{"id":6914,"date":"2014-11-14T03:45:04","date_gmt":"2014-11-14T11:45:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/?p=6914"},"modified":"2014-11-13T15:42:19","modified_gmt":"2014-11-13T23:42:19","slug":"getting-beyond-clicktivism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/getting-beyond-clicktivism\/","title":{"rendered":"Getting Beyond “Clicktivism”"},"content":{"rendered":"

How young people at Oakland’s Youth Radio are\u00a0using digital media\u00a0to elevate their political voices.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

During this past midterm election, ballots around California\u2019s Bay Area were as befuddling as ever. Should Oakland residents vote yes on Measure FF to raise the minimum wage? Or would this be too hard on small business? Would a yes vote on Proposition 47 mean the state was too soft on crime?<\/p>\n

But over at Youth Radio<\/a> in Oakland, California, all the confusing propositions gave LaKayla Dyer an idea. During an editorial meeting, Dyer suggested building an app that would decode some of the propositions into language young people (or adults, for that matter) can understand.<\/p>\n

Ten days later, the Know Your Props<\/a><\/a> web app was up and running. The editorial side picked propositions to highlight\u2014from a soda tax to lessening penalties for nonviolent crimes\u2014that would affect Bay Area youth and synthesized the facts. Meanwhile, other members designed the user experience.<\/p>\n

The app was only one piece of Youth Radio\u2019s election coverage, which included real-time social media posts and interviews. But the young people at Youth Radio are hard at work writing and broadcasting issues they care about all year round. It\u2019s an evolving type of civic engagement that\u2019s echoed by young people throughout the country who are tweeting, posting, sharing, and writing on social issues ranging from the Occupy Wall Street movement to the protests in Ferguson, Missouri.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Photo\/Sophie for Youth Radio Raw<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

\u201c[Young people] have views, insights and analysis that they\u2019re doing all the time,\u201d said Lissa Soep, senior producer and research director at Youth Radio. \u201cBut we want to help connect them with [the] audience and target their own thinking to get more and more sophisticated so that they\u2019re able to achieve the goals they have with respect to communicating.\u201d<\/p>\n

Soep is part of the Youth and Participatory Politics (YPP) Research Network<\/a>, an Educator Innovator\u00a0<\/em>partner,\u00a0which is researching \u201cparticipatory politics,\u201d defined as \u201cinteractive, peer-based acts\u201d in which people exert voice or influence on issues of public concern.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a pretty wide umbrella over the activities considered participatory politics. In some cases, online organizing can spur huge movements like it did in Ferguson <\/a>this summer. But there\u2019s plenty of critique around the idea that most<\/em> online activities are really a form of civic engagement. Is signing a Change.org petition really that impactful? Clicking \u201clike\u201d on a Facebook post? Retweeting? Sometimes called \u201cslacktivism\u201d or \u201cclicktivism,\u201d critics point out that sharing on social media might make it too easy to commit<\/a> to a cause without actually devoting any time or resources to it.<\/p>\n

Researchers at the YPP Research Network <\/a>are considering all these implications and trying to figure out just what truly impactful, or \u201cthick,\u201d civic engagement looks like for young people in the 21st century.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you see people talking about a crisis in civics, I don\u2019t think we want to be thinking about, \u2018Can you pass this test?\u2019\u201d said Ethan Zuckerman, director of the MIT Center for Civic Media<\/a> and a member of the YPP Research Network, in a keynote speech<\/a> at the Digital Media and Learning Conference in 2013. \u201cYou want to be asking the question, \u2018Do people feel like they have the ability to influence their government or community on the issues they care about?\u2019 And I think there is a sense that they may in crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n

At Youth <\/a>Radio, young people are gaining a greater sense of agency by fine-tuning their stories about issues they care about like cyberbullying<\/a><\/a>, fair labor<\/a> in fashion, or HIV<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Soep also said working with Youth Radio helps elevate young people\u2019s work from a \u201cpoint of view\u201d to a \u201cpoint of voice,\u201d which goes a step further than only sharing an opinion.<\/p>\n

As an example, Soep pointed to a recent Youth Radio piece by Catory Goodman, \u201cNavigating School Without a Computer<\/a>.\u201d In it, Goodman sheds light on how tough it is to stay on top of coursework without a computer at home\u2014even though she has a smartphone with internet access. She already knew her experience, but she used it to bring more nuance to a much larger discussion about the digital divide.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce that\u2019s put out there in a public way, it just helps people who have access to power and policy makers and administrators to have a better understanding of what that experience is like for her and the fact she\u2019s not alone in that experience,\u201d Soep said. Young people\u2019s work, like Goodman\u2019s, is broadcast on the Youth Radio site and sometimes through media partners like National Public Radio.<\/p>\n

At a time when Congress\u2019 approval rating hovers around a whopping 14 percent<\/a>, participatory politics and the internet help kids reach an audience of people who matter most to them. It\u2019s unclear how this will impact the more institutional political systems\u2014low voter turnout among young people was a main news item after the midterm elections. But network member Joseph Kahne recently wrote<\/a> in the Washington Post that the YPP Research Network\u2019s surveys have found experiences in participatory politics translate into stronger civic commitment and deeper engagement in school.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s still difficult to pin down how closely participatory politics and voting are linked. <\/a>But the young people at Youth Radio took it into consideration\u2014the Know Your Props app included a section for finding your polling place. Soep said it\u2019s possible Youth Radio will<\/a> do a new Know Your Props app for every election. In the meantime, there\u2019s a lot of news to cover.<\/p>\n

By Kathleen Costanza\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How young people at Oakland’s Youth Radio are\u00a0using digital media\u00a0to elevate their political voices.\u00a0 During this past midterm election, ballots around California\u2019s Bay Area were as befuddling as ever. Should Oakland residents vote yes on Measure FF to raise the minimum wage? Or would this be too hard on small business? Would a yes vote […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":6918,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8,11,17],"tags":[580,373,375,374,378,376,372,377,371],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6914"}],"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\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6914"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6914\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6957,"href":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6914\/revisions\/6957"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6918"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}