Joves, violència i vídeo digital

Roger Martínez and Miquel Fernández – In today’s seminar we have discussed how  young people is ‘normativizing’ (culturally producing norms about) the new scenarios originated by digital video in relation to the representation of violence, drawing on the results of two empirical research projects (‘Watch and being watched’ and ‘Violence, internet and mobile phones’). We have talked about how young people is using digital technology (mobile phones, video and photo cameras, internet) to make, distribute and watch videos with one or another type of represented violence, as well as to carry on aggressions to other young people. 

The production, distribution and consumption of home-made videos through mobile phones and the internet is making a difference in the way violent representations are being distributed through, and ‘fixed’ in, youth social space. In particular, attention is paid not only to the way the consumption of violent videos is being valued or rejected in different positions of youth geographies, but also to the impact that leaving a ‘permanent record’ of recorded images has in the sanctions faced by young people, as well as on their social reputation. This implies that new social norms regulating the novelty must emerge, and this paper studies how young people, in dialogue with the ‘adult’ intervention of teachers, parents, youth workers, authorities and the media, culturally produce normative limits and moral responses to this phenomenon.