Kirsten Drotner

Dangerous Media? Panic Discourses and Dilemmas of Modernity∗

The article focuses on the history of so‐called media panics, i.e. emotionally charged reactions on the appearance of new media. Tracing “la longue duree” of panics overprint, film and computer media and taking examples from Britain, Germany, Sweden and Denmark, the author argues that media panics are intrinsic and recurrent features of modernity. They represent a complex constellation of generational, cultural and existential power struggles through which adults seek to negotiate definitions of character forming (“Bildung”) in order to balance fundamental dilemmas of modernity. *The article is an updated and revised version of my article “Modernity and Media Panics,” in Kim Christian Schroder & Michael Skovmand (Eds), Media Cultures: Reappraising Transnational Media (London, Routledge, 1992), pp. 42‐62.

Global Culture in Practice: A look at children and adolescents in Denmark, France and Israel

This article discusses a preliminary exploration of how globalization becomes embedded into the lives of children and adolescents in three very different countries: Denmark, France and Israel. Analysis of qualitative data collected from the three countries as part of a major cross-cultural study suggests five interrelated practices of globalization: (1) the role of television as both a default medium and as a source of favourite contents; (2) the preferences for transnational fiction; (3) the medias catering to the utopias of a shared world; (4) the hybrid characters of childrens cultures; and (5) intergenerational struggles related to globalization. The findings suggest that for children and adolescents globalization involves the linking of their own locales to the wider world while, at the same time, localization incorporates trends of globalization. The article points to two parallel processes: one of young childrenss adoption of a global perspective on social life, and the second of the hybrid coexistence of multi-cultures in their lives.

Mediatized Childhoods: Discourses, Dilemmas and Directions

The discursive articulation of contemporary childhood takes many forms, and most of these have some connection to media and ICTs (information and communication technologies): children are variously called a zapper generation, a net generation (Tapscott, 1998, p. 3), a digital generation (Papert, 1996), cyberkids (Holloway and Valentine, 2003) and the thumb tribes (Rheingold, 2002). Both popular and more academic claims are often remarkably polarized into overly optimistic or pessimistic notions about the future of childhood: children are seen as harbingers of innovative competences and social interactions or they are regarded as potential victims of psychological and cultural demise. What these discourses indicate is that contemporary childhood is a mediatized childhood both in an empirical and a discursive sense.

Children and Digital Media: Online, On Site, On the Go

Charting the relations between children and digital media immediately invites a bottom-up perspective on media, a perspective that focuses on the multiple ways in which children take up and appropriate digital media, be they audiences of media produced by adult professionals or content creators themselves. But one need not venture far in that direction to realize that this perspective is intimately bound up with a top-down perspective on these relations, a perspective that focuses on the ways in which adults debate and intervene in children’s media uses. This dual perspective is important to keep in mind simply because it serves as a useful reminder that children’s media uses are a set of contextualized socio-cultural practices that must be analysed and understood in relation to a grander canvas of modern childhood and adulthood.

Cross-over culture and cultural identities

Two assumptions recur in much work on contemporary youth culture: the first is that young people of today are cultural explorers: they are often at the forefront in appropriating new cultural forms and the first to experiment with new cultural expressions. The second assumption is this: contemporary culture is basically a mediated culture obliterating old and well-established distinctions between art and commerce, so-called high and low culture. Furthermore it is argued, this obliteration furthers an application of aesthetic forms such as parody and pastiche that, in their turn, make for self-reflexion and distance in reception. This blurring of high and low culture has been termed cross-over culture to denote a ’cross-fertilisation between different arts, media, genres, styles and sub-cultures’ (Walker, 1987: 11). The combined result of these two assumptions is that young people today are rutinely regarded as cultural poachers (Jenkins, 1991) undermining established hierarchies with ironic panache. Examples range from scratch-video makers and devoted club

Mediated co-construction of museums and audiences on Facebook

This article asks how we should research museum communication with audiences through social media. We argue that museums and audiences co-construct one another on social media, and we explore how particular modes of communication and discursive genres serve to generate mutual online positionings. Based on in-depth analyses over three months’ Facebook communication at nine Danish museums and applying theories and methods from discourse analysis, we offer an analytical model of social media communication; and we examine how processes of co-construction are established, upheld, modified and developed. We find that museums and audiences alike largely co-construct one another along familiar lines of institutional authority and that more dialogic modes of interaction mainly result when museums harness audience knowledge resources. We put our results into perspective in terms of recommendations for museum professionals that offer a sobering empirical corrective to the often celebratory claims made to the de-stabilizing of institutional authority and control wrought by social media.

Toppling hierarchies? Media and information literacies, ethnicity, and performative media practices

This article suggests how we should study media and information literacies (MIL) and do so at a time, when young people nurture these literacies through multiple media practices and across spaces of learning. Our basic argument is this: in order to gain a robust knowledge base for the development of MIL we need to study literacy practices beyond print literacy and numeracy, and we need to study these practices beyond formal spaces of learning. The argument is unfolded with particular focus on ethnic minority youth since this group routinely figures as under-achieving in studies of school literacy, such as Programme for International Student Assessment. Based on a brief overview of literacy studies in view of digitization and a critical examination of recent studies of youthful media practices and ethnicity, the argument is illustrated through an empirical analysis that draws on results from a nationally representative survey of media uses among Danes aged 13–23 years. The analysis demonstrates that ethnic minority youth offer the most serious challenge to existing literacy hierarchies found in formal education. We discuss the implications of these results for educational policy-making and for future research on MIL, advocating inclusive approaches in terms of media for learning and spaces of learning.

Young people’s own museum views

ABSTRACT Taking a mixed-methods, visitor-focused approach to views on museums, this article examines what views young Danes aged 13–23 years (n = 2,350) hold on museums and how these views can be categorized and articulated. Arguing that studying views of museums as socially situated meaning-making practices adds theoretical and empirical depth to existing research and practice, we apply semantic categorization, speech-act theory, and cognitive linguistics as analytical tools. Our results demonstrate that respondents’ most prevalent semantic categories are ‘exciting,’ ‘educative,’ and ‘boring.’ Their responses fall into two main types: assertive speech acts providing factual descriptions and expressive speech acts providing more evaluative judgments. In general, young Danes make sense of museums along three different routes. One group wants museums that expand and challenge prior perceptions and knowledge, another group prefers museums that cater to existing interests, while members of a third, smaller group take it upon themselves to make museum visits enriching experiences.

Youthful media cultures: Challenges and chances for librarians

The main argument of the paper is as follows: there exists an opposition between cultural discourse, prioritising print media, and cultural practices engendered by a multi‐faceted media culture of which print is only one dimension. This opposition materialises very much as a generational opposition in cultural institutions of leisure of which public libraries are absolutely central. Based on new quantitative and qualitative data on juvenile media uses in Denmark, the paper first describes the multimedia culture in two dimensions: innovation and integration. Together, these dimensions serve to relocate libraries in the everyday lives of the rising generations both materially and symbolically. Secondly, the paper focuses on ways in which these relocations call for renewed action by librarians and reflexivity on their professionalism.

Nouveaux paradigmes pour nouveaux mÉdias ? une approche comparative du contexte europÉen

The article focuses on media convergence, its empirical emergence and scientific challenges. Drawing on a major, European comparative study of juvenile media culture, it is a main argument of the article that in empirical terms media convergence serves to increase the complexities of media culture, while in theoretical terms media convergence enforces and enhances increased focus on media contents and uses. The author proposes that the challenges of media convergence is most fruitfully met by a convergent research approach. This approach, in turn, necessitates an integration of ict and media studies, a systematic collaboration between the arts, social and natural sciences, as well as sustained collaboration between basic and applied forms of research.RésuméCet article analyse l’émergence observée de signes de convergence au sein des médias et les défis scientifiques qu’elle engendre. A partir d’une grande étude comparative sur la culture des jeunes Européens en termes de médias, l’article s’articule sur deux plans principaux. Au plan empirique, les convergences observées permettent d’insister sur la complexité de la culture des médias, alors qu’au plan théorique, elles valident et valorisent l’analyse plus poussée des contenus et des pratiques de ces médias. L’auteur suggère qu ’une approche comparative est la plus à même de nous faire comprendre les défis de ces convergences. Cette approche rend indispensable l’association des recherches sur les médias et celles s’intéressant aux tic, une collaboration systématique entre les lettres, les sciences et les sciences sociales ainsi qu ’une coopération étroite entre recherches théoriques et appliquées.Cet article analyse l’emergence observee de signes de convergence au sein des medias et les defis scientifiques qu’elle engendre. A partir d’une grande etude comparative sur la culture des jeunes Europeens en termes de medias, l’article s’articule sur deux plans principaux. Au plan empirique, les convergences observees permettent d’insister sur la complexite de la culture des medias, alors qu’au plan theorique, elles valident et valorisent l’analyse plus poussee des contenus et des pratiques de ces medias. L’auteur suggere qu ’une approche comparative est la plus a meme de nous faire comprendre les defis de ces convergences. Cette approche rend indispensable l’association des recherches sur les medias et celles s’interessant aux tic, une collaboration systematique entre les lettres, les sciences et les sciences sociales ainsi qu ’une cooperation etroite entre recherches theoriques et appliquees.