::fc-announce:: Digital Natives in Australia and Korea - Australia-Korea Fundation Conference

[Larissa Hjorth]

Apologies for cross posting. ^^


Digital Natives in Australia and Korea - Australia-Korea Fundation Conference
For details of the program, visit http://www.dis.unimelb.edu.au/about/news/AKFconf06.html 
WHEN: Thursday 30 November 2006


Digital Natives in Australia and Korea

Thursday 30th November 2006
Yasuko Hiraoka Myer Room, Sidney Myer Asia Centre, University of Melbourne

Overview
The Department of Information Systems at the University of Melbourne, with the support of the Australia-Korea Foundation and Asialink, is hosting a one-day conference for media and ICT experts, academics, students, policymakers and those who are interested in knowing about young people’s digital culture in Korea and Australia. Experts from the two countries will examine how information and communication technologies shape the way young people live and communicate in the two countries and how they produce and consume culture. 

Korea is a world leader in the deployment and application of ICT like broadband and mobile internet, and sees new types of digital culture being continuously created by its digital-savvy young generations (see the special report on South Korea in the latest issue of The Diplomat). This conference offers the opportunity for new perspectives of Australian (digital) society through a comparison with Korea. It will also foster opportunities to exchange and share knowledge on the social adoption and experience of digital and mobile technologies among experts with diverse interdisciplinary perspectives from the two countries. 

The conference will explore four themes through the following sessions: 

• Emerging digital cultures: The case of Cyworld in Korea
• The same tribe of digital natives? Young people’s digital behavour in Australia and Korea
• Good or bad? Internet practices in youth life
• What is it for? Industry and educational perspectives

Each session involves a presentation from an Australian and a Korean expert, as well as an opportunity for discussion.

Sessions
Session 1: Emerging digital cultures: The case of Cyworld in Korea
This session sets a scene for the day and offers the audience an opportunity to understand the current development of digital culture in Korea. Larissa HJORTH draws attention to the popularity of Cyworld, the highly successful Korean virtual community that has been launched globally, and its potential adaptation in a global market. To gauge the potential of Cyworld’s global adaptation, she presents a case study of Korean students studying in Melbourne and examines how their relationship to communication technologies changes when away from home. Dr Yeran KIM explores the stylization of young people’s practice of the digital, as this seems to be articulated within existing cultural repertoires. In rejecting a unilateral understanding of digital culture, she argues for diverse modes of digital habitus formed through cultural circuits from the internet to mobile technologies, such as mobile phones, MP3 and digital cameras. She concludes with two points on digital youth culture: a [re]emergence of cultural values of differentiation and the potential of the subcultural diversification. 

Session 2: The same tribe of digital natives? Young people’s digital behaviour in Australia and Korea
This session examines whether Australia and Korea young people are the same in using digital media using the concept of prosumers. Dr Shanton CHANG focuses on the internet interactive cultures of Australian young people. For this purpose he draws on the concept of prosumers, those who both consume and produce contents in the digital space. Based on the results from focus group interviews, he examines whether Australian youngsters would generally have prosumer characteristics. Dr Eun-Woo JOO critically examines Korean young people’s political and cultural activities in their active practice of the digital. New media and digital environments have enabled Korean young people to freely express themselves and become active cultural ‘prosumers’. He arguesng people’s social participation takes increasingly privatized forms, social implications of their digital practice are complex, from participation in global cultural events to ideological reactions to domestic and international political agenda.

Session 3: Good or bad? Internet practices in youth life
This session examines risks of the current proliferation of the internet use in terms of wellbeing and addiction. Professor Johanna WYN discusses recent thinking about the social implications of new communication technologies for the lives of young Australians, particularly focusing on the significance of digital communication technologies for young people’s identity formation in relation to their citizenship and civic engagement. She argues that where young people do not have access to digital communications technology (largely due to a lack of economic resources), they also lose out in terms of the cultural resources that their peers use and shape through this medium. Dr Youn-Min PARK investigates the problem of the internet addiction, including online game addiction, online chatting addiction, or cyber obscenities addiction, which has increasingly become a social issue in Korea. She reviews the status of the phenomenon in Korea, and introduces how the Korea Agency for Digital Opportunity & Promotion (KADO) has addressed the problem through the Center for Internet Addiction Prevention and Counseling where counseling service is provided for free.

Session 4: What is it for? Industry and educational perspectives
This session examines implications of the digital culture for businesses and in educational contexts. Dr Marisa MAIO MACKAY draws on the results of a number of research initiatives in industry and discusses the changing 'mobile' landscape through the eyes of the consumer. After all it is the end user’s perceptions and experience of a mobile service that will determine its market success. End users will shape the mobile landscape. Her talk includes a look at the current Australian market, and discusses why it is changing and what we need to do to ensure its growth. Dr Joon LEE asks whether Korean young people’s digital literacy or skills in everyday life are translated into academic skills required in university education. With a case study of ‘Information Literacy’, an education programme at Seoul National University, he discusses 1) what problems digital generations have, 2) how the Academic Information Literacy is defined for Korean students, and 3) how SNU tries to develop students’ literacy muscles.




 Program
Each session begins with an introduction by the chair, followed by presentations of Australian and Korean speakers (20 minutes each). Then panel discussion follows (20 minutes).  

Conference Program
Yasuko Hiraoka Myer Room, Sidney Myer Asia Centre, University of Melbourne
Morning
Time	Topic	Speakers
8:30 – 9:00	Registration, tea and coffee
9:00 – 9:05	Welcome and introduction	Professor Johanna Wyn, Youth Research Centre, University of Melbourne
9:05 – 9:20	Opening address	Australia Korea Foundation
9:20 – 10:30	Emerging digital cultures: The case of Cyworld in Korea
	- Introduction by chair (5 mins)
- The gifts of presence: a case study of Korean virtual communities
- Doing the digital: Stylization of digital culture
- Panel discussion 
- Closing by chair (5 mins)	
Larissa Hjorth, RMIT

Dr Yeran Kim, Hallim University
10:30 – 11:00	Morning break	
11:00 – 12:10	The same tribe of digital natives? Young people’s digital behaviour in Australia and Korea
	- Are they willing to contribute?
Prosumer characteristics among the Australian youth
- Cultural enthusiasm and political disinterest: Korean young people in digital information age	Dr Shanton Chang, University of Melbourne 

Dr Eun-Woo Joo, Chung-Ang University
12:10 – 1:30	Lunch	
1:30 – 2:40	Good or bad? Internet practices in youth life
	- Young people, ICTs and wellbeing

- The spread of Internet addiction among young Korean internet migrants	Professor Johanna Wyn, University of Melbourne
Dr. Youn-Min Park, Korea Agency for Digital Opportunity & Promotion
2:40 – 3:10	Afternoon break	
3:10 – 4:20	What is it for? Industry and educational perspectives
	- The "Mobile" landscape - the user perspective

- Sea of information and teaching findability: Information literacy education at SNU	Dr Marisa Maio Mackay, mMet

Dr Joon Lee, Seoul National University
4:20 – 4:30	Closing remarks	Australia Korea Foundation
	Close	Professor Johanna Wyn


Conference Program – The Main Common Room, Women’s College, University of Sydney
Morning
 Speakers
Shanton Chang received his PhD at Monash University and currently lectures in change management and information systems at the University of Melbourne. His primary research areas are in the diffusion of broadband technology in Australia, adoption and appropriation of broadband technology, online behaviour, the management of multicultural workplaces and the impact of culture on the design and implementation of information systems. He has been involved in intercultural training programs for managers and employees across the higher education, union, and private sectors in Australia.

Larissa Hjorth is a researcher, artist and lecturer in Digital Art in the Games and Digital Art program at RMIT University. Hjorth has been researching and publishing on gendered customizing of mobile telephony in the Asia-Pacific since 2000. Key publications include ‘Postal presence: a case study of mobile customisation and gender in Melbourne’ (2005), ‘Fast-forwarding present: the rise of personalization and customization in mobile technologies in Japan’ (2005); ‘Odours of mobility’, Journal of Intercultural Studies (2005), ‘Being there and being here: Gendered customising of mobile 3G practices through a case study in Seoul’, co-authored with Heewon Kim Convergence journal (summer issue, 2005).

Eunwoo JOO is an assistant professor at the Department of Sociology, Chung-Ang University in Korea. He received his PhD at Seoul National University. His major is the sociology of culture. He is mainly interested in visual culture, popular culture, and social theories. He has recently studied identity politics represented in cinema of U.S., Japan, and Korea. His publications include ‘American silent films and the formation of national Identity’ (2005) and ‘Korean sociology of culture and studies on mass/popular Culture’ (2004). He also has a book titled Vision and Modernity (2003) in Korean. 

Yeran KIM°°is an assistant professor at School of Communications, Hallym University in Korea. She gained her PhD at Goldsmiths College, University of London. Her main research interests include popular culture, cultural studies and visual communications. Dr. KIM's current research projects are on popular culture in digital environment and new orders of cultural production and consumption in contemporary cultural industries. Her publications include ‘Digital Habitus’ (2005), A Prediction and Construction of Cultural Infra In the Future: Contents from Structure, Practice beyond Contents (2005), and ‘A Study on Community Culture in virtual space’ (2004).   

Joon Lee is an assistant professor at the Department of Communication, Seoul National University. The department's new initiative on ICT is his main responsibility, and he has led this program for four years. He studied and taught Design and Collaboration with New Media at Yale University until 2000 and worked for Samsung Electronics as Chief Creative Officer in the Division of eBusiness. Professor Lee's current research projects include information architecture, HCI and digital contents.
Marisa Maio Mackay is a specialist in User Behaviour Research Services and has consulted to many large companies in this area. She has a PhD in Marketing and Information Systems in the area of ‘Forecasting Market Demand for Breakthrough Products’.  Marisa also has a Masters by research in brand equity and has undertaken extensive research and consulting into the value of brands. Since joining m.Net Corporation in 2003, she has been responsible for the development and integration of research into the mobile managed service provider role that m.Net provides to both their media and telecommunication clients. 
Youn-Min Park is a manager of the International Cooperation & Planning Team at the Korea Agency for Digital Opportunity & Promotion. Her work relates extensively to developing and carrying out global ‘digital divide’ projects, such as IT Learning Programs, to assist developing countries’ information use, and collaborating with ITU and UN to address problems of information for development. Her doctoral research focused on information use for development based on a qualitative case study of seniors in South Korea and their experiences with the Internet. Dr. Park’s research interests include information for development, online welfare services, social gerontology, and qualitative research methodology.

Johanna Wyn is a Professor in Education and Director of the University of Melbourne’s Youth Research Centre. She is one of Australia’s leading youth researchers, whose work focuses on the education, training and work experiences of young people, their well-being and youth health promotion.  Johanna leads a number of research programs, including the Life-Patterns longitudinal study. She initiated the pioneering Masters of Youth Health and Education Management at the University of Melbourne, which is offered in partnership with the Faculty of Medicine, teaches in a range of masters programs and in the sociology program in the Faculty of Arts and supervises research students.  Her books include Rethinking Youth (1997), Youth, Education and Risk: Facing the Future (2001) and Youth and Society: exploring the social dynamics of youth.

Registration
To register, please complete the form overleaf and return to James Morrison by Friday 24 November.
Cost of registration: $30                      $10 for students
Fax: (03) 9349-4596
Mail: Department of Information Systems, The University of Melbourne, VIC 3010

Location
The map of the Sidney Myer Asia Centre at the University of Melbourne is here: 
http://www.asialink.unimelb.edu.au/asialink/asialink_map.pdf