New Media and Youth Political Action

To rigorously consider the impact of new media on the political and civic behavior of young people, The MacArthur Research Network on Youth and Participatory Politics (YPP) developed and fielded one of the first large-scale, nationally representative studies of new media and politics among young people. The two principal researchers for the survey component of the YPP, Cathy J. Cohen of the University of Chicago and Joseph Kahne of Mills College, oversaw a research team that surveyed nearly 3,000 respondents between the ages of 15 and 25 years of age. Unlike any prior study of youth and new media, this study included large numbers of black, Latino, and Asian American respondents, which allows for unique and powerful statistical comparisons across race with a focus on young people.Until now there has been limited opportunity and data available to comprehensively explore the relationship between new media and the politics of young people. One of the few entities to engage in this type of rigorous analysis has been the Pew Internet and American Life Project. The YPP study expands on this field-leading work by including an extensive battery of items addressing participatory politics and adequate numbers of participants from different racial and ethnic groups, thus allowing for analysis of how different groups of young people were engaged with new media in the political realm.The YPP study findings suggest that fundamental changes in political expectations and practices may be occurring -- especially for youth. The analysis of the data collected reveals that youth are taking advantage of an expanded set of participatory practices in the political realm in ways that amplify their voice and sometimes their influence, thus increasing the ways young people participate in political life. The YPP researchers label this expanded set of opportunities and actions participatory politics

From Page to Stage to Screen and Beyond

A group of Chicago youth media organizations have embarked on an evaluation process with adult program alumni to assess the degree to which hands-on media production and dissemination contributes to developing productive, independent, and engaged citizens. This report sets the stage for the evaluation, which began in late 2012 and will run through 2013, highlighting the work of youth media organizations in Chicago and exploring six dimensions, or outcome areas, that youth media organizations work within: journalism skills, news/media literacy, civic engagement, career development, youth development, and youth expression

Addressing Radicalisation into the Classroom - A New Approach to Teacher and Pupil Learning

This article examines one response to the UK Governments directive that radicalisation and extremism should be tackled in all UK secondary schools. The small scale study, which is set in the broader literature of teaching often difficult PHSE topics to young people in secondary school and also the use of simulations as tools for learning in the classroom, analyses the responses of teachers to being trained with and using ‘Zak’ a bespoke research based simulation on the radicalisation process. An analysis of the teacher’s’ responses indicated that it was recognised that the principales of adults manipulating children, whether for sexual gratification or radicalisation, are considered to be very important topics for staff working with young people in school settings to address. It was also recognised as to be a flexible learning tool which enabled various pathways to be explored with young people in lessons to explore and raise issues regarding many aspects of e- safety, not just radicalisation. Additionally, the teachers remarked that the social media ‘Facebook’ format of the simulation was appreciated by the young people and this appeal resulted in their immersion with it as a teaching aid. Also of significance was how the ‘Zak’ package was delivered into schools with the staff reporting that the inter-professional training delivered by specialist police trainers and the accompanying materials enhanced the learning and confidence of the teachers on this multi-faceted and complex topic

Transitions and shifting understandings of writing: Building rich pictures of how moving from school to university is experienced through exploration of students’ discourses of writing

In a time of economic constraints and increasing competition for places, negotiating “the transition” from school to university has become crucial for students’ educational success. Writing holds a dominant place in the academy as a mechanism of assessment. Therefore, exploring the writing practices of students as they move from school to university offers a valuable lens into how students negotiate the complex and multiple demands of moving between educational and disciplinary contexts. This paper will explore what insights an analysis of instantiations of students’ discourses of writing (Ivanič, 2004) can offer to develop a rich picture of how students experience their writing “in transition”. The data presented is taken from an ethnographic-style project that followed a group of British students from A-levels (HSC equivalent) to their second year of university study. Ivanič’s framework of discourses of writing offers a useful analytic tool, allowing analysis of the sets of beliefs and assumptions that students draw on when engaging in and talking about writing and can be applied to different kinds of data collected around students’ writing. Discourses of writing also provide an organising frame for exploring how students’ understandings of writing change as they move between educational and disciplinary contexts. This analysis shows that the ways students’ understand their writing are not only influenced by various discourses, which can change as students move between school and university, but understandings are individual, situated and context-dependent. The role of emotions, students’ “face work” (Goffman, 1967) and the dominant force of assessment emerge as significant areas for further development

AGENT: Alumni growth and engagement across new technologies

The AGENT project aims to use social networking technologies (LinkedIn and Facebook) to support the development of undergraduates’ employability and career development. The focus of the project is on e-mentoring by alumni to provide a ‘bridge’ between individuals whose social ties and connections are weakened by time and distance, whilst at the same time capitalising on the learning opportunities afforded by the widening of social networks. Social networking sites (SNSs) have been shown to provide students with the tools to make connections, build relationships and support personal development. From a social capital perspective, SNSs can support ‘weak ties’ by allowing students to grow a social network from which to draw resources in the form of information, knowledge, advice and expertise that an institution’s alumni can provide. Alumni are a key resource for building professional networking communities that can provide offline as well as online support to students. We report on an on-going JISC project –AGENT (Alumni Growth and Engagement across New Technologies) that explores how Web 2.0 technologies engage alumni, create the sense of belonging, develop more effective and mutually-beneficial alumni-student connections and associated positive social capital outcomes.Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) 2011-201

Life After Youth Media: Insights about Program Influence into Adulthood

* Do the skills, attitudes, and behaviors imparted in youth programs "stick" into adulthood?* If they do, how do they manifest in career, education, and life decisions?* How do the skills, attitudes, and behaviors that youth programs try to impart differ based on program intensity or levels of engagement?* Do these elements look different for people who went through youth media programs versus people who went through other types of youth programs?These are common questions that youth program providers, funders, public officials, and other leading thinkers regularly wrestle with. This report tells the story of a group in Chicago committed to providing quality youth media programming in the city and how, through a collective evaluation, they were able to begin to answer these critical questions

Don’t be stupid : The role of social media policies in journalistic boundary-setting

This document is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis Group in Journalism Studies on 9 May 2018, available online via: https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2018.1467782 Under embargo until 9 November 2019.Social media are now firmly embedded in professional newsrooms, and policies and guidance within these newsrooms have evolved to include social media activities. These policies articulate and expose the underlying assumptions of the role of these new media within the traditional boundaries of the newsroom. Through thematic analysis of the policies of 17 news organizations, this research identifies and explicates the ways in which professional news organizations have moved and reinforced the boundaries of newswork to both include social media, and to bring social media under its control—to the extent of requiring newsworkers to subsume their personal online identities under their professional ones. The research identifies a number of areas of further research, including analysis of compliance with these policies and resistance to them on the part of newsworkers.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio