Generation Z in a Digitally Native World: Culture, Activism, and Identity (book proposal) (book proposal)
USA
Organization: IGI Global
Event: book proposal
Generation Z has emerged as a strong disruptor redefining global politics, culture, activism, identity, and education through their deep and exclusive digital fluency. Generation Z has challenged traditional political structures and elite dominance through digital activism and leaderless movements, leading to ignited controversies and intergenerational dissonance. Through digital means such as Discord servers, VPN networks, livestreams, memes, and even Large Language Models, Gen Z has successfully manoeuvred existing technology both as a medium of expression and a mechanism of agency. Their activism also takes place in algorithmic environments that subtly alter political momentum, visibility, and influence, transforming algorithms into invisible but powerful political actors. This youth has turned online platforms into infrastructures of new forms of democracy, evasive of state panopticons. Gen Z’s activism is marked by the unseen logics of decentralized, transparent, and post-ideological processes due to the generation’s withdrawal from traditional, ideology-driven political parties. Their hybrid forms of protest—emerging from virtual networks and extending into physical spaces—have transformed traditionally hierarchical structures into something increasingly obsolete. For Gen Z, the Internet is the new public sphere—a site combining political deliberation, collective identity, and private autonomy online. Gen Z approaches education, work, and identity in a way that indirectly prompts, and lately directly challenges, institutions to revisit the face of authority, pedagogy, identity, and belonging in the digital realm.
The present volume, Generation Z in a Digitally Native World: Culture, Activism, and Identity, seeks to explore the ways in which Generation Z contributesin shaping today's society, democracy, politics, and culture. It specifically aims at exploring how the generation negotiates digitality, activism, and belonging from existing interdisciplinary perspectives e.g., education, cultural studies, media, and sociology, and so on.
Suggested Themes and Topics
Contributors are invited to submit theoretical, empirical, or comparative chapters engaging with but not limited to the following areas:
I. Understanding Generation Z
- Identity formation, values, and worldview in a hyperconnected era
- Generational psychology and learning styles: how Gen Z learns, thinks, and processes information
- Intergenerational comparisons with Millennials, Gen X, and Boomers
- The language of change: protest, inclusion, and self-expression
II. Education and Learning
- AI-assisted learning, gamification, and hybrid classrooms
- Gen Z in higher education: engagement, motivation, and skepticism toward institutional models
- Teacher–student relations and reconfigurations of authority
- Educational inequality and the digital divide
- Language learning, translanguaging, and digital literacy
III. Digital Culture and Mental Health
- Social media and selfhood: the aesthetics of identity and belonging
- Mental health, motivation, and community in the digital age
- Gender, sexuality, and intersectionality among Gen Z youth
- Faith, ethics, and post-religiosity: pluralism and spirituality online
- Memes, influencers, and digital storytelling as cultural discourse
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IV. Activism, Democracy, and Technology
- Plugged democracy: digital protest, civic participation, and new forms of governance
- Online movements and hybrid activism in global and local contexts
- Surveillance, privacy, and algorithmic control
- Digital citizenship, misinformation, and ethics
- Humor, virality, and online political resistance
V. Work, Culture, and Global Perspectives
- Gen Z and the redefinition of work, purpose, and productivity
- Global South perspectives: digital activism, education, and inequality
- Migration, mobility, and digital belonging
- Postcolonial and decolonial readings of Generation Z
- Cross-cultural case studies (e.g., Morocco, Nepal, India, Nigeria, Brazil, Indonesia)
VI. Technology, and Innovation in a Gen Z World
- AI, Data, and Algorithmic Cultures
- Cybersecurity, Surveillance, and Digital Rights
- Internet of Things (IoT) and the Hyperconnected Generation
- Gaming, Virtual Worlds, and Emerging Technologies
- Digital Law, Regulation, and Governance
- Technopolitics and Geo-Digital Power
- Human–Machine Interaction & Extended Realities
- Crypto, Digital Economies & Platform Monetization
https://www.igi-global.com/publish/call-for-papers/call-details/9460
Saad Boulahnane