TY - JOUR

T1 - Digital Socialization? An Exploratory Sequential Analysis of Anonymous Adolescent Internet-Social Interaction

AU - Zizek, Boris

N1 - Funding information: The German Research Foundation (DFG) and the research funding of Gutenberg University Mainz allowed me to work as a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University with Prof. Robert L. Selman. The present study was carried out during my stay at Harvard Graduate School of Education. I wish to express my heartfelt gratitude to the DFG, Gutenberg University, and Robert L. Selman as host and supervisor of the study.

PY - 2017

Y1 - 2017

N2 - This paper applies "extensive sequential analyses" as described by Oevermann in 1996 to a personal account posted on the MTV website A Thin Line (ATL), to the respective anonymous responses posted by account readers and to the website as the pragmatic framework of this interaction. This analysis shows that interactive websites are understood as social spaces where one can find a counterpart for intimate, socialization-relevant interaction. This means that a large amount of confidence is placed in the Internet and social media to provide new possibilities for the discussion of central personal life issues. Beyond the reconstruction of this transformation of social reality, this analysis enables the quality of this interaction that competes with traditional socialization contexts to be judged. P, a 17-year-old girl, is able to control the communication of her private problems in a new way through the use of digital interaction structures, filtering the interaction. The anonymous counterparts are assured by the character limits that they only have to participate superficially and without any major involvement. In the case of traditional instances of socialization, such an unattached and filtered interaction is already an expression of its failure. The Internet-based interaction analyzed here lacks key qualities of socialization interaction.

AB - This paper applies "extensive sequential analyses" as described by Oevermann in 1996 to a personal account posted on the MTV website A Thin Line (ATL), to the respective anonymous responses posted by account readers and to the website as the pragmatic framework of this interaction. This analysis shows that interactive websites are understood as social spaces where one can find a counterpart for intimate, socialization-relevant interaction. This means that a large amount of confidence is placed in the Internet and social media to provide new possibilities for the discussion of central personal life issues. Beyond the reconstruction of this transformation of social reality, this analysis enables the quality of this interaction that competes with traditional socialization contexts to be judged. P, a 17-year-old girl, is able to control the communication of her private problems in a new way through the use of digital interaction structures, filtering the interaction. The anonymous counterparts are assured by the character limits that they only have to participate superficially and without any major involvement. In the case of traditional instances of socialization, such an unattached and filtered interaction is already an expression of its failure. The Internet-based interaction analyzed here lacks key qualities of socialization interaction.

KW - Adolescence

KW - Development

KW - Digital media

KW - Digital socialization

KW - Digital youth

KW - Limits of digital communication

KW - Objective hermeneutics

KW - Reconstructive methods

KW - Social web

KW - Socialization

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85037663467&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1159/000479082

DO - 10.1159/000479082

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:85037663467

VL - 60

SP - 203

EP - 232

JO - Human development

JF - Human development

SN - 0018-716X

IS - 5

ER -