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Instant Identity: Adolescent Girls and the World of Instant Messaging explains how girls use instant messaging - a primary mode of new media communication for their generation - in order to flirt, bond, fight, and generally relate to peers in ways that both transcend and play into their culture's dominant gender norms. Examining IM conversations and interviews with the girls, Shayla Thiel Stern demonstrates exactly how girls use IM to construct identity and negotiate sexuality, as they constantly move between childhood and adulthood in their language and actions online. This book is among the first of its kind to truly explore the millennial generation's prevalent use of instant messaging and its implications for the future.
About the author
The Author: Shayla Thiel Stern earned a Ph.D. in mass communication from the University of Iowa and is Assistant Professor in the Communication Department at DePaul University in Chicago, Illinois. A former editor of The Journal of Communication Inquiry, she is the author of chapters in Girl Wide Web: Girls, the Internet, and the Negotiation of Identity (edited by Sharon Mazzarella) and Women in Mass Communication (edited by Pamela Creedon and Judith Cramer) as well as articles in Feminist Media Studies, The Chicago Tribune, and The Washington Post.
Report
«This accessibly written book gives readers direct insights into how instant messaging has become a vital part of American adolescent girls' everyday lives. Shayla Thiel Stern's method of inviting teenage girls to give her copies of their IM conversations breaks new ground for the study of digital media among teens. Her analysis of these conversations in light of feminist theory and cultural studies gives us a unique and sympathetic vantage point from which to consider [how] profanity, gossip, sexuality, friendship, parental relationships, and the negotiation of marketing messages continue to play important roles in the construction of teenage lives today.» (Lynn Schofield Clark, Assistant Professor, School of Communication, University of Denver; Author, 'From Angels to Aliens: Teenagers, the Media, and the Supernatural')
