Improving the wellbeing of at-risk youth through media participation

ABSTRACT

As a persistent societal problem in Finland, youth marginalisation invites innovative, practice-based studies. The pedagogical action research, titled Young People in the Limelight: Towards Agency through Multiliteracies, investigates the potential of including media participation as a part of media education in the context of the non-formal education of youth work to support youth, who are at risk of marginalisation, to become active agents in their lives and to build their multiliteracies. Around 100 participants, mainly aged 15–22 years, had difficult life situations or learning or social difficulties. The article examines media participation from the perspective of a theory of wellbeing called self-determination theory (SDT). The data, which mainly include observation diaries and interviews, are analysed based on three needs of wellbeing: competence, autonomy and relatedness. The results confirm the validity of SDT by showing that the participants have all three needs. They also reveal that at-risk youth find it difficult to fulfil these needs. Media participation can help them fulfil these needs, for example, by offering them expert positions and informal situations to express their autonomy and relate to others in, with and through media. Furthermore, the satisfaction of these needs improves the media participation of at-risk youth.

KEYWORDS:

• Youth media participation
• at-risk youth
• wellbeing
• action research
• self-determination theory

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Mari Pienimäki, PhD, is a researcher at University of Tampere. She is the responsible researcher of the action research project Young People in the Limelight (2015–2017) conducted by a group of ten researchers. She has extensive experience in adult education, formerly working e.g. as a university lecturer of media education and a teacher of art and media in colleges, polytechnics and universities. She focused in her doctoral theses (2013) on the critical media literacy of youth. She is interested in developmental study, such as action research. Her main research interests lie in media pedagogy, MIL, media participation, visual media and at-risk youth.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Koneen Säätiö (Kone Foundation, Finland) and Academy of Finland [grant number SA 304146].