[DMI] Digital Media Youth Advisory Helps Civic Engagement Volume Create MySpace Survey
The teens in this year's Digital Media Youth Advisory started out the year in force, beginning with a re-write of a survey for the MacArthur volume on civic engagement.
The volume approached Global Kids with their plans to survey teens in MySpace. However, when we saw their questions, we were delighted to run them through the advisory to create a more youth-friendly approach. After a significant re-write, the teens submitted the following questions, which were incorporated into their MySpace page. If you are a member of MySpace, log in and post your own response.
Are you tired of the way you are represented in the media, or the huge panic that adults are having about MySpace? Want to speak back about it? Please read on...Some big thinkers are writing a high profile book about how youth use digital media, my MySpace, to engage with politics and society. A very important part of this process is to get feedback from you guys that we can include in the book. So, we came up with some questions that we'd really appreciate you guys answering! You can answer by leaving a comment.
thanks ~ kate
1) Should adults be concerned about how youth view their rights and public affairs (like voting)? How might online experiences better connect youth to real information and get them actively involved?
2) Do online games or sites like MySpace spark meaningful forms of political discussions and actions? If so, can youth expand this involvement into the real world?
3) What should adults know about the pros and cons of youth using digital media?
4) What steps can we take to influence parents and professionals so that they can better understand youth's involvement in improving their communities? What steps can we take to influence them to adopt more creative, real and fair opportunities for youth to be heard?'
And in case you are curious, here's how the teens revised the questions. After talking as a group about what makes a good survey question for teens, we organized the youth advisory into smaller groups, gave each team one of the original questions, tasked them with returning to the group with a revised question, discussed the revised question with the group, added more revisions as a group until we came to consensus that it was a good question, then sent them on to the volume editors.
Below are the original questions:
1. To what extent should we be concerned that young people are less inclined than earlier generations to engage with former touchstones of citizenship such as voting and following news about public affairs? If these shifts should concern us, how might online experiences better link young people to credible information and satisfying participation opportunities?
2. Are the boundaries of civic engagement changing for young people online? For example, when can online spaces such as myspace and facebook constitute forums for civic engagement? Or, do protests in an online game constitute civic engagement? If so, how do such engagement experiences translate into broader participation in politics, and public life?
3. What do you think are the opportunities and pitfalls of teaching participatory media skills and orientations for creating the capacity to raise public voice(s)? What suggestions do you have for helping make such pedagogy successful?
4. What can we learn about success and failure in youth digital media experience to go beyond what is currently offered in schools and community youth programs?
5. What strategies can we develop to influence educators, educational policy makers, community youth workers, professional associations, and parents to see youth civic engagement differently, and to adopt more creative and democratic opportunities for young people to raise their public voices?
