Broadband Society and Generational Changes (Participation in Broadband Society)

The role generations play in accepting and shaping digital technologies, and possibly vice versa, is an increasingly relevant issue in contemporary society. For the first time in the academic debate, this volume outlines the theoretical issues and explores some results from empirical researches on the relationship between generations and the media in digital society. The first part of the book deals with the theoretical debate on generations, from Mannheim's to the revisiting of some classical notions shaped by disciplines as history, demography, marketing and sociology. The second part gathers a selection of researches at international level, with particular attention to the European context. Though each research used specific methodologies, the main approaches focused on media domestication by young and old generations, and on the comparative analyses of different generations in adopting media.