that has political intent or impact) that allows them to advance their perspectives.…
Mobilization. Members of a community rally others to help accomplish civic or political goals.…
Investigation. Members of a community actively pursue information about issues of public concern.… (41)
Cohen and Kahne have overseen two national surveys, each collecting data from roughly 3,000 survey respondents aged 15–25. The bad news is that despite the publicity around Obama’s courting of the youth vote, more than half (56 percent) of those contacted had not been involved in politics in any form over the 12 months prior to being queried. Somewhat more reassuring was that what they are calling participatory politics does not “distract” youth from forms of institutional political practices (such as voting, petitioning, street protest, or writing letters to the editor). On the contrary, Cohen and Kahne found that those who engaged in participatory politics (roughly 40–45 percent across all racial categories) were almost twice as likely to vote as those who did not.
Seeking to better understand how these various sets of practices entered the lives of American youth, the Good Participation team at Harvard University (Rundle, James, and Weinstein forthcoming), conducted in-depth interviews with 70 civically and politically active youth between the ages of 15 and 25. The youth they interviewed were more likely to engage, on a regular basis, with some of these practices (especially circulation, production, and investigation) than others (dialogue, feedback, and mobilization), while there was a wide range in the depth and degree of sophistication with which they were applying these practices.
Ben Bowyer, a member of the YPP survey team, also analyzed data from the Pew Internet and American Life Project that was collected following the 2008 and 2012 elections (Smith 2013). He found substantial increases in these participatory practices over this four-year period. For example, the number of youth posting pictures or videos related to social and political concerns increased from 10 percent to 21 percent; the number sharing political news through social media went from 13 percent to 32 percent; and the percentage who had started a group online supporting a cause went from 14 to 26 percent. By almost every measure, the percentage of youth engaged in participatory politics is growing at a rapid rate. Keep in mind that these practices often involved deeper commitments of time, energy, social capital, and other resources than many of the mechanisms of institutional politics (voting, for example), supporting our argument that at least some young people are not “disengaged” but rather are conducting politics through other means.
Reflecting what we’ve described as the participation gap, these skills and experiences are unevenly distributed among American youth. The good news is that these sets of participatory politics practices may be more broadly accessible across race than those practices associated with institutionalized politics. Cohen and Kahne found that 43 percent of white, 41 percent of black, 38 percent of Latino, and 36 percent of Asian-American youth participated in at least one act of participatory politics during the prior 12 months. By contrast, the difference in voting in 2008 between the group with the highest rate of turnout according to the U.S. Census Bureau—African American youth (52 percent)—and the group with the lowest rate of turnout—Latino youth (27 percent)—is 25 percentage points. These findings offer hope for forms of political participation that more fully reflect the demographic diversity of contemporary American society. However, there is still heavy stratification on the basis of educational background and some of the more “advanced” practices are much more likely to be performed by those with high educational, economic, cultural, and social capital than by those who are more disadvantaged. So while participatory politics does raise hope for fostering a more democratic culture, it can not in and of itself overcome some of the structural inequalities that have historically blocked many from participating in civic and political life.
In a critique of the concept of participatory politics, James Hay (2011) writes, “It would be too simplistic to generalize blogging, photo-shopping and social networking (media revolution) as the condition for an enhanced democracy” (666). Hay cites the Tea Party as an example of a more participatory—yet reactionary—approach to politics, a debatable proposition given how much this right-wing group relies on traditional hierarchies, established media channels, funding from conservative think tanks, and established political framing practices, and how little room it has for youth participation. But Hay is correct in stressing that participatory politics may be just as likely to generate reactionary as progressive politics, and we have debated where Invisible Children and second-wave libertarianism fall on this spectrum. As we will see in Chapter 6, the young libertarians have sought to negotiate for themselves a space between party politics and more participatory forms of engagement. These new platforms and practices potentially enable forms of collective action that are difficult to launch and sustain under a broadcast model, yet these platforms and practices do not guarantee any particular outcome, do not necessarily inculcate democratic values or develop shared ethical norms, do not necessarily respect and value diversity, do not necessarily provide key educational resources, and do not ensure that anyone will listen when groups speak out about injustices they encounter.
Forging New Links: Civic Paths and Connected Learning
A key challenge is to identify the mechanisms that help young people move from being socially and culturally active to being politically and civically engaged. Linda Herrera (2012), for example, interviewed young Egyptian activists to map the trajectory of their involvement with digital media prior to becoming revolutionaries. For many, their point of entry was through recreational use—downloading popular music—trading Hollywood movies, gaming, or sharing ideas through online discussion forums and social networking sites. Mundane involvements in participatory culture exposed them to a much broader range of ideas and experiences than allowed within the official culture of this Islamic nation, encouraged them to acquire digital skills and discover their personal voice, and enabled them to forge collective identities and articulate their hopes for the future. As Herrera concludes, “Their exposure to, and interaction with, ideas, people, images, virtual spaces, and cultural products outside their everyday environments led to a substantial change in their mentality and worldview” (343). Such practices involved transgression against government and religious authorities who sought to restrict their engagement in popular culture; such shared experiences led them to understand themselves as a generation that has developed distinctive cultural and political identities through their engagement with each other via an ever evolving array of digital platforms. We have seen similar patterns throughout our interviews with American youth who have become involved in these various activist movements.
Many “traditional” civic organizations enable youth to participate based on an apprenticeship model, where they learn through subordinating themselves to a powerful adult mentor. By contrast, our case study groups adopt a more participatory model, in which young people are taking control of and shaping their own modes of engagement. In this model, learning takes place not only vertically, from expert to newcomer, but also horizontally, from peer to peer. Such sites often blur the distinction between interest-based and friendship-based networks that have informed other work in the connected learning tradition described below. Young people may enter a given network based on shared interests and with the intention of working toward collective goals; in the process, they become integrated into rich social communities that often motivate and reward their continued participation. Some of this mentorship is built into the group’s formal activities, while other forms emerge organically as participants learn through practice (Kligler-Vilenchik and Shresthova 2012).
Current scholarship (Gibson 2003; Bennett 2008b; Wattenberg 2008; Buckingham 2000; P. Levine 2007) suggests that young people are rarely addressed as political agents, that they are not invited into the political process, and that they are not consulted in the political decision-making process, whether local, state, national, or global. According to these studies, young people are most apt to become politically involved if they come from families with a history of citizen participation and political activism, if they encounter civics teachers who encourage them to reflect on and respond to current events, if they attend schools where they are allowed a voice
