Socialization

[Autom. eng. transl.] The paper analyzes the passage (Besozzi, 2006) from a model of socialization of a transmissive and integrationist nature, referring substantially to a systemic perspective of society, of which Talcott Parsons (1951.1955) is assumed as a reference author, to a communication model , which developed thanks to the reflection of symbolic interactionism (Mead, 1966; Blumer, 1969) and phenomenology (Schutz, 1979; Berger and Luckman, 1969; Berger, Berger, Kellner, 1973). In the first model, socialization presents itself as a meeting place between the individual and society, because it makes the first "adequate" to the second, that is, able to respond effectively to the system's role expectations: this is only possible, however, if the existence of shared social and cultural issues that represent the content of socialization. The "fall of the great narratives" (Lyotard, 1979) has led to a profound change in the social scenario characterized by the presence of points of view that are also contradictory, therefore with ambivalence and uncertainty. The individual then emerges who no longer has a relationship of dependence with respect to the social structure, from which he receives through the process of socialization a cultural heritage that leads him to the construction of the Self, but of inter-dependence between individuals, groups, associative realities, institutions (Giddens, 1999), in which the individual is capable of symbolic production which, through social interactions, builds a personal process of socialization (self-socialization) whose outcome is the construction of an original identity. The advent of digital media has obviously widened and complexed the panorama of subjects' interaction possibilities: no longer only in presence, but also through the mediation of apparatuses, thus creating paths for constructing the Self in which real and virtual constantly interact. Finally, the contribution focuses on two aspects related to the process of socialization and construction of the Self in the digital age: 1. The possibilities offered by electronic media as a place for research, experimentation, learning, comparison. An example from this point of view can be represented by the activities of cultural production on the net: they can in fact be considered as experimentation of identity in action (Weber, Mitchell, 2008) which, through user feedback, through the activation of a reflexive activity, they help the subject in the process of self-socialization (how can one not hear the echo of the ego in the mirror of Cooley, 1902?). 2. The need to consider that the interaction mediated by electronic media takes place within a social context that defines the possibilities and limits of both the experience and the attribution of meaning to it, and therefore conditions the socialization processes implemented by subjects (Buckingham, 2008).