Youth and Media ― New Media and Cultural Participation

Volume three in Warsaw Studies in Culture and Society from Peter Lang Academic Research, this book documents an ethnographic study of teenagers in Poland. The goal was to understand their everyday use of new media communications. The editors do not make broad claims for the study as representing young people, Poland, or new media as a whole. Instead, they offer it as a window into an emerging reality of how people communicate, represent themselves, find information, and think about knowledge, represented by the voices of several dozen young people in Poland. The researchers were also young, and from a variety of disciplines. The book is strongly interested in the question of how people participate in culture, and who is excluded by various frameworks for cultural participation. By relying on first-person voices and accessible forms of analysis, the authors hope to produce an ethnography whose use reaches beyond scholars and is interesting and accessible to the general public. The book has had strong general media and government attention in Poland, sparking significant public interest and debate. The English translation is sometimes stilted but servicable, and the lively voices of the young people do come through. As a Polish study, it will be useful to US readers both for its differences and similarities to US young people at home, in love, at school, and socializing, using Google, Wikipedia, social media, etc. The book will be useful to scholars of sociology, anthropology, and media studies, as well as to general readers with a strong interest in its subject. Annotation c2013 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)