Civic engagement, pedagogy, and information technology on Web sites for youth

Scholars of political socialization are paying increasing attention to how the Internet might help cure the civic disengagement of youth. This content analysis of a sample of 73 U.S.-based civic Web sites for youth introduces a framework for evaluating Web sites’ strategies for fostering active communication for citizenship. We offer the first systematic assessment of the extent to which a broad range of Web sites aim to develop young people’s abilities to use information and communication technology (ICT) as a vehicle for civic participation and to engage with ICT as a policy domain that encompasses issues (such as freedom of speech and intellectual property rights) that shape the conditions for popular sovereignty online. The study finds low levels of interactive features (such as message boards) that allow young people to share editorial control by offering their own content. In addition, few sites employ active pedagogical techniques (such as simulations) that research suggests are most effective at developing civic knowledge, skills, and participation. We also find little attention to ICT policy issues, which could engage budding citizens in debates over the formative conditions for political communication in the information age. We conclude with suggestions for civic Web site designers and hypotheses for user studies to test

Games for civic learning: A conceptual framework and agenda for research and design

Scholars, educators, and media designers are increasingly interested in whether and how digital games might contribute to civic learning. However, there are three main barriers to advancing understanding of games’ potential for civic education: the current practices of formal schooling, a dearth of evidence about what kinds of games best inspire learning about public life, and divergent paradigms of civic engagement. In response, this article develops a conceptual framework for how games might foster civic learning of many kinds. The authors hypothesize that the most effective games for civic learning will be those that best integrate game play and content, that help players make connections between their individual actions and larger social structures, and that link ethical and expedient reasoning. This framework suggests an agenda for game design and research that could illuminate whether and how games can be most fruitfully incorporated into training and education for democratic citizenship and civic leadership

Portrayals of information and communication technology on World Wide Web sites for girls

This study reports a content analysis of 35 World Wide Web sites that included in their mission the goal of engaging girls with information and communication technology (ICT). It finds that sites emphasize cultural and economic uses of ICT, doing little to foster civic applications that could empower girls as citizens of the information age. The study also finds that sites foster a narrow range of ICT proficiencies, focusing mostly on areas such as communication, in which girls have already achieved parity with boys. An examination of the role models portrayed in ICT occupations indicates that the sites show females mainly in elite technology jobs, reversing stereotypical mass media depictions of females in low-status roles in relation to ICT. Employing an original index of ICT knowledge and skills, the study finds that the sites that scored highest both on fostering comprehensive knowledge and skills as well as featuring civic content were general interest Web communities. Ownership (for-profit or not-for-profit) of sites was less important than editorial control: Sites that offered girls a place to contribute their own content were more likely to offer civic material and a broader range of ICT knowledge and skills. We conclude with recommendations for Web site designers to rethink their design strategies and their rationales for closing the gender gap in computing

Using Technology, Building Democracy: How Political Campaigns' Uses of Digital Media Reflect Shifting Norms of Citizenship

As new technologies are becoming increasingly common to the creation, circulation, and reception of political messages in general, the relationships between conceptions of citizenship and media technologies are a vital space of inquiry. Research concerning the intersection of technology and politics is rapidly growing, and has provided much insight into voters' patterns of technology use and the content of campaigns' messages across media technologies, but the ways that digital tools and their content are tied to the norms of political participation and citizenship with political texts remain unanalyzed. This dissertation therefore investigates how political campaigns are using digital media to create and circulate campaign messages, and how these digital messages articulate norms and definitions of participatory citizenship that are currently functioning within a contemporary democratic public. In order to undertake this analysis, I examine a host of campaign texts created during the 2010 midterm election cycle, their technologies of circulation, and their practices of creation. Thus, this research combines methods of textual analysis with ethnographic participant observation within a federal-level election, and in-depth interviews with campaign staffers and political consultants. In doing so, I describe four digitally-mediated phenomena as points of rupture in traditional practices of campaign communication that hold implications for current accounts of citizenship: (1) Digital texts such as microsites, fact-checks, and blogs feature political information that is detailed, contextual, and contingent, and encourages citizens to approach political information from a skeptical perspective; (2) An increased effort to engage citizens in the digital circulation of campaign texts implies new publics of campaign messages and enables forms of action that are simultaneously empowering and intensely constrained; (3) The emergence of a new genre of social media content highlights behind the scenes and digital retail politics emphasizes mobilizing citizens rather than informing or persuading them; (4) Changing practices of how campaigns exert control over public discussion provide novel opportunities to engage in public deliberation, debate, and criticism, but simultaneously limit the scope of policies around which such debate can take place. Collectively, these practices show opportunities for new and shifting forms of citizenship

Why we engage: how theories of human behavior contribute to our understanding of civic engagement in a digital era

This paper brings together literature from behavioral economics, sociology, psychology and communication studies to reveal how civic actors, institutions, and decision-making processes have been traditionally understood, and how emerging media tools and practices are forcing their reconsideration.IntroductionAs digital communication technologies have evolved over the past few decades, the convergence of network structure and accessibility with hardware and software advances has allowed individuals to interact in various, even contradictory, ways. They can explore, hide, reach out, evaluate, connect, negotiate, exchange, and coordinate to a greater degree than ever before. Furthermore, this has translated to an ever-increasing number of users interacting with information in unprecedented ways and, due to device portability, in totally new physical locations. Twitter, Facebook, and Foursquare update each other simultaneously across application platforms with near-real time photos and impressions of places; mobile exercise applications allow users to track their own movements as well as view where others in their geographic vicinity went running; Yelp users can read selective reviews from social network friends and strangers in their community on a specific restaurant; and Facebook friends can see what their peers bought, listened to, and read - from anywhere they are able to access the Internet.  Most of these apps update across platforms enabling both maximum reach across a user’s social group as well as a highly selective direction of information to a subset of their social network. Just as the rapidly evolving landscape of connectivity and communications technology is transforming the individual’s experience of the social sphere, what it means to participate in civic life is also changing, both in how people do it and how it is measured. Civic engagement includes all the ways in which individuals attend to the concerns of public life, how one learns about and participates in all of the issues and contexts beyond one’s immediate private or intimate sphere. New technologies and corresponding social practices, from social media to mobile reporting, are providing different ways to record, share, and amplify that attentiveness. Media objects or tools that impact civic life can be understood within two broad types: those designed specifically with the purpose of community engagement in mind (for instance, a digital game for local planning or an app to give feedback to city council) or generic tools that are subsequently appropriated for engaging a community (such as Twitter or Facebook’s role in the Arab Spring or London riots). Moreover, these tools can mediate any number of relationships between or among citizens, local organizations, or government institutions. Digitally mediated civic engagement runs the gamut of phenomena from organizing physical protests using social media (e.g., Occupy), to using digital tools to hack institutions (e.g., Anonymous), to using city-produced mobile applications to access and coproduce government services, to using digital platforms for deliberating.  Rather than try to identify what civic media tools look like in the midst of such an array of possibilities (by focusing on in depth examples or case studies), going forward we will instead focus on how digital tools expand the context of civic life and motivations for engagement, and what participating in civic life looks like in a digital era. We present this literature review as a means of exploring the intersection of theories of human behavior with the motivations for and benefits of engaging in civic life. We bring together literature from behavioral economics, sociology, psychology and communication studies to reveal how civic actors, institutions, and decision-making processes have been traditionally understood, and how emerging media tools and practices are forcing their reconsideration

Fake News & Twitter Wars: Media & Politics in the Trump Years

The Behind the Book series presented by the Maloney Library, Fordham University School of Law, April 5, 2017. Professor Jessica Baldwin-Philippi, Fordham University, and Professor Zephyr Teachout, Fordham University School of Law, discuss the relationship between political campaigns and the media and their publishing experiences. Father Eric Sundrup, S.J., America Magazine, moderates. Introduction by David J. Goodwin.https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/behindthebookvideos/1003/thumbnail.jp