Collapsing contexts: social networking technologies in young people’s nightlife

ABSTRACT

In the latest discussions of children and young people’s new geographies of leisure and pleasure, one controversial issue has been how digital technologies co-produce and reconfigure young people’s everyday worlds. This article draws on semi-structured interviews with 40 young people who regularly use social networking technologies in their nightlife experiences in Zurich and Lausanne, two nightlife hubs in Switzerland. Informed by Danah Boyd’s concepts of ‘collapsing contexts’ and ‘imagined audiences’, this article enables a critical engagement with young people’s emerging understanding of their nightlife contexts, which are increasingly permeated by networking technologies. I show how social networking spaces facilitate the coming together, or collapse, of various social contexts which induce young people to imagine multiple audiences, including authority figures, in their nightlife practices. These collapsing contexts and imagined audiences, I argue, present new perspectives on debates about control and surveillance in young people’s contemporary urban nightlife.

KEYWORDS:

• Digital technologies
• power relations
• nightlife
• alcohol
• surveillance
• leisure

Acknowledgements

A warm thankyou to the interviewees for their time and openness in sharing their nightlife stories with us. I would also like to thank Anna Katz, Pauline Ndondo for their assistance in conducting the interviews and transcribing, Vera Bäriswyl for transcribing further interviews, Valentine Guenin, Noémie Gass, Annik Gmel, Christelle Morier, and Jonas Valdieck for translating the interview materials. Furthermore, I wish to thank the two referees for their constructive comments. Finally, I am very grateful to Sara Landolt and Itta Bauer for their support, advice, and guidance while this work was being written.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Wilkinson’s (2016, 2017) use of the term, everynight’ refers to Malbon’s notion of the every-night (1998).

2 She uses both terms in close coordination. See explanation on Boyd’s blog: http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2013/12/08/coining-context-collapse.html

3 Ethical approval was obtained for the study from Zurich’s and Lausanne’s Cantonal Ethics Commission for Research on Human Beings.

4 See: https://www.stadt-zuerich.ch/prd/de/index/statistik/themen/bevoelkerung.html#ueberblick_bevoelkerungstadtzuerich

5 See: http://www.lausanne.ch/lausanne-en-bref/lausanne-un-portrait/un-portrait/statistiques/une-ville-des-chiffres.html

6 Anna Katz and Pauline Ndondo.

7 Vera Bäriswyl and Valentine Guenin.

8 By Noémie Gass, Annik Gmel, Christelle Morier, and Jonas Valdieck.

9 Instagram is a photographs and video sharing social networking service launched in 2010. It allows users to take images and edit them with a selection of digital filters. Instagram was acquired by Facebook in 2012.

10 https://www.edoeb.admin.ch/dokumentation/00153/01448/01450/index.html?lang=de

Additional information

Funding

This project is part of a research project Youth@Night funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation  [grant number 150181].