PhD project aimed at understanding how Oslo youths from different backgrounds use social media to create a sense of belonging.
How is the sense of belonging and non-belonging of 12-year-olds in Oslo, from families with different incomes, with and without migrant backgrounds and with different gender, on social media, such as TikTok and Snapchat, created through practices, places, and social interaction?
The project will analyze 12-year-olds from mixed-income as well as high-income families to create a comparison. The comparative approach will also analyze migration backgrounds and comprise gender as an analytical category. Belonging relates to physical places one is emplaced using social media as well as digital space and social arenas. The entanglement of these places and spaces is intertwined with identity and empirically compelling.
The PhD project is part of the BELONG project (2021-2025), financed by the Research Council of Norway.
Research questions
- What practices, (digital) spaces, and people do 12-year-olds share and how do they influence belonging or non-belonging on social media? How does belonging to or via digital media influence belonging in physical arenas?
- What are the inclusion and exclusion practices among peers on social media platforms and how do they impact the (non-)belonging to social groups?
- Which impact do digital consumer-related practices (including consumer goods and services) have on 12-years-olds’ sense of belonging?
- How do 12-year-olds use sense of non-belonging in a productive way to replace a potentially negative feeling of non-belonging on social media?
Supervisors
- Anita Borch (SIFO) is main supervisor and project manager in the Belong project.
- Marianne Rugkåsa (Faculty of Social Sciences, OsloMet)
- Mari Rysst (SIFO and Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences)
