الشباب في دولة الإمارات والشبكات الاجتماعية الافتراضية: مقاربة للتمثّلات والاستخدامات

Abstract

Youths in the United Arab Emirates and the virtual social networks: an approach to representations and uses. This article is about the use of Internet by the youths in The United Arab Emirates (UAE), away from the dominating theoretical paradigms, which restrict it to the technological determinism and the uses and gratifications. We try, in this study, to explain how possession of nearly the same technological equipments by the youths did not lead to the unification of uses and did not produce homogenization of these uses. This is due not only to the differences in the technical skills of the users but also to the socio-cultural context of the use and the Internet representations and its applications: Blogging, Face book, Twitter and YouTube. This research tries also to answer the following question: does the Internet interrupt the daily social relationships of the youths or does it reproduce them? Does the cyberspace put the youths away from their reality or enhance their connection to it including its symbols, values, conceptions and feelings?.