Media consumption and the processes of recognition among young people: The Twilight case

This paper analyses the relationship between media consumption and social recognition by illustrating the outcomes of a qualitative research study carried out in the Veneto Region (Italy) in 2012. This research regards the fruition, by the youth audience, of the cinematographic product titled Breaking Dawn, Part 2, the last episode of the literary and film saga Twilight. The investigation was divided into two phases: the first phase consisted in 10 participant observation sessions during movie showings; the second phase consisted of 20 in-depth interviews with young men and women from 16 to 25 years old. The analysis focuses on some crucial issues of the relationship between young people and media products, such as emotional involvement while watching a movie, identification processes with the main characters, and gender differences in fruition. As a result, the research shows that seeing the movie led to the majority of the interviewees being involved in an eminently social dimension. As a matter of fact, young people show a significant need to share the contents of cultural consumption, a need that therefore affects the processes of recognition within the community or group to which they belong. This mainly concerns the peer group in which young people express their emotions by using the same shared cultural codes.