Research
OCPYC’s research activity
The Observatory of communication and participation of Youth Cultures (OCPYC) is a research center for the study of contemporary youth phenomena, established in 2010 in the Department of Political, Communication and Social Sciences at the University of Salerno, in Fisciano (SA).
The research interests of the Observatory concern the different areas of the youth studies and the issues that impact on young people’s lives, trough theoretical perspectives, methodologies and techniques both qualitative and quantitative.
In order to reflect the interdisciplinary character of the research on youth, the scientific board and the research team are characterized by a core founding group of scholars from the sociological area, supported by a network of researchers coming from different area, which generally make specific contributions in relation to the multiple objectives of the research and the their main field of belonging.
Since its establishment, the Observatory also conducts the research activities on young people and youth policies within the Permanent Observatory on Youth of the Campania Region; in this context, the studies and the field research are aimed especially at the interconnections between the different spheres of young people's lives and the theoretical and analytical perspectives on social policies, which affect young people.
As a technical-scientific organization supporting the decision making processes of the Campania regional government on youth sector, the research center carries out social research on youth and youth issues concerned with the multi-year and annual programming in the field of youth policies. As part of the development of knowledge through basic research, the observatory elaborates ad hoc analysis, in accordance with the institutional objectives and priority, through monitoring and evaluation of policies and public services for young people.
Publications
Areas:
The search paths of individual thematic areas are based on an exploratory cross-sectional dimension that relates to the world of everyday life of young people. The main areas of study focus on the youth condition and the life perspectives compared to the training paths, work and family of the subject under investigation. The observation is also aimed at knowing the traces of their identity, personality, self-perception, value orientations, meanings, use of the time, civic culture and forms of cultural participation and expression. The Centre looks in several directions and redefines the prospects favoring the understanding that matures by a gradual approach to the world of youth. Following the mixed methods prospect standard and nonstandard approaches are integrated, with combined techniques. A look at which only initial coordinates are provided without pre-defining the objects of observation.
Through the area of participation, OCPG focuses on models and realities existing in the current scenario of juvenile forms of aggregation. Along with the monitoring of traditional participatory methods, such as associations, the interest is extended to new types of social interaction, connection and relations, to reticular configurations and emerging networking processes. The active and participatory dimension of social capital and citizenship is observed in the relations between collective, social and political-institutional actors. The study aims at understanding the diverse expressions of identity of the world of youth, the mechanisms of interaction and relations, both participatory and decision-making oriented, the generative processes of planning, the experiences and activities that interest and create opportunities for young people in Campania. These goals represent the cognitive basis for creating conditions for intra-generational and inter-generational comparison and relations. The numerous lines of research and research-action intend to uncover and integrate young people's input to the processes of social economic and cultural construction, both at local and at regional level.
The study area on languages deals with the communicative action as a complex expressive dimension between language, body and practices, signifiers through which thought, culture, ideologies, styles and habits are expressed. The study of language observes linguistic characterizations and discursive contexts. A specific look is dedicated to online communications (chat, blogs, social networks). The body, as signifier and cultural matrix, is analyzed using the most common and recognizable bodily signs: clothing, makeup, tattoos and various cosmetics. The observation of practices will extend to the rituals, behaviors, patterns of consumption, as monitored in the places of culture, entertainment and leisure.
Monitoring and narrating the art forms that are present in Campania. The goal is to create a dynamic and attentive look to changes in the contemporary world to make the myriad of languages associated with youthful creativity living and productive. Without any limits of genre or form (from tradition to avant-garde, from classical to technological support) the scope of this research is to create a laboratory-archive of great cross-dimension and continuous regeneration. The space of this research is proposed as a documentation and update centre.The study matures in parallel with a real scientific and teaching factory that combines research with an exhibition space dedicated to innovative processes of arts (dynamic archive), in an ongoing confrontation between the many ways of thinking about creativity. The research aims to promote critical and interpretative talents of phenomena inside the current world of creativity, so as to build a training centre to for building at full potential the critical eye of who wants to deal with theory, research and essay writing.
