Fisk-Memo14

As part of the “information society,” it nearly goes without saying that children and teenagers have increasingly embraced Internet-based platforms for communication and social interaction following the advent of personal computing in the early 1980's. From the early electronic bulletin board systems and online chat rooms to the social networking sites of today, information technologies have shaped – and been shaped by – youth culture. However, the adoption of information technologies by youth has created new possibilities for exposure to and participation in new configurations of potentially deviant activities. More recently, concerns over the risks that youth face online have become an increasingly common topic of discussion for the mainstream news media, politicians at all levels of government, school administrators and parents. On the basis of these events, a discourse of “youth Internet safety” has emerged, framing youth as simultaneously innocent and deviant, and Internet technology as simultaneously beneficial and threatening to society. This research project will examine power as it operates through configurations of “youth Internet safety,” as a means to both uncover the ways in which dominant institutions strategically reorder cyberspace through discourses of Internet safety, and critically examine the construction of criminal and deviant categories online. The aim of this type of work is not to act as a polemic against notions of “disproportionate” Internet safety measures, but rather to articulate a broader conceptualization of the forms of online deviance, and the power relations from which they develop. As such, this research will be guided by a central question: How have contemporary categories of online deviance and youth safety been constructed, and in what ways are they used to reorder information technologies and their users?
 * Overview**


 * Preliminary Framework...**

//Phase 1: (Epistemic) Subculture Formation// A subculture forms around the adoption of a technology. One example, of course, is the use of Internet technologies by youth as a platform for communication.

//Phase 2: Discovery Event/Period// An event, or series of events, causes the subculture to be “discovered” by dominant discourse. In the case of “youth Internet safety” discourse, the events of 2007 – with state and local legislative efforts in addition to various extralegal actions – seem to indicate

//Phase 3: Disaggregation// The subculture is slowly categorized in terms of dominant discourse, making visible specific aspects of the subculture, while obscuring others. In the case of Internet users, “youth Internet safety” discourse categorizes youth Internet users as victims or “bullies”. Older Internet users are categorized as deviant, immature and criminal...

//Phase 4: Reconstitution (?)// Finally, categories in dominant discourse shift... (Not sure if this fits.)