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SAMKUL-Samfunnsutviklingens kulturell

Understanding Youth Participation and Media literacy in Digital Dialogue Spaces

Alternative title: Å forstå ungdommers deltakelse og mediekompetanse i digitale rom for dialog

Awarded: NOK 9.6 mill.

New practices in digital media, including social media, have the potential to inspire dialogue and discussion, and to engage young people in democratic life. The research project U-YouPa investigates how young people in different European countries participate in different digital media spaces. Key research questions are: How do young people, by using existing "participatory" media formats, meet challenges related to developing media literacy, diversity, intercultural dialogue and inclusion in European countries? What and how can young people contribute to media literacy that can advance creativity and inclusion among young people with different sociocultural backgrounds? U-YouPa develops methods and concepts that contribute to an increased understanding of how young people of use media use in intercultural conversations and to engage politically. An innovative research design engages young people with different sociocultural backgrounds in different phases of the research. They participate in data collection, interpretation of findings and in establishing ethical recommendations and rules that enable and encourage intercultural dialogue. By applying this research design, we seek to provide a deep understanding of how digital media is interwoven in daily activities of young people. We focus particularly on political and intercultural activities - which activities young people initiate, observe and/or participate in. The research design will in this way contribute to knowledge about ethics in digital media, and an understanding of how young people develop media skills that facilitate political engagement and intercultural dialogue. One of the studies examines how the TV series SKAM in Norway and Germany encourages youth participation in digital and physical spaces. Another study examines how young people in Austria use social media and physical spaces for political engagement and activism. Key findings: U-YouPa has examined media competencies that young people draw on in digital spaces. This has included mapping of skills that young participants in a blog for the TV series SKAM used when commenting on and discussing episodes from the series. In 2022, after the COVID pandemic, we began work on participatory research in physical spaces. Moreover, our Austrian partner has developed case studies of how young people in Austria engage politically in social media and physical spaces. The outlined research has resulted in papers that have been presented at renowned media research conferences such as ECREA, NordMedia and STS- Science Technology and Society (21st annual conference, Graz, Austria). U-YouPa's participants in Austria have published several scientific papers in peer-reviewed journals such as Metal Music Studies, 7(2) 2021), and STS Conference Proceedings in 2023. Five of U-YouPa's researchers at OsloMet - Oslo Metropolitan University have published an article in the peer-reviewed media research journal Nordicom Review (43(1), 2022): Media narratives, agonistic deliberation, and Skam: An analysis of how young people communicate in digital spaces. Furthermore, in 2023, U-YouPa's postdoctoral fellow Florence Namasinga Selnes published a scientific article in the journal Media, Culture and Society entitled: Fake news on social media: Understanding teens' (Dis)engagement with news. PhD student Lukas Mozdeika's work is also linked to U-YouPa. In 2023, he published a peer reviewed article in the journal Communication and Democracy, entitled: Emojis, Nudges, and Memes: Mapping Interpassivity Theory onto Digital Civil Culture.

Young people have largely withdrawn from traditional forms of democratic participation. They are still keen to engage in democratic life, but ask for more and different public spaces of participation. Addressing this challenge, the key goal of the U-YouPa project is to provide a research-based understanding of the interconnection between cultural and technological preconditions for strengthening youth participation in digital dialogue spaces, thus meeting the fundamental challenges of inclusion currently emerging in European countries. The project will: i) develop methods, concepts and empirical knowledge that contribute to increased understanding of the potential participatory media spaces for intercultural dialogue among young people, ii) analyze current varieties in young people’s involvement on cultural and political media platforms, and explore innovative frameworks for stimulating young people’s contributions to developing an (inter)culturally reflective and inclusive media literacy, and iii) create a knowledge-based ethical framework for technology design supporting inclusive dialogues in digital media spaces. To reach these objectives, the project is based on an innovative research-design, involving young people with different sociocultural backgrounds in all phases of research as co-researchers and co-producers, including data gathering, interpretation of findings and the creation of ethical recommendations and rules that enable and encourage intercultural dialogue. Providing deep understanding of how technology is interwoven in daily activities of young populations—particularly their participation in political and intercultural dialogue activities—and what activities they initiate, observe and/or participate in, the research design will contribute significantly to the generation of knowledge about digital media ethics, and understanding of what capacities facilitate intercultural dialogue.

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SAMKUL-Samfunnsutviklingens kulturell