Abstract

This paper examines the most significant contributions in health communication on adolescents and young people developed inside the positivist and interpretativist com-municative currents. Analyzing the results obtained by both models, a new investigati-ve approach is required, which would focus on the risk understood as a symptom of uncertain times dominated by a multitude of symbolic mediated resources and as an essential ingredient to youth culture and their lifestyle.

Abstract

This work presents a research study designed to analyse the development of power relations in a virtual world, known as Habbo Hotel, aimed at the child and teenage market. What motivated this work was the desire to under­stand how this company wielded its power through the different agents responsible for taking decisions on the behaviour of the users within this virtual world. Simultaneously, this research went deeply into the type of lessons learnt by users as to citizenship springing from the behaviour rules imposed by the company owning this space. In order to understand what young people were learning about the wielding of power, and the prototype model citizen within the virtual world, we analyse the systems of rules that govern what users can or cannot do, and we proceed to analyse the contents of spaces in which users will talk about the reasons why the company had expelled them from Habbo Hotel. The findings of this work reveal that the application of rules on the part of the company results in the experience inside this virtual world not always being fun, democratic, creative, participative or completely satisfying. This thus questions some of the main arguments proposed by different writers on these new forms of communication.

Abstract

This contribution is justified by the necessity of analyzing the participative content that the interactive youth transmitted in the use of ICTs and social networks in the origin of the social movement of the Spanish Revolution. Our objectives have been focused on proving how young people feel, live and experience the democratic citizenship by means of audiovisual display systems, participating in public open spaces where a better informed digital citizenship is being formed among the technological convergence, hypertextuality and non linearity. We have tried to identify both the educational content of their interactions and implications and the use of audiovisual display systems in their organization as a group. The methodology we have used is the in-depth case study in the days when people occupied public spaces. We collected observations, interviews, information from the social networks (Twitter, Facebook, n-1, Tuenti), news in the media and also information, posters and photographs generated during the occupation by the participants themselves. From this techno-educational point of view we analyze how these young people widen their communicative relationships and get connected on line creating new meanings for educational, social and political issues. The analysis of their speeches shows us a reappropriation of the ICTs by these young people who express and communicate publicly and contributing in this way with new points of view for the citizenship education.