The National Institute for Youth and Popular Education (INJEP) has just published the results of a study devoted to Tastes, practices and cultural uses of young people in working-class areasThe study is based on interviews with teenagers in the working-class neighborhoods of Bourgoin-Jallieu, Villejuif and Dammarie-Les-Lys.
One of the challenges of this qualitative study was to understand the articulation between cultural practices (music, reading, outings, libraries, amateur practices) and digital practices.
This survey documents the effects of the digital switchover for working-class youth, " showing how the advent of social media, video-on-demand platforms, downloading and streaming have turned the place of television in modest households upside down."
The study's authors qualify the decline of television among working-class youth. "Despite the internet and video-on-demand platforms, television remains central to cultural activities in working-class families. Watching television together is the important family and cultural moment. It is during these moments that opinions and discussions are exchanged around the choice of program, usually carried out by the parents (more often the father if both parents are present) and/or by the oldest child. In adolescence, young people watch television mainly as a family, or with sisters or brothers, very rarely alone. The programs are of contrasting registers: films, series, entertainment, reality TV and may also come from foreign channels (via DTT) linked to the parents' country of origin. These are all occasions that show a ritualization of TV moments for the family, which gathers around them.
The survey underlines how much " teenage consumption is strongly determined by the offer put forward on the platforms, and certain "trendy" series and films become a must-see. Observed in detail, YouTube usage nevertheless shows clear gender specificities: while boys are big consumers of gaming videos and educational content (popularization, documentaries...), girls tend to turn to beauty and lifestyle content. The first overview offered by this survey is, however, necessarily reductive and does not allow us to grasp the complexity of YouTube's juvenile uses: above all, it confirms the interest of more in-depth surveys on these practices.
Listening to music, a central practice of popular youth
The survey highlights the types of consumption and listening that are most common among working-class teenagers. "Listening to music appears to be a central practice of working-class youth, and the only one capable of "uniting everyone" around common tastes and methods. At the heart of this musical consensus, rap dominates and structures tastes. Indeed, if many teenagers display a certain eclecticism (they listen to "everything" and do not reject any musical genre), it is rap that concentrates almost all the actual consumption by being the preferred genre of more than ¾ of the young people we met. Nevertheless, this consensus around rap should not mask subtle intra-genre distinctions and the permanence of distinctive relationships to music. The young people explain that not all raps are equal and state clear hierarchies between "violent" or "vulgar" rap, rap that is closer to their daily concerns and "thoughtful" rap, even mixed with pop and French song.The survey also points to the special place of libraries and media libraries in these adolescent outings in the neighborhoods. "In all three areas, young people frequent and appreciate these places, without necessarily taking part in the cultural activities they offer (borrowing books, reading on the spot, audiovisual uses, etc.). They invest them above all as places of sociability".
In a separate chapter of the study, devoted more specifically to digital practices, Thomas Legon shows how access to digital technology is intertwined with family histories and organizations: he places digital practices " in the context of immigration stories, the varying degrees of competence of the different generations, the spatial organization of housing, and siblings who may or may not include 'older' children who will facilitate access for the youngest (by pushing for equipment, breaking down restrictions, etc.), but also with rules of use, prohibitions, and family judgments. ), but also with rules of use, prohibitions, and family judgments.
He reminds us of " the impact of living conditions on the digital practices of young people: the modesty of financial means or the sharing of domestic space (intervenes) thus directly on the practices of adolescents. Thus, withregard to packages and terminals, a condition of access to an autonomous, intimate or even nomadic use, he reminds us that " the fact of living in an environment with constrained economic resources can thus lead to not being able to replace a broken phone or not having enough Internet "data" in one's package to be truly nomadic in one's use of digital technology".
Social networks: relationships with oneself, relationships with others
"All the respondents use, even if only occasionally, at least two different virtual social networks. (...) The first important distinction concerns the type of people with whom we interact. Thus, Whatsapp and Facebook are used by our respondents much more for family ties (especially intergenerational ones) than Snapchat, which is particularly used for close friends.""If the platforms used primarily for family ties are practical, or even essential, for the adolescents we met, they are never their favorites. The respondents always declare a stronger taste for social networks that connect them with their peers. Among these peers, above all strong ties ), which may explain the success of Snapchat among the youngest, since compared to other popular platforms, this network is mainly used to be in contact with a small number of very close people".The survey highlights " forms of learning how and what to post, for example, but also specific terms to designate practices, specific parts of the platforms (...) In particular knowing how to distinguish between "stories" and "the feed" for the type of content to be published, but also the role of certain informational resources to regulate one's public visibility (and thus, again, to regulate the type of content to be published)".
"The learning of aesthetic self-development, which is a much more feminine learning than masculine, inclines girls more to think about how to share photos of themselves on social networks. "We can see that the learning of a "network culture" and the aesthetic enhancement of oneself is an interactional process," observes Thomas Legon."The "likes" are a way of using interaction to learn about oneself, in the manner of a democratic vote. This is undoubtedly a characteristic belief of the working classes, who want to see in the choice of the greatest number a credible indicator to orient themselves in the choice of cultural items (...) But this dimension is not the only one. Beyond the return of anonymous opinions compiled in a metric (likes), the interactional learning is also done thanks to the strong links to whom one trusts to show and tell everything about oneself, "behind the scenes" before appearing on the virtual social scenes.Presentation of oneself through social networks: knowing how to "hold your place
Working-class youth must also learn to play within a specific set of social, gender, and sociability constraints when it comes to sharing things about themselves (or participating in what peers are sharing) on social networks.The articulation between cultural practices and digital practices does not only concern the consumption of cultural goods. Digital tools and platforms make it possible both to facilitate access to creation and then to distribute these creations to an audience(via virtual social networks in particular). "The interviews show above all the extent to which the distribution of creations online is a difficult exercise, very strictly framed by the "network culture". "We can't do "anything", "anyhow". By taking example on other amateurs, one can imagine and organize the artistic presentation of oneself (on a mode "and why not me?"), but also very quickly to be discouraged of the weak audience which one meets and to give up ".
The socialization methods characteristic of working-class environments permeate digital practices: respect for the gender order, the primordial place of the family and strong ties in online and offline life, the "morality" of sociability. The fact that class socialization is maintained in digital practices does not mean that they remain "locked in" or "limited to" the social class shared by young people from working-class neighborhoods.
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