Online Media and youths Cyberculture

1
Online Media and(youths) Cyberculture

• Anthony Fung
• School of Journalism and Communication
• The Chinese University of Hong Kong
• Talk for EMB

2
What are common online media for youth?

• Media which are online
• Portal sites for general entertainment/ info/
  news (e.g. Yahoo, Now.com)
• Functional sites for different interest groups
  (e.g. amazon.com, cartoonnetwork.com)
• Chat rooms (e.g. BBS, interest group chat rooms,
  forum)
• Online Games

3
Some other youths hot spots

• online games (different kinds)
• MMORPG (role play game)
• online chatting features e.g. ICQ
• Online diary

4
Common Concern/ perceived problems

• Over Reliance on the Internet?
• Addiction to online media? And then more desires
• Worsening social relationship? And then Isolation
• Over violence/ anti-social norm games
• Online crimes? And then

5
What are the theoretical Questions concerned

• Given the consequences of technologies, what will
  be the youth identities in this postmodern age?
• Why do youth have to immerse into the virtual
  realities (instead of the realities)?
• What kind of social problem that cyberculture
  foregrounds?
• What will be our new society (new info age)?

6
What do youth do online?

• Escape from the competitive/ cruel reality
• Meet new peer/ friends
• Assume a new set of identities
• Tell stories of their own and express their
  feeling and emotion
• Search for an ideal world online

7
Movie Time

• Think about what actors are doing? And why do
  they do so..

8
Some common concepts for understanding online
culture

• Virtual realities searching for ideals
• Interactivity active and action
• Textual poachers - youth contribution
• Cyber/ online communities youth lifestyle

9
Virtual realities

• Mark Poster fanciful imaginings that, in their
  difference from real reality, evoke play and
  discovery, instituting a new level of imagination

10
Characteristics of virtual realities

• a new ritual
• a new sensation of time and space
• a new set of language
• a constructing identity
• a communication medium
• flexibility and exploration
• imagination
• pleasure

11
What kind of activity?

• What are the chats, websites, diaries?
  integration of emotion, knowledge, and action
  (c.f. knowledge in textbook)
• What kind of channel is it? An alternative
  channel to voice their opinion envoicement
  (vs opinion in classroom)
• What is the learning environment/ socialization?
  Information seeking (c.f. teacher passing info)

12
Disadvantages and Issues

• questioned identity (e.g. lies on ICQ by ICAC
  report) real emotion?
• Love and fantasy (realistic?) mass deception?
• dehumanization and isolation
• killing time (just another kind of hobby)
• Escapism (from reality)

13
Advantages or New Perspectives

• More knowledge/ broader horizon (even educated
  than parents/ teachers)
• New communication modes/ channels (more opinions/
  diversity)
• Creativity and innovation
• Critical edge

14
Interactivity

• Not just than active
• interactive participation
• Question Think about what youth are doing in
  daily life. Are they really active?

15
Appropriateness of terms

• Reader misses the excitement of live involvement
• receiver implies only a passive reader
• user implies an addictive relationship with media
• audience and spectator add the collective and
  affective dimensions but retain the sense of
  passivity in receiving an already finished
  product
• Consumer assumes that media exist for commercial
  purpose
• decoder implies reader the secret symbols

16
WWW

• view, read, listen, write to inquire, respond,
  interact.
• textual poachers (Jenkins) - not passive and
  escapist - aggressively take animals not
  originally theirs

17
Co-authorship

• coauthors active participants with concomitant
  responsibilities
• producerly reading of texts co-produce the
  meaning along with the author-producers of the
  texts (Fiske)
• challenging the encoding-decoding model

18
Textual poachers

• mode of reception attention and social
  interactions with like-minded fans
• critical and interpretative practices learning
  communitys preferred reading practices -
  playful, subjective and speculative
• consumer activism organize for changes and
  search alternative development

19
Cybercommunities

• imagined communities suggesting real communities
  in decline
• An alternative or a compensation?
• What is real and imaginary?

20
Disadvantages and Issues

• Gender
• sex-role stereotyping
• masculinization of pleasure
• antifemale patriarchy
• gendered communities
• Age
• Generational non-communication

21
Advantages

• New Identities
• New possibilities for changes
• New ideas in specific sites
• Challenging the fixed convention
• A pluralistic culture

22
New Possibilities?

• A Brave new world