A Public Voice for Youth: The Audience Problem in Digital Media and Civic Education

Contributing Organization(s): MacArthur Foundation Digital Media and Learning Initiative, The


Author(s)/Creator(s): Peter Levine

Publishing Date: 2008-01-01

Issue Areas: Children and Youth; Media; Education and Literacy

Ownership/Rights Info: Copyright 2008 Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Published under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works Unported 3.0 license.

Available at: http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/dmal.9780262524827.119


Part of the Volume on Civic Life Online: Learning How Digital Media Can Engage Youth.

Students should have opportunities to create digital media in schools. This is a promising way to enhance their "civic engagement," which comprises political activism, deliberation, problem-solving, and participation in shaping a culture. All these forms of civic engagement require the effective use of a "public voice," which should be taught as part of digital media education. To provide digital media courses that teach civic engagement will mean overcoming several challenges, including a lack of time, funding, and training. An additional problem is especially relevant to the question of public voice. Students must find appropriate audiences for their work in a crowded media environment dominated by commercial products. The chapter concludes with strategies for building audiences, the most difficult but promising of which is to turn adolescents' offline communities -- especially high schools -- into more genuine communities.

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Available at: http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/dmal.9780262524827.119


Intended Audience: Advocates; College/University Professors; General Public; Researchers

Type/Format: Whitepaper

Language code: English

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