MacArthur Digital Media and Learning Initiative
Building on its strengths in the area of youth and civic engagement, CCCE is engaged in collaboration with the MacArthur Foundation’s Digital Media and Learning Initiative. The MacArthur Initiative is a major effort to improve understanding of how digital technologies can and are being used to reshape the way youth learn. Its six projects explore how young people use digital technologies through language, games, and social interaction, as well as in more conventional education applications. The focus is on how these uses of digital media can enhance the way youth develop skills for creativity, judgment, learning and systematic thinking.
The CCCE contribution to the Digital Media & Learning Initiative is in the area of digital learning and civic engagement. In 2006, the MacArthur Foundation (through a grant administered by the New Media Consortium) selected CCCE Director Lance Bennett to lead a civic engagement initiative in an effort to understand how digital media offer young people new ways of engaging with politics and public life. Bennett helped assemble a team of international experts, both scholars and practitioners, representing a broad range of experience in the field. Following a number of meetings, both physical and virtual, the team produced the volume Civic Life Online: Learning How Digital Media Can Engage Youth (fall 2007, M. I. T. Press). An uncorrected proof of Bennett’s introductory chapter is available here.
Background on the MacArthur Civic Engagement Project
Young people experience a world that is often not friendly to political, or even public, expression. Many learn early on that politics and public issues are not fun or popular topics of discussion or concern. At the same time, no generation has ever been more intimately acquainted with communication media that can instantly connects large numbers of people as public producers and consumers of information and opportunities to act. The Civic Engagement project explores the nexus of these conditions in the lives of contemporary young people: How do young people use digital communication technologies to engage in politics? What are the sorts of politics they engage in? What are their favored styles for involvement? How can educators, governments, activists, and youth themselves use digital technologies to better engage these citizens in the making? An interview with Professor Bennett discussing the Civic Engagement Project is available here. His posts on the MacArthur Spotlight Blog also provide a good introduction to the topic, along with helpful links.
Online Discussion with Leading Experts. A highlight of the project was an online discussion in October, 2006 with leading thinkers in the fields of youth development, civic engagement, digital learning, and uses of digital technologies. This fascinating discussion includes rich references to the state of knowledge in these areas, along with anecdotes about novel political uses of digital technologies. The conversation is enlivened with debates about the possible emergence of politics in online communities such as games and fan networks. The discussion ranges over the field’s cutting edge research, and raises questions about the very nature of citizenship and civic and political engagement. Here is an archived version of that discussion. Following this discussion, Bennett explored what he saw as some of the fault lines running through the conversation in a blog post and paper.
Looking Ahead
CCCE continues its research and applied programs involving youth, digital communication, and civic engagement. Professor Bennett and graduate student Chris Wells are conducting research on the world’s online youth civic engagement sites, and further exploring differences in perspectives on the conception of citizenship and pathways to engagement.
To apply what we learn, CCCE continues developing Becoming Citizens, an internship and seminar program that places University of Washington undergraduates in various civic engagement capacities with Seattle civic youth organizations.
An exciting new project involves CCCE as a core partner, along with a coalition of non-profits, government and educators, in developing the Seattle Youth Commons, an online environment for youth community-building and political discussion. In the spring of 2006 young people from all over the city participated in advisory sessions to discuss their digital skills and media preferences, and to suggest design elements and features. Aided by this peer input, a team of teens from around the city began the site design and development during the summer of 2006, with assistance from CCCE and YMCA staff. Lance Bennett and graduate students Chris Wells, Toby Campbell and Deen Freelon are excited to have the opportunity to apply the CCCE’s research and service experience to this experiment in online youth engagement. Stay tuned for more details!
