Juventude e cidadania: usos das mídias digitais na ONG Aldeia, em Fortaleza, e no projeto KDM, em Barcelona

Abstract

This research analyzes the sociocommunicational processes produced by the young people when they leave the condition of being only part of the audience and start to be, as well, producers of mediatic content and managers of communicational policies, by acting in sociocultural projects that deal with citizenship insertion of young people in situation of social exclusion, through the use of digital medias. To achieve it, the research – qualitative and developed under a multimethodological perspective – studies two specific cases, where these relations between new communicational technologies and collective mobilizations can be identified. The protagonists of this investigation participate of Aldeia association, in Fortaleza (Brazil), that works with young inhabitants of unprivileged areas, specially with boys and girls that live in Morro Santa Terezinha; and of the Project KDM, developed in Barcelona (Spain), that focus the integration relations between young migrants and autochthonous. The research is theoretically based on determined axes: the social construction of the concept of youth and the ambivalence of this age group; the trajectory of social movements and its convergences with identity and cultural issues; the concept of citizen communication, by the reconfiguration of communicational flows; the extension of citizenship notions, beyond the social, political and civil rights; and the centrality of digital medias and its relations with the citizen exercise, potentiated through the emergency of communication receptors-producers. Three main aspects are presented with the investigation: 1) the complementarity of analogical and digital medias and the online and off-line relations in the daily practices of the researched young people. 2) The sense of citizenship turned to a demand of professionalization and insertion in the job market. 3) The lack of a more critical perspective on reading communicational means and analyzing social structures, which sets a citizen communication that doesn’t explore all its potential of transforming media and society.