Fredrik Miegel

A Generational Thing? The Internet and New Forms of Social Intercourse

Drawing on the work of Karl Mannheim this article analyses the internet as a generational phenomenon. It makes use of two different, but in generational terms interrelated empirical materials. In the first case study, data from focus group interviews and individual interviews with a total 55 young Swedes (15–25 years). These data reveal how young Swedes tend to understand illegal file sharing as a generational issue. Among other things, they consider themselves rather than middle-aged politicians to be the actual legal authorities within the area. Table 1u2003Focus groups. Focus group number Focus group theme Number of participants (gender), age 1 Young people in a traditional peoples movement. UNF – the temperance movements youth organization 3 (three women), 20–25 years old 2 Members of LUF (The liberal partys youth organization) 4 (three women, one man), 17–21 years old 3 Members of alternative political organizations Some 20 individual interviews (about 75% women), 15–20 years old 4 Young people actively involved in the organization around Young in Lund (Ung i Lund) 2 (one woman, one man), 20–25 years old 5 Young users of the website connected to Young in Lund (Ung i Lund) 4 (three women, one man), 15–22 years old 6 Young bloggers 3 (three women), 20–23 years old 7 Facebook users 2 (one woman, one man), 20–25 years old 8 File sharing 5 (two women, three men), 21–26 years old 9 File sharing 5 (one woman, four men), 17–19 years old 10 File sharing 4 (three women, one man), 17–19 years old 11 Explicitly politically uninterested young people 5 (four women, one man), 17–19 years old The second case study is based on a youth council, Lunds ungdomsting. The research project started with an ambition to understand the internets role in engaging young people. The initial analyses, however, revealed that although the internet plays a role, it cannot usefully be separated from other activities. We consider and analyse this observation through Mannheims terminology: the youth council members generational experience of the internet has naturalized it as a form of communication in a manner that makes distinctions between online and offline action obsolete.

Civic Passion : A Cultural Approach to the ‘Political’

Within media studies the default perspective of “the political” and “the civic” is overly rational. This rational bias can be observed within various research traditions. Two obvious examples are traditional, mainstream research of political communication, and substantial parts of the large body of research drawing on Jürgen Habermas’s theory of the public sphere. Starting from a short review of the rational view of the political/the civic presented within these traditions, Peter Dahlgren’s notion of civic culture is analyzed as a perspective that offers a complementary view. This article elaborates on its intellectual origins by paying special heed to the connection between the civic-culture view of the political and the civic and the perspectives offered by pragmatist philosopher John Dewey. Departing from these insights, the article presents empirical illustration of everyday workings of civic culture, and concludes with reflections concerning what becomes of the media within a civic culture approach.