Youth, Society and Mobile Media in Asia by Donald Stephanie Hemelryk;Anderson Theresa Dirndorfer;Spry Damien;

Author:Donald, Stephanie Hemelryk;Anderson, Theresa Dirndorfer;Spry, Damien;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Economics, Finance, Business & Industry
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group
Published: 2010-03-02T00:00:00+00:00

Context and exploration

This chapter is based on a three-year research project on the urban play culture of young people in Seoul. Of the main initial findings, two aspects became crucial in shaping the conceptual basis for the project. First, the city needs to be viewed as an ‘urban network’ rather than in terms of geographical boundaries, as ubiquitous technology no longer belongs to a ‘proximate future’ (Bell and Dourish 2007: 142). The city is connections – of multiple infrastructures and constituents where human and non-human nodes constantly influence one another and together (re)create the network. It is crucial, therefore, to study not only the macro-level design of the city as a network (through policy, for example), but also its micro-level construction at the intersection of people, place, and technology. Accordingly, this chapter explores this exact intersection to comprehensively portray the constant renewal of the city as imagined and experienced by young Koreans.

Second, among many sub-demographics under the broad ‘youth’ umbrella, there is an age band that presents a particularly interesting case for investigation. This demographic is between the ages of 18 and 24, which I call ‘transyouth’. Transyouth are in the transitional phase between youth and adulthood and have been the pioneers of the flourishing network culture in South Korea at the convergence of analog and digital. With this understanding, the following sections discuss the urban network (particularly in the form of convergence between place and technology) and transyouth in the context of contemporary Seoul.

This study draws upon transdisciplinary research data including interviews, questionnaires, diaries, and ‘Shared Visual Ethnography’ (SVE) to render the everyday urban social networking with and through which young Seoulites interact to constantly (re)create the city and the self.

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