Gen Z, Digital Media, and Transcultural Lives: At Home in the World

Most books on young people in the global South focus on how Gen Z consumes content and are thus receivers of global cultural flows. Gen Z, Digital Media, and Transcultural Lives: At Home in the World offers narrative exploration of how Gen Z in the global South uses digital media and technologies to not only engage with global cultural content, but also create content for employment, leisure, advocacy, and awareness. This book offers a new perspective that illustrates how this generation practices playful resilience in engaging with global flows and local realities. Kiran Vinod Bhatia and Manisha Pathak-Shelat highlight how this content reflects engagement with global flows and efforts to direct and impact these flows, expand audiences, and grow digital networks for material, emotional, cultural, and other rewards. The authors demonstrate how youth in the global South build digital worlds for themselves and others through active and producer-level participation. Scholars of communication, media studies, and digital anthropology will find this book of particular interest.

Kiran Vinod Bhatia is a digital anthropologist with a focus on marginalization and digital media. Manisha Pathak-Shelat is professor of communication and digital platforms and strategies at MICA in India.