To share or not to share?: News practices in the media life of Swedish youths
Publication details
| Year: | 2018 |
| Issued: | 2018 |
| Language: | English |
| Start Page: | 149 |
| End Page: | 159 |
| Editors: | Andersson Y.; Dalquist U.; Ohlsson J. |
| Authors: | Andersson Y. |
| Type: | Book chapter |
| Book title: | Youth and News in a Digital Media Environment: Nordic-Baltic Perspectives |
| Publisher: | Nordicom |
| Place: | Gothenburg |
| Topics: | Internet usage, practices and engagement; Digital and socio-cultural environment |
| Implications For Educators About: | Digital citizenship |
| Implications For Stakeholders About: | Researchers |
Abstract
"Yvonne Andersson directs the attention to how news use and identity formation among youth are entangled in partly new ways. Youth today do not use media, they live in media, and whatever they share, comment, upload etc. simultaneously shares information about the sender; who you are, who you want to be, how you want to be perceived – and that makes news-sharing and commenting a rather risky business. Interviews with Swedish youth display how these precarious aspects of the news practice sometimes hinder them from digital civic engagement." (From editors' introductory chapter 1, p. 14)
Outcome
"For children and youngsters growing up today, offline and online flow into each other. Social relations, affiliation, affinity, belonging and identity formation are crucial for adolescents taking part in digital media.... Commenting on and sharing a news article, or not, is a form of civic engagement but it’s also personal impression management. This entanglement of news consumption and identity formation has emerged quite recently.... [W]hen youngsters partly live their lives in media, news engagement – or the lack of news engagement – is not merely contingent on knowledge and skills that may be improved by education, e.g. media literacy." (Author, 156)