Media prosumers

The current twentysomethings, born in Europe between 1977 and 1987, are the ‘Net Generation’. When they were (and some still are) in their formative period, which takes from puberty until adolescence, they made their homework using search engines like AltaVista, Northern Light and nowadays Google. They are the MTV generation as they have been watching music clips with their friends all their life, or worse, re-enacted them. And one may call them the ‘9/11 Generation’ as the attack on the World Trade Center will be in their minds as the turning point as was World War II or the assassination of JFK for earlier generations.

Quite clearly this generation has been hugely influenced by (new) media. They are digital natives and media prosumers (consumers and producers). An interesting question therefore is how does this generation deals with issues of privacy, a very visually orientated society and 'shocking' content. It's no surprise that the top electronic art festival Ars Electronica ((held in Linz, Austria) gave itself the title 'Goodbye Privacy' last year. And the International Film Festival Rotterdam organised 'The International Conference Media Education from the artistic perspective' today.

Anne van Someren (Creative Manager for the New Media Literaries project at MIT's Comparitive Media Studies) stated: "Young people are already practicing the skill of collective intelligence when they contribute to Wikipedia. They are already learning about the difficulties and potentials of appropriation when they write fan fiction or create a remix video. However, these competencies have yet to be recognised or introduced into formal education and or (media) companies.". The project (in search of: the heart and mind of Europe's twentysomethings) we're working on will give some clues on how these competencies can be recognised in different parts of society. Certain insights will be published on this blog during the year. But if you have examples yourself, share it with us by adding a comment!