"Peopel want Likes!" : A qualitative study of young people's knowledge and behavior when publicizing text and images using social media platforms.

The purpose of this study was to investigate what knowledge 16 year old highschool students have when it comes to text- and imageposting on social media and how they act on the basis of their skills and attitudes on text and image publishing. An important aspect of this was to investigate the impact of young people 's identity in relation to text- and image posting on social media as this according to research is a big part of what motivates young people in their everyday practices (Buckingham, 2008). The essay questions was , What is young people’s experience on posting text- and image on social media? How aware are young people at the pros and cons on posting text and images on social media? What are young people's attitudes about text and image posting? And how do young people act on the basis of experience , awareness and attitude? Which role plays identity in their actions? To seek answers to my questions and achieve the aim of the thesis was conducted three semi-structured focusgroup interviews in collaboration with two high schools. The results have been reported, interpreted and analyzed by pattern-seeking. The theoretical framework used in this paper is the research and theories of primarily media researchers who have distinguished themselves in the Media and Youth research, For example, Ulla Carlsson, David Buckingham, Sonia Livingstone and Kristen Drotner. I have primarily studied books with different themes within the topic of identity, Media literacy, children , media and culture. Through these researchers and their theories I could gather knowledge about young people's media habits and identity processes in relation to media use. Media Literacy during the course of the study proved to be a very important topic and especially the book Children and Youth in The Digital Media Culture, editor Ulla Carlsson, contains a lot of interesting theories and reflections on the subject. Through the various articles in the book I have gained an understanding and knowledge on the topic Media Literacy, a topic that most of the researchers argue is so important, but seems to be forgotten, or even not taken into consideration in schools. This study showed that young people are living a life where the boundary between the physical and the digital world is in principle non-existent but that several of the youngsters lacked guidance and support when it came to things that happened on the internet. Despite the fact that the digital world is as integrated into the physical world in the lives of young people, adults are not present in the young people's life’s on the internet. However, one of the schools in this study had focused on teaching Media Literacy and these young people showed a greater confidence and security in their virtual living. These young people had a clearer strategy and awareness of the risks of social media. The researchers' strong argumentation for educations in Media Literacy in schools teach from the youngsters in this study to be highly relevant arguments, however, Media Literacy seems to be a forgotten subject in schools , a subject that in most schools is’nt taken into consideration. Why? Is it the lack of time or the lack of knowledge about the youngsters or the subject? Some interesting conclusions could be drawn from the focusgroup interviews in this study and it was that there is a big difference in how knowledge is achieved amoung the students. The girls had knowledge of the advantages and disadvantages of text and picture published by particularly bad experiences and had thus learned how best to act on social media and the internet. The boys, however had media and information education in school and experienced social media as a relatively safe place to stay on. This in theory could be due to differences between the sexes when girls are generally more vulnerable in society, but also according to researchers it could have to do with Media Literacy. Media Literacy is currently no compulsory element in the curriculum, but can pose a big difference to young people 's digital lifestyle. Why let go of the children in the digital world when we hold their hands in the physichal