Australiaâs Rural Youth, Online Storytelling and Identity Performance

Sasha Mackay

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Australiaâs Rural Youth, Online Storytelling and Identity Performance

In: CyberCulture Now: Social and Communication Behaviours on the Web

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Sasha Mackay

Sasha Mackay
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Type:: Chapter

Pages:: 103â114

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1163/9781848881785_009

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Online storytelling spaces provide young people who live in rural and remote parts of Australia with an opportunity to develop their personal identities and connect and communicate with other young people. The Australian Broadcasting Corporationâs (ABCâs) rural and regional youth network, Heywire, is such a space. Heywire invites 16-22 year old Australians who identify as âruralâ or âregionalâ to create an online profile and upload stories about their lives in the form of text, audio, video or photographs. Emerging from my PhD project, this chapter describes how rural and regional youth perform their identities through creating stories for the Heywire website, addressing notions of individual and social identities as a sub-theme. Compared with their city counterparts, the youth who live in regional towns or isolated properties have fewer opportunities to socialise with other people their own age. Subsequently computer mediated technologies, particularly the Internet, can enable this group of people to connect with each other and develop a sense of community. In this chapter I outline how these possibilities exist within an online storytelling space. I describe a number of reasons for young peopleâs story-sharing on the Heywire website in order to demonstrate the potential for spaces such as this to enable isolated youth to experience a sense of connection and belonging, despite geographical dispersion and physical isolation.

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CyberCulture Now: Social and Communication Behaviours on the Web

E-Book ISBN:: 9781848881785

Publisher:: Brill

Print Publication Date:: 01 Jan 2013

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- Social Sciences
  - Cultural Studies

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Australiaâs Rural Youth, Online Storytelling and Identity Performance

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CyberCulture Now: Social and Communication Behaviours on the Web

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Australiaâs Rural Youth, Online Storytelling and Identity Performance