Media & Generations: use of media in generational discourse

media&generationPRIN - National Research Project

Twenty first century teenager: Media Representatio, theory and PolicyLeeds, 10th-12th July 2008

Teenagers and Media representation: Switching the perspective.How teenagers represent themselves in a media environment.

Luca Rossi LaRiCA / University of Urbino “Carlo Bo”



persistence/easy to search/addressed to an unknowable audience/ easy to replicate/(boyd 2007)

Growing availability of User Generated Content:

wesearch/scenario



persistence invisible audiences replicability searchability

few Writings Printing press, newspapers Digital media (pc, video-cameras)

World Wide Web + Google (Google Book Search)

many Writings Personal online publishing / Web 2.0 (Blogs, Flickr, YouTube)

Digital media (pc, video-cameras)

World Wide Web + Google (Google Blog Search)

wesearch/scenario



media&generation/research

Is it possible to use ugc to observe the emergence of the generational discourse?

[ world-wide, media based, generational wesense (Edmunds, Turner 2005) ]

May specific media products get user generated generational discourses started?



wesearch/methodology

Keywords Identification

Through 5 focus groups we’ve identified 45 media products to be used as keywords to investigate online discourses




Query strings definition

a) Avoid unwanted responses (spam)b) Obtain the full text of every blog entry (yahoo pipes)c) choose between chronological or “by relevance” output



Storage of blog entries and retrieval of authors’ information

a) Incremental storage of RSS entriesb) Scraping of authors’ information


supported platforms:

Blogger ITA / ENGFlickr ENGIl Cannocchiale ENGLibero ITASplinder ITAWindows Live Space ENGYouTube ENG



Summary of collected data

starting set of keyword: 45retrieved blogs entries: 3000cases with authors’ data: 928




Generation Age (2007) %

Postwar 55 3%

Boomers 41-54 3%

X generation 29-41 15%

Y generation 28 79%

Totale 100%

Collected data: age distribution




media&generation/results

Media products are anchors for personal memories which can be used in an individual or a generational way.



media&generation/results

“The Party (La Boum)" and ”The Party 2"... Today as yesterday are cult movies of my life… even if my time has been more the “missed party time!” I was more than 18 and still waiting for the first kiss!! I’ve always been slow, naive, dreamer and scared”

(A. female 44 years old)



media&generation/conclusions

“for us it wasn’t Christmas if there wasn’t the Coca-Cola Ad(that one with the tree), and “Home alone” on Tv…”.(A. male 19 years old)



rappresentazione generazionale

rappresentazione individuale

X generation (1966-1978)

41,18% 47,06%

MTV generation (1974-1981)

30,77% 53,85%

Boomerang generation (1977-1989)

28,7% 55,56%

C generation (1980-2000)

28,3% 55,66%

Y generation (1979-1991)

28,7% 55,56%




XMTV

BoomerangC

Y

0,00%

10,00%

20,00%

30,00%

40,00%

50,00%

60,00%

generational use

individual use




me generation?



media&generation/limits&possibilities

- average age of online content producers- accuracy of published data- automatically updated online profiles- need of a more accurate filter technology- privacy issues



media&generation/limits&possibilities

- users share their personal data online- qualitative analysis of large quantity of data- high qualitative value of ugc- average age of online content producers- spontaneous data



http://[email protected]://www.soc.uniurb.it/larica

News & Politics

Media & Generations: use of media in generational discourse