blog




  • Essay / Digital Media Essay - 1062

    Traditionally, social anxiety over perceived risks does not target a single group or class, but rather describes the universal and pervasive feeling of anxiety towards children and the general condition of childhood. This anxiety has changed with the introduction of digital cultures for young people. There are two traditional discourses for conceptualizing young people's interaction with digital media: Henry Jenkins (2004) uses the terms "digital generation" (as a utopian discourse) and "Columbine generation" (as a discourse on risk) to describe these perspectives opposite. The “Columbine generation” expounds the idea that interaction with “risk factors” such as violent video games incites aggressive deviance through these media (Jenkins, 2004). Online spaces are therefore becoming the scene of new moral panics regarding child safety and generating governmental imperatives to protect and regulate young people (Wyn, 2014). Today, young people are described as having created a bedroom culture that facilitates their consumption of media without parental supervision or limitation (Mesch, 2009). According to Sandywell (2006), one of the concerns surrounding the Internet is that it reconfigures boundaries. The Internet further erodes boundaries previously crossed by the telegraph and telephone. Historically, the way we form and maintain relationships and communications has been irrevocably changed by technology. However, these new cultural forms of risk society are still imbued with traditional inequalities, such as gender. Discourses on “sexting” primarily present young women as more vulnerable, while ironically portraying those who engage in it as more deviant than men (Burkett, 2015). The rapid development of technology has contributed to the creation of “new pornography” (Hardy 2009) which has become easily blamed by young people due to the blurring of boundaries between