Piattaforme, adolescenti e forme di soggettivazione. Una lettura foucaltiana del progetto Transmedia Literacy

Abstract

The article illustrates some results of the international Transmedia literacy project, funded under the Horizon 2020 program. The contribution focuses, in particular, on the relationship between the centrality of the peer to peer dimension in teens’ communication practices and the forms of subjectivation produced in relation to such practices.

Through the use of the concept of technologies of the self, developed by Michel Foucault (1988), the selected research data demonstrate how children (in the age group 12-18 years) are subjectivated and, at the same time, subjectivate themselves by developing knowledge, skills and identity in their "digital social life", finally reaching the maturation of an ethical awareness (Serpieri 2018; 2020). Through activities of fruition and production of contents and co-construction of relationships, they promote a transformation of the self that takes place in the context of peer-to-peer interactions located in the practices of digital platforms uses.

The project shows how in the context of peer relations, especially in social media, but also through the use of video games, teens develop an unexplored and stratified set of skills, in accordance with the concept of transmedia literacy, “a set of skills, practices, values, priorities, sensibilities, and learning/sharing strategies developed and applied within the context of the new participatory cultures” (Scolari 2018, 11).

In this sense, the research results, in the light of Foucalt's reflection, photograph the young students, capturing them in an unprecedented way, enhancing educational actions and skills that they have acquired in the informal sphere and that could be recognized and supported also within the world of school, where education, in its broadest and most inclusive meaning, often struggles to cross the border of "education". Thus, the practices of subjectivation exercised through the technologies of the self, such as writing, reflexivity, meditation, putting oneself to the test (just to name a few) contribute to forming identity by unfolding their ethical value and are associated with the maturation of transmedia skills which become skills of identity management and interpersonal relationships among peers.

Concepts such as that of "society of control" (Deleuze 1990), "platform society" (van Dijck, Poell and de Waal 2018), "surveillance capitalism" (Zuboff 2019), "neurocapitalism" (Griziotti 2016) or "bio capitalism" -cognitive ”(Fumagalli 2018) provide the conceptual frame of reference that defines the increasingly complex society in which these transformation strategies are situated and nourished.