Discussion and Conclusion

Abstract

This book presents our longitudinal study, as conducted in Austria over nearly twelve years, from 2005 until 2017. Our core question focused on the role of media within the socialisation of children, who subsequently became adolescents and grew up in families exhibiting various degrees of social disadvantage. The study followed them from five, or respectively six, years of age up to the last stage of adolescence, and into young adulthood. Even in a comparatively rich country such as Austria (see Chapter 2), the living conditions of socially disadvantaged young people are particularly demanding. They are often strongly affected by a lack of health (see Kuntz, Waldhauer, Zeiher, Finger, & Lampert, 2018) and by a limited access to education services and, linked to this, with a low level of participation in society. These challenges are intensified by the progressive transformation of the means of communication. As changing media environments are deeply integrated in a constantly changing society, where they act as a trigger for various processes of social change (see Carpentier, Schrøder, & Hallett, 2014; Hepp & Hasebrink, 2014; Lundby, 2014), transformative processes become highly relevant in individuals’ everyday lives—and, therefore, for socialisation processes as well. To define the role of the media in the overall context of complex and diverse socialisation processes, a theoretically and methodologically coherent concept CHAPTER 9