Patricia Lange: Youth, Identity, and Online Community
Filed at 3:57 pm on August 7, 2007 in Identity • 2 comments
Youth today are increasingly living mediated lives in which video cameras, video production and sharing figure prominently in recording and influencing every day, social encounters between co-located and dispersed youth. By studying the dynamics of such mediated encounters we can learn how youth project social identities and how they attempt to negotiate acceptable forms of participation in online communities.
No one wants to live their life behind the view finder of a home video camera, or so conventional wisdom used to go. While adults could often be criticized for abstractly experiencing their children’s every day and ritual lives through a camera, a younger generation is directly incorporating media into their intimate, social encounters in ways that help youth bond with each other. Many youth and kids are living mediated lives in which producing, sharing, and viewing videos on sites such as YouTube play a prominent role in shaping their interaction, friendships, and social identities. In some cases youth may design their videos to distinguish themselves from other YouTube participants by parodying what they feel is inadequate and unimaginative video content. Other times, youth may create videos that contain nostalgic reflections on friendship-based use of media, such as beloved video games. Encoding such nostalgia in videos not only communally preserves significant moments in their lives, but also helps them connect with dispersed youth with similar interests and form larger social networks. Young people often shape the form and content of their videos to project particular identities that reflect what they have learned in terms of social and technical skills.
While many people view youth productions as disposable, or “viral,” videos, systematic study of many of these videos shows that they are laden with intensely personal meanings that are important to the video makers and serve as a way to transmit affective affinities—digitally. Studying how many youth create and circulate videos is contributing to new ways of thinking about computer-mediated communication and about how social networks may be created, negotiated, and articulated through media.
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Tags: identity, interest-based-learning, participatory-cultures, video-blogging, viral-video, youtube
Comments (2)
1: Horacio Lopez at 11:33 pm on Thursday, August 16, 2007
I think we should, for a moment, avoid following the agenda of big media. Hardly a day passes without hearing how some newfound teenager role model signed a deal for a record label after being mightly amplified and augmented in Youtube.
Confessions before a webcam may sometimes be authentic, but I can hardly see that as some sort of contribution to anyone’s well being -the author included.
In letting big media dictate the focus and preferences of the young audience, resonating as an echo chamber of their purposes is probably not in the best interest of students.
Nevertheless I’m optimistic, there’s room for “authentic authenticity”, for real learning, for unstaged, unpretentious communication.
Take for example this video of a kid in South America showing the birth of a calf. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOzBTGGVWNg
(using one of the new XO computers of the OLPC project)
You could study a thousand times in a biology classroom and never actually learn anything on how mammals are born. And it’s a kid who’s sharing with other kids who don’t have the opportunity to learn about it first-hand.
Sentimental outbursts before a webcam, practical jokes, or biology class on mammals….
It’s up to us to choose what use we make of technology.
2: Patricia Lange at 1:28 pm on Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Dear Mr. Lopez,
Thank you for your comments. I agree that it is important not to follow the agenda of the “big media” without reflection. We should be sensitive to opportunities for using media for useful and worthy endeavors such as the example you gave.
YouTube vlogs and video blogs outside of YouTube certainly offer a range of opportunities and uses and it is important to study how youth use video in practice. I have seen a number of video blogs that do engage their audience in many ways, including overt political calls to action. But throughout the course of this research project talking to and working with video bloggers, I have also found that highly personal diary forms of video blogging can encourage new thinking on uncomfortable subjects that people do not usually like to discuss. I’ve written a paper on this subject called “The Vulnerable Video Blogger: Promoting Social Change through Intimacy” that analyzes how highly personal video blogging can, in the right circumstances, promote social change. The article can be found here: http://www.barnard.edu/sfonline/blogs/lange_01.htm
Many people believe that all video bloggers are self-focused and unconcerned with other people. But the paper discusses, for example, how one video blogger came across information about a suicidal teen on a social network site. She posted her concerns and asked her audience to advise her. She and another video blogger intervened and the teen was contacted and hospitalized. Her experience also eventually sparked discussion about steps to take to help teens in trouble online. What began as a posting about her personal anxiety over the teen’s suicidal messages led to a larger discussion in the public sphere about helping youth.
Part of the challenge of this ethnographic research project is to understand what youth are actually doing with media, how their media productions are being received, and what positive benefits their media production may have on the subjects you mention, such as meaningful learning and communication as well as potentially new forms of civic participation.
Patricia G. Lange, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Fellow
School of Cinematic Arts
University of Southern California
Robust discussion/debate is encouraged. Comments are reviewed before posting to ensure they are on topic and do not promote commercial products or services.
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