Becoming Adults in a Changing World
Symposium ‘Youths and Digital Platforms: Vocalizing Voices from democratic and non-democratic Settings’
On January 29th, the Youth and Digital Platforms symposium took place. We look back on a inspiring day, where knowledge was shared, ideas were exchanged, and foundations of future collaboration were laid. Above all, we had a lot of fun and global engagement was flourishing.
Global South and Digital Plaforms
The symposium focused on the use of platforms in the Global South. We discovered for example, that digital platforms serve an important role in activism, community building, and forming relationships, especially when other channels are not available. Khadija Amahal shared the following example about the strenght and positive effect of social media:
“One positive side of social media is that after the earthquake in 2023, people started mobilizing helpers through social platforms, getting people rescued, and organizing shelter and food. There was an app that connected people in need with people able to help, which was widely spread through social media.”
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The day started of with a keynote given by Prof. Nyasha Mboti, followed by a panel with Dr. Gift Mwonzora, Prof. Winston Mano, and Bei Wang (PhD Fellow). Prof. Mboti shared about the ‘evil curricula’ and the challenge to answer the question “How do people stay in situations where they do not want to be?”. Additionally, the panel talked about whether to be optimistic of pessimistic about the future of digital plaforms. Together they identified challenges and strenghts to investigate further.
One attendee wrote: “Nyasha Mboti’s notion of the evil curriculum made me realize what big challenges everyone on different levels face.”.
Photos by Laura Hompus from Pixels & Passie
After the break, we were joined by the Youth Advisory Committee, a group of 10 young people around the world who are brought together by the Minestery of Foreign Affairs and the National Youth Council (NJR) to give young people a voice in its policy processes. They spoke about their own experiences of activism on digital platfroms and the paradox of visiblity. Their contribution followed the keynote by Dr. Qian Huang who spoke about the importance to recognize the mental load it takes to navigate online visibility and the role of media literacy to cope with this challenge.
“As most discussions on media literacy skills focus on increasing visibility, this made me think how decreasing visibility or managing of audiences should also be integrated in these debates.” – a reaction of an attendee.
Photos by Laura Hompus from Pixels & Passie
In the afternoon we were joined by by Prof. Isabella Rega, Dr. Çigdem Bozdag, Dr. Annamária Neag, Dr. Irem Inceoglu, Sanne Sprenger, Remy Nyamukabakaba, and Dr. Koen Leurs who shared insights about rethinking young people’s digital practices from the margins. We discoverd lots of similarities in coping with digital platforms in different regions and a lively discussion was held around the question whether youths’ should use their platforms to express their ideas on political or sociatal issues or whether expressing and experiencing joy was reason enough to have an online presence.
All of these insights came toghether in the goal of the symposium. Our aim was to reflect on the changing online landscape, with a particular focus on youths’ digital platforms with different stakeholders and as many perspectives as possible. We achieved this by literaly exchanging ideas on paper. Attendees wrote down their thoughts and had other react, and expand. Below you can see a few examples.
At the end of the symposium, Prof. dr. Bruce Mutsvairo announced the project of creating a special issue, based on the outcomes of this symposium. Together with Becoming Adults in a Changing World, he will continue to generate knowledge on the intersection of digitalisation, building relationships, finding your voice, and many more related themes. Are you interested in joining? See contact details below.
Please direct any questions to [r.jacobse@uu.nl] Rebecca Jacobse or [b.mutsvairo@uu.nl] Bruce Mutsvairo