Children and young people use media to establish their position within their respective social groups and contexts. The role their media repertoires and communicative practices play in this and how these change over time is being examined in a qualitative longitudinal study with colleagues from the FAU Erlangen-Nuremberg.
The conditions under which adolescents form relationships with other people and position themselves within different social contexts are changing in the course of mediatisation. Media developments and the increasing use of media in families, peer groups, school etc. have an impact on the actor constellations and communicative practices within these social contexts and contribute to their dissolution of boundaries.
Against this backdrop, the project addresses the consequences of changing media environments for the socialisation process of children and adolescents. Classical socialisation agents such as family, peer group or school are considered as communicative figurations on which young people actively exert influence and within which the media play an important role as communication channels, but also as subject areas or thematic fields.
The project focuses on the role of the media in the negotiation processes regarding belonging and dissociation as well as the changes over time. The starting point is the family as the first and most important instance of socialisation.
The project is a cooperation between the Friedrich Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg (Prof. Dr. Rudolf Kammerl) and the HBI and was approved by the German Research Foundation in 2018. In 2021, the project team received funding for three more years, which will enable them to continue the longitudinal study and conduct further research into how family life changes over time and what significance the use of digital media in particular has for shaping the relationships between family members.
Duration: 2018-2023
Contact Person
Dr. Claudia Lampert
Senior Researcher Media Socialisation & Health Communication
Leibniz-Institut für Medienforschung | Hans-Bredow-Institut (HBI)
Rothenbaumchaussee 36
20148 Hamburg