Talamo, A. & Ligorio, B. (2001, Feb). Strategic identities in cyberspace. CyberPsychology and Behavior, 4(1): 109-22.

abstract only.

I leaned on this paper in my Masters in Social Psychology, focussing on the ways that kids use online systems in a similar way as offline systems to develop their sense of self.

abstract:

This paper aims at describing, according to the recent advances in social psychology and Computer Mediated Communication, how identities are perceived and constructed in cyberspace. All interactions analyzed in this study were performed within “Euroland,” a collaborative virtual environment. The interacting community was composed of students, teachers, and researchers working on a transnational educational project. Practices and dialogues within Euroland are analyzed using an ethnographic and conversational method. A sample of discourses and actions that occurred during 8 months of time, selected according to the research aims, was analyzed. During online connections, users were personified by an “Avatar.” Avatars are able to walk, fly, and look around the virtual world. They are also able to build and manipulate three-dimensional objects, perform virtual actions, and chat with other connected users. Results showed that “Eurolanders” showed and constructed their identities using strategic “positioning” depending on the interactive situation. Identities are thus dynamic and strongly related to the context, created and constantly recreated by the users. It is concluded that specific features offered by the Euroland environment are exploited by the users as resources to play with, while moving from one strategic positioning to another. Cyber identities involve resources given by specific technological tools and by community. The cyber-identity construction process seems to be highly congruent to the advances in the dialogical perspective in psychology, where identities are considered in their conceptualizations as multiple, “multivoiced,” “positioned,” and context-dependent.

emphasis added

Livingstone, S., Hadon, L, Gorzif, A & Olafsson, K. (2011). EU Kids Online. London School of Economics and Political Science.

full text pdf

Six years on from a first report about how kids in the UK  use the web (some harrowing accounts about their not-so-critical consumption of content - intel on this is covered here by a long-time-ago-self: notes from the project director’s keynote address at the Association of Internet Researcher’s conference in Chicago in 2005), this is a cross-national study based out of the London School of Economics. It’s not just Europe: also includes comparisons w USA, Russia, Australia & Brazil.

aims:

…to enhance knowledge of the experiences and practices of European children and parents regarding risky and safer use of the internet and new online technologies, in order to inform the promotion of a safer online environment for children.

Here are notes & quotes:

big overall sample: 25,000 European children and their parents in 25 countries (1K each).

Internet use is increasingly individualised, privatised an mobile: 9-16 yo internet users spend 88 minutes per day online, on average.. 49% go online in their bedroom, 33% go online via a mobile phone or handheld device.

don’t be afraid of risk:

risky opportunities allow children to experiment online with relationships, intimacy and identity. This is vital for growing up if children are to learn to cope with the adult world

the UK falls into the “higher use, some risk”: 

HIgh internet use in a country is rarely associated with low risk; and high risk is rarely associated with low use; rather, across countries, the more use, the more risk

…risk must be distinguished from harm

Children often tell a friend, followed by a parent, when something online upsets them, and they try a range of pro-active strategies online, thought these don’t always work and some children are more fatalistic in their responses to online harm

interes stats associated w “risky behaviours” (NOTE - ALL LESS THAN 50%):

• 40% have looked for new friends on the internet
• 34% have added people to my friends list or address book that i have never met face-to-face
• 16% have pretended to be a different kind of person on the internet from what i really am
• 15% have sent personal information to someone that i have never met face to face
• 14% have sent a photo or video of myself to someone that I have never met face to face

And with regards to social networking sites like Facebook:

• 38% 9-12 yo and 77% 13-16yo have a profile on a social networking site (SNS)
• 20% 9-12yo and 46% 13-16yo use Facebook as their main SNS
• 27% 9-12yo display an incorrect age on their SNS profile

Children surely have the right to use services where many social activities – for governmental, artistic, citizen groups, news, 

educational offerings and more – take place. But to enable these opportunities, some risks should be further mitigated.

• 29 per cent of 9-12 year olds and 27 per cent of 13-16 year olds have their profile “public”, though this varies according to the country and the SNS used.
• A quarter of SNS users communicate online with people unconnected to their daily lives, including one fifth of 9-12 year olds. 
• One fifth of children whose profile is public display their address and/or phone number, twice as many as for those with private profiles.
• One in six 9-12 year olds and one in three 13-16 year olds have more than 100 contacts on their SNS profile.
• Compared with those who do not use SNSs, SNS users are significantly more likely to report seeing sexual images, receiving sexual or bullying messages or meeting online 
• contacts offline – though for each risk, the overall incidence is fairly low

pdf of a research study looking at how the “global” youth culture marketing segment is actually a local phenomenon, and therefore youth culture is not so global after all.

Kjeldgaard, D. & Askegaard, S. (2006, Sept). The Glocalization of Youth Culture: The Global Youth Segment as Structures of Common Difference. Journal of Consumer Research, Vol 33: 231-247.

abstract:

In this article we present an analysis of global youth cultural consumption based on a multisited empirical study of young consumers in Denmark and Greenland. We treat youth culture as a market ideology by tracing the emergence of youth culture in relation to marketing and how the ideology has glocalized. This trans-national market ideology is manifested in the glocalization of three structures of common difference that organize our data: identity, center-periphery, and reference to youth cultural consumption styles. Our study goes beyond accounts of global homogenization and local appropriation by showing the glocal structural commonalities in diverse manifestations of youth culture.

a couple of notes:

* use the web to draw together resources from global culture in order to identify with an aspired lifestyle that’s not present locally

* makes the experience more globally oriented

* the internet plays a more important role than TV in providing symbolic imagery of a central identity for youth (particularly when artifacts and expressions of that identity aren’t available locally)

* the web offers a space for “deterritorialized communities of peers” (p. 243): perceptions of greater similarity with people far away

pdf of a sample chapter (introduction) from:

Fowler, D. (2008). Youth Culture in Modern Britain, c. 1920-c.1970. Palgrave macmillan: Basingstoke.

my notes:

The term “youth culture” was coined by an American sociologist, Talcott Parsons, in 1942. It was popularised in the UK in the 1960s by an Oxford researcher and journalist, Bryan Wilson. It was subsequently taken up in academe by the University of Birmingham’s Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies department.

“Everyone in Britain who could read or had access to a television set knew about youth culture.” (p. 2)

early popular understanding of youth culture (in the 1960s) equated it with fan worship (specifically of The Beatles), and later with Mods and Rockers, followed by “drug use, promiscuity, and student unrest” (p. 3).

“linked so closely with the decades of affluence and classlessnes” (p. 4)

“youth [endeavour] to define and pursue a culture of their own, and, indeed [hijack] institutions run by adults to pursue their own preoccupations and lifestyles.” (p. 5)

“in pursuit of communities of their own…” (p. 8)

“The Flapper Cult” of the 1920s was debated in the House of Commons. (p. 8)

Youth culture is articulated not just in fashion, but in the creative output of its community members: its written word etc.