Participatory methods as innovative approaches for research on the relevance, sense and integration of social web on the daily lives of young people

Wijnen, C., Trültzsch, S. (2011). Participatory methods as innovative approaches for research on the relevance, sense and integration of social web on the daily lives of young people . Zagreb conference: "New challenges and methodological innovations in European media audience research". 7-9 April 2011.

Abstract: Current social web developments offer various possibilities for communication, participation, self- presentation and the acquirement of knowledge. Recent studies have shown that young people use especially social network sites (SNS) to present themselves, to manage relationships and to communicate with their peers (boyd 2008; Paus-Hasebrink et al. 2009; Tarazow et al. 2010; Valkenberg/Peter 2010). The ways young people are dealing with media nowadays differ much from the classical picture of mere reading audiences: They are actively producing and interacting with media in a self-reflected way. This leads to the question if traditional methods of audience research are still enough or if there are other possibilities that offer a deeper insight into the media worlds of young people. We will examine participatory research designs of action research and community based research (Borda 2002) that are used in the context of health (Gosin et al. 2003; Unger et al. 2007), social work and education (Brown/Rodriguez 2009; Reason/Bradbury 2002) and question if such approaches can be useful for research in the field of SNS. Based on experiences of a participatory project with adolescents on the use of casting shows ways of integrating young people in research on how children and youth are dealing with social web will be discussed. Further the design of a planned participatory research project on the self-presentation of young people on SNS will be presented – including first results of a pilot study.