Descrição
Even in highly developed economies, the gaps generated by digital [dis]advantage have been the object of study for over a quarter of a century. Nonetheless, they are persistent even among young adults who many assume to have “grown up digital.” In this research, we push back against assumptions of digital ubiquity for young people living in the U.S. by considering the impacts of digital inequality on aspirational identities, as well as the relationships between digitally mediated activities and academic achievement. Our case study is ideally suited to this purpose as the majority of the students attend a Title 1 School with a majority low-SES population. We take a multi-method approach that we present in two complementary approaches in our analysis of our original survey data with over seven hundred youths with a subset of matched interviews producing qualitative data. Using QCA, we perform a series of sufficiency tests to predict membership in prespecified outcome sets; that is, we assess the degree to which cases characterized by given antecedent conditions exhibit a shared outcome. Doing so allows us to chart our configurations for two academic outcomes related to academic achievement and two outcomes relating to intensity of internet search. In the second part of the analysis we turn to the qualitative data to probe how these patterns shed light on digital and aspirational identity work. Concluding the article, we consider how the nexus between digital activities and aspirational identity work must be addressed both in the U.S. and indeed globally.||Neste artigo, buscamos compreender como a identidade aspiracional pode ser influenciada por atividades digitais. O estudo se baseia em dados originais de pesquisa com mais de setecentos jovens de baixo nível socioeconômico, matriculados em uma escola secundária agrícola na Califórnia, e em um subconjunto de entrevistas correspondentes, que geraram dados qualitativos. Nessa abordagem multi-metodológica, apresentamos duas perspectivas complementares. Na primeira parte, utilizamos análise comparativa qualitativa para realizar uma série de testes de suficiência para prever a ocorrência de dois desfechos relacionados ao desempenho acadêmico e dois desfechos associados à intensidade da pesquisa na internet. Na segunda parte, usamos dados qualitativos para investigar até que ponto esses padrões podem elucidar o nexo entre as atividades digitais e o trabalho de identidade aspiracional. Para melhor compreender as implicações das desigualdades digitais nesses processos, o estudo se apoia no conceito do agentic technological self, o qual fornece um paradigma de selfing.
