{"id":11058,"date":"2016-04-11T13:21:09","date_gmt":"2016-04-11T20:21:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/?p=11058"},"modified":"2016-04-11T13:21:09","modified_gmt":"2016-04-11T20:21:09","slug":"how-young-people-are-changing-civics-by-any-media-necessary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/how-young-people-are-changing-civics-by-any-media-necessary\/","title":{"rendered":"How Young People Are Changing Civics, by Any Media Necessary"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 2011, a young man named Mohammad posted a video on YouTube <\/a>where he spoke into the lens of a handheld camera.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy name is Mohammad, and I am undocumented,\u201d he said. He explained how his parents immigrated to the United States when he was 3 years old, and detailed the difficulties of being undocumented, including being rejected from his dream university because he lacked a Social Security number. He described how his experiences inspired him to become active in the DREAM movement, a group of young activists working to support the DREAM Act and immigrant rights.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mohammad\u2019s video, along with stories of other young people \u201ccoming out\u201d online as undocumented, are highlighted in an upcoming book, \u201cBy Any Media Necessary<\/a>.\u201d Co-authors and media scholars Henry Jenkins<\/a>, Sangita Shresthova, Liana Gamber-Thompson, Neta Kligler-Vilenchik, and Arely M. Zimmerman explore how young people like Mohammad use media to participate in the political sphere and speak out about issues that matter to them.<\/p>\n

Political participation is changing, and the authors present multiple examples of young people who aren\u2019t adhering to old definitions. In the past, participation meant volunteering for a campaign, collecting signatures, joining a protest movement, or donating to a candidate. But young people today are harnessing digital and social media tools to get their stories out to the world.<\/span><\/p>\n

\""By<\/a>

“By Any Media Necessary” will be published this summer.<\/p><\/div>\n

The book, according to co-author Gamber-Thompson, is a compilation of several years of writing and research that included talking with hundreds of young people across the country. The project was supported by the MacArthur Foundation and was carried out through the MacArthur Research Network on\u00a0Youth and Participatory Politics<\/a>. The authors have created\u00a0free, online, easy-to-implement workshops and curriculums<\/a> for educators across disciplines who want to understand how young people are reshaping civic activism.<\/p>\n

American Muslim youth, for example, are using storytelling and social media to explore identity and engage in discussions about Islamophobia in the U.S. Young libertarians, meanwhile, are using the internet to spread memes, communicate, meet up, and make music videos.<\/span><\/p>\n

Of course, the tricky part of writing a book about a rapidly evolving concept like participatory politics is that it\u2019s always changing.<\/p>\n

The bulk of the book\u2019s research wrapped up before the #BlackLivesMatter movement, to which many of the book\u2019s core concepts can be applied. #BlackLivesMatter activists have used Twitter and other social media platforms to tell stories and mobilize protests in cities and campuses across the country around police brutality and discriminatory practices in the criminal justice system.<\/p>\n

Plus, we\u2019re in an election season where participation on social media has a great impact on politics. Donald Trump engages a huge audience on Twitter, and Bernie Sanders supporters have turned a once-little-known candidate into a mainstream one largely via social media.<\/p>\n

Gamber-Thompson, who is also a Program Associate at the National Writing Project, also draws interesting parallels between the political acts cited in the book and supporters of anti-establishment candidates. Both Sanders and Trump, for example, are tapping into the nationwide sentiment that electoral politics isn’t responsive. This sentiment is similar to the one young people engaging in nontraditional political activities have echoed for years, Gamber-Thompson said.<\/p>\n

Not everyone is convinced of this shift in civic participation, though. Most notably, Malcolm Gladwell\u2019s 2010 article in The New Yorker, \u201cSlow Change: The Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted<\/a>\u201d argues (strongly) that activities like posting a video, tweeting about an event, or changing a profile picture to support a cause are a \u201clow cost\u201d form of activism. In other words, young people are phoning it in, taking the easy way out of real<\/em> activism.<\/p>\n

More recently, a New York Times book review of Dwight Garner\u2019s \u201cI Hate the Internet<\/a>\u201d asks: \u201cWhat has happened to political activism? Do people think typing 140-character morality lectures is pushing society forward?\u201d<\/p>\n

But the authors of \u201cBy Any Media Necessary\u201d say that young people using new communication tools to express views is anything but \u201clow cost.\u201d Young DREAMers make themselves vulnerable to threats and put themselves at risk for deportation when they \u201ccome out\u201d in videos about being undocumented. LGBTQ youth run risks of being ostracized by classmates or family members when they support LGBTQ rights on personal social media pages. American Muslim youth, especially those involved in social justice campaigns, have had to worry about personal and online surveillance by the government and in their own communities. And #BlackLivesMatter activists have been harmed and arrested at protests that were often organized via Twitter, sometimes for just trying to record events.<\/span><\/p>\n

Instead of comparing what happens on Twitter to what happened during the Civil Rights Movement, the authors say compare Twitter to how civil rights leaders used the telephone to organize.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not to say this shift hasn\u2019t come without hiccups. But neither has any shift that has changed politics, and society, for the better.<\/p>\n

Photo\/ Ella<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 2011, a young man named Mohammad posted a video on YouTube where he spoke into the lens of a handheld camera. \u201cMy name is Mohammad, and I am undocumented,\u201d he said. He explained how his parents immigrated to the United States when he was 3 years old, and detailed the difficulties of being undocumented, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":11059,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8],"tags":[682,580,84,87,486,371],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11058"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11058"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11058\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11205,"href":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11058\/revisions\/11205"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11059"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}