Techno-Social Generations and Communication Research

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

Consisting of an international team of six scholars, this theme session proposal contributes to the conference theme by outlining a coherent conceptual, theoretical, and methodological agenda to integrate the concepts of sociological generations and techno-social generations into communication research.

Generation is a taken-for-granted concept in today’s technological development. Often, without being quite aware of it, we begin to shift from a language of Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 or from blogging to microblogging. Just as naturally, we replace our Iphone 4 with 5 and then 6 – or at least some of us do. Yet generations of technology cannot be separated from sociological generations. An age cohort may be associated with particular types of communication technologies. Hence popular terms such as the Net Generation, the Facebook Generation, digital natives, the iGeneration and Generation Z.

Why are these techno-social generational labels being invented and what purposes are they made to serve? How do technological generations relate to sociological generations? How does a sociological generation attuned to technologies of print culture or television culture respond to new digital technologies? How does the emergence of a new technology impinge upon the making of new sociological generations? How might a concept of techno-social generation help to capture the complex interactions between technological and sociological generations, between change and continuity in historical processes?

This panel gathers six speakers to address these questions. Lewis Friedland will open the panel by outlining a middle-range theory for understanding how common experiences continue to unify generations in today’s network society. Piermarco Aroldi studies the role of media in shaping generational identities and argues that “social generations” are the outcome of both exogenous and endogenous forces. Focusing on the discursive construction of technological generations as sociological generations by media advertising and branding, Jonathan Gray examines how branding efforts divide the public into generational cohorts and then give raced, classed, gendered, and political shape to those generations. Peter Hart-Brinson explores theoretical and methodological issues in the study of socio-technical generations, arguing that technology and social media, as markers of distinction, extend generational theory by establishing networks and practices as key mechanisms of social generational change. Wazhmah Osman analyzes marketing campaigns that target youth to determine how their messages influence different youth groups. Finally, Guobin Yang explores the formation of techno-social generational identities by hypothesizing that the more de-stabilizing the effects of a new technological form, the stronger the techno-social generational identity among those who are most exposed to these technologies.

Sub Unit

• Theme Sessions

Chair

• Lewis A. Friedland, U of Wisconsin-Madison

Individual Presentations

• The Problem of Socio-Technical Generations and Civil Society in Transition - Lewis A. Friedland, U of Wisconsin-Madison

• Constructing the Taste of a New Generation: Branding and/as the Making of Audiences - Jonathan Alan Gray, U of Wisconsin - Madison

• The Digital Natives of the Millennial Generation: Stereotype and Reality - Peter Hart-Brinson, University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire

• Sent from an Old MacBook: Social Status, Age, and New Technologies - Wazhmah Osman, Temple University

• What is the Role of Media Technologies in Shaping Generational Identities? - Piermarco Aroldi, Universita' Cattolica del Sacro Cuore

• Conceptualizing Techno-Social Generations for Communication Research - Guobin Yang, U of Pennsylvania