Hi all, I'm following this very interesting thread and I am enthusiastic of some issues that have been raised. I did my PhD on adolescents and their experience of chatlines and when I was in Chicago last year I had the impression that the Italian context was very far from the international one because here there is stigmatization which derives from a diffused sense of alarm towards CMC. Obviously, who does not use CMC is more likely to feel distant from it, whereas those who know CMC have a more relaxed attitude, even among young people. During my interviews I had a sensation which still goes around my head: how do young people relate CMC and cultural capital? I try to be as clear as possible: Cultural capital is given -also- by the number and the quality of relationships you have in your social context, which you derive from your family, from school, from work etc. The sensation I had during my interviews was that your cultural capital could not be influenced by online relationships, and if you have a lot of online relationships, then your cultural capital could even be poorer. In other words, if you belong to higher stratification you are not expected to have online relationships (because you do not need to, or because you cultural capital would be in some ways affected by this?) and viceversa. This is clearly connected with stigmatization which is connected to general alarm towards CMC, which depends on the fact of being a daily practice. As long as CMC becomes daily, then social alarms will turn to other technological innovations involving very basic social practises as communication. Ciao, michela P.S. thank you Barry for the plea against jargon, my English is book-based and sometimes I miss something, although I can take the reading of this list as an exercise! ______________________________________ Michela Drusian, PhD Dipartimento di Sociologia Via Cesarotti, 10 I - 35123 Padova tel: +39-049-827 4314 cell: +39-340-2677379 email: michela.drusian@unipd.it web: http://www.sociologia.unipd.it/ ______________________________________