of technology in
relation to older forms of communication or of teenage social interaction. Susan Herring’s
chapter provides the most direct challenge to these kinds of assumptions, puncturing some
of the easy rhetoric about the “digital generation,” and locating adults’ views of young people
and technology in a broader historical context. At the same time, she is keen not to fall into
the trap of merely suggesting that “we’ve seen it all before.” Technology—in combination
with a whole series of other social and economic changes—is transforming young people’s
experiences, albeit in ways that (as Herring suggests) may only become fully apparent several years further down the line.
The Place(s) of Learning Finally, what are the implications of these arguments for our
thinking about learning? Learning is undoubtedly a central theme in popular debates about
the impact of digital technology. On the one hand, critics have often seen technology as
incompatible with authentic learning. For example, the use of computers in schools has been
condemned for undermining students’ creativity and for emphasizing mechanical rote learn-
ing, and it has also been seen to promise instant gratification, at the expense of encouraging
students to develop the patience that is required for the hard work of education.
On the other hand, advocates of technology have extolled its value for encouraging cre-
ative, student-centered learning, for increasing motivation and achievement, and for promot-
ing demanding new styles of thinking. Don Tapscott and Marc Prensky, for example, wax
lyrical about the interactive, playful styles of learning that are promoted by the Internet and
by computer games. Prensky’s “digital natives” and Tapscott’s “net generation” are seen as
more inquisitive, self-directed learners: they are more sceptical and analytical, more inclined
toward critical thinking, and more likely to challenge and question established authorities
than previous generations.
Above all, learning via these new digital media is seen as guaranteed “fun,” as the boundaries between learning and play have effectively disappeared. Academic analyses of learning in relation to digital media have drawn on a wide range of perspectives. It is sometimes forgotten that one of the key advocates of behaviorist theories of learning, B. F. Skinner, was also an enthusiast for what he termed “teaching machines”— machines that have some striking similarities with contemporary computers. Behaviorism
is certainly alive and well in the design of contemporary “drill and skill” software, although
most enthusiasts for computers in education tend to espouse a form of “constructivism”
that emphasizes active, student-centered learning rather than instruction. More recent ap-
proaches have drawn on social theories of learning, such as the “situated learning” approach.
From this perspective, learning is seen to be embedded in social interactions (or “communi-
ties of practice”), and it can take the form of a kind of apprenticeship, as newcomers observe
and gradually come to participate in particular social practices by modeling and working
alongside “old timers.” This theory also suggests that learning entails the development (or
“projection”) of a social identity; in learning, we take on, or aspire to take on, a new role as a
member of the community of practice in which we are seeking to participate. Such theories
have an obvious relevance to the study of online social networks, for example in the case of
gaming and fan communities.
One key emphasis in these debates is on the importance of the “informal learning” that
characterizes young people’s everyday interactions with technology outside school. Seymour
Papert, for example, extols the value of what he calls “home-style” learning, seeing it as self-
directed, spontaneous, and motivated in ways that “school-style” learning is not,58 while
Marc Prensky and Don Tapscott also look outside the school for alternatives to what they
regard as the old-fashioned, instructional style of Baby Boomer teachers. Similar arguments
have increasingly been made by academic researchers, who have looked to young people’s
leisure uses of digital technology—for example, in the form of computer games—as a means
of challenging the narrow and inflexible uses of information and communications technol-
ogy (ICTs) in schools.
To be sure, young people’s everyday uses of computer games or the Internet involve a whole
range of informal learning processes, in which there is often a highly democratic relationship
between “teachers” and “learners.” Young people learn to use these media largely through
trial and error. Exploration, experimentation, play, and collaboration with others—both in
face-to-face and virtual forms—are essential elements of the process. Playing certain types
of computer games, for example, can involve an extensive series of cognitive activities:
remembering, hypothesis testing, predicting, and strategic planning. While game players are
often deeply immersed in the virtual world of the game, dialogue and exchange with others
is crucial. And game playing is also a “multiliterate” activity: it often involves interpreting
complex three-dimensional visual environments, reading both on screen and off screen
texts (such as games’ magazines, and websites), and processing auditory information. In the
world of computer games, success ultimately derives from the disciplined and committed
acquisition of skills and knowledge.
Likewise, online chat and instant messaging require very specific skills in language and
interpersonal communication. Young people have to learn to “read” subtle nuances, often
on the basis of minimal cues. They have to learn the rules and etiquette of online communi-
cation, and to shift quickly between genres or language registers. Provided youths are sensible about divulging personal information, online chat provides young people with a safe arena for rehearsing and exploring aspects of identity and personal relationships that may not be available elsewhere. Again, much of this learning is carried out without explicit teaching: it
involves active exploration, “learning by doing,” apprenticeship rather than direct instruc-
tion. Above all, it is profoundly social: it is a matter of collaboration and interaction with
others, and of participation in a community of users.
In learning with and through these media, young people are also learning how to learn.
They are developing particular orientations toward information, particular methods of ac-
quiring new knowledge and skills, and a sense of their own identities as learners. They are
likely to experience a strong sense of their own autonomy, and of their right to make their
own choices and to follow their own paths—however illusory this may ultimately be. In
these domains, they are learning primarily by means of discovery, experimentation, and
play, rather than by following external instructions and directions.
Even so, there are some important limitations to all this. Media content is, of course, not
necessarily neutral or reliable: it represents the world in particular ways and not others, and
it does so in ways that tend to serve the interests of its producers. Activities such as chat and
game play are heavily bound by systems of rules, even if the rules are not always explicitly
taught and even if they can sometimes be broken or bent. The structure or “architecture”
of software itself (for example, of links on the Internet) imposes very significant constraints
on the ways in which it can be used. And the social worlds that users enter into as they
participate in these activities are by no means necessarily egalitarian or harmonious. For all
these reasons, we need to be wary of simply celebrating young people’s “informal” experiences of media and technology, and there are good reasons to be cautious about the idea of simply extending those experiences into the more “formal” context of the school.
This raises the important question, not so much of how young people learn with technology,
but of what they need to know about it. The need for “digital literacy” is fast becoming a grow-
ing concern among educators and policy-makers in many countries. To date, however, most
discussions of digital literacy have been confined to a fairly functional approach; the empha-
sis is on mastering basic skills in using technology, with some limited attention to evaluating
the reliability or credibility of online sources (an issue addressed in detail in another of the
volumes in this series). These are undoubtedly important issues, but digital literacy clearly
needs to be seen much more broadly. Literacy is more than a matter of functional skills, or
of knowing how to access information; we need to be able to evaluate information if we are
to turn it into meaningful knowledge. Critical literacy is not just about making distinctions
between “reliable” and “unreliable” sources: it is also about understanding who produces
media, how and why they do so, how these media represent the world, and how they create
meanings and pleasures.
In this respect, I would argue that digital literacy should be seen as part of the broader field
of media literacy. There is a long history of media literacy education in many countries, and
there is a well-established conceptual framework and a repertoire of classroom strategies that
are recognized and shared by teachers around the world. Clearly, new media such as games
and the Internet require new methods of investigation, and new classroom strategies, and
schools need to think hard about how they should respond to the more participatory forms of
media culture that are now emerging (for example in the form of blogging, social networking,
fan cultures, video production, game making, and so on). Nevertheless, media educators’
long-standing concerns with questions about representation, about the characteristics of
media “languages,” and about the ownership and production of media continue to be highly
relevant here, as does the emphasis on connecting these more critical concerns with the
practical production of media (enabling students to create websites or digital videos, for
example).
The issue of learning is addressed indirectly by several of the contributors here, but it is
taken up most explicitly in the two final chapters. Kirsten Drotner’s key concern is with the
implications of young people’s emerging digital cultures for the institution of the school.
How should teachers and schools build on the forms of creativity and learning that young
people are experiencing in their everyday uses of digital media? Rather than making the
school redundant, Drotner argues that it has a new role to play, both in addressing inequal-
ities in access to technology and in providing new forms of literacy. Meanwhile, Shelley
Goldman, Meghan McDermott and Angela Booker focus on the possibilities and the chal-
lenges of “informal” learning in out-of-school contexts.
While technology does provide important new possibilities for self-expression and communication, they clearly show that technology in itself does not make the difference. On the contrary, we need to think hard about the “social technologies”—the other forms of social interaction—and the types of pedagogy that surround the technology, and which crucially determine how it will be used. (These authors’ concern with the role of digital media in young people’s civic participation is taken up in another volume in this series.)
Conclusion
Simply keeping pace with the range of young people’s engagements with digital media is an
increasingly daunting task. Inevitably, there will be many gaps in our account here. Some
of them are more than amply filled by other books in this series, such as the volumes on
games, on ethnicity, and on civic engagement. Other gaps relate to the types of young people
who are addressed here. To date, research on young people and digital media has tended to
focus on the “early adopters,” who, as I have suggested, are also likely to be privileged in
other areas of their lives. Some of the chapters here—such as those by Sandra Weber and
Claudia Mitchell, and by Shelley Goldman, Meghan McDermott, and Angela Booker—do
focus explicitly on disadvantaged young people, although this is an issue that needs to be
addressed more effectively in future research.
Even so, our hope for this book is that the theme of identity will provide a useful lens
through which to view particular aspects of young people’s relations with digital media more
clearly. Identity is a very broad and ambiguous concept, yet it focuses attention on critical
questions about personal development and social relationships—questions that are crucial
or our understanding of young people’s growth into adulthood and the nature of their
social and cultural experiences. Focusing on this theme gives us a particular “take” on the
relationship between the individual and the group. It raises questions about social power
and inequality, and it enables us to connect the study of technology with broader questions
about modernity and social change. Perhaps most importantly, a focus on identity requires us to pay close attention to the diverse ways in which media and technologies are used in everyday life, and their consequences both for individuals and for social groups. It entails viewing young people as significant social actors in their own right, as “beings,” and not simply as “becomings” who should be judged in terms of their projected futures. In our view, the needs of young people are not best served either by the superficial celebration or the exaggerated moral panics that often characterize this field. Understanding the role of digital media in the formation of youthful identities requires an approach that is clear sighted, unsentimental, and constructively critical. We trust that this collection will be read, and its contents debated, in an equally rigorous manner.
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