Social Interaction Technologies (SIT) have broadened the horizon of communication in terms of the way people are able to communicate. It is now possible to interact with others across the world and engage in numerous activities ranging from dating to political movements, hobbies and even professions (Chigona, Chigona, Ngqokelela, & Mpofu, 2009). Adolescents and pre-adolescents especially are inclined to make use of SIT in their social lives with the most popular mode of communication, apart from email, being instant messaging (IM) (Brown, Mounts, Lamborn, & Steinberg, 1993; Bryant, Sanders-Jackson, & Smallwood, 2006; Madden & Rainie, 2003). Adolescents tend to use IM regularly as a tool to maintain relationships and girls especially, use it as a tool to socialise (Jennings & Wartella, 2004; Lenhart, Rainie, & Lewis, 2001). The mobile phone or cell phone, which is another example of an SIT-based communication, has become an established medium of technical, social and commercial communication in South Africa. It has given rise to the development and vast growth of a mobile youth culture who consider it an essential tool for communicating (Bosch, 2008). In South Africa, instant messages may be sent via mobile phone using one of two methods: MXit and the SMS (short messaging service). MXit and the SMS are considered convenient tools of communication as an ongoing conversation in the form of a text message may be maintained in the present (Yoshii, Matsuda, Habuchi, Dobashi, Iwata, & Kin, 2002).

Bibliography: leaves 256-293. / xii, 293 leaves : col. ill. ; 30 cm. / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library. / Explores the intricacies of girls' micro-social lived realities within larger macro-social contexts and the notion of identity as process by centring on the process of 'self-making' by ten teenage girls, living in Adelaide, South Australia in the mid 1990s. The main hypothesis argues for the strategic role of play in the constitution of 'self-making'. This is contextualised within an analytical framework of 'social praxeology', highlighting the importance of social networks to the ways the teenage participants themselves perceived and negotiated subjectivities. Argues that the young participants in this study acquired their sense of cultural (self) identities through three aspects of 'bodily praxis' - place, space and play. While the understandings of the girls and their familial and social groupings provides the focal point to the analysis, these were framed within the perspectives of sixty-five other young people and over fifty significant adults in various social institutions and wider social networks and further contextualised by a reflexive analysis of the research process itself. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, Dept. of Anthropology, 1999

Bibliography: leaves 256-293. / xii, 293 leaves : col. ill. ; 30 cm. / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library. / Explores the intricacies of girls' micro-social lived realities within larger macro-social contexts and the notion of identity as process by centring on the process of 'self-making' by ten teenage girls, living in Adelaide, South Australia in the mid 1990s. The main hypothesis argues for the strategic role of play in the constitution of 'self-making'. This is contextualised within an analytical framework of 'social praxeology', highlighting the importance of social networks to the ways the teenage participants themselves perceived and negotiated subjectivities. Argues that the young participants in this study acquired their sense of cultural (self) identities through three aspects of 'bodily praxis' - place, space and play. While the understandings of the girls and their familial and social groupings provides the focal point to the analysis, these were framed within the perspectives of sixty-five other young people and over fifty significant adults in various social institutions and wider social networks and further contextualised by a reflexive analysis of the research process itself. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, Dept. of Anthropology, 1999

Doctorat en sciences psychologiques / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished