Civic Life Online

The relationship of participation in online communities to civic and political engagement. Young people today have grown up living substantial portions of their lives online, seeking entertainment, social relationships, and a place to express themselves. It is clear that participation in online communities is important for many young people, but less clear how this translates into civic or political engagement. This volume examines the relationship of online action and real-world politics. The contributors discuss not only how online networks might inspire conventional political participation but also how creative uses of digital technologies are expanding the boundaries of politics and public issues. Do protests in gaming communities, music file sharing, or fan petitioning of music companies constitute political behavior? Do the communication skills and patterns of action developed in these online activities transfer to such offline realms as voting and public protests? Civic Life Online describes the many forms of civic life online that could predict a generation's political behavior. Contributors Marina Umaschi Bers, Stephen Coleman, Jennifer Earl, Kirsten Foot, Peter Levine, Kathryn C. Montgomery, Kate Raynes-Goldie, Howard Rheingold, Allen Schussman, Luke Walker, Michael Xenos

The relationship of participation in online communities to civic and political engagement. Young people today have grown up living substantial portions of their lives online, seeking entertainment, social relationships, and a place to express themselves. It is clear that participation in online communities is important for many young people, but less clear how this translates into civic or political engagement. This volume examines the relationship of online action and real-world politics. The contributors discuss not only how online networks might inspire conventional political participation but also how creative uses of digital technologies are expanding the boundaries of politics and public issues. Do protests in gaming communities, music file sharing, or fan petitioning of music companies constitute political behavior? Do the communication skills and patterns of action developed in these online activities transfer to such offline realms as voting and public protests? Civic Life Online describes the many forms of civic life online that could predict a generation's political behavior. Contributors Marina Umaschi Bers, Stephen Coleman, Jennifer Earl, Kirsten Foot, Peter Levine, Kathryn C. Montgomery, Kate Raynes-Goldie, Howard Rheingold, Allen Schussman, Luke Walker, Michael Xenos

A broad theory of civic life that asks the question "What should we do?" and shows how to ask it well for civic engagement. People who want to improve the world must ask the fundamental civic question: "What should we do?" Although the specific issues and challenges people face are enormously diverse, they often encounter problems of collective action (how to get many individuals to act in concert), of discourse (how to talk and think productively about contentious matters), and of exclusion. To get things done, they must form or join and sustain functional groups, and through them, develop skills and virtues that help them to be effective and responsible civic actors. In What Should We Do?, Peter Levine, one of America's leading scholars and practitioners of civic engagement, identifies the general challenges that confront people who ask the citizens' question and explores solutions. Ultimately, his goal is to provide a unified theoretical foundation for effective civic engagement and citizen action. Levine draws from three rich traditions: research on collective action by Elinor Ostrom and her colleagues, work on deliberation and discourse by Jürgen Habermas, and the nonviolent social movements led by Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. Using real-world examples, he develops a theory of citizen action that can effectively wrestle with these problems so that they don't destabilize movements. A broad theory of civic life, What Should We Do? turns from the question of what makes a society just to the question of how to relate to our fellow human beings in a context of injustice. And it offers pragmatic guidance for people who seek to improve the world.

An investigation of how governments, organizations, and groups use the Internet to promote civic and political engagement among young people. There has been widespread concern in contemporary Western societies about declining engagement in civic life; people are less inclined to vote, to join political parties, to campaign for social causes, or to trust political processes. Young people in particular are frequently described as alienated or apathetic. Some have looked optimistically to new media—and particularly the Internet—as a means of revitalizing civic life and democracy. Governments, political parties, charities, NGOs, activists, religious and ethnic groups, and grassroots organizations have created a range of youth-oriented websites that encourage widely divergent forms of civic engagement and use varying degrees of interactivity. But are young people really apathetic and lacking in motivation? Does the Internet have the power to re-engage those disenchanted with politics and civic life? Based on a major research project funded by the European Commission, this book attempts to understand the role of the Internet in promoting young people's participation. Examples are drawn from Hungary, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, and the United Kingdom—countries offering contrasting political systems and cultural contexts. The book also addresses broader questions about the meaning of civic engagement, the nature of new forms of participation, and their implications for the future of civic life.

This open access book provides the theoretical and pedagogical foundations for a promising new approach to civic education: using social media to teach civics. While many measures indicate that youth civic engagement has long been in decline, many of these measures fail to take into account all of the ways that youth can interact with civic life. One of these understudied ways is through social media, including platforms like Twitter, where young people have the opportunity to encounter the news, engage with people in power, and bring attention to the needs in their community. Throughout this volume, Chapman explores how and why teachers can use social media to teach civics, as well as how it might meet the needs of students in ways other approaches do not.

We are born, live, and die with technologies. This book is about the role technology plays in sustaining narratives of living, dying, and coming to be. Contributing authors examine how technologies connect, disrupt, or help us reorganize ways of parenting and nurturing life. They further consider how technology sustains our ways of thinking and being, hopefully reconciling the distance between who we are and who we aspire to be. Finally, they address the role technology plays in helping us come to terms with death, looking at technologically enhanced memorials, online rituals of mourning, and patterns of grief enabled through technology. Ultimately, this volume is about using technology to reimagine the art of life.

The roles that media play in the lives of children and adolescents, as well as their potential implications for their cognitive, emotional, social and behavioral development, have attracted growing research attention in a variety of disciplines. The Routledge International Handbook of Children, Adolescents and Media analyses a broad range of complementary areas of study, including children as media consumers, children as active participants in media making, and representations of children in the media. The handbook presents a collection that spans a variety of disciplines including developmental psychology, media studies, public health, education, feminist studies and the sociology of childhood. Essays provide a unique intellectual mapping of current knowledge, exploring the relationship of children and media in local, national, and global contexts. Divided into five parts, each with an introduction explaining the themes and topics covered, the handbook features 57 new contributions from 71 leading academics from 38 countries. Chapters consider vital questions by analyzing texts, audience, and institutions, including: the role of policy and parenting in regulating media for children the relationships between children’s’ on-line and off-line social networks children’s strategies of resistance to persuasive messages in advertising media and the construction of gender and ethnic identities The Handbook’s interdisciplinary approach and comprehensive, international scope make it an authoritative, state of the art guide to the nascent field of Children’s Media Studies. It will be indispensable for media scholars and professionals, policy makers, educators, and parents.

This book is a collection of articles that reflect on various connectivities between art and social justice and media which are pertinent to studying contemporary societies. How different forms of media and art, in the broadest possible meaning of these terms, reflect on, relate to, and campaign for social justice is an important topic to consider as artists, academics and activists. The subject matter of the book is also contextualized, with attention being paid to historical, cultural and communication factors, and with chapters referencing situations and collaborations in Brazil, Cyprus, Greece and South Africa. This is the first time that such a broad range of contexts are being considered together within the pursuit of studies on art and social justice. Furthermore, this book concentrates on how different art forms are manifest, in relation to social justice issues in an ever-changing world mediated by the Internet. How much mobilization happens online through art and media, and how much happens in ‘reality’ (offline) are issues explored at length with regard to youth and participation in social change.