Generational Use Of New Media

Generational Use of New Media examines and contrasts how younger and older people, representing different generations, engage with the new media that they increasingly encounter in everyday life. Exploring the various assumptions about the degrees to which younger and older people are more or less willing to use, or are capable of using, new media, the social circumstances under which they do so and the very design of those media, this book critically examines the gap that is assumed to exist between younger users of new media and older non-users. Thematically organised and offering comparative analyses of the generational use of new media and technology, this timely volume presents the latest research and rich new empirical material gathered in the EU, USA and Hong Kong, to reflect on societal practices and the practical implications of building a more inclusive information society.

Generational Use of New Media examines and contrasts how younger and older people, representing different generations, engage with the new media that they increasingly encounter in everyday life. Exploring the various assumptions about the degrees to which younger and older people are more or less willing to use, or are capable of using, new media, the social circumstances under which they do so and the very design of those media, this book critically examines the gap that is assumed to exist between younger users of new media and older non-users. Thematically organised and offering comparative analyses of the generational use of new media and technology, this timely volume presents the latest research and rich new empirical material gathered in the EU, USA and Hong Kong, to reflect on societal practices and the practical implications of building a more inclusive information society.

Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- CONTENTS -- List of illustrations -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction -- 1 The problem of media and generations -- 2 Age, cohort, life course and generation -- 3 Generation as location: Media landscapes and generations -- 4 Generation as actuality: Subjective landscapes of media generations -- 5 Nostalgia and the process of generationing -- 6 Generation, mediatisation and the rhythm of ages -- References -- Index.

Media education for digital citizenship is predicated upon the ability to access, analyze, evaluate and produce media content and communication in a variety of forms. While many media literacy approaches overemphasize the end-goal of accessing digital media content through the acquisition of various technology, software, apps and analytics, this book argues that the goals for comprehensive and critical digital literacy require grasping the means through which communication is created, deployed, used, and shared, regardless of which tools or platforms are used for meaning making and social interaction. Drawing upon the intersecting matrices of digital literacy and media literacy, the volume provides a framework for developing critical digital literacies by exploring the necessary skills and competencies for engaging students as citizens of the digital world.

Computer games, the Internet, and other new communications media are often seen to pose threats and dangers to young people, but they also provide new opportunities for creativity and self-determination. As we start to look beyond the immediate hopes and fears that new technologies often provoke, there is a growing need for in-depth empirical research. Digital Generations presents a range of exciting and challenging new work on children, young people, and new digital media. The book is organized around four key themes: Play and Gaming, The Internet, Identities and Communities Online, and Learning and Education. The book brings together researchers from a range of academic disciplines – including media and cultural studies, anthropology, sociology, psychology and education – and will be of interest to a wide readership of researchers, students, practitioners in digital media, and educators.

There is currently much discourse about generations in the public sphere. A sequence of letters conflates generations and age cohorts born in the last few decades (generation “X”, “Y” or “Z”) as well as multiple categories are used to describe today’s young people as a generation that is distinct from its predecessors. Despite the popularity of generational labels in media, politics, or even academia, the use of generation as a conceptual tool in youth studies has been controversial. This Special Issue allows readers to better understand the key issues regarding the use of generation as a theoretical concept and/or as a social category in the field of youth studies, shedding light on the controversies, trends, and cautions that go through it.

While the analysis of generations has been central in the sociological understanding of social change, the role of the media in this process has only been acknowledged as an important feature during the last couple of decades. Building on quantitative and qualitative comparative research, Media Generations analyses the role of the media in the formation of generational experience, identity and habitus, and how mediated nostalgia is an important part in the social formation of generations. Avoiding popular generational labelling Göran Bolin argues that the totality of the media landscape is a contextual structure that together with age and life-course factors help inform world-views and ways to relate to the wider society that guide the actions of media users. Media Generations demonstrates how - as different generations come of age at different moments in the mediatised historical process - they develop different media habits, but also make sense of the world differently, which informs their relations to older and younger generations. It also explores how this process of ‘generationing’, that is, the process in which a generation come into being as a self-perceived social identity, partly builds on specific kinds of nostalgia that establishes generational differences and distinctions. This book will be of special interest to those studying social change, collective memory, cultural identity and the role of the media in social experience.

This book investigates news use patterns among five different generations in a time where digital media create a multi-choice media environment. The book introduces the EPIG Model (Engagement-Participation-Information-Generation) to study how different generational cohorts’ exposure to political information is related to their political engagement and participation. The authors build on a multi-method framework to determine direct and indirect media effects across generations. The unique dataset allows for comparison of effects between legacy and social media use and helps to disentangle the influence on citizens’ political involvement in nonelection as well as during political campaign times. Bringing the newly of-age Generation Z into the picture, the book presents an in-depth understanding of how a changing media environment presents different challenges and opportunities for political involvement of this, as well as older generations. Bringing the conversation around political engagement and the media up to date for the new generation, this book will be of key importance to scholars and students in the areas of media studies, communication studies, technology, political science and political communication.