Unga, nyinflyttade IT-guider : - ett socialt och symboliskt kapital för digital delaktighet

Many reports in recent years are suggesting that young people should be involved in the development of the digital society. The Swedish government's Digidel campaign launched in 2011 involved adolescents to train elderly people. This thesis builds on the campaign with its major aim being to investigate how young people think about digital society and their own knowledge and skills to promote digital inclusion. The research questions were set to examine how adolescents look upon the competencies needed in today's digital society, what specific skills and capital the adolescents suggest that they have which can promote digital inclusion and how projects in this direction are perceived by the participants. The theoretical framework is based on theories about social capital. It encompasses Bourdieu's theories about symbolic capital and people's habitus, Putnam's theories about social capital and the power of the organization and Gidden's vision about how people are organizing themselves in the modern world. By interviewing four adolescents who worked as IT-guides for the elderly we get a picture of the skills and capital the adolescents consider themselves to possess that helped them to increase digital inclusion. The results show that it is not merely digital skills that the adolescents deem important to increase digital inclusion. In many ways their social abilities and the mutual learning laid a foundation for the elders to visit, and revisit, the IT-guides and enhanced the elders' curiosity about computers and the internet.