RICERCA ITALIANA     

Youth and cultural consumption

Università degli Studi di Salerno

Abstract

The project aims to examine youth cultural consumption, with particular regard to the age group comprising those who were born between 1978 and 1990.
To this end an in-depth analysis of the relation between identità formation processes and mass media consumption turns out to be crucial,given that on the one hand media provide a system of representations that can be invested with symbolic values and turned into the icon of youth and of the social role they wish to achieve, while on the other hand, as a recent research conducted by the Observatory of Communication at the Catholic University of Milan has showed, the media embody the identity principles of a generation, therefore allowing them to be acknowledged and shared, and emerge as the loci of identity formation and development.
Our research project also plans to check the analysis of consumption dynamics characterizing, in our opinion, the age cohort under study.
It is actually probable that young people aged from 15 to 19 years show a greater propensity to jump from one consumption tribe to the other, to explore and experiment with products offered by the cultural universe as a whole in a more flexible way. Instead, young people aged from 20 to 27 apparently show a consumption habits defined.
For the purposes of our research, we also need to check, whether the ongoing digital media-morphosis that is affecting the whole media universe by promoting a multiplicity of channels, information sources and new technologies will change consumption habits to the detriment of traditional media broadcasts.
Finally, we also wish to check the congruity of those hypotheses that agree on the fact that heavy cultural conditioning and homogenisation are often found in youth behavioural patterns, but identify margins for autonomy and critical attitudes in youth consumption. <<<

Principal Investigator

Natale AMMATURO Università degli Studi di SALERNO

Research Objectives

1.The project aims to examine youth cultural consumption, with particular regard to the age group comprising those who were born between 1978 and 1990. It also aims to carry out an in-depth analysis of the relationship between identity formation processes and mass media consumption, given that on the one hand media provide a system of representations that can be invested with symbolic values and turned into the icon of youth and of the social role they wish to achieve, while on the other hand, as a recent research conducted by the Observatory of Communication at the Catholic University of Milan has showed, the media embody the identity principles of a generation, therefore allowing them to be acknowledged and shared, and emerge as the loci of identity formation and development. Hence media settle in one's own memory, become part of one's own biographic narrative, following its stages and contributing to self-formation, thanks to their capacity to confirm and strengthen identity models, then actualising them by a mimetic or rather metaphoric representation. Media are required to provide resources to define oneself, to become recognizable through shared knowledge and to point to the road to self-formation; nowadays identity has become a highly problematic issue to such an extent that, as Bauman argues, in the fluid phase of modernity it becomes a kind of dress that one wears as long as it fits: be it sexual or political, religious or national, it keeps on changing its shape under the sway of the slightest force, just like fluids.From this perspective it would be superficial to argue that the ongoing crisis of the identity formation process in our society must be ascribed to media only. It is the other way round: many scholars believe that the media are the last ramparts that shield socialization and self-representation processes.All along this track we will try to identify those cult products or media that come fully into play within such processes, as they are capable to weave together the multiple and heterogeneous experiences life is threaded with, to express each individual's culture, taste and style by analyzing the contents (in terms of models, values, myths, representations) of some of the most significant cultural and media products (made for major media: TV, cinema, radio, the web).
The project is designed to achieve an assessment of the changes in youth cultural consumption
That emerged over time, with special reference to those related to the modes of access and reception of cultural and media products and to new forms of social aggregation and participation.

2. The second hypothesis that our research project wishes to check is concerned with the consumption dynamics that in our opinion characterize the cohort under consideration. It is actually probable that young people aged from 15 to 19 years show a greater propensity to jump from one consumption tribe to the other, to explore and experiment with products offered by the cultural universe as a whole in a more flexible way. Such behaviour could be driven by a deep curiosity for new technologies, by a thirst for knowledge that is typical of this age group and by a continuous and compelling need for new things. Instead, young people aged from 20 to 27 apparently show a "media agenda" and consumption habits that are less changeable and better defined, as they are more familiar with certain ways of access and more loyal to some cultural products that performed a very meaningful role in their developmental age.

3. Furthermore we intend to check whether the ongoing digital media-morphosis that is affecting the whole media universe by promoting a multiplicity of channels, information sources and new technologies will change consumption habits to the detriment of traditional media broadcasts. In this respect, some scholars argue that computer technology will wipe out any difference between producers and consumers ushering us into the new era of communication via media without mediators. Instead other scholars believe that traditional communication media are so deeply embedded in our culture that they cannot vanish all of a sudden. Our stance is closer to the latter: we think that even though broadcasting technologies characteristics will be partially altered by digital media, the role they play in youth consumption habits cannot be radically changed.

4. Finally we wish to check the congruity of those hypotheses that agree on the fact that heavy cultural conditioning and homogenisation are often found in youth behavioural patterns, but identify margins for autonomy and critical attitudes in youth consumption. <<<

Timescale

24 months

National and international background

Cultural consumption characterizes behaviours as modern to such a point that it epitomizes the habitus of the modern man, giving us insights into the quality of transformation and modernization processes of our society. According to Marx, consumption is a finish, that is to say the conclusion necessary for the continuation of the economic cycle of capital valorization. It is not by chance that western society is defined as the "consumption-oriented society", just to point to the centrality of the act of consumption in social dynamics, that obscures and definitely supersedes the act of production, shifting from the ethics of production to that of consumption. It is important to stress that today it is not appropriate to speak of mass cultural consumption as we did a few decades ago, when the process of culture industrialization was starting to develop in our country. This is due to some fundamental reasons: the plurality of choices currently offered by the cultural industry system; the growing technological development and the continuous spreading of new media, the ever-increasing segmentation and fragmentation of audience. In fact, according to McQuail, today the multiplicity of options in terms of specific content typologies provided by the new distribution channels has created highly segmented audiences, internally homogeneous, and fragmented or scattered over an increasing number of media sources. The emergence of the hedonistic dimension and of a new tribal feeling gives rise to an ethics of aesthetics and identifies the origins of the social tie with the sharing of media products, consumption practices and peculiar expressive codes. Drawing inspiration from maffesoli's thinking, it is possible in fact, to our mind, to argue that in our era we can spot out "consumption tribes", meaning by this expression social subgroups self-selected on the basis of a shared interest they take in the same type of product, trademark or consumption activity.Today's society is becoming mainly a "media society", in which media constitute a true "life world" that shapes cognitive, emotional and socio-relational experiences of both individuals and groups.
Consumption, especially cultural and media consumption, is seen as a social practice through which we may ‘interpret' complex identification-projection dynamics involved in the intricate process of identity formation (Thompson, Moores, Tosoni, Castells, Lévy). If everybody is rooted in a social network of relationships he takes part in by co-constructing meanings, consumption and production practices converge in a single ‘project' by which the subject becomes, the self and world image are realized and actualised. In this sense, youth is not only a biological status, but also a socio-cultural ‘product' for which communication and consumption practices create true ‘constitutive habitats'.Within the context of this novel scenario, young people grow up in the midst of a rich and diversified multi-media universe providing a wealth of stimuli, therefore they live experiences outstripping by far what was considered to be "normal" life experience up until very recently. In fact the shift from hands-on experience to representation contributes to enlarge everybody's experiential scope without limits, albeit in an increasingly virtual dimension.
In the course of the last decades the growing differentiation affecting not so much the structural aspect (connected to the multiplication of social milieux) but rather the symbolic aspect (connected to the multiplication of codes and cultural patterns of reference) has given rise to a plurality of social groupings cross-cutting the traditional socio-economic variables, to which the individual adheres spontaneously, that are based upon shared values, opinions, attitudes and behaviours. As a matter of fact, the subject is characterized today by a peculiarity: a gradual and progressive experimentation with a brand-new sense of freedom, mingling with an equally gradual and progressive loss of certainties, as pivotal loci of identification and social belonging disappear.
Symbolic contents of communication products (music, cinema, television, literature, visual arts) mirror such a complex reality as the youth world, thus helping to get in touch with it and think about it. That is why it is interesting to look at the relation between products, or better the seductive and seducing supply of products, and ‘prosumers', youth: a relation that reveals the mutual need to have a dialogue, to understand and attract. In fact cultural and media products convey the need to ‘talk to the young' and to ‘talk about the young' proposing a certain ‘model'. And young audiences ‘incorporate' those models and languages to ‘talk about themselves', to recognize and to be recognized. Therefore, if by consumption we mean a practice regulated by a relation, then we acknowledge that a space where the individual and social dimensions overlap comes to be constructed just via consumption. So the media space is proposed as a true ‘transitional' space, embracing youth's being and becoming.Probably media, the sphere of consumption, historically contribute to create an area of shared aspirations and desires, if not opportunities. Youth status in the South of Italy also evolves with the media sphere that, to put it shortly, all through the XXth century, shifts from the alphabetic Gutenberg's world to the TV audio-visual world, down to computers and cell phones cybernetics and to the accelerated pace of socio-anthropological transformations in the last twenty years (De Kerckhove 1993; levy 1996).
Besides being social subjects, young people are also symbolic models, belonging to a ensemble of strong images, ways of thinking, self-representations and at the same time representations of the society as a whole. <<<