ABSTRACT

Young people spend prodigious time online cultivating identities, relationships, and values, however, most research about young people's experiences online fails to consider how socioeconomic status shapes young people's engagement online. Drawing on communication theory about meaning-making, impression management, and trends toward prosumption, we examine how social class, informs young peoples' engagement online. Interviews and focus groups with culturally and geographically diverse teens from working-class families reveal that working-class youth articulate their engagement online in terms of (1) rule following, (2) impression management to become intelligible to peers, (3) cultivating relationships, and (4) occasionally by intentionally keeping meaningful things offline. We argue that their energies reflect efforts at (1) controlling the meaning of posts and (2) relational work, evidencing a ‘responsibility-orientation’ to online engagement. Implications extend previous research identifying the importance of personal responsibility for working-class users online and consider how education systems and online platforms might better serve working-class youth.

摘要

年轻人花费大量时间在网上培养身份，人际关系和价值观，但是，大多数有关年轻人在线经历的研究都没有考虑社会经济地位如何影响年轻人在线参与度。借助关于意义制造，印象管理和消费趋势的传播理论，我们研究了社会阶层如何在网上告知年轻人的参与情况。与来自工人阶级家庭的文化和地理上不同的青少年的访谈和焦点小组表明，工人阶级的年轻人在网上表达了他们的参与度，其依据是：（1）遵循规则，（2）印象管理变得对同龄人理解，（3）建立关系，以及（4）偶尔通过使有意义的内容保持离线状态。我们认为，他们的精力反映了在（1）控制职位的含义和（2）关系工作方面的努力，证明了对在线参与的“责任导向”。涵义扩展了先前的研究，确定了在线对工人阶级用户个人责任的重要性，并考虑了教育系统和在线平台如何更好地为工人阶级青年服务。