The 'Media Generation Gap' Between Teachers And Students In Secondary .

IntroductionThe 'Digital Generation' in Korea2002 was an eventful year for Korea. It saw people voluntarily organizing festivals to gather tocelebrate and cheer on the national football team. It also saw people organizing candlelightvigils to offer condolences for two teenage girls who were killed by an American army militaryvehicle, an event which led to anti-US protests. Lastly, it witnessed the election of a youngpresidential candidate, Roh Moo-hyun, with the support of younger generations whoencouraged each other to be politically active. All of these events had one thing in common:they were all partly enabled by the use of new media, such as the mobile phone or the internet.As a result, 2002 was a year when the media and the public started to focus on the idea of youngpeople as a different, brand new, 'digital' generation (these popular discourses about the digitalgeneration in Korea will be looked into in the following chapter). Adults felt they wereuninformed about this brand new 'digital generation', a generation who were widely consideredto be completely different from previous generations.In addition, the first two events mentioned above drew positive attention to the social power ofthe internet in bringing people together based on their common interests. By contrast, the resultsof the presidential election not only apparently proved the political power of the internet, butalso drew attention to its role in accelerating the growing gap and conflicts between youngerand older generations. After the presidential election on 19th December 2002, the 'generationiBy 'new media' I mean the new media texts as well as new media productions youngpeople use such as the internet (Instant Messenger, Social-Networking Services, etc.), mobilephones and computer games.11

gap' or 'conflicts between generations' became key expressions defining Korean society. The media generation gap' here is considered as a conflict between two different cultures based onthe media they mainly use. In other words, the younger generation and the new mediaassociated with them are considered to be in conflict with the older generation and the old media(e.g. newspapers and television) they mainly use.This social discourse defining young people as the 'digital generation' and emphasizing the'generation gap' arising from their media associations influenced the school setting as well.Teachers had to deal with these 'unknown' young people's new media use in two differentways. Firstly, teachers found themselves in a position to regulate young people's new mediause. Due to the mobility of new media, students' new media culture blends into schools, makingthe once private young people's culture both public and visible to teachers. Secondly, schoolsand teachers are expected to promote media literacy in young people. Young people are thoughtto be exposed to risks and dangers that adults are not totally aware of, when using new media.Media education has come to be regarded as a means of 'self-regulation' for young people, andthe panacea for all problems that new media might cause. As mentioned before, the 'novelty' ofyoung people's new media culture has seen some uneasiness from educationalists. Teachers'lack of confidence, backed up by the digital generation discourse, and their attempts to maintaintheir position as experts often result in teachers returning to a protectionist approach in mediaeducation, or sticking to their area of expertise.However, young peoples' relationships with new media are not only relevant to mediaeducation classes, but to the school culture in general. As the digital generation discourseinevitably gives power to young people over adults, the natural hierarchy related to knowledgetransfer and expertise is bound to be reversed — or so it is claimed. Also the 'generational'12

discourse or the concept of 'generation' itself emphasizes the intergenerational differences,accentuating the 'gap' between generations, in this case teachers and young people, rather thanpaying attention to their similarities or continuities. Young people themselves also take part inconstructing their identity as the 'digital generation', often using it to negotiate theirrelationships with teachers.Timescale of the study and research questionsThe fieldwork for this thesis took place in 2004-5. This was the period when young people's newmedia usage and the alleged 'media generation gap' between teachers and students were put in thespotlight. Within this social context, I set out to study the construction of the young people'sdigital identity both by teachers and students.The overarching research question of this study is as follows:How do young people take part in the construction of their generational identity in relation to newmedia within the context of their relationships with teachers and peers?To answer this main research question following subsidiary questions will be explored:1) Is there a 'media generation gap' between students and teachers?2) To what extent and in what ways do young people construct themselves as a 'digitalgeneration'?3) How is the 'digital generation' discourse played out in the school setting, by both students andteachers?13

An overview of the thesisChapter 1 focuses on analyzing popular discourses about the 'digital generation'. I start byintroducing the Korean context and looking at newspaper articles (published in 2001-2) thatdealt with the 'digital generation' and young people's new media use. This chapter shows howthe 'digital generation' discourse is used to define young people within the social, cultural andtechnological contexts of Korea. I then move on to analyzing the popular books and reports thatdescribe and construct young people's generational identity in relation to the 'new' mediaenvironment in which they are growing up. Rather than being a data chapter on its own, thischapter functions as an introduction to the broader social context of the study and to the keyissues. I aim to take an in-depth look at how young people are being framed as the digitalgeneration, and think about the social functions of the 'digital generation' discourse.Moving on from popular discourses, the second chapter reviews what the academic researchsays about young people and new media. Studies focusing on young people and their new mediause can be categorized into two groups in terms of the data they use. Firstly, there are reportsand surveys that measure young people's access to and use of new media quantitatively. InKorea, there are annual statistical reports surveying the computer and internet usage of theKorean population (details of this are discussed in chapter 2). I will not, however, pay muchattention to the statistics that the surveys present (e.g. the percentage of internet use orappropriation rate of computers, etc.), but rather review the reports in terms of their topics ofexamination, and approaches towards new media and young people. Secondly, I will reviewqualitative research that puts young people's new media use in context. As there is an extensivearray of topics related to young people and new media, in this chapter 1 will focus on reviewing14

studies that deal with young people's new media use in three specific social and spatial settings:peer group, home and school.Chapter 3 deals with theory. In this chapter, I take a step back from the discussions about youngpeople's new media culture to look at the theories underpinning the 'digital generation'discussions. The 'digital generation' is a unique generational category as it tends to identifyyoung people with the technology they use. However, technology itself is not a neutral factorbut is developed and appropriated within a given social context (Jasanoff, 1995). In the first partof this chapter, I will explore theories about the social construction of technology. Thesetheories show how users' interpretations of technologies contribute to the construction of thetechnology that in turn influences users' daily lives. In addition to theories derived fromtechnology studies, I will also look at theories used in media and cultural studies thatconsider users as well as their interaction with media texts and media production whenstudying a cultural product or phenomenon. In the second part, I move on to theories ofgeneration. 'Generation' is a theoretical concept that has various meanings according to theacademic disciplines it is used within. In this chapter, I will focus on theories of 'generation'that are relevant to the 'digital generation' concept (i.e. socio-cultural generation and sociostructural generation). By studying theories explaining the characteristics and processes of theconstruction of a 'generation', I aim to pull out the elements that contribute to the generationalidentification and generational structuring of young people in relation to new media.Based on these previous discussions, I then introduce my research questions that areinvestigated in the data chapters (chapters 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9). Before going into the analysis of thedata, in chapter 4, I discuss my research design and methodological standpoint, followed bydetailed explanations and discussions of the methods I used to collect data.15

Chapter 5 is the first data chapter. I discuss quantitative data collected via a large-scale survey Iconducted with teachers and young people. The main aim of the survey is to explore the 'mediageneration gap' by looking at the media uses of young people and teachers, and also byinvestigating their perceptions about both young people's and adults' new media use. Thefollowing four chapters discuss the qualitative data I collected in the following year (thetimeline of my research is detailed in the methodology chapter) by conducting group interviewswith young people and individual interviews with teachers. While the survey data looked at bothteachers' and young people's new media use, the focus of the interview data is on young people'snew media practices and teachers' approaches to them.Chapter 6 looks into young people's construction of their new media culture. Young peoplemake use of new media mostly as a means of communication, but more importantly as a spaceto 'hang out' with their peers. As new media are mostly used as a place for peer culture, thereare implicit rules which function as markers of generational membership, and which oftenbecome a source of stress for young people. At the same time, young people's new media use isalways limited by technical and economic constraints. In this chapter, I discuss the factors thatinfluence young people's ways of using new media including their efforts to establish culturaland often 'generational' boundaries in relation to media use. After discussing the construction ofyoung people's new media culture in general, in the following chapters I focus on specific newmedia used by young people (i.e. instant messenger, peer-to-peer networks and mobile phones),and how young people make meanings of these media both amongst themselves and in relationwith teachers (in the school setting).In Chapter 7, I examine young people's use of BuddyBuddy, which is an instant messagingservice that was used by Korean teenagers at the time of the interview. This chapter shows howyoung people actively put generational markers on internet spaces to keep their online peer16

group culture private. I discuss how young people build a private 'generational' space on thepublic platform of the internet, by using not only technical features (e.g. features of SNS sitesenabling users to control the level of openness) but also cultural features (e.g. choice of brand;implicit rules in terms of the 'right' ways of using the new media) to keep their spaces exclusiveto themselves.Chapter 8 looks into the new economies of young people's new media culture. By focusing onyoung people's discussions of their peer-to-peer network use, I suggest that young people's newmedia practices are related to building up capital and buying authority within the virtual world.In this chapter, I examine (1) how economic factors limit or shape young people's new mediause; (2) new economies, described by young people, which function in online platforms; and (3)how young people's identity as 'economically independent students' and/or the 'digitalgeneration' contribute to these new economies on the internet.Lastly, the final data chapter, chapter 9, brings the focus back to the school setting. When Iconducted the interviews, a growing number of students owned mobile phones, bringing them toschool for various reasons such as personal entertainment, communication or even 'safety'.Regulating young people's mobile phones at school became an issue involving teachers, schooladministrators, students and often parents. In this chapter, I discuss how teachers justify theregulation of young people's access and use of mobile phones in schools, and look into thenegotiations between teachers and young people in relation to the mobile phone. By exploringthe regulation practices of teachers and teachers' and students' negotiations of the presence ofmobile phones in the school setting, I probe how young people's identity construction as the'digital generation' plays out in school.17

In chapter 10, which is the conclusion of this thesis, I summarize the research findings. Bylooking into young people's new media use and the ways in which both teachers and youngpeople themselves interpret that use, I aim to show the process of 'generationing' that takes placearound the technology. The examination of how young people, teachers and various contextscontribute to the 'generationing' process will help to demonstrate the complexity of the relationsbetween young people and new media, without simply categorizing them as a 'digitalgeneration' with innate abilities to use new media and natural preferences for the newesttechnology.18

Chapter 1. Constructions of the 'digital generation'IntroductionIn South Korea, 'digital natives' are sprouting up at a fast pace to help cement the nation'sglobal status as a high-tech pacesetter full of technology gurus. The term 'digital native'was coined to refer to the first generation who was born and grew up in the 21' centuryinternet era surrounded by gadgets like computers and cell phones. "Some babies hereappear to pick up a computer mouse and cell phone earlier than a spoon and chopsticks,"said Park Jung-hyun, a senior researcher at LG Economic Research Institute. "They aregenuinely digital natives, a totally different generation from their fathers and grandfathers,or analogue natives," Park said. Indeed, a majority of Korean children go online regularly,and they are accustomed to using mobile phones for games or wireless telephone services.A recent government survey found that 50.3 percent of three-to five-year-olds log onto theinternet at least once a month. They were found to have first faced the Web at 3.2 years onaverage. Many Korean preschoolers are also casual users of handsets. KTF, the country'sNo. 2 wireless carrier, runs a charging system customized for four-year-old kids. "Digitalnatives are thinking, acting and reacting very differently from how we did, mainly becausetheir childhoods are in large part shaped by technology," Park said. "Their lifestyle, formedin line with the newest technologies, can be a huge asset for this nation. They will grow upto become developers of futuristic techniques or consumers to help the related markets takeroot," he said.Some regard digital natives as a potential blessing for Korea, but some experts voiceconcerns on the increasing number of young techno geeks. "Kids use computers and cellphones mostly to play games. It is just like when children indulged in TV and video in thepast," said Hwang Jin-kyu, a researcher at the state-backed Korea Institute for YouthDevelopment. "Children turning to computers and handsets are more prone to gameaddiction than those who depended on TV or video. We have to recognize the dark side ofdigital natives and prepare for proper measures," he said. With both the positive andnegative aspects of digital natives, Korea is expected to become a target of benchmarking,according to Kim Kyung-mo, an economist at the local brokerage Mirae Asset. "Korea isleading the world as far as digital natives are concerned. As a result, foreign countries willtry to keep a tab on things here to learn lessons in advance," Kim said. "In a sense, Koreawill become a crystal ball displaying what happens when digital natives replace analoguenatives," Kim said. "The nation would be an example to benchmark." (my emphasis) Kids become 'digital natives' (Tae-Gyu Kim), Korea Times, 29 Oct 2006 19

The newspaper article cited above is a fine example of how popular discourse in Koreacharacterizes young people as a 'digital generation'. Firstly, it shows the two contradictory waysyoung people are approached in relation to the new media: one being the 'techno-guru' and theother being the 'techno-geek% It celebrates young people as a new generation with differentskills and abilities which adults, defined in this case as an 'analogue generation', lack. On theother hand, it introduces adults' worries about the negative sides of young people's new mediause, such as computer or game addiction. The newspaper article also illustrates how expertswho are considered as authority figures in defining the digital generation come from twodifferent fields. The positive views are championed by experts related to electronic products ormarketing, and the negative views are shown by experts working in youth-related institutions. Itcan be suggested that these backgrounds influence how they make sense of young people andtheir relations with new media.Secondly, this news article reveals the specifics of the Korean context in approaching the digitalgeneration. It shows Korea's national pride as a technologically advanced country where youngpeople or even younger children have easy access to new media technology. In the beginning,the article declares that "'digital natives" are sprouting up at a fast pace to help cement thenation's global status as a high-tech pacesetter full of technology gurus'. It is followed bystatistics and an expert's comment about the 'digital natives' in Korea to prove the point. Inaddition, it shows when putting a specific label on young people, terms such as 'digital natives',coined by American commentators, are commonly used in Korea. However, there are othertitles invented to describe younger generations which reflect specific cultural or social contextsin Korea. For example, terms such as the '13-generation' and W-generation's were, albeit5P stands for Participation, and W stands for the World Cup. Both of these terms weresuggested by a brand marketing research institute founded by Cheil Communications(http://www.cheil.com/index.jsp)20

temporarily, used to describe the younger generation after the 2002 World Cup. Recently, theterm 'post-digital generation'

Table 5.6. Teachers' access to digital cameras and mobile phones (%) 162 Chart 5.1. Media that students and teachers most frequently use (%) 166 Chart 5.2. The service/functions of the internet that students and teachers use when they are online (%) 169 Chart 5.3. The service/functions of the internet that that teachers of different age groups use