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Digital Media and Democracy: Early Returns
The relationship between digital media and democracy is complicated, because it is difficult for researchers to draw causal connections between adopting new social computing technologies and promoting what Joseph Kahne, Mills College professor and head of the Civic Engagement Research Group, has characterized as behaviors and values consistent with an “effective, just, and humane democratic society.”… more
Empowering Youth-directed Learning in a Digital Age
Tashawna is a high school senior in Brooklyn, NY. In the morning she leaves home for school listening to MP3s, texting her friends about meeting up after school at Global Kids, where she participates in a theater program, or FIERCE, the community center for LGBT youth. On the weekend she'll go to church and, on any given day, visit MySpace and Facebook as often as she can. While she misses television and movies, she says… more
Reinterpreting the Digital Divide
digital divide: the gap between people with effective access to digital and information technology and those with very limited or no access at all.
The digital divide is understood to be the gap between those who use and are familiar with computers and technology and those who aren't. I'm 17, African-American, live in a considerably urban neighborhood in Chicago, and would seemingly contradict many of the statistics about race and ethnicity and their relationship to the digital divide. I have broadband internet, I use it frequently, I know my way around the computer, and I like using it. These are just basic things, but some statistics suggests that many people of my demographic aren't fluent in even these simple tasks. Based on what I’ve seen, I have to wonder whether the digital divide isn’t more complicated than it is sometimes described.… more
Educating for the Future, Not the Past
Historian Robert Darnton has argued that we are currently in the fourth great Information Age in all human history. The first information revolution came with the development of writing in 4000 B.C. Mesopotamia. The second was facilitated by the invention of movable type (in 10th Century China and 15th Century Europe). The third was marked by the advent of mass printing (presses, cheap ink and paper, mass distribution systems, and mass literacy) in late 18th Century Europe and America. The current Information Age is the fourth such era, marked by the development of the Internet and, more importantly, the World Wide Web in 1991 with its open access structure that makes possible the interconnection of all the world’s knowledge to all the world’s people. The point of this historical perspective is to remind us that the last decade has seen transformations of a kind notable even from the long perspective of the record of human history. Our Information Age has been the most extensive and rapid in human history, structurally altering traditional economic and political arrangements on a global level and, at the same time, restructuring communication, interaction, publication, and authorship in all currently available media. Is it any wonder that many of us are wondering what will happen next—or asking how best to prepare ourselves for what comes next?… more
Teaching, Texting, and Twittering with Obama
With the first year of the Obama administration officially coming to a close, educators have been thinking about how the president’s online presence could be used for both civic education and media literacy purposes. Obama came into office with the promise of delivering web-based participatory democracy or “Government 2.0” to citizens. But I have found myself arguing that Obama’s “embrace” of online practices was actually quite limited, when it came to the messages he was promulgating. I am also not alone in wondering if online commenting and voting really constitutes democratic engagement.… more