Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society La Trobe University, Australia.
Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society La Trobe University, Australia.
Soc Sci Med. 2021 May;276:113817. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2021.113817. Epub 2021 Mar 5.
The 21st century has seen the proliferation of technologies and sources of information on issues of all kinds, including sexuality. Amid debates about the role of social media and the internet in mediating sexuality, questions about credible, reliable and objective sources of information have also arisen, particularly in relation to young people's knowledge-seeking. Drawing on theorisations of sexual citizenship, Foucault's notion of the 'episteme', and the work of science and technology studies scholar John Law, this article examines a 'collateral reality' produced by contemporary demands on young people to source, assess and act on sexual health information. Using interviews with 37 young people living in Australia, the analysis identifies a range of approaches to sexual health-seeking practices, key dynamics in the construction of reliability and fact, and the extent and nature of the accommodations young people report making to navigate incomplete and unreliable information. With the contemporary self increasingly framed through the ability to discern truth from falsehood, reality from fake news, these demands and choices have significant implications for qualification as the proper modern citizen. Accommodating information weaknesses and gaps in sexual health information, we argue, produces what we call contemporary 'epistemic citizens'; young people explicitly aware of the limits of official knowledges about sex and sexualities, and of the expectation that individual citizens must either content themselves with officially constituted sexual selves or else seek and enact marginal or unofficial alternatives using sources generally denigrated as unreliable. As we will conclude, current forms of sexual health information and related calls for youth literacy operate as a mechanism for generating a specific modern form of epistemic citizenship. Future sexuality education might consider ways to support even more literate, sophisticated epistemic citizens relieved of the responsibility to piece the truth together on their own, and who in turn feel more included.
21 世纪见证了各种问题的技术和信息来源的激增，包括性问题。在社交媒体和互联网在调解性问题方面的作用的争论中，关于可靠、可信和客观信息来源的问题也出现了，特别是在与年轻人的知识寻求有关的问题上。本文借鉴了性公民身份的理论、福柯的“知识型”概念以及科学技术研究学者约翰·劳的著作，考察了当代年轻人对性健康信息的来源、评估和采取行动的要求所产生的“附带现实”。通过对 37 名居住在澳大利亚的年轻人进行访谈，分析确定了一系列寻求性健康的实践方法，可靠性和事实构建的关键动态，以及年轻人报告为了应对不完整和不可靠的信息而做出的调整的程度和性质。在当代，自我越来越多地通过辨别真假、辨别真假新闻的能力来构建，这些要求和选择对作为合格现代公民的资格产生了重大影响。我们认为，适应性健康信息中的信息弱点和差距，产生了我们所说的当代“认知公民”；年轻人明确意识到官方关于性和性的知识的局限性，以及个人公民必须要么满足于官方构成的性自我，要么利用通常被贬低为不可靠的来源寻求和实施边缘或非官方的替代方案的期望。正如我们将得出的结论，当前的性健康信息形式和相关的青年扫盲呼吁是生成特定现代形式的认知公民身份的一种机制。未来的性教育可能会考虑如何支持更具文化素养、更复杂的认知公民，减轻他们自己拼凑事实的责任，从而让他们感到更受包容。
