[Air-l] teens and myspace

[Michela Drusian]

Hi all,

I'm following this very interesting thread and I am enthusiastic of some 
issues that have been raised. I did my PhD on adolescents and their 
experience of chatlines and when I was in Chicago last year I had the 
impression that the Italian context was very far from the international one 
because here there is stigmatization which derives from a diffused sense of 
alarm towards CMC.  Obviously, who does not use CMC is more likely to feel 
distant from it, whereas those who know CMC have a more relaxed attitude, 
even among young people. During my interviews I had a sensation which still 
goes around my head: how do young people relate CMC and cultural capital? I 
try to be as clear as possible: Cultural capital is given -also- by the 
number and the quality of relationships you have in your social context, 
which you derive from your family, from school, from work etc.  The 
sensation I had  during my interviews was that your cultural capital could 
not be influenced by online relationships, and if you have a lot of online 
relationships, then your cultural capital could even be poorer. In other 
words, if you belong to higher stratification you are not expected to have 
online relationships (because you do not need to, or because you cultural 
capital would be in some ways affected by this?) and viceversa.  This is 
clearly connected with stigmatization which is connected to general alarm 
towards CMC, which depends on the fact of being a daily practice. As long 
as CMC becomes daily, then social alarms will turn to other technological 
innovations involving very basic social practises as communication.

Ciao,
michela

P.S. thank you Barry for the plea against jargon, my English is book-based 
and sometimes I miss something, although I can take the reading of this 
list as an exercise!

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Michela Drusian, PhD

Dipartimento di Sociologia
Via Cesarotti, 10
I - 35123 Padova
tel: +39-049-827 4314
cell: +39-340-2677379
email: michela.drusian at unipd.it
web: http://www.sociologia.unipd.it/

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