This expansive, lively introduction charts the connections between international youth cultures and the development of global media and communication. From 1950s drive-ins and jukeboxes to contemporary social media, the book examines modern youth cultures in their social, economic, and political contexts. Exploring the rise of young people as a distinct media market, the book examines the relation of youth to modern consumerism, marketing, and digital technologies. The chapters are packed with analysis of media representations of youth, debates about the media’s 'effects' on young audiences, and young people’s use of the media to elaborate identities and negotiate social relationships. Drawing on a wealth of international examples, the book explores the impact of globalisation and new media technologies on youth cultures around the world. Assessing a profusion of worldwide research, the book shows how modern youth cultures can only be understood as part of an international web of connections, exchanges, and experiences. With an ideal balance between detailed examples and engaging analysis, this book is a must-read for anyone interested in youth cultures and the modern media.

This book explores the impact of globalisation and new technologies on youth cultures around the world, from the Birmingham School to the youthscapes of South Korea. In a timely reappraisal of youth cultures in contemporary times, this collection profiles the best of new research in youth studies written by leading scholars in the field.

This essential volume brings together the work of internationally-renowned researchers, each experts in their field, in order to capture the diversity of children and young people′s media cultures around the world. Why are the media such a crucial part of children′s daily lives? Are they becoming more important, more influential, and in what ways? Or does a historical perspective reveal how past media have long framed children′s cultural horizons or, perhaps, how families - however constituted - have long shaped the ways children relate to media? In addressing such questions, the contributors present detailed empirical cases to uncover how children weave together diverse forms and technologies to create a rich symbolic tapestry which, in turn, shapes their social relationships. At the same time, many concerns - even public panics - arise regarding children′s engagement with media, leading the contributors also to inquire into the risky or problematic aspects of today′s highly mediated world. Deliberately selected to represent as many parts of the globe as possible, and with a commitment to recognizing both the similarities and differences in children and young people′s lives - from China to Denmark, from Canada to India, from Japan to Iceland, from - the authors offer a rich contextualization of children′s engagement with their particular media and communication environment, while also pursuing cross-cutting themes in terms of comparative and global trends. Each chapter provides a clear orientation for new readers to the main debates and core issues addressed, combined with a depth of analysis and argumentation to stimulate the thinking of advanced students and established scholars. Since children and young people are a focus of study across different disciplines, the volume is thoroughly multi-disciplinary. Yet since children and young people are all too easily neglected by these same disciplines, this volume hopes to accord their interests and concerns they surely merit.

Inspired by Walter Benjamin's classical Arcades Project, Consuming Media is a pioneering exploration of the interface between communication, shopping and everyday life. Based on a six-year study by over a dozen scholars on a specific site, it analyses the links between power, media and consumption in contemporary urban culture.Illustrated with rich ethnographic detail, Consuming Media scrutinises four main media circuits - print media, media images, sound and motion, and hardware machines - to assess how media texts and technologies are selected, purchased and used.Exploring the relations between different media, the nature of cultural citizenship and the power relations of public space, Consuming Media presents an ethnography of globalisation and develops a new approach to understanding media consumption.

This invaluable addition to Springer’s Explorations of Educational Purpose series is a revelatory ethnographic account of the visual material culture of contemporary youths in North America. The author’s detailed study follows apparently dissimilar groups (black and Latino/a in a New York City after-school club, and white and Indigenous in a small Canadian community) as they inflect their nascent identities with a sophisticated sense of visual material culture in today’s globalized world. It provides detailed proof of how much ethnography can add to what we know about young people’s development, in addition to its potential as a model to explore new and significant avenues in pedagogy. Supported by a wealth of ethnographic evidence, the analysis tracks its subjects’ responses to strikingly diverse material ranging from autobiographical accounts by rap artists to the built environment. It shows how young people from the world’s cultural epicenter, just like their counterparts in the sub-Arctic, construct racial, geographic and gender identities in ways that are subtly responsive to what they see around them, blending localized characteristics with more widely shared visual references that are now universally accessible through the Web. The work makes a persuasive case that youthful engagement with visual material culture is a relational and productive activity that is simultaneously local and global, at once constrained and enhanced by geography, and possesses a potent and life-affirming authenticity. Densely interwoven with young people’s perspectives, the author’s account sets out an innovative and interdisciplinary conceptual framework affording fresh insights into how today’s youth assimilate what they perceive to be significant. Supported by a wealth of ethnographic evidence, the analysis tracks its subjects’ responses to strikingly diverse material ranging from autobiographical accounts by rap artists to the built environment. It shows how young people from the world’s cultural epicenter, just like their counterparts in the sub-Arctic, construct racial, geographic and gender identities in ways that are subtly responsive to what they see around them, blending localized characteristics with more widely shared visual references that are now universally accessible through the Web. The work makes a persuasive case that youthful engagement with visual material culture is a relational and productive activity that is simultaneously local and global, at once constrained and enhanced by geography, and possesses a potent and life-affirming authenticity. Densely interwoven with young people’s perspectives, the author’s account sets out an innovative and interdisciplinary conceptual framework affording fresh insights into how today’s youth assimilate what they perceive to be significant. Supported by a wealth of ethnographic evidence, the analysis tracks its subjects’ responses to strikingly diverse material ranging from autobiographical accounts by rap artists to the built environment. It shows how young people from the world’s cultural epicenter, just like their counterparts in the sub-Arctic, construct racial, geographic and gender identities in ways that are subtly responsive to what they see around them, blending localized characteristics with more widely shared visual references that are now universally accessible through the Web. The work makes a persuasive case that youthful engagement with visual material culture is a relational and productive activity that is simultaneously local and global, at once constrained and enhanced by geography, and possesses a potent and life-affirming authenticity. Densely interwoven with young people’s perspectives, the author’s account sets out an innovative and interdisciplinary conceptual framework affording fresh insights into how today’s youth assimilate what they perceive to be significant.

Textbook

Part of the successful Routledge Introductions to Media and Communications series which provides concise introductions to key areas in contemporary communications, Bill Osgerby's innovative Youth Media traces the development of contemporary youth culture and its relationship with the media. From the days of diners, drive-ins and jukeboxes, to today's world of iPods and the Internet, Youth Media examines youth media in its economic, cultural and political contexts and explores: youth culture and the media the 'Fab Phenomenon': markets, money and media generation and degeneration in the media: representations, responses and 'effects' media, subculture and lifestyle global media, youth culture and identity youth and new media. Analyzing the nature of different forms of communication as well as reviewing their production and consumption, this is an essential introduction to this key area in communication and cultural studies.

Music and Youth Culture offers a groundbreaking account of how music interacts with young people's everyday lives. Drawing on interviews with and observations of youth groups together with archival research, it explores young people's enactment of music tastes and performances, and how these are articulated through narratives and literacies. An extensive review of the field reveals an unhealthy emphasis on committed, fanatical, spectacular youth music cultures such as rock or punk. On the contrary, this book argues that ideas about youth subcultures and club cultures no longer apply to today's young generation. Rather, archival findings show that the music and dance cultures of youth in 1930s and 1940s Britain share more in common with youth today than the countercultures and subcultures of the 1960s and 1970s. By focusing on the relationship between music and social interactions, the book addresses questions that are scarcely considered by studies stuck in the youth cultural worlds of subcultures, club cultures and post-subcultures: What are the main influences on young people's music tastes? How do young people use music to express identities and emotions? To what extent can today's youth and their music seem radical and progressive? And how is the 'special relationship' between music and youth culture played out in everyday leisure, education and work places?

The Bloomsbury Handbook of Popular Music and Youth Culture provides a comprehensive and fully up-to-date overview of key themes and debates relating to the academic study of popular music and youth culture. While this is a highly popular and rapidly expanding field of research, there currently exists no single-source reference book for those interested in this topic. The handbook is comprised of 32 original chapters written by leading authors in the field of popular music and youth culture and covers a range of topics including: theory; method; historical perspectives; genre; audience; media; globalization; ageing and generation.

Siân Lincoln considers the use, role and significance of private spaces in the lives of young people. Drawing on extensive ethnographic research, she explores the place of 'the private' in youth cultural discourses, both historically and contemporarily, that until now have remained largely absent in youth cultural research.