my report in Media 304: Media and Identities at the College of Mass Communication, University of the Philippines Diliman - PhD Media Studies program

1. Youth, Identity, and Digital Media
Chona Rita R. Cruz (CINDY) 86-16518
PhD Media Studies

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Facebook
Twitter
Tumblr
Instagram
BLOGS
Flickr
About Me / Gravatar
Soundcloud / LastFM
Deviant Art

3. 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

5. 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

6. “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

7. 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

8. 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)

9. 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

10. “Consumer Citizens Online:
Structure, Agency and Gender in
Online Participation”
Identity within the context of online
consumer cultures

11. 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

12. 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

13. 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.

14. “Questioning the Generational
Divide: Technological Exoticism and
Adult Constructions
of Online Youth Identity”

15. • 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

16. • 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?

19. 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

20. “Producing Sites, Exploring Identities:
Youth Online Authorship”

21. • 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 SelfReflection, 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

22. “Why the Youth ♥ Social Network
Sites: The Role of Networked Publics in
Teenage Social Life”

23. •
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Facebook
Twitter
Instagram
Flickr
Tumblr
BLOGS
About.me
Soundcloud / LastFM
LinkedIN

24. • 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

25. “Mobile Identity:
Youth, Identity, and Mobile
Communication Media”

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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

28. 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

29. “Leisure is Hard Work: digital
Practices and Future competencies”

30. • “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

31. “Mixing the Digital, social, and
Cultural: Learning, Identity, and
Agency in Youth Participation”

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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
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33. 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