commitments to the vision and procedures of democracy, which in turn entails a capacity to see beyond the immediate interests of one’s own group” (156). The organizations and networks we discuss—to varying degrees—provide the preconditions for this kind of civic culture. These groups achieve this kind of political potential by fostering a shared set of values regarding what an ideal society might look like, encouraging a sense of affinity among members, enabling access to greater knowledge about the world and the issues they confront, modeling a set of democratic and participatory practices, helping youth to develop their identities as civic agents, and providing a context for meaningful political discussions. Dahlgren models these traits as a circuit; each builds upon the other, reinforcing the group’s progress toward supporting democratic participation. Even where all of these conditions are met, there still often needs to be some kind of catalyst that inspires this civic culture to take action around a particular concern. What we are calling participatory politics involves activities that foster one or another attribute of Dahlgren’s civic culture but also efforts to inspire and organize civic action. We will revisit these criteria in Chapter 3 as we discuss how fan organizations like the Harry Potter Alliance and Nerdfighters provide the preconditions for civic and political participation.
Across this opening chapter, we have introduced five foundational concepts (as well as a range of related vocabulary) that will inform the chapters that follow. First, we described how individuals and groups outside the dominant political structures are making use of emergent systems of narrative circulation to give their voices a strength and scope often unavailable to earlier generations. Second, we described the concept of transmedia mobilization/activism to stress ways young people are seeking to shape public opinion across a broad range of different platforms. Third, we discussed the civic imagination as opening up possibilities to envision alternatives and through them, to think about what kinds of change might be possible. Fourth, we talked about participatory politics as a set of practices that allow young people to deploy the skills they acquired through their everyday engagements with social media and participatory culture to change the world. And finally, we discussed connected learning in terms of the ways these organizations enhance their participants’ civic education, often by connecting the political realm to other activities they care about. We see close relationships between these core concepts, which suggest something about the media strategies, creative vision, organizational activities, and informal learning practices through which American youth are conducting politics in the early 21st century.
What Comes Next?
In the next five chapters, we examine each of our case study organizations. As we do so, we will expand the analytic vocabulary we use to discuss participatory politics. Chapter 2 considers Invisible Children as a group that struggles to reconcile its attempts to control the framing of its message and its dispersed network of young participants who help spread that message. Here we identify paradoxes that shape this and many other organizations that are trying to embrace participatory politics. Among the tensions we consider are those between goals and process, comprehensible and complex stories, activism and entertainment, consensus and contention, spreadable and drillable messages, and top-down and bottom-up approaches. We explore the ways that Invisible Children, in ramping up to Kony 2012, placed more emphasis on empowering youth to tell their own stories, yet following the backlash against the video, became progressively more centralized—ultimately disbanding its participatory activities, and finally announcing plans to shut down. At the same time, we rebut some of the criticisms directed against IC, showing how it was not exclusively reliant on a politics based on digital circulation but rather sought to prepare participants for more in-depth engagement with its mission through on-the-ground, face-to-face activities as well as the use of social media.
Chapter 3 considers the Harry Potter Alliance, Imagine Better, and the Nerdfighters as examples of fan activism. Over the years, these groups have addressed a range of different causes, rather than define themselves around a single mission, and they have relied on the larger infrastructures that have grown up around fan communities. Here we deepen our concept of the civic imagination, exploring how these groups harness the power of popular culture as an alternative, shared language through which to talk about politics. References to shared content worlds carry affective attachments for their members, offering more empowering fantasies about what it might mean to fight for social justice. We consider two different models—fannish civics and cultural acupuncture—that these groups deploy to mobilize public support. The difference between the two has to do with the depth of knowledge of the original content world each assumes. Fannish civics inspires fans as fans through their shared mastery of shared texts, whereas cultural acupuncture seeks to gain greater circulation by attaching a group’s messages to larger public conversations, often inspired by the release of a new entertainment product. This chapter also considers how shared tastes may provide the basis for the creation of “public spheres of the imagination,” places where people discuss shared values, hopes, and dreams. But the chapter also considers how a taste-based politics may exclude some would-be participants, insofar as taste is shaped by factors of class or race.
Chapter 4 explores the processes by which American Muslim youth are defining their identities and asserting their voices in the face of the political and social realities of post-9/11 America. If our work on the fan activists stresses that their shared interests in popular culture could provide a bridge into greater civic engagement, contrast that with the fact that speaking as an American Muslim is always already marked as a political stance, even if these youth see themselves as primarily speaking to shared cultural or spiritual interests. We consider a range of expressive projects that involve asserting the diversity of American Muslims identities in relation to the concept of a precarious public—that is, one where there is a considerable gap between voice and influence. What makes the groups and networks we look at especially precarious is the tension between their members’ desires to insure that their life stories get told and the fear that they are going to become the focus of surveillance by various government agencies or suffer the consequences of “social surveillance” by conservative parents and religious leaders, or online “haters.” For American Muslim youth, constructing their own, alternative narratives involves considerable risks and understandable anxieties, and we take a look at the important role humor plays in easing some of those strains.
Chapter 5 explores the nature of political storytelling from a different perspective—that of undocumented youth raised in America who are supporting the DREAM Act, which they hope will offer them a path to citizenship and, more immediately, reliable access to higher education. A spectacular example of transmedia mobilization, this loose network has sustained its efforts over many years via creative, evolving uses of social media and networked communication, in concert with on-the-ground activities. Here our primary focus is on the production of “coming out” videos, through which these young people share stories of their own experience of risk and vulnerability as a means of forging a stronger, collective voice. Throughout this chapter, we identify a range of both personal and collective reasons why coming out online was an important and effective tactic during the formation of this movement. We also highlight the risks DREAMers confront in acknowledging their immigration status in such a public fashion.
With Chapter 6, we return to the question of how the mechanisms of participatory politics relate to institutional politics (the source of some of the paradoxes we discuss in Chapter 2). Our focus is on Students for Liberty, one wing of what has been described as “second-wave libertarianism.” Unlike first-wave libertarians, this movement is more invested in bringing about change through educational and cultural activities than through party politics. On the one hand, these young libertarians receive financial resources and other support from conservative think tanks and individual funders, whose influence on many right-of-center movements in the United States raises questions about whether any such movements can be described as grassroots. Yet these youth are also tapping YouTube and social media to assert their own voices, much like the other groups we have discussed. And many of them are “strategic nonvoters.” Despite being well informed and deeply engaged in political debates, they do not see voting as the appropriate mechanism for promoting their causes given the corrupt nature of the current governmental system. Here, again, we see the tension between narrowing opportunities
