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Digital Youth
Remarks
T.J.M. Holden
Panel 3: Digital Difference
Sunday, June 22nd
13:00 - 14:30 p.m.
Thinking through
Difference
About Me, On this Panel
Originally I was asked by the organizers to
present something at this conference, but . . .
That was kind of like asking Ringo to do a drum
solo.
Imagine David Slater as Paul here:
“you know, Ringo . . .you could go -- da-dupe,
ba-dupe, da-dupe…”
(Believe me, no one would be duped by that)
About Me, On this Panel
Anyway . . . once it became clear that I had nothing
to offer, the organizers said:
“well, hey . . . There’s always commentary . . . “
Which is why I sit before you in the role of
commentator
Soon it should be abundantly clear that they might
have been better off with Ringo as a
commentator
But, it’s too late to rescind the offer
And besides, this shouldn’t take longer than your
average Led Zeppelin drum solo
About Me, On this Panel

I come to this panel with a number of intellectual
caps:
–
–
–

My work is primarily situated in Japan, although I
also have looked at other Asian countries, such
as Malaysia, and Asia in general
–

Communication researcher
Social theorist
Mediated sociologist
Mostly in relation to matters of contextualized
globalization
In these comments I will try to don these various
caps
About Me, On this Panel
My claim to inclusion, perhaps, was a chapter in a
book on “Global Youth Culture” (2007)
There I presented an ethnography of youth cell
phone use in Japan
I dubbed these users “adolechnics”
–
Users with clearly distinguished differences from other
mobile phone users in Japan
and presented the multiple ways that keitai worked
to mediate identity
–
Mobile phones served to nurture and advance their
difference
Adolechnics’ 4 Levels of
“globality”
In concluding, I theorized 4 “levels” of
youth mobile phone use vis-à-vis
globalization:
–
The Macro-Global
– The Global-Local
– The Micro-Global
– The Micro-Local
The Macro-Global

keitai simultaneously connects adolechnics
to larger social, political, economic and
moral worlds;
 above all:
–
the consumer-capitalist economy, and
– the popular cultural realm.
The Global-Local

While adolechnics actively engage in
consumption via mobile phones . . .
 they consume without being overly
consumed with the idea of consuming.
 They share the joy of consumption:
–
with mutually linked, though independent,
consumers
– All engaged in identical acts of consumption.
The Micro-Global

Adolechnics devote considerable time teaching
one another:
–
–
–
–

how to belong to their groups
what it means to be a young adult-in-the-making
to be a consumer of popular culture
to become a member of an economic and cultural subgroup within society.
So much of adolechnic behavior can be
understood as a process of mutual instruction and
learning, reinforcing, integrating, connecting,
group-forming.
The Micro-Local
Adolechnics exist in atomized capacity – as
individuals.
 They wield keitai as a means of defining self and
expressing agency.
 For the adolechnic, the private social worlds that
they create are amae-ful
 Through the acceptance of others, each individual
is empowered to be:

–
Optimistic
– Inquisitive
– Playful
– Trusting
– Externally-oriented
– and pro-actively social.
About this Panel
Well, enough about ME!
As for this panel . . .

The common name associated with digital -anything -- in academic discourse this past
decade has been “divide”
 The fact that this panel consciously selected
a moniker of difference in association with
“digital” cannot be missed and should not be
minimized
About Divides
“Divide” meant a schism
 Often defined by race, age, gender, or
geographic location
 And this worked to organize research for over
a decade showing the various “divides” and
“secondary divides” in place, in particular,
between:
– Nations North and South
– Between nations in a region (for instance,
in Asia)
– Within any one country (for instance, the
US or Japan)
Typing Divides (DiMaggio and
Hargittai [2001])
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Technical means (software, hardware,
connectivity quality);
Autonomy of use (location of access,
freedom to use the medium for one's
preferred activities);
Use patterns (types of uses of the Internet);
Social support networks (availability of
others one can turn to for assistance with
use, size of networks to encourage use);
Skill (one's ability to use the medium
effectively).
Typing Divides
In my earlier work on adolechnics, all 5 of
these elements appeared in youth
mobile behavior
–
Denoting not so much a “divide” as points
of demonstrable difference
–
It is this theme that I wish to emphasize as I
move through the rest of these comments
Typing Divides (Norris [2001])
3 Levels:
1. the global divide
–
2.
the social divide
–
3.
encompasses differences among industrialized
and lesser developed nations;
points to inequalities among the population
within one nation; and
A democratic divide
–
refers to the differences among those who do
and do not use digital technologies to engage
and participate in public life.
Embodied Divides
We see these divides in each of the works
on this panel, by turns.
For instance:
Hjorth’s work points us toward the “global
divide”
Qiu’s work underscores the “social divide”
Cleveland’s work helps us explore the
“democratic divide”.
Comparative Divides I
Much work on digital divides has been
comparative
-- as we saw in the work of Lin and
Jung, yesterday
Comparative Divides I
Ishii and Wu (2006) compared
Taiwanese and Japanese youth
–
Taiwanese youth use the Internet to a
much greater extent than Japanese youth
– even though broadband services are
cheaper and faster in Japan
– Japanese youth use text-messaging
services featured on mobile phones more
than their Taiwanese counterparts.
Comparing Divides I

While Taiwan has developed a unique BBS
(bulletin board system) culture, Taiwanese
have a comparatively stronger degree of
trust in the Internet than the Japanese.
 The Internet culture in Japan is more
individualized.
 Japanese adolescents and young adults
tend to avoid direct communication, resulting
in the promotion of a unique mobile media
culture among the Japanese youth.
Comparative Divides I
The findings suggest that:
 despite the worldwide standardization
of communication technologies
 the two countries have created
different media trends for their youth
 due to culturally different personal
relationship patterns
Comparative Divides II
Comparing three “high-access countries”
in East Asia – Japan, South Korea and
Singapore -- Ono (2005) found that:
–
inequality in ICT access, use and skills
reflects pre-existing inequality in other
areas of economy and society in the three
countries.
– Not all of which are the same in the 3
countries
Comparative Divides II
Specifically:
 In Japan and South Korea, women are less
likely to use computers and the Internet than
men.
 In Singapore, gender inequality is less
pronounced, but the separation between the
users and the non-users by education and
income is considerably larger than in the other
two countries.
 Moreover, there is a clear divide across
demographic groups when it comes to its actual
usage.
–
Access therefore does not translate into usage in
these three countries
Japan’s Secondary Divide
Japan’s Secondary Divide
The previous graph shows the
breakdown of demographic usage of
the internet.
–
Over the last six years, almost all age
groups have increased their share of total
home PC access
– SAVE FOR 20 year-olds, whose share
DROPPED from 23.6% to 11.9%
Summarizing About Divides
In short:
–
Divides exist
– They can be evaluated in numerous ways
– They differ both within and across
countries
 This
is especially true in Asia where there is
great variation in economic, political, social,
and ethnic configuration
–
There seems to be a need for further
conceptualization of digital phenomena
The “Difference” Difference

Rather than a divide, the idea of difference
takes the emphasis away from schism -conflict or disjuncture.
 The emphasis is on characteristics
associated with use or non-use
–
–
Certainly, some of this may be embodied in
geographic location, racial characteristics,
gender, and economic condition.
And by comparing the papers by Mouri and Wu
(yesterday) we can easily appreciate the
differences in use of mobile between Japan and
Taiwan
The “Difference” Difference

And each of these latter elements we saw in
our papers this session

However, the emphasis on difference opens up
analysis:
–
–
In ways that “schism” might not
And in more positive ways
The “Difference” Difference
For instance:
 in Cleveland’s emphasis on how racial
imagery services a more subversive, less
reactionary political agenda
– This evinces society’s complex
“sectoral” organization, that enables
two “contradictory” elements to stand
side by side, at once.
 Something
that we all puzzled through
yesterday and heard a partial answer from
in Davidson’s paper
The “Difference” Difference
For instance:

in Hjorth’s highlighting of a particular user group, which
opens into a discussion of intimacy
– A key feature of other work on cell phone (I.e. Ito
[2005])
– But a larger feature of Japanese media, a I have
shown in my work on television

Where Hjorth’s work is significant is in demonstrating
the unique forms that intimacy can take in this particular
user group
– Thus, while intimacy may be a central feature of all
Japanese media, it is liberated in unique ways by this
particular medium for this particular user group
The “Difference” Difference
For Instance:
 While Qiu’s paper accentuates the economic . . among
his “have-nots” are non-economically delineated social
groups:
– school drop-outs
– rural children left behind by their migrant-worker
parents
– Ethnic-minority youth
– Female Internet dropouts
 Certainly, the economic is the key analytic sector, with:
– young migrant workers
– students from low-income families
 Yet, all groups he covers possess social definitions that
distinguish them, and (differentially) locate them in sociopolitical space
The Digital Difference
One aspect of difference that we all must
appreciate (and which authors
generally do) is that not everything
digital means “keitai”.
–
One example is Qiu’s emphasis on “economy” which, he is clear, is not only
about cell phones.
 online gaming is included
Differences in “Digital”
Difference
While cell phone has been the dominant
interpretation of “digital” in the literature, as
well as the papers this week-end, we should
recognize that there are various
incarnations;
Most importantly:
–
–
–
–
–
the Internet
Webcam/video chat
Role-playing games
Ipod/MP3
Portable game players
Analytic Difference
Although some devices share certain functions
Others demand different assessments based on how the
devices interact with, in particular,
– Psychological,
– Social-psychological,
– Social
dimensions of human orientation and behavior.
Analytic Difference
Thus, in assessing these papers I would ask that we
also recognize the following “difference-makers” in
tendering analysis about “digitization in contemporary
life”:





“Digital demands”
“Digital capabilities”
“Digital opportunities”
“Digital influence”
“Digital response”
And that these 5 aspects may/will likely differ depending
on the particular device (digital medium) under study
Analytic Difference:
Public versus Private
Another important distinction in certain analyses is the
use of digital devices in public versus private
– For instance, engaging in good night pillow talk
by phone may differ from talking by phone as one
walks down the street
– Listening to an MP3 on the train can be socially
distancing (and interpretable as such); doing the
same thing in one’s own room ought not be
viewed the same way
A simple observation is that this is one role (and a
justification) for ethnography: to establish and
concretize such differences
Analytic Difference:
Place and Mode of Use
The difference in use suggests that the same
digital device might be capable of producing
different social outcomes
 Based on its place of use
 As well as its manner of use

Differences that we saw outlined in the
research reported by, among others, Galbraith
and also Manabe.
Analytic Difference:
Public versus Private
In certain cases, with certain devices, the
distinction between use in public
versus private space may not matter
As, for instance, when we talk about “copresence”
– Or when we regard Internet use
–
 Texting,
emailing, web-searching, conducting
commercial transactions
 I.e. when we emphasize “function”/”use-value”
Digital Devices as
“Difference Markers”
The cultural role of these digital devices
is not only to adopt a style of life
It demarcates one as belonging to a
group:
–
Any group
 Which implies “sociality”
 Demonstrates “popularity”
 Refutes anomic-ness
Borrowing from Goffman I
Remember Erving Goffman? (We ought never
forget him…)
When Goffman talked about “tie-signs” he meant
that a gaze could link one passerby with
another
Applied to digital phones, we can see them
serving as tie-signs of a different sort:
–
–
–
Tying us to unseen others
Implying networks beyond direct social surveillance
Marking us as “belonging elsewhere”

Beyond the current space of observation
Borrowing from Goffman II:
Marking Difference
“Stigma” is germane, as well.
There is an is/not condition of “stigma” associated
with digital use
 Is: the condition of carrying and using digital
devices in public
– Effect: negates stigma
 The stigma of being an outsider, a loner, an
outcast
 Not: the condition of not bearing/using digital
devices in public
– Effect: activates stigma
 The stigma of being unaffiliated, an outsider,
uncool
Surveillance and Difference
Numerous authors (e.g. Green 2002; Ling and
Yttri 2002; Skog 2002) have argued that cell
phones have altered power geometries
– Youth can avoid the surveillance of parents
or others via their new mode of
communication
– Certainly in Japan, this is true
 As Ito and Okabe (2003) have argued
 Mobile phones mean “freedom from”
–
–
in a context where lack of space abounds
and the major sites of daily existence
(home, school, work, urban space) are so
heavily monitored
Surveillance and Difference
While this may afford a certain privacy, the fact of
surveillance and the presence of the cell phone
IN THE FACE OF surveillance is suggestive:
– of an open flaunting of privacy
– An open presentation of “the intimate self”
 As keitai (in particular) is often asserted to
be an affective device
 It is a representative extension of us
– in our capacities of and subjectivity as
being an intimate being
–
A declaration of social independence from the
collectivity
Surveillance and Difference
The existence of social observation and the
awareness of observation, suggests that:
–
digital technologies are wielded precisely to
emphasize “difference”
 The
differentiation of “my private life” from “this
public world”
In a word, because there is surveillance,
public digital display happens
Assessing Digital Difference in
Public

Although insularity from public engagement
may be one assessment of digital use in
public . . .
 nonetheless, digital engagement in an
alternative social (but private) “space”, is:
– a social act
– committed in a specific, locatable, larger
(common) social space
Intimacy and Surveillance
Absorption or Display?
In Absorption and
Theatricality (1980)
Michael Fried
studied 18th-century
French painting’s
representation of
absorptive states
Media-induced Absorption
He emphasized portraits in which the
people depicted ignored the beholder
–
This is signified as total self-absorption; a
loss of social self-consciousness.
–
It is akin to the “interiority” McVeigh theorized
exists with cell phone use (2003)
Intimacy and Media
Fried also argued,
though, that
whenever a
consciousness of
viewing exists:

absorption is
sacrificed
 and theatricality
results
Surveillance and “Digital
Display”
As for the social world’s encounter with digital
technology, I would agree with Fried about the
theatricality.
But I also think we need to look at his claim about
viewing differently.
He argues that when painters obliterated the point of
view of the beholder, the 18th century observer:
– was “neutralized”
– And the viewer found this neutralization “thrilling”
Surveillance and “Digital
Display”
When it comes to digitality in public, I think that
neutralization and theatricality are wed.
The observer, though screened off, is:
– Present, and
– Complicit
S/he stands in the outer social world in a
position of voyeur of the digital performers,
engaged in their public acts of private
communication.
Surveillance and “Digital
Display”
A state, I admit, I often find myself in . . .
As I witness (spy on?) someone locked in on
their digital device in public
Concluding About Public
Display
Leaving me to wonder:

whether there is a communication process going on
independent of the communication process involving
digital technology
–
–
Beyond the communication between human and
machine or human and human through the machine .
..
Perhaps there is the communication between: human
on machine (on the one hand) and the public world
(on the other)
Concluding About Public
Display: Communicating
Difference
Rather than the former (ostensibly) engaged in
“excluding” the latter during the process of
their “third party” act of communication

The former plays to the latter:
–
–
–

Signaling it
Engaging it
Speaking to it (about self and place of self in
society)
Communicating difference
Thank You!
Hey Ringo:
Drum Roll, please . . .