Our Future Environment

A dutiful model exists in the Facebook/ABC deal to encourage youth participation in politics. Facebook is an online social networking tool that is increasingly used by older age brackets and offline and traditional media outlets, it currently has over 60 million users worldwide (Stone, 2007). Between May 2006 and May 2007, Facebook users newly enrolling by age 12-17 increased by 149%, users age 18-24 increased by 38%, users age 25-34 increased 181%, and users age 35 or older increased 98% (Comscore, 2007). In 2007, ABC News and Facebook formally established a partnership that allows Facebook members to electronically follow ABC reporters, view news reports and video and participate in polls and debates. Roughly 20,000 to 60,000 users vote in each poll and a slightly smaller sample participate in debate or news report discussions. ABC and Facebook jointly sponsored Democratic and Republican presidential debates preceding the 2008 New Hampshire primary and is encouraging users to interact with reporters and users. Until late 2007, a Facebook user who wants to respond to a daily political report could only write a comment or send an e-mail message to a generic address. Recently, users can send private messages directly to reporters and post questions and messages on the reporters’ public Facebook pages. The ABC/Facebook page also has an easy and direct link to voting registration and a way to post a reminder to your friends to register.
Facebook reinforces an obligation to participate in government centered activities by using the platform (social network site) youth have already chosen to participate in while simultaneously popularizing the importance of opinion and voting as a core democratic act. This Facebook/ABC alignment also reinforces the dutiful citizen model by explicitly stating that one becomes informed about issues and government by following mass media.  On the surface, the Facebook/ABC partnership appears to demonstrate that youth can join civil society organizations and/or express interests through political parties that employ two-way communication to mobilize supporters rather than a one-way conventional model. Although youth are encouraged to vote and voice their opinions to others, can post comments and questions (uncensored) on reporters and candidates pages, and even post their own reports on some pages there is still no option for youth led activities or assurance of actual two-way communication between reporters, candidates and Facebook users.
An example of an online actualizing citizen model is TakingITGlobal. This website is an example of one of the few bottom up online environments that encourage civic participation in physical space. However there is currently no established methodology for evaluating the interaction of online and offline engagement (Raynes-Goldie & Walker, 2008).  TakingITGlobal is a Canadian based international website that capitalizes on the popularity of social networks and digital media to create a youth civic engagement tool for interactive learning, collaboration, dialogue and action. Their mission is to provide “opportunities for learning, capacity-building, cross-cultural awareness and self-development through the use of information technologies” because of the belief that once youth have the information they will share it. TakingITGlobal has over 170,000 members (as of Dec.13, 2007) up from 130,000 in early 2007. Thirty-one percent of users are from North America (Canada and the United States) and the average user is 22 years of age. TakingITGlobal has demonstrated successful bridging of offline and online civic engagement through youth led collaborations at the UN world summit, an AIDS conference, and a student World Assembly in Africa.
The website is divided up by “issue themes” where users can interact and obtain information. The website does not include political participation as a theme but instead promotes participation in government according to different issues such as the environment, human rights, and education. The website does include a section titled ‘Participation’ which includes a discussion on what participation is or is not. The website introduces their opinion on participation as follows: “When a young person speaks out against discrimination, exclusion, and injustice they are participating. When a group of young people in a community organize an event promoting social change, they are participating. When international networks of youth work towards common goals, they are re-distributing who participates in systems of power. There are a wide variety of forms that youth and youth organizations can be involved in to enable change and have an effective impact in their communities.” An emphasis on individual determination of what participation is, the global impact encouraged on the website, and a de-emphasis on political participation places TakingITGlobal in the actualizing citizen model.
The disagreement between what civic engagement or the citizen should be–passive or active, engaged or disengaged, actualizing or dutiful—may lie in the relatively short existence of the online environment. Youth born in the 1990s to the present might engage in politics but through different routes than their parents or grandparents. Youth know how to use new media (online or digital media) but have come into it when it is largely used for purposes of socializing and entertaining. The United States is just beginning to use new media in the civic and political realm. The collaboration between ABC and Facebook in presidential debates are an example, although edited and moderated, of the use of new media that is brought into a public physical space where youth can use their technical and social networking skills. Youth know how to use online tools but lack the skills to communicate their concerns in effective ways to a larger public audience.
The complications inherent in both offline and online spaces are access to government institutions, inclusivity of youth in traditional adult led organizations, and fostering a sense of youth leadership and responsibility while balancing this with some level of adult led functions. The concern here is how to engage youth in a bottom up process, which is how youth have engaged in public life in the past, but still promote leadership and engagement with authority and policy makers. Bennett (2008) proposes six possible answers to how to integrate the public and private worlds of online youth with offline spaces. A particularly relevant answer for this paper is that educators and other youth workers who design civic education programs often base citizenship on unexamined assumptions, and they “can benefit from learning how generational social identities and political preference formation are changing so they can design more engaging civic education models” (11).

Filed under: fostering identity on May 29th, 2008