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
July 15th, 2008 at 03:02pm
Deen Freelon
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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
June 25th, 2008 at 11:08am
Deen Freelon
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Differences about citizen identity and the engagement goals directly shape the most basic design decisions. Thus, a model based on organizations sponsoring issue pages and bringing kids to those orgs (a more conventional civic model) – lead us to wanting kids to see the whole “news” site when they log in.
By contrast, a sense that personal networking better reflects kids identity preferences and describes emerging forms of political action leads to thinking that kids should see their profile page first and move from there into the site.
The challenge is to find ways to make moving out into the site – visiting/joining groups etc.– attractive to the kids. If the site is going to do something new, it is in figuring out how to make this movement attractive.
Entry Filed under: PSO website development, conceptions of citizenship
November 5th, 2007 at 05:53am
Lance Bennett
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