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Online journals as virtual bedrooms?

Young people, identity and personal space

Paul Hodkinson is a Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Surrey. His research interests focus on the relationship between media, commerce and collective forms of identity among young people. Such issues are explored via a comprehensive reworking of the notion of subculture in his book, Goth. Identity, Style and Subculture (2002). He is co-editor of Youth Cultures: Scenes, Subcultures and Tribes (2007) and has published various articles on the implications of different forms of Internet communication for patterns of identity among young people. He is co-convenor of the British Sociological Association Youth Study Group. [email: p.hodkinson{at}surrey.ac.uk]

Sian Lincoln

Sian Lincoln is a Senior Lecturer in Media Studies at Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool, UK. Her research interests lie primarily in the area of contemporary youth culture, visual sociology and ethnography, and particularly in relation to teenage ‘bedroom culture’, youth and music and new media technologies on which she has published. She is also co-convenor of the British Sociological Association's Youth Study Group. [email: s.lincoln{at}ljmu.ac.uk]

This article considers the increasing importance of personal, individualized spaces in the lives and identities of young people through a comparative examination of the contemporary use of the physical space of the bedroom and the ‘virtual’ territory of the online journal. Particularly popular among those in their teens and early twenties, online journals constitute an interactive form of web log whose content tends to be dominated by reflections upon the everyday experiences, thought and emotions of their individual owner. We propose here that such online journals often take on for their users the symbolic and practical properties of individually owned and controlled space — something we illustrate through a comparison with young people's uses of the primary, individual-centred, physical space in their lives — the bedroom. This discussion is informed by research by each of the authors, on young people's bedrooms and on the use of online journals respectively. The article identifies and explores understandings and functions of these two spaces for young people, identifying a number of apparent similarities in their use. Through doing so, we illustrate the potential value of the bedroom as a prism through which to understand online journal use at the same time as helping to illuminate the general significance of personal space to the lives and identities of contemporary young people.

Key Words: bedrooms • identity • Internet • online journals • space • youth

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