Marina Micheli

Besides generational divides between “natives” and “immigrants”, large differences in internet use and digital skills exist also between young people. Indeed parents shape their children’s relationship with digital media through their child-rearing strategies and even their own internet use. The qualitative research presented in this essay examined the relationship between internet appropriation and adolescents’ social background with a special attention to parents’ role. From the analysis of 53 interviews to adolescents of different social classes, it was possible to identify two patterns that elucidate links between internet appropriation, parental socialization and teenagers’ socio-economic and cultural background. The results show instances of social reproduction, but do not confirm a linear relationship between social and digital inequalities according to which the most extensive and innovative internet appropriation is found in the most privileged social contexts.

LINK (OPEN ACCESS): http://qds.revues.org/513

Recent studies on social networking sites (SNSs) reveal that users’ social background is not a significant predictor of participation in this type of social media. The broad user bases of Facebook and other social media platforms also appear to suggest that social background no longer affects access to SNSs. A small number of studies even claim that in the participatory web environment, social content is more likely to be created by non-elites, such as lower-income people or racial minorities [Blank, G. (2013). Who creates content? Stratification and content creation on the Internet. Information, Communication & Society, 16(4), 590–612]. Nevertheless, engagement with SNSs also reproduces inequalities, for example via class- and ethnic-based ‘self-segregation’ [boyd, d. (2012). White flight in networked publics? How race and class shaped American teen engagement with MySpace and Facebook. In L. Nakamura & P. A. Chow-White (Eds.), Race after the internet (pp. 203–222). New York, NY: Routledge]. Drawing on a large-scale survey (N = 2327) and a set of 56 interviews with Italian teenagers, the current paper explores the persistent influence of socio-economic background and cultural capital in adolescents’ use of SNSs. The research findings show that, although structural variables inevitably influence their participation in social media, teenagers from ‘lower-income’ families are more enthusiastic about the communication and relational features of these sites. In contrast, their peers from ‘elite’ families focus on the capital-enhancing opportunities offered by SNSs and display a critical stance that leads them to limit their social activities on these platforms. Overall, the results suggest that SNSs are not exempt from digital inequalities, but nonetheless provide novel opportunities to lower-income teenagers.

Purpose: In recent times the relationship between social stratification and internet use has become more complex. In order to understand the new configuration of the digital divide, this chapter examines the relationship between socioeconomic background and digital engagements among youths.

Methodology: This study explores digital inequalities among Italian teenagers from a holistic perspective. It draws on primary data obtained with a triangulation of methods: a survey on a representative sample of 2,025 high school students and 56 semi-structured interviews with teenagers from different social classes.

Findings: The statistical models indicate that cultural capital and parents’ occupational status do not associate with broader social media use but are positively related with online informationseeking.The interpretative analysis suggests that teenagers from the upper-middle class in licei make sense of the internet “vertically,” in affiliation with parental socialization and are more concerned with capital enhancing activities. Instead, teenagers from less advantageous social contexts appropriate the internet “horizontally,” jointly with peers, and are mostly interested in social-networking and UGC production.

Practical implications: School track, along with parents’ socio-economic status and cultural capital, influences teenagers’ internet use. Further studies could explore whether school tracking contributes to digital inequalities.

Originality: The study extends Annette Lareau’s theory of parenting styles and social reproduction, but also obtains innovative results related to digital inequalities among youth.
Contrary to expectations, teenagers from less advantageous social backgrounds enrolled invocational schools have better chances to actively participate in social media than teens from the upper-middle class in academic-oriented high schools.

‘Explore Locally, Excel Digitally’ is an after-school program based on new media literacies and participatory learning conducted in a Los Angeles high school during spring 2011. The current article offers a comprehensive report of three sessions of the program with detailed descriptions of their creative curricula developed by members of the research team and graduate students. The article contains a detailed examination of how each session's lesson plan connects with the broader theoretical debate on new media literacies, following Henry Jenkins' new media literacies and participatory culture concepts. The article is addressed both to educators who seek inspiration for future projects, and to students and scholars working in the arena of new media literacy and media education interested in links between theory and practice.

The widespread adoption of social network sites by teenagers seems to indicate that social inequalities do not impact, or at least have lessen their influence, on this matter. The article instead shows that family’s social class is still relevant in shaping teenagers’ online practices and the meanings they attach to social network sites.
In the first part the article offers a literature review of the outcomes available on the topic. Afterwards it presents the findings of a qualitative research based on 53 semi-structured interviews with adolescents living in the north of Italy and representative of different social classes. The study has identified two different types of appropriation of social network sites.  Adolescents from upper class families openly exhibit a detached attitude toward Facebook: they believe it is valuable when used seriously, but they are critics on many angles. Instead, their peers from lower class families are positive inclined towards the social network. They use Facebook for a meaningful part of their emotional and relation issues and adopt the site to make new friends. The relevance of these findings for the research on digital inequalities among adolescents is discussed in the conclusions.

The research explores how teenagers from different social classes use and give meaning to the internet in their everyday life. The most common representations of youth’s relationship with information and communication technologies focus on the generational distinctiveness (for instance the expression “digital native”) and hide the relevance of social stratification. On the contrary socio-economic and cultural conditions contribute to differentiate teenagers’ relationship with internet and digital media. For such a reason the present work investigates how social background shapes teenagers’ internet use, attitudes and meaning-making practices. It also explores in which circumstances it is possible to identify digital inequalities. The first chapter presents a review of the literature on digital inequalities among teenagers. A particular emphasis is placed on research using qualitative approaches and investigating how dispositions and meanings are constructed within particular socio-cultural contexts. The second chapter illustrates the theoretical perspective. Given that parents’ key role is mostly overlooked in digital inequalities research, this chapter discusses the relevance of the theory of socialization and parental mediation. The third chapter describes the main references used for developing the methodology of the thesis. It presents a brief overview of the methodological underpinnings of audiences studies, domestication theory and science and technology studies in order to outline the notion of “appropriation”: the latter concept proved to be a helpful tool in order to overcome a solely descriptive analysis and to produce a contextualized account of digital inequalities. The fourth chapter gives an account of the research design, methods, samples and procedure of the analysis. The chapters that go from fifth to nine discuss the outcomes of the analysis. The fifth chapter illustrates the analysis of a survey administrated in spring 2012 to a representative sample of Lombardy second year secondary students (n. 2327) designed and implemented with other colleagues at the Department of Sociology and Social Research with the support of Lombardy Region and the Lombardy Office of Education. Chapters six to nine are dedicated to the qualitative results. They give an account of the four patterns of internet appropriation obtained through the analysis of 53 semi-structures interviews conducted with teenagers of different social classes (organized by parents’ professional occupation in: upper middle class, lower middle class, working class). Even if extremely diverse, the patterns present a coherent logic according to parents role as social agents. Teenagers from upper class families draw heavily from their parents discourses and examples to define their relationship with digital media. On the other side, adolescents with a working class background draw only but vastly on their peers. Overall the results show that socio-economic status and cultural background contribute to define teenagers’ internet appropriation through parental socialization. However, there is not a linear causality between social inequalities and internet use. Processes of reproduction, based on the possession of cultural capital coexist with tendencies of “disalignment” in the expected relationship between social status and media use. The relevance of these findings for the debate on digital inequalities among youth is discussed in the final chapter.

Il volume raccoglie i risultati di un’indagine valutativa sugli investimenti della politica regionale in tecnologie digitali nelle scuole del Sud Italia, nel settennio 2007-2013. L’obiettivo è quello di capire cosa hanno fatto le scuole con le tecnologie di cui si sono dotate, stimare gli effetti che ha avuto questa politica sui livelli di apprendimento e far emergere i contesti in cui le tecnologie sono state meglio utilizzate e sfruttate.

The main focus of this report is on children’s experience of mobile media and the mobile internet, with an emphasis on smartphones and tablets. Ultimately the project is interested in risk and safety issues, but to contextualise this, the report also considers children’s adoption and use of these devices and the wider consequences that follow. The research involved a qualitative study of children, their parents, teachers and others working with young people in nine European countries: Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Portugal Romania, Spain and the UK.

Facebook has significantly transformed the online habits of young Italians. Our research assesses this change through a two-year survey conducted among undergraduate students. The data we collected in 2008 (N=1088) and 2009 (N=1123) allowed us to define profiles of media use based on indicators such as time spent online, consumption or creation of content, and familiarity with digital technologies as compared to analog media. Results have also shown the quick adoption of Facebook: in 2008, half of the students were completely unfamiliar with Facebook, while in 2009 all our respondents were aware of it and 59% of them were also using it on a regular basis. To grasp the magnitude of this change, we conducted a qualitative research study based on 30 semi-structured interviews with randomly selected university students (aged 19-24). Our research questions whether the massive adoption of Facebook, both in terms of frequency and time spent online, is really producing a change in how Italian students are using the Internet, or whether it is merely reproducing old forms of media consumption. To explore this issue, we will focus on how students are appropriating Facebook - in terms of uses and meanings they attach to it - and on the transformation of the relationship between more traditional forms of media consumption (like television) and digital media.

“You learn more than with the same old books” Different approaches to ICT amongst vocational, technical and academic-oriented secondary schools in Southern Italy

Most research about the progressive “embodiment” of ICT in the classroom does not distinguish by school type or track. Understandably, studies focus respectively on primary education, secondary education or higher education. On the other hand, few is known about the ways in which ICTs are being introduced into different types of secondary schools. Notwithstanding, this is a particularly relevant topic, especially in the Italian secondary school system which is hierarchically structured into tracks: vocational schools (istituti professionali), technical schools (istituti tecnici) and academic-oriented high schools (licei). Each track differs, not only for the curricula, but also for students’ socio-economic and cultural background (Checchi, 2003). Indeed tracking has been widely criticized for fostering the reproduction of social inequality across generations (Reay, 2011; Shavit and Muller, 2000). The increasing digitalization of schools might be occurring in different ways, and might be having different consequences, according to secondary school track. Drawing on data collected in 2014 within the project “Evaluation of the effects of ICT investments in Southern Italy’s schools” for the Department of Development and Economic Cohesion, the paper examines the main differences in ICT use and attitudes in different secondary school tracks of Southern Italy. In particular, it analyses teachers uses of ICT (from IWB to smartphones and social network sites), teachers attitudes and students opinions about digital technologies for learning. While data concerning teachers was collected through an online survey on a representative sample of teachers (n. 1.345), students views were collected in a small sample of schools (n. 29) visited by the researchers (the students of a class were asked to write the advantages and disadvantages of ICTs for learning and in six schools focus groups were conducted). Aim of the paper is to investigate: 1) To what extent attitudes and values about ICTs vary according to school track? 2) What are the implications of these differences in terms of digital divide and social inequalities? 3) What are the opportunities, if any, offered by “digital learning” to disadvantaged students in terms of achievement, equality and quality of (school) life? Overall the paper challenges dominant discourses about ICT use in the classroom that do not contemplate how school track and students population shape ICT adoption and its consequences on learning and school life.