Crossroads in Cultural Studies Conference 14-17th December 2016 Program Index

This paper will compare the 1960 Mexican film Quinceañera (Fifteen Year-Old Girl, Alfredo B. Crevenna), the
1987 telenovela Quinceañera (Carla Estrada), the 2000 telenovela Primer amor… a 1000 por hora (First
Love… at 1000 Km Per Hour, Pedro Damián), and the 2012 Nickelodeon Latin-American television series Miss
XV (My 15/Miss 15, Pedro Damián). How is the same story retold through different audiovisual media? The
explicit variations of these texts not only point to differences in industrial practices but also a transformation
of social norms and mores. This research seeks to contextualise and historicise the production of these
narratives in order to understand the way they have shaped and reflected the representations of Mexican
young women over a period of 50 years.
4W
Youth participation, citizenship and democracy (Chair, Phillipa Collin)
Yiyi Yin* & Anthony Fung*
China?
Youth Online Cultural Participation and Bilibili: An alternative form of democracy in
This paper examines one of the most popular youth opens platform and video sites in China, Bilibili.
Facilitated by specific bullet-commenting technology, the commenting system embedded on Bilibili allows to
post and share videos and to engage other participants on an equal basis. It essentially constitutes hundreds
of open and parallel discussion forum for each specific video posted. The kind of online youth participation
could be read as an alternative version of digital democracy that manifests and builds on grass-root
creativity, collective intelligence and affective labor. This paper examines this emerging culture by analyzing
how members interact and attempt to act free of political and commercial forces. It depicts how they try to
shelter their de-politicalized public space, and at the same time embraces cultural and political resistance
toward capitals and dominant power. It reveals how political subjectivity of Chinese adolescents being visible
in such cultural practices.
Fiona Suwana
Digital Media and Indonesian Young People to Support Democracy
This research aims to examine how Indonesian young people have been able to use digital media to support
democracy in Indonesia, as the world’s third largest democracy. The Internet is perceived as a media that
can potentially promote greater democracy due to its more open forms of communication compared to
traditional media, therefore creating more opportunities for freedom of expression. Moreover, Internet use
has increased rapidly in Indonesia, particularly among youth between 18-25 years old. Democracy and
participation in public culture require not just a willingness to consume information, but to create; share;
and use information. While, digital media practices in Indonesia have promoted the participation of more
young people than ever before to engage in political and civic activism, Therefore, this presentation explores
the capacities and motivation of Indonesian student leaders in five universities and one college in Jakarta to
do civic engagement and political participation by digital media.
Soo Ah Kwon
The Global Youth Empowerment Project
This paper critically examines the shift in contemporary transnational youth governance from a politics of
resistance to politics of empowerment as deployed by the United Nations and its partner organizations.
Drawing on ethnography at global youth conferences, this paper investigates the spaces in which cultural
(re) production of a transnational and “ideal” global youth subject is constructed and negotiated among the
elite group of global South and North participants. This empowered global citizen and democratic subject is
juxtaposed against the potential misery and “risk” that the “bad” uneducated, antcapitalist, undeveloped
(global South), and unsafe (Arab) youth presents to global economic development and security. The author
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