Hauge, Chelsey
Research
Global Networks, Local Reels: Social Media, Civic Education, and Mobility in Transnational Youth Media
Scores of youth media programs operate globally in the hope that media engagement will foster voice and empowerment for the young people involved, yet there is little understanding of the ways in which the media production and pedagogical practices of these programs are situated within broader discussions on media, development, literacy, and globalization. My research is about relational mobility in youth media, and attends specifically to a transnational youth media and development program in rural Nicaragua run by Plan International and Amigos de las Americas. Through video production, diverse youth narrate complicated stories about agency and mobility in a globalized world, stories that offer both resistance and reification of global narratives about hope, youth, and mobility. The task, and the youth's relationship to each other, is fraught: there is an insistence that they work together, that North American, Dominican and urban Nicaraguan youth have the right to enter into collaboration with rural Nicaraguan youth and communities and have a voice in the creation of videos and their subsequent sharing through in a variety of mediated spaces. There is an explicit insistence that youth have a story to tell, that that story is indeed tell-able through new media practices and that the story, told in new media, is related to their becoming leaders, activists, and young people involved in "development", or "civic engagement". This research explores these paradoxes, focusing on how youth media makers negotiate agency and mobility in media production, and how their media productions themselves are shaped by diverse and complicated mobilities.
With my research, I aim to achieve a better understanding of the ways in which mobility is constructed for youth in programs that explicitly work on themes of social change, justice, and development at the transnational level. I would like to understand how global and local flows shape the material practices of youth media producers, and the ways in which the mobilities of media producers are both fostered and constrained by the pedagogical practices of youth media organizations, producers, and communities.
I decided to pursue my PhD because, after experiences working with non profits and action oriented groups, I figured out that I am most passionate about research and theory. I am very excited about and interested in the ways in which transnational groups of youth move through and create media, and hope to continue to be involved with and work with global youth movements and media throughout my research career.
I came to UBC for several reasons. Primarily, there a number of senior scholars and other students working in similar areas with whom I can collaborate and learn who have interests similar to my own. This has been key to developing my ideas and identifying my own interests. Also, as a native Californian who was living in New York City, I was excited about being back on the beautiful West Coast!
Get to know people! Join groups! Work on research projects! Attend talks! It's so easy to isolate yourself, and then you lose out on the riches that graduate school can offer. And, of course - say no to drama. For whatever reason, grad students seem to love drama, it's super easy to get caught up in, and your life is so much better without it.
