Representation of teenagers in New Media Blogs and Social Networking Analysing texts created by teenagers, for teenagers.

. David Buckingham: Youth Identity and Digital Media David Buckingham has written extensively on the opportunities that the web 2.0 era provides for young people to produce their own representations, and through this, challenge the common representations held by mainstream media. In particular he concentrated on how teenagers use blogs and social networking spaces to create their own identities and to self-express, because personal webpages and blogs differ from other online forms as they are not fixed or static but allow for on-going alterable expression. Blogs are increasingly being used by teenagers as a way of expressing their identities. Expressing oneself online becomes a way for teenagers to explore their beliefs, values and self-perceptions, thereby to help them grapple with their sense of identity. Indeed, youth authors indicate that personal sites provide both a space and stimulus to participate in this dialogue. One teenager interviewed by Buckingham said that a blog provides the opportunity for a nice shiny me, which suggests that some teenagers use blogs and personal websites to present a facet or facets of themselves that they may feel unable to do in real life. Youth authors can therefore use their personal sites to explore ways to present, in public, versions of themselves that may be stifled in other settings. They gradually learn how to create the identities and images they want others to see. Task: Bearing this last quote in mind, how accurate do you feel these representations are? Are they more accurate than the representations weve examined in the case studies so far?