Media enculturation of youth in leisure

Karović, Mensuda. (2018). Media enculturation of youth in leisure. PhD Thesis. Filozofski fakultet u Zagrebu, Department of Pedagogy.
(Poslijediplomski doktorski studij pedagogije) [mentor Previšić, Vlatko].

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Abstract

In contemporary age, it is not possible to image a life of a child, adolescent, as well as an adult outside of the media context. Everybody, according to their own needs, chooses certain media and media content and determines the time that they will spend watching those media or media content. Youths use media for entertainment, finding information, or simply for spending free time, avoiding boredom, achieving certain level of the mood, forming identity, and for cultural identification (Comstock and Scharcker, 2001; Roberts and Christenson, 2001; Valkenburg and Cantor, 2000; Dubow, Huesmann and Greenwood, 2007; Arnet, 1995). It is necessary to add that youths today use media for socialization, promoting themselves, and for inculturation. Due to the significance that culture has for the life, or because of the thought that life is nothing more than a culture, we have chosen the media enculturation of youth during free time as the problem of this dissertation. The title of this paper contains terms that have demanded critical interpretation and the analysis of theoretical sources due to the importance and the complexity. Also, empirical research has been conducted in order to determine the media enculturation based on the free time activities and the value system of the youth. Namely, free time is a part of the cultural life; it enables the use as well as the creation of cultural goods which increases the level of general culture. Shortly, the development of creative cultural personality is possible in free time. On the other hand, it is possible to see the culture of youth through the value orientations that act as directing principles in life and that are being adopted through the process of socialization and enculturation. Doctoral dissertation contains seven parts: Introduction, Theoretical Part, Methodology of Empirical Research, The Results, Conclusions, and Literature. Theoretical part of the dissertation contains five subtitles. In the first part, ‘Adolescence as Period of Life’, holistic approach was used in dealing with the adolescent period that is often called ‘the second birth’ due to the complexity of changes that appear in this period of life. Firstly, that is the process of moving from the childhood to the adult age characterized by changes on the body, cognitive, and socio-emotional plan. The process of socialization has been expressed in period and it is established through learning. By analyzing theories of social learning, we tried to clear up the influence of media on the cognitive-emotional and moral development of the personality. The process of enculturation forms the cultural identity – the process that is located in the core of an individual and in the core of their social culture. That is actually the process that determines the identity of these two identities (Erikson, 1976). The identity is form through phases and each phase has certain identity crisis that if it gets overcome successfully will result in certain virtue. Adopting the value system is also significant task of age of adolescence. Cognitive, affectionate, and behavior component of the value indicates that values completely determine the behavior of a person. Namely, the cognitive component determines wanted behavior. Affectionate component directs a person to choose people of similar values in their social circle. In the end, behavioral component determines the behavior of a person. It can be concluded that all important processes for forming a personality are done in the age of adolescence. The second part is entitled ‘Culture and Youth’. In this part, the genesis of culture has been listed. Slow elaboration of term ‘culture’ lasted for twenty centuries which means that culture is much older as an idea than as a word. Kroeber and Kluckhohn have collected 164 definition of the term and they added their own definition which says: "Culture consists of patterns, explicit and implicit, of and for behavior (…); the essential core of culture consists of traditional (i.e. historically derived and selected) ideas and especially their attached values; culture systems may, on the one hand, be considered as products of action, and on the other as conditioning elements of further action." (Skledar, 2012). The foundation of culture is communication. Cultures are marked by communication media and because of that we have audible, visual, electronic, and digital culture of communication. Digital society is based on the communication networks that surpass borders which caused the establishment of global culture where information takes central place. Information is part of the cultural base of the society and it includes aspects of exchanging knowledge and cultural identity and the way the society treats the information – their availability and processing and it is also determined by cultural perspective. (Hemelink, 2003). Thanks to the digital media, youth has the opportunity to experiment with cultural identities in socalled the identity laboratory what is described the best by Gofman’s dramaturgy theory. Third part of the theoretical part of the work, ‘The Free Time of Youth’, starting from the theoretical starting point about the free time marks ancient age as the period where leisure had great importance and it was related to the focusing on opinions and feelings that enable a person to be present in a creative way. Leisure that is often equated to the term ‘free time’ represents the most important time for dynamics of human creational discoveries and recognition of his creative potentials. Free time, thou, represents time used most often in passive consummation of finished media products which results with the feelings of indifference, apathy, and boredom. Dumazedier (1962) indicates that the central problem of the civilization of free time is contained in the possibility to cause active behavior and active attitude. Active behavior implies social, cultural, and individual dimension and it is confirmed as the capability of optimal participation of a person in social and cultural life as an optimum of self-confirmation of the personality. Regarding the development of personality as one of the three functions of free time, the emphasis is placed on the culture of spending free time. Culture and culture processes shape the complete thinking of a young person, as well as behavior and creative imagination, and the establishment of values. Theoretical consideration and the analysis of the importance of free time result with one conclusion and that is the need for active and creating fulfillment of that free time for the purpose of personality development. Empirical researches indicate that free time is used exclusively for the purpose of entertainment and leisure. The education about the free time is necessary in order to develop a culture, capabilities, and habits for fulfilled, useful and pleasant free time spending and this is what Previšić (1987) has been indicating. Media in Modern Life of Youth’ is the fourth part of this dissertation where family tree of media has been represented. Fidler (2004) divided this tree in three areas: interpersonal, emission and documentation area. The tree shows that new media are never pushing out the old because the old media transform into more contemporary forms. Media are not the only thing changing as the structure and the content of media program also changes. Under the strong pressure of the ideology of profit, media oligopolies push out the production of content and programs of the biggest quality such as educational and documentary program in order to push in different shows and entertainment programs whose production is cheap and that bring big income. Media culture, due to their wide presence, has been taking the central place in contemporary theory of culture for thirty years. It shapes dominant understanding of the world, universal values and it provides the basis for understanding individual and collective identities. The adoption of media culture without intellectual efforts and speedy expansion enabled by the new media made the media culture cosmopolitan according to the presence in the world. New media whose creative innovation is represented by digitalization have completely overtaken the life of youth who are online twenty-four hours a day. Youth most often use the media for fulfilling their needs for socialization and entertainment. Media content has made them completely passive and it has locked them in their rooms and because of that the term ‘the Bedroom Culture” was coined where youth chooses the content without the adult supervision. The fifth part, ‘Media enculturation’ as pedagogical process was written as a type of conclusion in comparison to previous parts. Scientists from the area of pedagogy, psychology and sociology indicate that media are taking over the mail role of agents of the socialization and enculturation of youth. Arnett (1995b) lists seven agents of socialization whose goal is for youth to become socialized members of their culture. He listed media as special agent because their only goal is profit. The content of the media effects the current and permanent changes in behavior, changes of attitudes, cognitive and physiological changes and changes of emotions. Several variables have been determined and their role is the moderators of effects of media content exposure. Some of those moderators, intelligence (crystallized, fluid and emotional) and term differentiation for example, indicate the importance of media literacy. Media literacy implies seven skills that should be actively used while interpreting messages received through the media. For the purpose of gaining media literacy, it is necessary to introduce media education in the curriculum in all educational levels. ‘The Methodology of Empirical Research’ is the third part of the dissertation that contains following parts: problem and the goal of the research, tasks of the research, hypotheses, sample, instrument, and procedure. Based on the determined problem and the goal of the research, the tasks and hypotheses of the research have been defined. The research was conducted through polling questionnaire on the sample of 418 students of second and third grade of the High School which is 15,8 percent of total number of students of second and third grade students in Canton Sarajevo. The anonymous polling research was conducted in the 2015/2016 school year. The fourth part of the dissertation is ‘Results’ and it contains tables that show the research data. It also shows all the research variables, relation between socio-demographic characteristics of the research participants with examined variables and relation between value orientations with all researched variables. The fifth part, ‘Discussion’, contains significant data and their comparison with the results of the previous researches. The time-content dimension of exposure to media is different in relation to gender, place of living, and academic success of the students and this partly confirms the first hypothesis of the research. Even though the conclusions of many researches indicate that new age and new technologies do not rely on tradition and traditional values, this research shows that family upbringing had great significance in the upbringing of the participants. That was reflected on cherishing traditional value orientations and moral values. Value orientations differentiate in relation to gender, place of living, education of the mother, and academic success of the participants while the significant statistical connection between the age and the education of the father was not determined. That partly confirms the second hypothesis of the research. Youth spends free time by doing computer, social and non-structural activities. Activities of free time are different in relation to gender, age, parents’ education level, and academic success of the participants. The place of living did not prove to be relevant for doing free time activities. That also partly confirms the third hypothesis. Mental and expressive free time activities are very connected to the creative value orientations of youth. The forth hypothesis of the research that was related to the relationship between value orientations with all examined variables of the research has also been partly confirmed. The sixth pat of the dissertation contains conclusion, the scientific importance of the research and the suggestions for further research.

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