Youth Online: Identity and Literacy in the Digital Age

by Angela Thomas

Overview

Youth Online chronicles the stories of young people from several countries – the US, Australia, Canada, Switzerland, and Holland – and their interactions in online communities over a seven-year period. It examines how young people construct their identities in various social contexts: social, fantasy, role-playing; and for various social purposes: leadership, learning, power, rebellion and romance. It explores the ways youth are deploying both visual and literary cues to develop a full sense of presence online and to effectively communicate with their peers. Using methods of textual, visual, and socio-psychological analysis, this book illuminates the ways in which young people are making sense of their own identities and their place within broader communities.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780820478548
Publisher:	Peter Lang Publishing Inc.
Publication date:	07/01/2007
Series:	New Literacies and Digital Epistemologies Ser.
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	242
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.06(h) x 0.02(d)

About the Author

The Author: Angela Thomas is Lecturer in English Education at the University of Sydney. She specializes in teaching new media literacies and is the author of numerous articles and book chapters on fan fiction, online role-playing, blogging, digital fiction, cyberculture, identity, and learning in virtual worlds, and is co-author of Children’s Literature and Computer-Based Teaching.

Editorial Reviews

«This book deals with crucially urgent concerns for all involved in the education of school-age young people who live their lives at the interface of contemporary material and cyberworlds. It explores how young people construct their identities in online social, fantasy, role-playing and educational contexts and for various social purposes including leadership, learning, power, rebellion and romance. Angela Thomas masterfully focuses her transdisciplinary research, integrating studies of identity, multimodal semiotics, socially constructed new literacies, and education, to reveal the achievements and challenges reflected in the online lives of net-age adolescents. The work presented is both scholarly and accessible. It is both essential and enjoyable reading for all who work with young people.» (Len Unsworth, Professor in English and Literacies Education, The University of New England)

From the Publisher