Taking Politics Seriously: The Effect of Digital Media and Literacy Education on Young Voters
1.17.12 | Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart’s brilliant satire of loose campaign finance laws and the 2012 presidential campaign has sparked a frenzy of video-sharing and related postings on social media networks. What effect might this send-up have on young voters, many of whom use Colbert and Stewart as their primary news sources?
In this video posted last summer, Joseph Kahne, a professor of education at Mills College and director of the Civic Engagement Research Group, discusses the impact of digital media on political participation.
Related resources include:
The MacArthur Network on Youth and Participatory Politics (YPP): An interdisciplinary network of scholars working together to understand the ways youth participation in online networks is shaping and reshaping youth civic and political engagement in the public sphere.
Digital Media Literacy Education and Online Civic and Political Participation: Joseph Kahne is the lead author of a newly published paper (International Journal of Communication, Vol 6) co-authored by Nam-Jin Lee (College of Charleston) and Jessica Timpany Feezell (UC Santa Barbara) that assesses how frequently digital media literacy education occurs in U.S. high schools and whether it can increase the likelihood that youth will engage with digital media in ways that promote the quantity, quality, and equality of online civic and political participation. From the abstract:
Can media literacy education promote and improve youth engagement in civic and political life? Unfortunately, to date, there have been almost no quantitative assessments of the frequency of media literacy education, nor of any possible subsequent impacts. This study draws on a unique panel data set of a diverse group of youths in high school and college settings. It finds that exposure to media literacy education is not strongly related to demographic variables. In addition, with controls for prior levels of online political activities, for political interest, and for a broad range of demographic variables, this study also finds that digital media literacy education is associated with increased online political engagement and increased exposure to diverse perspectives.
The full text is available here (PDF).
Digital Media and Democracy: How Time Spent Online is Training Tomorrow’s Active Citizens: From Spotlight, Sarah looks at the findings of a study released in February 2011 on student internet usage and civic/political engagment. The study was conducted by researchers affiliated with the MacArthur Network on Youth and Participatory Politics.
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