Angela Booker: Participation = Power?
Filed at 8:26 am on December 13, 2006 in Identity • Leave a comment
Institutions may be of paramount significance to understanding links between commodification, access, and engagement.
How does digital media link young people to power, particularly if it becomes commoditized? From the standpoint of youth participation in public and private modes of the social world, digital media stand out as portals to communicate, to influence and be influenced by self and other. Yet, for power increase, access and engagement are only first steps. The growth of power at a social group level requires at least some combination of knowledge of a system, clarified intention, and sustained participation that leads to a change. Engagement with digital media, made available by a corporate sponsor or otherwise, seems unlikely to lead to the exercise of some form of power without at least these or other additional factors. However, it does provide a structure that can support a range of participation from consumption to revolution.
During the civil rights movement, institutional structures like churches turned out to be of paramount significance to the effectiveness of the movement (see Doug McAdam’s work). Individual churches were not always interested in playing such a role, yet their structural presence provided a means of communication and a springboard for individuals to become participants at the movement level. The structure itself existed before and continues beyond the movement, but its leverage as a powerful force for that particular drive toward change had to be coupled with intention set forth inside the movement and with a systemic examination that encompassed the institutional role of churches as well.
That said, digital media seem to be providing an institutional space where youth and others can congregate. At the least, basic corporate interests in markets and profits are well defined, and so corporate institutional power is already engaging the digital space for those purposes. See Dara N. Byrne’s post. Youth can also engage the digital space to increase their power and voice if they see themselves as a cohesive group with some common interest(s) and can locate the structure of the digital world in relation to broader systemic processes.
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Tags: commoditization, structural-analysis, systemic-analysis, youth-participation
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