I have been awarded a SOURCE Summer 2020 Research Assistant to support a new research project on Generation Z and Media!

Project Description

How does Generation Z consume media, and how does that media influence their everyday conversations? Scholars have previously examined how media is appropriated in face to face everyday talk (Beers Fagersten, 2012; Duff, 2002; Sierra, 2016a,b, 2019; Tovares, 2006, 2007, 2012). I am completing the revisions for my first book, Millennials Talking Media with Oxford University Press, in which I examine how and why American Millennials reference a wide variety of media (TV shows, films, videogames, Internet memes, books, songs, etc.) in their everyday conversations. For my second book, I will extend this research to examining how Generaztion Z (or “Zoomers”) use media in their everyday life. I will use this grant to provide my students with an opportunity to conduct research on their own generation, Generation Z, and potentially on their own communicative behavior.

What the student research assistants will be doing this summer:

1) Conducting a literature review primarily on current research on Generation Z and their use of media
2) Reviewing and coding conversations that my undergraduate students have recorded and transcribed for my classes, for media references and talk about media
3) Audio- and/or video-recording and transcribing their own conversations among their friends (with consent from all involved) for media references and talk about media, in the tradition of participant-research in the interactional sociolinguistic methodology