Conceição Costa

Virtual communities and social activities: reframing the online experience

The way communities are being reconfigured via the uses people make of media technologies is a key aspect to understand how contemporary experience is evolving in a changing media environment. This article presents and discusses the findings of an ongoing project that deals with the study of media-based participatory culture and the linkages between face-to-face and virtual communities from the point of view of users specific activities. The document specifically deals with the metrics sense of community (SOC) and its reframing in the online context. Empirical evidence extracted from the study of several operational communities located in Portugal is exploited in order to discuss the relation between media use and community development, namely on what concerns the improvement of social capital amongst those groups. The main contributions discussed are: the concept of SOC and its validation for virtual communities; the role communities have in informing media consumption and the consequences online communities have for the behaviours and media use patterns depicted by existing face-to-face communities.

Playing Digital Security: Youth Voices on their Digital Rights

The United Nations UN Convention 1989 on the Rights of the Child changed the way children are viewed and treated worldwide. The Convention has been affecting governments, civil society and the private sector. ICT driven companies on the internet should not be an exception. According to Livingstone, Carr and Byrne 2015, Internet governance bodies have given little consideration and reflection to childrens rights. In this paper, it is proposed that in order for youth actively participate in an increasingly digital environment; they need to know better their rights to privacy and freedom of expression, among others. Although the understanding of the digital environments principles lies beyond the scope of average childrens school curricula, they can however play and discover simple technological concepts in the classroom. Thus, by early developing their literacy on digital identity management, they will be able to navigate, communicate, play and learn online more safely, achieving a responsible connected presence. A qualitative study on a visually oriented encrypted learning activity game among a group of students aged 16-18 years old, of the third cycle of Basic Vocational Education has been conducted with the following aims: a to understand how knowledge about security technological processes can improve youths capability for managing their digital identities; b to understand the value of pedagogies of play. Using participant observation, focus group and interviews, youth behaviours and attitudes towards this game based learning approach as well as their perceptions of their digital rights are presented.