Most forms of activism reach the same core group of participants, who already are politically engaged, and redirect them toward new issues. But the Harry Potter Alliance and the Nerdfighters, for example, often target young people who are engaged culturally, who may already be producing and sharing fan art, and help them to extend their engagement into politics, often by deploying existing skills and capacities in new ways. Kahne, Lee, and Feezell (2011) discovered that involvement in online networks organized around shared interests (fandom, for example) also shapes political identities: “online, nonpolitical, interest-driven activities serve as a gateway to participation in important aspects of civic and, at times, political life, including volunteering, engagement in community problem-solving, protest activities, and political voice” (2).
The Carnegie Corporation’s report on the Civic Mission of Schools (Gibson 2003) argues that educational institutions play a crucial role in allowing students to rehearse civic skills by participating in decision-making processes directly impacting their lives, yet many schools are backing away from this historic mission because they fear controversy with parents or loss of control over school governance in what is seen as a risky time for American education. Lauren Bird, the 20-something-year-old communications director for the Harry Potter Alliance, represents the kind of youth who might have fallen through the cracks under these conditions. Across a series of interviews, Bird shared a personal story about how schools fail to engage students with the political process:
I wasn’t terribly civically engaged when I was younger. I had some teachers who told us of the importance of watching the news and being responsible citizens and I followed that advice as best I could, but the contents of the news or just what being a “responsible citizen” meant, was rarely discussed. I grew up in a suburb in Texas during the War on Terrorism. You can guess the kind of ideologies most of my educators held. As I started realizing that I didn’t agree with most of the things the culture around me preached, I quickly learned to stay silent and pretend I did.… I wish I had had more grown up examples of diverse and critical thinking. I wish there had been more teachers who were talking about current events or about how to get involved in our communities.… That would’ve gotten my feet wet to want to be more proactive and involved.
We first interviewed Bird as a comparative literature student at New York University, who had just starting to become more actively involved as a video blogger for the Harry Potter Alliance. Bird recounted having been invested in the Harry Potter books since the age of eight and doing video projects since high school. Bird was drawn into the social media around fandom and participated online but never “IRL” (in real life). In high school, an encounter with the videos created by John and Hank Green led to a discovery of the Nerdfighter community. But Bird developed interest in the civic aspect when the Harry Potter Alliance was involved in Help Haiti Heal (a campaign that raised enough money to fund five cargo planes full of disaster relief supplies) in 2010—and was amazed by the ways fans used their power to help. A few months later, Bird applied to a video editor position with the HPA and is now a paid staff member; Bird will resurface later in the book as a participant in some of the group’s Hunger Games and Not in Harry’s Name campaigns. Today, Bird remains more engaged by the fannish aspects—rather than the specifically political dimensions—of the organization’s mission.
This moment when Bird was able to put all of these pieces together—linking creative skills, fannish ties, and the desire to make a difference—represents an example of what Mimi Ito, Lissa Soep, and their collaborators (Ito et al. 2015) describe as “consequential connections,” a concept that has emerged from the MacArthur Foundation’s Connected Learning Initiative. Connected learning research (Ito et al., 2012) seeks to identify and map “the constructed features of the cultural and social environment that support connections, brokering, and translations across spheres of activity,” primarily in terms of the ways young people’s interests and activities within their homes or their peer culture relate to what gets valued by schools and other powerful institutions in their lives. Ito et al. (2015) argue, “Learning is most resilient and meaningful when it brings together multiple spheres of a young person’s life.” For Bird, school-based civics education failed to motivate civic action, whereas fan activism brought increased awareness and encouraged deploying recreational skills toward political ends.
A white paper on connected learning (Ito et al. 2012) describes some underlying assumptions:
Connected learning is socially embedded, interest-driven, and oriented toward expanding educational, economic or political opportunity. It is realized when a young person is able to pursue a personal interest or passion with the support of friends and caring adults, and is in turn able to link this learning and interest to academic achievement, career success or civic engagement. (42)
Young people often take more chances and invest more of themselves in their recreational lives than they do in the school environment, especially given today’s constant pressure to prepare for standardized testing. Such connections, the connected learning researchers conclude, are fluid as young people try out identities and explore interests, drilling deeper into those they find meaningful and moving on to others that look rewarding.
What these young people do for fun may move swiftly into forms of social and political engagement if, say, outside forces threaten the worlds they have built for themselves. For example, Rachel Cody Pfister (2014) shares a case study involving Hogwarts at Ravelry, a community of young knitters who came together as a consequence of their shared interests in all things Harry Potter. Through this community, participants articulated a “shared purpose, culture, identity” that empowered their civic actions. When the group sought to organize the “Ravelympic Games” in parallel with the official 2012 Olympics, they received a threatening letter from the U.S. Olympic Committee. The community used its social network to educate members about the stakes in this conflict, to brainstorm possible responses, to reach appropriate allies, and to shift public opinion. The parallels between the struggles of this crafting community in the Harry Potter fan realm and the kinds of civic activities that drew Lauren Bird to the Harry Potter Alliance should be clear enough; in both instances, fandom provided the conceptual resources, the shared identity, and the sense of collective empowerment required for political participation.
One of the key ways that networked communication has mattered (especially when coupled with the outreach efforts of the kinds of organizations we are studying) is in creating opportunities for youth to enter new kinds of communities and, through them, to open themselves to “consequential connections.” Another case in point is 15-year-old Enzo from Students for Liberty. Enzo attended a California high school where a majority of liberal-leaning students supported President Obama in the 2012 election; he knew of no other students who shared his budding interest in libertarian ideology: “There aren’t really any high school groups per se, and I’m probably the only libertarian at my high school because either everyone is gung ho about Barack Obama because it’s the fad or is just a Republican because their parents are. And so, I don’t really have a group or membership or anything. I’m just kind of there.” What’s more, at 15, he did not have a driver’s license, access to transportation, or the financial means to contact like-minded young people in his community. Instead, Enzo formed friendships with a group of young libertarians he met on Tumblr, using the space to learn more about the movement and to “try on” a new identity that diverged from his parents’ more conservative beliefs. Enzo, whose views on social issues like gay marriage led him to explore libertarianism, said, “There’s the generation gap; like the older generations aren’t as accepting of libertarianism as the newer ones are,” and explained that pursuing his interests online helped him steer around obstacles to participation:
Tumblr is a very good place to find like-minded stuff and discuss, so that’s where I met most of my libertarian friends. That’s where we mostly converse. They have invited me to some places but my parents won’t take me because they can’t afford it or it’s too late or it’s on a weeknight or something like that. It’s kind of hard, so it’s mostly online and stuff like that, and just talking to my friends at school and trying to convert them.
Enzo’s
