Civic Learning Online . . . For Whom?

April 24th, 2008 at 03:50pm Deen Freelon Permalink

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?

Entry Filed under: adviser conversations, digital learning skills