Il tempo libero dei cybernauti: culture multimediali a confronto

In the modern information society, communication is more and more spread by new technologies and global webs that offer new forms of cultural participation, increasing possibilities of interaction among the subjects. Increasing rates of people are crowding the virtual arena of the cyberspace and, among these people, someone chooses spaces and paths typical of the leisure time, integrating or substituting by them the available range of opportunities: in Italy the loisir cybernauts are the 12,5% of the population aged from 14 years (ISTAT 2000). The main objective of this essay is to explore the relationship reinforcing or substitutive - between cyber-activities and other media and extramedia activities of the leisure time, in order to get a complex map of the loisir lived by users of the cyberspace and their social-demographic features. By avoiding any a priori classification and adopting an empirical-multidimensional approach, in this reference population the research has pointed out some segmentations that can be related to different existential instances and not univocal outlines of cultural behaviours and use of the leasure time. The strategy of empirical analysis has lead to the individuation of four different types of loisir cybernauts - the Indoors, the Outdoors, the Playful-interactives, the Instrumental-refined who are different in generational terms, for a different mix of their media and extramedia activities, and for a different competence in using Internet and the new media. While the rates of non-experts overtake those of experts among adults confirming the pyramid-shaped model that usually represents wider stages of population in correspondence of a more deprived cultural mix among young people this ratio is turned upside down: in young people the multimediality is actually characterizing a higher number of subjects who are able to integrate traditional and innovative media. Beyond the noticed differences, the recurrent element, rising from the analysis of the individuated types, is the complementarity of the loisir cyber-activities towards other activities and of their function that reinforces in some way the different life styles and the levels of cultural and recreational fruition.

Isabella Mingo, Valentina Talucci, Il tempo libero dei cybernauti: culture multimediali a confronto in "SOCIOLOGIA DELLA COMUNICAZIONE " 35-36/2004, pp , DOI: