To meet on young peoples terms in young peoples' social arena : - A qualitative study on youth workers experience of on line counselling of young people

With this research we aimed to seek how youth workers express their experience of counselling on the internet compared to traditional counselling face to face with a theoretical ground in semiotics and symbolic interactionism. Our questions were 1) How do youth workers describe their experiences from anonymous, faceless online counselling? 2) How do youth workers experience the differences between online counselling and the traditional face-to-face counselling? 3) Which possibilities and difficulties do they see in online communication with adolescents? We used semi-structed interviews with seven youth workers. Six of those are active in non-profit organisations, and one in social services. The results from our interviews showed that the interviewees saw that misunderstandings were more frequent on the internet, but that online counselling with adolescents still was easier than in the face-to-face meetings. To compensate for the non verbal part of communication in real life, symbols is seen as very important in online communication. The youth workers meant that the development of the on line counselling has opened a new arena. An arena where they get an opportunity to meet young people whom they don´t believe they would have met elsewhere. We found that this is a new, not fully developed culture with its own langue which we are about to learn. Once we understand and are capable of using this language new ways to meet with clients will be opened