• 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.

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?

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?

. . . Internet activism is individualistic. It’s great for a sense of interconnectedness, but the Internet does not bind individuals in shared struggle the same as the face-to-face activism of the 1960s and ’70s did. It allows us to channel our individual power for good, but it stops there.

This is great for signing a petition to Congress or donating to a cause. But the real challenges in our society – the growing gap between rich and poor, the intransigence of racism and discrimination, the abuses from Iraq to Burma (Myanmar) – won’t politely go away with a few clicks of a mouse. Or even a million.

Daily Kos, the Nation, and CLO adviser Allison Fine have all articulated thoughtful objections to these and other arguments and assumptions embedded in the piece, and Kohn’s response to her critics highlights some of the deep-rooted philosophical differences between partisan Democrats and leftists steeped in critical theory. But I want to sidestep that debate for the time being to focus on an implicit question running through the entire discussion: what, in civic and political terms, is digital media good for? And what projects are better left to the non-digital world?

Kohn’s critics were as quick to dispute the notion that online politics is somehow inherently atomistic as they were to acknowledge the fact that it will never be sufficient to fulfill the goals of most civic and political projects of any significance. Kohn herself seems to view new media as little more than a narrowly helpful supplement to “real” political activity, the vast majority of which plays out offline. But in light of current theoretical understandings and empirical findings, what ought we to expect the internet to do well, and at what point should we begin to curb our enthusiasm? I think we can all agree that new media has made political contributions, petition-signing, and self-expression easier than ever before, but what about changing hearts and minds, civic participation in the legislative process, engaging the disengaged, and hedging against gross concentrations of power (political, economic, cultural, and other)? This question is so basic that we as scholars run the risk of incorrectly assuming that we all agree on the answers, which is why addressing it directly is crucial.

While it is certainly the case that new technologies, tools and services are leveling the playing field, existing societal position and resources still matter. The question is: when do they matter more or less? Under what circumstances do people with less resources still manage to benefit from the new tools in ways that would have been difficult earlier? What are the examples of mobilization that do not involve people with PhDs, ones with noteable techie know-how or one’s with considerable financial resources either themselves or among those in their networks? There are such examples, certainly, but it would be interesting to see systematically what it is that unites them. What commonality is there among such cases that suggests a true leveling of the playing field that goes beyond allocating more opportunities to those who are already considerably privileged? (On a sidenote, these issues are similar to the ones I raised while discussing Yochai Benkler’s book The Wealth of Networks.)

What is important to understand from a youth civic engagement perspective is that not all youth are equally proficient at using digital media. Terms such as “digital natives” and “DotNets,” used by scholars and civic practitioners alike, imply the opposite when applied broadly to the current generation of adolescents and young adults. A better conceptualization of online youth engagement might begin by observing that only some youth fit the tech-savvy “digital native” archetype, and continue by asking how the digitally disadvantaged can best be brought to the virtual table. As a local example illustrating this divide, members of the CLO team have anecdotally observed alarmingly low levels of email proficiency among some of the low-income youth with whom they have come into contact. Instead of maintaining consistent email addresses, they seem to be caught in a ongoing cycle of email address registration, abandonment, and re-registration fueled by chronic password forgetfulness. Reaching these young people via participatory civic sites will remain a Sisyphean endeavor until they learn to master this most fundamental of online skills.

Much of the breathless internet triumphalism effusing forth from the popular press tends to downplay the strong possibility that preexisting inequalities will, in the absence of action to redress them, persist in online contexts (this is not to imply that Shirky’s book falls into this category; I haven’t read it). This holds true for youth civic sites no less than for any other type of participatory media. In addition to Eszter’s general questions, then, I would like to pose a few of my own:

• What can be done to make online civic spaces more appealing to diverse groups of youth? What are some effective ways to avoid falling into the trap of simply placing a piece of technology into the world and expecting an energized, diverse user base to emerge autonomously?
• What offline structures need to be constructed to ensure that youth civic sites attract more than just the “usual suspects,” i.e. young people who have already bought into the value of civic engagement?
• What other online exemplars devoted to youth engagement can we look to that have managed to navigate these issues with a relative measure of success? What can we learn from them?

Edit: According to a recent report from Scientific American, a new University of Minnesota study has found that

even the least privileged kids have profiles on MySpace and Facebook. And they’re on the internet all the time. That finding goes against past studies that have found a ‘digital divide’ between rich and poor kids.

This looks like a pretty egregious non-sequitir to me, as the fact that poor kids have social network profiles is not evidence of the absence of a digital divide. Eszter, I’d be particularly interested to see what you have to say about this. (Can’t find the actual study write-up, but here’s an interview with the PI.)

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?

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?

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.

The candidate most involved with YouTube is Senator Barack Obama. Obama has been posting far more videos than other candidates and has had some very popular videos posted about him. While there are certainly many factors involved with Obama’s ability to energize young voters, his campaign’s competence with social media has certainly boosted his numbers in this traditionally apathetic constituency.

One of the most entertaining videos that came out last summer was this one, named “Crush on Obama.” While the video is clearly a joke, it brings out Obama’s youth and good looks, which are both assets in a presidential election. This video currently has over 8 million views.

This next video is titled “Yes We Can.” Created by will.i.am of The Black Eyed Peas, this video features a star cast in an inspirational song mirroring one of Barack Obama’s speeches. As of the time of this post, it has been viewed over 14 million times.

This final video is an example of how Obama has used YouTube to respond to widespread criticism. In this case, Obama was attacked because of a clip of his Pastor, Reverend Wright. This now famous speech given on March 18^th in Philadelphia has over 5 million views.

Next week I’ll be exploring some of Hillary Clinton’s more famous videos.