Engaged Youth » Civic life, online and off

Civic life, online and off

June 25th, 2008 at 11:08am Deen Freelon Permalink

Here at CLO, it perhaps goes without saying that we spend the majority of our time thinking about how digital media can facilitate civic engagement among young people. But focusing on digital media in isolation may ignore some of the ways in which youth view their online and offline worlds as fundamentally continuous. Scholars are increasingly finding that many people (particularly youth) tend not to differentiate sharply between what they do online and in real life (Miller & Slater, 2001; Livingstone, 2003; Freelon, 2008). This perspective raises the possibility that young people may not see the value of online civic engagement efforts if they do not include substantial links to unmediated life.

Youth civic engagement practitioners have already begun to think about and address this challenge. One successful example comes from Dan Pacheco, senior manager of digital products at the Bakersfield Californian, the monopoly paper in Bakersfield, CA. He created Bakotopia, a locally-focused youth portal that integrates an event calendar, classifieds, social networking, blogging and more. Over the course of two years the site accrued a solid user base, and Pacheco decided to supplement it with a print magazine that would reprint the best user-contributed content. Somewhat counterintuitively, he found that the magazine began to drive online content production, as content authors enthusiastically jockeyed for a limited number of print column inches.

Although Bakotopia’s mission is not specifically civic, there is much we can learn from its successes. First, by integrating offline and online aspects of everyday life through its primary content (blogs, classifieds, photos, etc.), the site has drawn together a young public around the shared experience of living in Bakersfield. Further, by promising to publish the strongest online content in the print magazine, it has managed to inspire many members of that public to communicate publicly with one another. However, not much of Bakotopia’s content would be considered “civic” under most scholarly definitions. Content authors and commenters appear to be concerned predominantly with the latest news about music, fashion, local entertainment events, and gossip.

This brief look at a thriving local youth site raises several discussion questions for us as scholars of youth civic engagement:

How can youth civic sites (YCSs) best connect the offline and online interests of their audiences? Do you agree that this is a major priority for online youth engagement?
What role should local institutions such as schools, community centers, civic organizations, etc. play in reinforcing the skills and attitudes learned on YCSs? Are they necessary or can YCSs get along fine without them?
How can YCSs leverage the allure of entertainment and other non-civic topics and allow youth to express themselves relatively freely without devolving into a completely non-civic space like Myspace or Digg?

Entry Filed under: adviser conversations, conceptions of citizenship

4 Comments Add your own

1. Lance Bennett | June 29th, 2008 at 8:03 am

The strategy outlined in the successful youth news site seems important: make it inclusive of lots of interest areas. The idea of feeding content back to print publication is an interesting twist. I would like to know why this is so attractive.

At present we tend to distinguish between civic sites and social and commerce sites. Part of the reason may be that the social and commerce sites are not designed to facilitate large scale (and often not even small scale) political organizing and action.

At the same time, keeping civic sites active requires addressing more than just politics. Teens need places for music, art, events and sports — and for learning new media skills as well.

Perhaps seemingly disparate (civic and social) spheres will merge so that different activities can occur effortlessly in one kind of place. IN some ways this is happening. Political applications are being written for facebook, and the 2008 election is alive and well on youtube.

But how to find or start a resource rich network to address a community issue — share the activities of that network with other community organizations and networks? These possibilities still seem to require civic sites with public networking tools.
2. Deen Freelon | July 2nd, 2008 at 10:30 am

Interesting points, Lance. It may be that larger community sites such as Facebook and Youtube tend to facilitate only limited forms of civic engagement such as political discussion and bumper-sticker-style expression since civic engagement is not their core focus. The value-add of civic sites may be at least twofold in that case: 1) they offer specialized online tools that non-civic sites don’t, and 2) local civic sites allow individuals in a given community to connect and work together on issues of mutual interest. But there may be a tradeoff here: if only those youth already convinced of the value of civic engagement are likely to visit civic sites on their own, larger community sites will be comparatively more likely to attract disengaged youth who might be responsive to targeted engagement efforts. I can’t wait to see the results of our first user surveys on this question . . .
3. Howard Rheingold | July 7th, 2008 at 10:17 am

Community map mashups are one good way to contact online tools and literally where you live. Where can you skateboard without being busted? Where are public toilets? Places to hang out without being hassled? Cool places to eat? Music venues that let minors in?
4. Lance Bennett | July 14th, 2008 at 6:39 am

I agree. Mapping is a super technology for connecting community activities and issues. Surdna Foundation is funding a national youth community resource inventory. It would be good to automate this in the future — that way it can be continuously updated — and feed into other things.