Spotlight on Digital Media And Learning

10.29.08 | The workshop convened by Lance Bennett and others around the growth of a civically-engaged youth community on Puget Sound Off was too rich over two days of discussion to capture in its entirety. The following note details one point relating to youth and digital media I found worth reflecting upon.

There aren’t enough politically engaged young people to go around, so one potential obstacle to collaboration with other local nodes in the youth and civic movement is the tension between collaborating and competing for a scarce resource.

While PSO content is produced by the community, and through their own actions the community can bring content to broader attention, an editorial function is also necessary to elevate and highlight content, regardless of whether it is already popular.

Lance: "Repeat offenders turn into staff members." In every community that grows, the founders discover that enthusiastic participants can become leaders, if empowered.

Diana Hess noted that "mere voicing" or giving a voice to youth doesn’t necessarily mean they are engaged or likely to be engaged. They need evidence that someone is listening to what they have to say.

This brought me to mention what I learned about marketing in my years of trying to grow online communities: Marketing, no matter what you are trying to sell or even give away, starts with knowing who your customer is; this is no different when marketing online engagement to anybody. With youth, listening to what they have to say is not just consumer research, but is itself a powerful message to potential constituents and a foundation for pedagogy and community building. Who are you? What interests you? What can we offer you in exchange for your participation? These questions are both the essentials of marketing 101 (the third question is what marketers call "the value proposition") and the beginning of giving young people not just a voice but an ear.

Eszter Hargittai, who has been conducting empirical research on these topics, pointed out that the access divide is no longer just defined by availability of tools and media, but in terms of autonomy—the young person’s freedom to use the Internet where and when they want. She also talked about the skill divide. The popular image of "digital natives" held by many carries an assumption that age is an important determinant of online success, but the skill divide might be more important than age. Participation increases when young people think they know enough about a subject—skills plus knowledge. One of the young women PSO panelists said "Nobody likes talking about something they don’t know."