THE ROLE OF YOUTUBE AND FACEBOOK IN CO-BUILDING AND SHARING MULTIDIMENSIONAL IDENTITIES IN THE CONTEXT OF EUROPEAN INTEGRATION VS. NATIONALIST POLITICS: THE CASE OF ROMANIAN TEENAGERS

Identity negotiation is a complex process determined by different social interactions and relationships from various environments. One of these environments is also represented by social media, where people are more and more present, and where everyone can express their opinions as freely as possible. Thus, in our research we used the content analysis of YouTube videos and Facebook posts, to follow the co-building and sharing of the supranational and national identities. The case discussed is that of Romanian teenagers, for whom it turned out that the European identity is much stronger than the Romanian national identity. Moreover, we discovered that the strengthening of the European identity can be achieved effectively through social media, even at a time when Romania was affected by nationalist politics. The period considered is 2016-2019, and data were collected from 274 teenagers on Facebook and 115 teenagers on YouTube. As a research framework, we chose the approach of the Social Representations Theory, using both quantitative and qualitative techniques for data analysis.