Civic engagement quick hits

Where’s the future of activism?

—from the Mother Jones 2008 Student Activism Survey
(more…)

Entry Filed under: digital learning skills, participatory media, social networking

1 comment September 4th, 2008 at 05:04pm Deen Freelon Permalink

Blogistics: A Digital Civic Learning Module

If we may depart from our usual theoretical discussions for a moment, let’s have a look at the web-based curriculum profiled in our recent CLO report. This blogging curriculum, entitled Blogistics, is currently available as an interactive Flash presentation. Here are some questions to think about while navigating through it:

• What works well and what could be improved upon? How effective is this presentation likely to be overall?
• What do you think of format (interactive web-based slideshow) as a delivery vehicle for civic lessons? Might it work better for presenting some learning material than  others?

Of course, feel free to comment on any other salient aspect of the presentation.

Entry Filed under: adviser conversations, digital learning skills

4 comments August 8th, 2008 at 10:05am Deen Freelon Permalink

New Evaluative Framework for Civic Curricula

CLO has just released a new short report outlining an evaluative framework for civic curricula based on the learning categories developed in our previous report, Young Citizens and Civic Learning. Here is the abstract:

This report introduces the work of the Civic Learning Online Project in developing digital media learning tools. The need for identifying specific online learning goals and opportunities is discussed first. This is followed by the introduction of an online curriculum unit, Blogging in Public, which is evaluated in terms of the civic learning opportunities it offers.

After perusing this report, we would appreciate your input on the following questions, as well as any general feedback:

• Do you see any major categories of civic learning which our evaluative framework would exclude? If so, what?
• Do you think civic practitioners are likely to find our framework useful? What can we do to make it more useful for them?

Entry Filed under: adviser conversations, civic learning goals, participatory media

3 comments August 8th, 2008 at 10:01am Deen Freelon Permalink

Two paradigms of civic learning

We’d like to get a discussion started on our latest report, a literature review/think piece on generational differences in civic engagement practices. Here’s the abstract:

How can civic education keep pace with changing political identifications and practices of new generations of citizens? We examine research on school-based civic education in different post-industrial democracies with the aim of deriving a set of core learning categories. Most school-based approaches reflect traditional paradigms of dutiful citizenship (DC) oriented to government through parties and voting, with citizens forming attentive publics who follow events in the news. While this model may appeal to some young people, research suggests that it produces mixed learning outcomes, and may not capture the full range of learning and engagement styles of recent generations of citizens. We expand upon these conventional learning categories by identifying additional civic learning opportunities that reflect more selfactualizing (AC) styles of civic participation common among recent generations of youth who have been termed digital natives. Their AC learning styles favor interactive, networked activities often communicated with participatory media production such as videos shared across online networks. The result is an expanded set of learning categories that can be used to design, document, and compare civic learning in different environments from schools to online communities.

If possible, please have a look at the full paper. But even if you don’t have time to read the whole thing, I’ve included a couple discussion questions that should make sense based solely on the abstract:

• Have you seen the AC and DC styles reflected in your own research or anecdotal observations of school civics programs or young people themselves? If not, how would you characterize the new brand of civic engagement popular among youth? Are there other conceptualizations of youth civic engagement not mentioned in the paper we should be aware of?
• The authors mention Obama very briefly in the paper, suggesting that the youth enthusiasm for his campaign (particularly as expressed through participatory media) defies the typical AC/DC distinction. Would it be more accurate to conceptualize the Obama campaign as an exception to the rule or as a hybrid of the two styles (AC methods in pursuit of DC ends)? Looking toward the future, do you expect that digital media will continue to occupy the AC end of the civic spectrum, or will they diffuse evenly across AC and DC as they becomes more integrated into everyday life?

Entry Filed under: adviser conversations, conceptions of citizenship

1 comment July 15th, 2008 at 03:02pm Deen Freelon Permalink

Digital media: what is it good for?

CLO is a bit late to this particular conversation, but I wanted to spotlight the ongoing dust-up in the civic/political blogosphere over a recent Christian Science Monitor op-ed by Sally Kohn, a youth civic practitioner. The piece, titled “Real Change Happens Offline,” makes a number of controversial claims, some more defensible than others: (more…)

Entry Filed under: adviser conversations, participatory media

3 comments July 15th, 2008 at 03:01pm Deen Freelon Permalink

Success and failure in online civic engagement

What determines whether attempts at online youth civic engagement succeed or fail? Eszter Hargittai tackles a question very similar to this one in her recent contribution to a discussion of Clay Shirky’s latest book, Here Comes Everybody. But you don’t need to have read the book to apply Hargittai’s core insight to the issues we’ve been discussing on this blog: (more…)

Entry Filed under: adviser conversations, digital learning skills, participatory media

10 comments June 25th, 2008 at 03:39pm Deen Freelon Permalink

Civic life, online and off

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. (more…)

Entry Filed under: adviser conversations, conceptions of citizenship

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

PSO Programming

We are currently developing PSO media skills curricula at both our partnering organizations, such as the YMCA, and through the CCCE’s Becoming Citizens program (http://depts.washington.edu/ccce/civiceducation/citizens.html). However, we would love to hear our project advisor’s ideas on the following:

What are some of the programmatic pieces you feel we might want to be sure to include to go along with the PSO website?

What are some of the media pieces that you think we should teach?

Finally, what kind of youth development philosophy would you encourage?

Entry Filed under: adviser conversations, digital learning skills

4 comments June 10th, 2008 at 12:19pm Toby Campbell Permalink

YouTube Politics - Hillary Clinton

In my last post, I discussed key YouTube videos about Barack Obama. In this post, I will be discussing some of Hillary Clinton’s videos.

Hillary Clinton has been much less active on YouTube than Barack Obama. However, there have been some very notable videos posted both by her and by others outside of her campaign. This video is one her campaign released as a commercial before the Texas primary. It received a large amount of media attention and was considered very controversial. The video is called “Children,” and has received 960,000 views as of the posting of this blog, making it the most viewed video Hillary Clinton has posted.

The next video was released in March 2007, making it one of the first viral videos of the 2008 election cycle. This famous mashup combines Apple Computer’s 1984 Super Bowl commercial with one of Hillary Clinton’s speeches in an attempt to paint her as “Big Brother.” The video, titled “Think Different,” has witnessed over 5 million views to date.

This last video is an example of how YouTube can amplify the media echo chamber. In late March, Hillary Clinton was caught exaggerating about sniper fire she encountered during a trip to Bosnia while she was the First Lady. Users of YouTube were quick to post news clips about the gaffe, which quickly spread throughout the internet. This video currently has over 1 million views.

Next week I will look at videos relating to John McCain.

Entry Filed under: participatory media, videos

Add comment May 28th, 2008 at 09:23am jonhickey Permalink

Lance Bennett on rethinking civic learning standards

Lance Bennett (Civic Learning Online project director) discusses the citizen identity shift and implications for civic learning in on and offline environments. If social identities and learning preferences are changing among digital natives, shouldn’t we rethink how young people are introduced to civic life?  (more…)

Entry Filed under: civic learning goals, digital learning skills

Add comment May 18th, 2008 at 11:30am Lance Bennett Permalink