ViRaBi

Viral #constructions of space in cultural education processes

Young people experience their socio-spatial environment and their everyday lives in a world shaped by digital media. The internet has become a place for cultural and social change. In order to encourage young people to take an active and responsible role in shaping their digitalized world, cultural education needs to promote the ability to perceive complex social and cultural contexts. As a place for cultural education, the internet is integrated into the socio-spatial environment – an environment that is not a space by administrative definition but is created by the actions of the subjects. The digitalization of young people’s socio-spatial environments is leading to different relationships with the world and to new ways how to connect patterns of orientation and experience from daily life with artistic, aesthetic forms of experience and expression in multimedia communication.

The aim of the project is to gain new insight into the mechanisms of socio-spatial environment construction among adolescents through digitalization of society. These findings will then be used to identify points of reference in order to incorporate the socio-spatial perspective into current processes of cultural education in a sophisticated and tailored way. We will examine which patterns of perception and processes of reception adolescents develop in relation to their socio-spatial environment given the changed meaning of space due to digitalization processes and look at the challenges this presents. The results will allow to realize the best possible value of socio-spatial-orientated cultural education processes for adolescents.

The project ViRaBi is carried out by the following institution:

Project management:

Prof. Dr. Detlef Kanwischer, Institut für Humangeographie, Johann Wolfgang-Goethe-Universität Frankfurt a. M., kanwischer@geo.uni-frankfurt.de

Research assistant:
Christina Reithmeier, Institut für Humangeographie, Johann Wolfgang-Goethe-Universität Frankfurt a. M., reithmeier@geo.uni-frankfurt.de