INTERACTION, MEDIA CULTURE AND ADOLESCENTS AT SCHOOL

This paper describes the findings of a project that focused on an existing data-set of radio-microphone recordings, interviews and fieldnotes, collected in two London schools in 1997-8.2 The analysis provided a significant base for the research we are currently carrying out within the ESRC’s Identities & Social Action Programme.3 The project that we report in this paper aimed: • to map some of the principal ways in which young people spontaneously draw media culture into their daily lives at school • to explore some of the ways in which this either complements or conflicts with the instruction from their teachers.4 In studying the encounter between school and media culture, our analysis spans three time-scales (or durées): the historical, the quotidian, and the momentary. More specifically, in the search for answers to particular questions, we consider: i) historical and communicative processes in society at large ii) the ethos in particular schools and classrooms iii) the cultural resources and dispositions that individual students bring with them (their wealth, linguistic abilities, educational expectations, and positioning within (sub-)cultures of consumption) iv) the positioning of individuals at school and within the peer group v) discourse strategies within specific communicative events, and the local interactional affordances of particular medi