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The final version of the paper can be found here. IMPORTANT: Relevance to debates on contemporary social networking sites?Readers should note that although it focuses upon LiveJournal as a form of 'social software', as distinct from 'serious' forms of blogging, the paper was written and accepted prior to much of the explosion in popularity of what are now known as 'social networking sites' (SNS) and well before the development of a discrete literature on the use of such sites. In today's terms, LiveJournal often is seen as one of the pioneers of familiar SNS features such as personal profile pages, friends networks, interactive comments and privacy settings. In spite of inevitable differences from one year to the next and one site to the next, I regard many of the findings and conclusions of this paper as highly relevant to developing understandings of the current use by young people of newer SNS such as Facebook, MySpace and Bebo. I hope that readers will agree.Brief references to more recent social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook, as well as updates on figures were included as part of minor amendments made to the paper prior to its final publication in 2007.Thank you for your interest and I hope you enjoy the paper. AbstractSuggestions that the internet has facilitated existing trends towards the increasing disconnection of individuals from substantive communities have been balanced by a variety of empirical case-studies demonstrating evidence of significant communal features on some online discussion forums. While recognising the role of discussion forums in facilitating community, this paper seeks to shift the focus of debate towards the rapidly increasing use of online journal style web logs as a form of social interaction. Ostensibly centred upon the individual rather than the group, yet increasingly interactive and socially oriented, interactive online journals appear particularly consistent with the notion of individualistic, rather than group-centred patterns of sociability. The paper explores this possibility in relation to case study research focused on the recent take-up of online journals by a group of individuals who previously participated in discussion forums associated with a music and fashion subculture known as the goth scene.

This article explores the continuing involvement in youth music and style cultures of older participants through examination of the case study of the goth scene. It does so in the context of a widespread neglect, until recently, of what happens to participants of 'youth cultures' as they move beyond adolescence and also of a growing consensus about the broadening of youth itself as a life course period. Drawing on recent work on older participants in other music and style related groupings, the article uses original qualitative research to examine the developing lives and identities of goths as they become older. Rather than regarding continuing participation as a simple extension of youth, the focus is on the ways participation accompanied and was reconciled with material, domestic and physical elements of developing adult lives. Through reference to the case study, I emphasize the ways the experience of ageing for long-term music and style culture participants can constitute a collective experience.

Recent debate on the conceptualisation of youth cultures has been characterised as an irreconcilable stalemate between materialist defenders of a version of subcultural theory derived from the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies and post-subcultural theorists who favour more individualised understandings. This article suggests that, beneath this façade lies a more complex and reconcilable debate and that it may be time to move beyond the polarising presence of the CCCS as primary reference point for the discussion. Turning to substance, I go on to examine how enduring areas of disagreement within the debate can be resolved, establishing ways forward with respect to the interplay between spectacular groupings and individual pathways and the contextualisation of youth cultures, including with respect to material and structural factors. I advocate greater emphasis on the study of collective youth cultures as part of broader biographies as a way forward that can reconcile these substantive strands and draw together insight from across the subcultures/post-subcultures debate.

This article considers young people's identities and privacy on social network sites through reflection on the analogy of the teenage bedroom as a means to understand such spaces.The notion therein of intimate personal space may jar with the scope and complexity of social media and, particularly, with recent emphasis on the challenges to privacy posed by such environments. I suggest, however, that, through increased use of access controls and a range of informal strategies, young people's everyday digital communication may not be as out of control as is sometimes inferred. Recent adaptations of the bedroom analogy indicate that social network sites retain intimacy and that their individual-centred format continues to facilitate the exhibition and mapping of identities. Though an awkward fit, I suggest the bedroom may still help us think through how social network sites can function as vital personal home territories in the midst of multi-spatial patterns of sociability.