Digital media and generational “we-sense”. Which is the relevance of generational paradigm in...

Digital media and generational “we-sense”

Which is the relevance of generational paradigm in actual context?

The topic is nowdays at the center of the debate on the new media since the start of the digitilization (see the debate about the Internet Generation, or, just in the last few years, on the so called people of Digital Natives)

Actually…

The theoretical concept of “Generation” belong to a very classical tradition of sociological paradigms (i.e. Mannheim),

… and the debate is also now very interesting on one hand in the social sciences (Corsten,

Turner…) on the other hand in other close disciplines

(History, Demography, Marketing…)

A sociological approach: a tradition of a school

(Osscom)

• A set of 5 years long field researches, finally merged in a National Research Project, about the relation between media and generations:

2 years project financed by Italian Ministry of University involving 5 different national universities

• 68 biographical interviews• 73 focus groups• 12 couple interviews

A series of researches

• Dopoguerra (Postwars): born 1940-1952; formative years during the Fifties / mid Sixties

• Boomers: born 1953-1965; formative years during the last Sixties / Seventies

• Neos: born 1966-1978; formative years during the Eighties / first Nineties

• Posts: born 1979-1991; formative years during the Nineties / first years of the new millennium.

The background: four (italian) generations:

A –many –years-long qualitative research (more than 200 subject contacted for in depht interview or focus) about the generation of baby boomers in Italy, published in a non-academic book as a collective autobiography

Which disciplines?

• Marketing: generation as a target• Strong identity (Baby Boomers) • Weak identity (X Generation) • Deterministic Identity (Net generation, Nintendo

Generation, Digital Natives and so on)• Sociology: generation as a social identity (overall

in political action)• History: generation as historical subject of

change• Others: (education sciences: generation as a

collective receiver of a tradition…)

“An age cohort that comes to have social significance by virtue of constituting itself as a cultural identity” (Edmunds & Turner).

People who belong to the same generation:• were born in the same period of time• have the same age• share a common world of past, formative, (sometime

traumatic) experiences• are nowadays in the same life-cycle position• share a particular “generational semantic”• share a generational “we sense”• share a sort of “habitus”.

Generations in the sociological tradition(Mannheim, Bourdieu; Corsten, Edmunds & Turner)

*

What generations are not?

• Time-boxes containing groups of people (25 or less years-long boxes, for the old demographic tradition) builded by chance

• Simple forms of elective belonging (I can’t choose in total freedom my generational belonging: I can’t choose my date of birth…)

• Social deterministic machines for building collective identities between co-agers (sometimes people choose between two possible elective generations)

What Generations are?

Like many social facts, they are, first of all, what we can observe about them…

• In order of social continuum– Regularity (there is a series of generations… one following

the other)– Contrast (some generations are more protagonist in social

arena)

• In order of the perspective of observation– From outside– From inside

In order of social continuum

Like a wave A = In deep water. B = In shallow water.

The elliptical movement of a surface particle becomes flatter with decreasing depth.

1 = Progression of wave 2 = Crest 3 = Trough

Regularity Diversity between

different generations

Identity (family, or nation)

Cohabitation (they live together, or in the same time)

and for what media are concerned…

Is it still the same in the era of digital television?

Contrast

Dimension

Effects

The generational wave of the 68

Dimension: global (in the pictures: Berkeley, Paris, Mexixo City, Prague, Rome…)

Effects: politically, culturally very relevant

Something similar in arabian revolutions?

Dimension: sub-global? Effects: ?

Something more about dimension of generations…

The number of people composing a generation is not useless in determining the generational strenght in a society

But this variable is not sufficient in determine social effects

See the examples of the Baby Boomers in Italy

and for what new generations

are concerned…

Dimension: a global generation? In which sense? Where the action come from?

Effects: which ones? Which are the changes?

In order of the perspective of observation

From outside perspective

Events Global (Fall of the Berlin Wall, ’89; 9/11/2001) Glocal (Moonlanding, ‘69) Local (Vermicino, Italia, ‘81)

The role played by media in allowing the access to the event (but also to interpretate the event, enphasize it before, memorize or create a sort of nostalgia, after).

Global, Local, Glocal

From outside perspective (1) Everyday Life

Tradition Soft culture Public and private environment

The role of the media Artifacts, as a domestic landscape Cultural role (rituals, cultural forms, contents…)

BB generation…

Other generational media tools

Some generational confusion?

From outside perspective (2) Social definitions

sterotypes from old generations stereotypes from media (like a lot of the marketing

definitions, or typical generational contents) Social context

Welfare crisis: guaranteed and non guaranteed generations

Institutional changes Transformation and innovation driven by institutions (like

DTT) or by the market (transformation of the standards): digital immigrants vs digital natives?

From inside perspective (1)

Collective self identificationMy experience with the Baby Boomers

Self narration Production/selection of generational texts as expressive of a generational identity (think global about Twilight Saga, and local about Moccia’s books in Italy)

From inside perspective (2) Sharing

Experiences, life seasons, contents

Symbolic identificationAre there some symbolic characters for the generation? (or media propose some of them?)

Generation: complexity of a sociological concept

Three reasons why being careful in defining generations by media tools: Because media role is very complex in

interaction with generations Because generations are different Because different generations are

always interacting between them

… and

a reason why being careful in defining new generations Because new generations are building

themselves, but the “from inside” perspective is hidden to the observation during this phase

And, consequently, our point of view is distorted by more visible “from outside perspective”

What can we say about generations and media?

• The role of the media is growing if they can play a 360 degree role: material landscape, rituals, espressive space, narration tools

• it is decreasing if not every possible dimension are involved

Repertoires and mediated experiences (generational semantic)

Discourses and reflexivity (“We sense”)

Boomers (born in 1953-65; formed in ‘60s/’70s)

Massmedia audience:

National/international

Age of scarcity

Medium lifecycle

Strong sharing (and memories)

Scarce resources (print and radio)

Politically connotated

Conquered in adult age

Contested by Postwars

Posts (born in 1979-91; formed in ‘90s/’00s)

Mass and personal media audience: Global/local

Age of plenty (fragmentation)

Long lifecycle (e.g. reruns, dvd, and YouTube)

Wide sharing/nanosharing (and short memories)

Abundant resources (Internet)

Expressively connotated

Immediately accessible

Contested by Neos

*

The past is a shared country.How social media collaborate to the

definition of the “nostalgic” genre

Starting point: a sociology of nostalgia

F. Davis,, Yearning for Yesterday. A Sociology of Nostalgia, 1979

D. Lowenthal, The Past is a Foreign Country, 1985 R. Robertson, “After Nostalgia? Wilful Nostalgia and the

Phases of Globalization”, 1990 C. Shaw, & M. Chase, (eds.), The Imagined Past: History

and Nostalgia, 1989 B.S. Turner, “A note on Nostalgia”, 1987; “Nostalgia,

Postmodernism and the Critique of Mass Culture”, 1988

(The past is a foreign country is the beginning of The Go-Between, novel written by L.P. Hartley)

Defining a nostalgic psychological attitude

Relation between an individual and her/his personal past (childhood or adolescence)

Subjective memory (not necessarily shared with others)

Positive attitude towards this past (sometimes) Fetish behaviour (example:

collectionism)

Defining a nostalgic social attitude

Relation between a generation and its collective past (the historical moment when people of a generation were young)

Collective memory (necessarily shared with others)

Positive attitude towards this past as a way of (collective) identity building

Social (in-group) discourse (“The way we were”)

Defining a nostalgic genre(i.e. in american cinema ‘70)

Media discourses and texts wherein nostalgia is the presumed attitude of the target

Target generation represented in the present, living in nostalgic attitude or in the past the generational target is nostalgic

for The past is represented mainly through a “fetish”

representation of the objects, social rituals an values of everyday life

Nostalgic genre in italian traditional media (for boomers’ generation)

Some examples where the defined/described/imaginated past correspond to the 60s (the youth of the boomers generations)

A movie: Sapore di mare (1983) A Tv series: Raccontami (2006/07)

Critical analysis

The past is described like a place without conflicts, where the only things to take care of are personal problems, personal /very general) ethics, and so on

The past is evoked by the presence of material/cultural products (design objects, songs, public characters…)

Nostalgic genre in italian web 2.0

User generated contents about 60’, 70’

http://www.pagine70.com/

http://xoomer.virgilio.it/mic.perrone/Anni70.htm

http://www.doktorlove.com/annisettanta.html

Critical analysis

The past is evoked representing cultural products (design objects, songs, public characters…) as a links to the collective memory

Basically, the historical perspective is absent: when there is an historical approach, it is modulated following an “evenementielle” storytelling

70s are involved in the process of “nostalgization” through a discourse translating them in 60s-like decade

Synthesis

In nostalgic genre there are no real differences between traditional media narrative texts and web 2.0 UCG: Representation of the past throughout representation

of material or cultural products (i.e. industrial mass production)

Substitution of historical perspective with Pseudohistorical background (in traditional media) Pseudohistorical tales (in UCG) Absence of narrative perspective and substitution with

“amateur collector” emotion

The time-line representation in italian nostalgic discourse

60s 80s Today

Time-structure of nostalgic ideology

Removedperiods 70s 90s

Social conflicts

Political conflicts

Understanding nostalgic discourse

Media genre show itself as a part of wider social discourse or social imaginary

The “nostalgia effect” could be represented as a ideology of time (strategy of cultural egemony), where traditional media play a crucial role in create Material conditions (cultural objectes, representation and

memory of material objects) Ideological storytelling (in contrast to historical discourse

as a form of knowledge)

The UCG nostalgic genre do not show real differences from the traditional media one.

Thank you for your attention!

fausto.colombo@unicatt.it

http://www.centridiricerca.unicatt.it/osscom

Publications

F. Colombo, L. Fortunati (ed.), Broadband Society and Generational Changes,  Peter LangPublishing Group 2011 (English)

P. Aroldi (ed.), Generazioni, media e società, monographic issue of “Comunicazioni Sociali”, 2011 (english and italian)

Media+Generations, (ed.) F. Colombo, Angeli, Milano 2012 (italian)

References

Colombo, F. & Fortunati (eds), L., Broadband Society and Generational Changes, Peter Lang 2011

Davis, F., Yearning for Yesterday. A Sociology of Nostalgia, The Free Press, N.Y. 1979

Jameson, F., Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Duke University Press. 1991.

Lowenthal, D. The Past is a Foreign Country, Cambridge Univ. Press, 1985 Morreale, E., L’invenzione della nostalgia. Il vintage nel cinema italiano e

dintorni, Donzelli, Roma 2009 Robertson, R., After Nostalgia? Wilful Nostalgia and the Phases of

Globalization, in B.S. Turner, Theories on Modernity and Postmodernity, Sage 1990, 45-61

Shaw, C. & Chase, M. (eds.), The Imagined Past: History and Nostalgia, Manchester University Press 1989

Turner, B.S. , A note on Nostalgia, “Theory, Culture and Society”, 4, 1987, 147-156; Nostalgia, Postmodernism and the Critique of Mass Culture, , “Theory, Culture and Society”, 5, 1988, 509-526