Participation in Broadband Society – serie

This book discusses the personal and social lives of e-actors interacting within the socio-technical structures of the evolving broadband society by exploring the different ways in which individuals, social groups, institutions, operators, manufactures, policy makers, designers and other parties contribute to human communication and social interaction in contemporary media societies. The volume covers four theoretical and empirical areas of research: the conceptual perspectives of e-actors, the emergence of new forms of agency, subjectivity, and mediated interpersonal communication, the everyday life experiences of e-actors, and finally the shaping policies and regulations in the broadband society.

This volume represents a collection of recent thinking and research on the social and cultural aspects of contemporary broadband societies by exploring the social experiences and practices of using new information and communication technologies (ICT) within different contexts and domains of the emerging broadband society. It offers a compendium of the latest thoughts and questions on digitally mediated citizenship, networked identity, and sociality in the 21st Century and covers four main themes and empirical areas of research: uses and practices of new media, with particular focus on underprivileged groups, new media and the social differentiation of their use, ICT use and sustainable development, and finally new technologies, new challenges.

To speak of participation today raises a series of questions on how the presence and use of new media affect modes of social participation. From a variety of theoretical, empirical and methodological perspectives, the contributions in this volume explore participation in different social realms – from everyday life, interpersonal relationships, work and leisure activities to collective and political action. This collection demonstrates that participation is a localised notion, assuming a multitude of shapes under a variety of technological, political, socio-economic, linguistic and cultural conditions.

Recent developments in new media have led to the rise of what has become known as ‘social media’. The shift towards mass self-communication has lowered the technological thresholds for everyday users to connect and to become ‘produsers’ in media life. However, the question is to what extent users interacting in this ecosystem are empowered – and not disempowered – to express their creativity and concerns and to obtain a prominent role in new media design and innovation.

The contemporary internet focuses on user experiences of more recent developments on the internet, specifically with the spread of broadband, the audio-visual applications it has enabled, Web2.0 uptake more generally and the growth of eGovernment. The Contemporary Internet is comparative in two senses. The first is at the cross-national level, examining factors affecting different countries’ experiences of the internet, with a particular, but not a sole, interest in what may be termed ‘cultural influences on perceptions, adoption and use’. Second, the book is comparative within countries, examining the, sometimes very, uneven experiences of the internet’s possibilities. One question that pervades several chapters is how the digital divide is evolving in the light of the more contemporary developments outlined above.

The role generations play in accepting and shaping digital technologies, and possibly vice versa, is an increasingly relevant issue in contemporary society. For the first time in the academic debate, this volume outlines the theoretical issues and explores some results from empirical researches on the relationship between generations and the media in digital society. The first part of the book deals with the theoretical debate on generations, from Mannheim’s to the revisiting of some classical notions shaped by disciplines as history, demography, marketing and sociology. The second part gathers a selection of researches at international level, with particular attention to the European context. Though each research used specific methodologies, the main approaches focused on media domestication by young and old generations, and on the comparative analyses of different generations in adopting media.