The media are calling 2008 “The Year of the Young Voter.” Whatever you want to call it, something is definitely happening. There’s a level of excitement this country hasn’t seen in a long time. We have an opportunity to show the world that students can self-organize, and actually start working toward a common goal. We don’t claim to have the answer, but if you’re interested in giving it a shot, read on.
Your Revolution is here. Imagine the power of a social utility like Facebook, combined with the ability to register to vote instantly online, and a set of dynamic tools designed for activists and organizers. Your Revolution has created a Facebook application which takes advantage of Washington and Arizona’s new online voter registration legislation. The Facebook application allows the user to register to vote in a matter of minutes directly from their profile.
The application includes a peer pressure aspect as well, as it scans your friends list and cross references the respective secretary of state website to see who is and who has not registered to vote, and puts this in a visual percentage. The application then gives you the opportunity to invite your friends to register to vote. Even if they are not from WA or AZ they can use the Rock the Vote interface which automatically generates the correct form to complete and mail in for every other U.S. state. Check it at: www.yourrevolution.org Needless to say the viral potency of this application the amount of people who will be given the opportunity to register to vote from such an easy platform will be tremendous. We’re taking advantage of the viral potential and huge user base of Facebook to really make a difference in this election, and in politics in the future. The project has already become quite popular, and it’s going to be a serious political force in the months to come, especially among student voters. We’re working successfully with lawmakers in other states to open online voter registration systems (right now, we’re co-authoring legislation in Oregon as part of a wider package of voter access proposals).
We realized, however, that we could accomplish our ultimate goals much better if we built Your Revolution into a more robust application. So, that’s what we did. It now has a full set of features designed specifically for student groups and non-profits. Many activist groups are already using Facebook to manage their projects; we looked at their needs, and developed custom features that allow them to better coordinate with volunteers, organize groups, projects and events, and—most exciting of all—the ability to assign tasks, retain communication with interested individuals, and coordinate with other groups and organizations with similar interests.
A website does not mean that you have a web presence. To be an effective marketer you need to bring the product to the crowd, not let them come you. Facebook has become the most efficient and effective space for increasing and creating visibility.
*68 million users with 250,000 new registrants all day.
*50% of Facebook users are now over the age of 25
* Average Facebook user spends 20 minutes on the site every day, more than Google, MSN, and YAHOO combined.
* Facebook has 85% market penetration in college students
Washington Caucus Example:
Washington State democratic caucuses 2008: On Facebook, one person in our group who spent 90 minutes collecting information and invited 30 people join an event to participate and motivate friends to as well.
*In 4 days over 14,000 people were invited with approximately 2,000 people listed as accepted to attend. Washington State went on to have record numbers at the caucuses all across the state.
* No external evangelism, phone calls, emails or faxes were deployed.
* Over 200 comments, pictures, videos, and testimonials posted.
When discussing how digital media can best support civic engagement among youth, it is important to distinguish between the technical capacities necessary to navigate and manipulate various forms of digital media and the civic skills that allow young people to connect with shared issues. Howard Rheingold offers a helpful starting point with his digital skills curriculum, which attempts to demonstrate how technology can serve as an attractive vehicle for what he calls “public voice.” Public voice, as distinct from private voice, comprises all communicative acts that seek to “inform publics, advocate positions, contest claims, and organize action around issues that [young people] truly care about” (Rheingold, 2008). Positioning public voice within the context of digital media harnesses the latter as a tool to teach young people about the former. Because this specific form of communication does not come naturally to most youth, learning it is presumed to require some direct instruction.
We on the CLO team believe that Howard’s approach shows much promise, but wonder if many of its recommendations are more suited for college students than for teens in high school. For example, might the concept of a “public” be too subtle for some teens to grasp, particularly if said public does not immediately emerge to respond to their attempts to address it? Further, given the undifferentiated epistemological landscape of the internet, in which Google results place paranoid cranks shoulder to shoulder with accredited experts, might some digital natives experience difficulty in critically analyzing web content? How often are these young people asked to articulate and defend their own opinions? The answers to these questions may recommend that the public voice curriculum be revised somewhat for younger learners.
How could the public voice curriculum for a high-school age demographic? What is it reasonable for youth of that age to be able to understand and accomplish, civically speaking?
A second question that has arisen for us relates to the long-term sustainability of the skills learned in these types of curricula. Decades of education research has concluded that students retain only a small fraction of what they learn, particularly if the lessons are not practiced. Therefore, we are strongly interested in suggestions regarding ways to ensure that the civic skills we teach “stick,” as it were, as opposed to beginning and ending in the classroom.
What can be done to ensure that the skills that youth learn in your curriculum become self-sustained habits, rather than one-time lessons?
Considerable research suggests that while schools are still a major predictor of civic engagement, youth do not gain nearly the civic skills we might hope from their experiences at school. Scholars point to a number of reasons for this:
Recent trends in education policy have reduced the time devoted to arts, music, and civic education, in favor of math, reading, and assessment.
A lack of resources often prevents schools from offering programs that enable youth to develop and work on their own civic and political concerns and connect classroom learning with extracurricular activities.
A disconnect in citizenship styles has schools emphasizing a duty-based style of citizenship to young people who are much more accustomed to using expression tools to craft individual identities.
Political pressures lead many teachers and school administrators to limit political discussions and debates, despite evidence suggesting that open classroom and school atmospheres greatly enhance civic learning and engagement.
If young people are not developing civic skills at school, are they doing so elsewhere in their lives? An important question is what role online activities may play in civic learning for the millions of young people online—but most young people only occasionally pursue civic information and activities online, preferring to devote their time to social networking, gaming, and entertainment.
This produces something of a Catch-22: when they offer civic skills, most schools emphasize traditional modes of interacting with government and politics, and they present it in a dry manner. The online world is much more attractive to young people, but only occasionally offers civic learning opportunities.
This situation has us at the CCCE thinking about the potential of the new world of online youth engagement projects, especially as we prepare Puget Sound Off for its upcoming launch. The overarching question we ask ourselves is:
Can online projects create spaces for civic learning that engage young people?
And, more concretely: What functions and features should an online environment have to both hold the attention of young citizens and foster the development of important civic skills?
In developing our digital youth commons, Puget Sound Off, we have striven to make it attractive both to already-engaged youth as well as to those who are not yet quite as involved in civic affairs. It is certainly much easier to facilitate the goals and preferred methods of those who come to civic sites knowing what issues they care about and how to address them than it is to convince relatively disengaged teens that civics is worth their time. Nevertheless, we feel that it is essential to probe the limits of what digital media can do not only to encourage preexisting civic instincts, but also to inspire new commitments to community involvement.
To that end, I would like to raise two issues that might bear on a youth civic site’s ability to attract more than just the usual suspects. First, our informal and anecdotal interactions with youth have revealed that not all of them share the “digital native” orientation so frequently attributed to their generation. Our team has observed, for example, many young people (particularly those from disadvantaged economic backgrounds) experiencing difficulty with skills often taken for granted in discussions of online civic engagement. These include such fundamental competencies as possession of a regular email address and the ability to format blog posts and comments so that they can be easily read. We would like to compile a working list of potential obstacles like these with a rough sense of their relative importance that can help drive the development of training modules aimed at moving disadvantaged youth closer to par with their more empowered peers.
What common technical features that youth civic sites might use pose the most significant obstacles for digitally disempowered youth?
Second, apart from technical considerations, we are concerned that certain elements of youth civic sites—the design scheme, the language used in official communications to visitors, the featured content—may signal to some youth that it is not “for” them. To preempt this possibility, we have already decided to take steps to ensure that minority viewpoints (for multiple definitions of “minority”) are represented on the front page. But are there other steps we might be able to take to make our site more inclusive? And are there any findings that suggest steps we definitely should avoid taking?
What can site creators do to make their sites more inviting to diverse youth demographics?
There are many challenges that surround the engagement of youth in the management and editorial components of youth engagement sites. PSO partners are actively discussing different ways we may be able to succeed in this capacity.
We’re currently partnering with other local organizations to get their youth involved in using the PSO site when it launches, and we are running school-year and summer youth content production teams out of the YMCA. We’re simultaneously engaged in an active discussion about how to develop youth governance of the site. We have been discussing different strategies and possibilities for engaging youth in the management and editorial process, and we would love to spark a conversation about recommended approaches to this issue.
Do we keep youth editorial and governance teams separate, or do we combine them into regional youth teams? Are team members elected by the youth who use the site, or do we recruit them through an application process housed in partnering organizations? When and how do we kick off this process? Feel free to weigh in on the discussion!
I find it very interesting how often people believe that social networking sites simply take off on their own, unaided and without any nurturing. I met with an advocacy group that is creating their own social networking site (of course, we all need our own sites since no other social networking sites exist!) They were so very concerned about the functionality of the site - do the buttons work right, is the navigation good, etc. Great, I said, so why exactly do busy people need more friends and if they do, why do they need to be on your site to have them?
I had just read Britt Bravo’s excellent piece on questions groups should ask themselves about building online communities. I think the questions apply whether one is working within an organization or just with a bunch of friends. The questions are easy and clear, although it’s always astonishing to me how seldom groups actually ask themselves things like, “why would our users/members/participants/donors want or need this new tool?” and “how will we engage people?”
If we want people to come together and build relationships around issues, it’s critically important that we designate people to be what Valdes Krebs calls, “network weavers.” The weavers have to give the network purpose, they have to connect people, stoke conversations, share information and organize on land meetings when necessary (and as
much as I hate them, they are actually necessary!) Too often, we think that these functions are simply going to happen, organizers have to make sure they happen. Communities rarely form themselves, they have to be nurtured. As Seth Godin points out here, online organizing is a crucial, poorly understood, but critical position. If I were counseling a young person interested in a career in social change, I would strongly suggest they train and practice being an online organizer since it includes all of the organizing, listening, facilitating, communicating and connecting skills that will make them successful in whatever else they do.
Using the Internet for games, instant messaging, and Myspace is second nature to many young people, yet the medium’s rich civic potential for this tech-savvy demographic remains untapped. In this video (available below the jump), Lance Bennett discusses the potential for digital media to connect young people with public life.
For more information, an executive summary of our MacArthur-funded work is available here. Puget Sound Off, the Seattle youth media commons website, will launch in mid March. For more info on the site, click here.
For six weeks during the summer of 2007, a diverse group of Seattle-area youth collaborated to design, implement, and advertise a web site intended to help connect local young people to civic opportunities and public life. They directed, filmed, and starred in this video PSA (available below the jump), which communicates the site’s purpose via a creative visual metaphor.
