Collectivity, Identity, and Multivocality

Abstract

Abstract Mediated youth culture is constantly changing. With the digital turn, contemporary Arab youth cultures continue to coalesce locally and integrate globally. These youth cultures allow for the emergence of a digital self within predominantly collectivist societies. For youth, traditional and socially mediated networks are concurrently liberating and constraining. Young people often experience a tension between the desire to display their individuality and the expectation to heed social norms. From this milieu, forms of cohabitations between competing voices within society emerge. In the process, the sociocultural dynamics of the digital turn manifest themselves as complex, multilayered processes that shape subjectivities. Young people thus emerge as simultaneously independent individuals and dependent community members.