New Media and Global Citizenry

New Media and Global Citizenry

In the readings this week, I found the discussion about Digital Youth, Social Movements, and Democracy in Brazil and it’s relation to article on Changing Citizenship in the Digital Age by W. Lance Bennett. to be quite compelling and illustrates both the pros and the cons of new media and social networks and how the general society is reflected in what is seen in the virtual world.

Youth engagement has long been an issue in many political and social movements. Traditionally, youth are both, often harder to engage in social and political movements, as well as the flip side of that equation; the force behind many social and political movements. When engaged, youth movements can have tide turning affects and social media has the potential to harness both the social nature of youth and their technological proclivity, to organize and mobilize in ways that have not been possible before.

With social media specifically and new media in general, youth constituents have been quicker to become engaged because they are already engaged with this technology in their daily lives. Critics see this actually as disengagement, as it does not necessarily result in higher voting rates or rates of civic engagement that have been measured in the traditional sense, but social media has opened up new avenues of engagement that seem promising for future social movements and grassroots mobilization.

Again, critics point to the relatively trivial things that are currently the predominant focus of most social media, including buying behaviors and pop culture being the highest volume. They also point to the abuses, threats and frauds that are prevalent in this domain, yet there is also, true grassroots activism and social movements happening in social media. The openness of the virtual world, even in societies that have been very closed in the past have brought new voices to many people who have not had a voice or an audience in the past, and they can now have an international and vast reaching audience. This is truly revolutionary.

Raquel Recuero, from Brazil, talked about social media in her country in the recorded Google hangout meeting, as both providing a voice for many points of view as well as a mirror to the general prejudices of society. When asked about how prejudice is manifested in social media she points out that prejudice is present in society in general.  Within social networks it is also apparent. Social media is a reflection of what is in the society, and is not creating that prejudice. Sometimes people use the relative anonymity of social networks to voice prejudices and other socially unacceptable ideas and behaviors in a more flagrant way than they would in a public setting, but the ideas and sentiments are present before social media gave them a venue to vent.

She also mentions that she sees in her studies a trend of people shutting down more contentious issues within social media by choosing not to comment on peoples links to avoid fights and exposing themselves to social retaliation within that social media.

While people are able to us social networks to express their tastes and opinions., gender prejudices are coming up even within social networks unrelated to politics and social activism and these comments are not always welcome. Recuero mentions and the other panelist agreed that any expression of taste can bring on criticism.

She went on to mention that traditional media is losing ground to the amount of content and targeted content on social media and people are becoming more critical as they become more exposed to different ideas through different media. The youth market wants to “hang out” online and prefer the more interactive format.

Mobilization efforts are using Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites, and struggles between religious groups. This has larger ramification than it would normally because the local voices have a larger audience and the potential to reach people is so great. Youth are using Facebook and twitter to create content  and news about what is going in locally.

Bennett makes that point that while its true we see youth engaging socially online that all engagement is not “civic” engagements, and we should not be too quick to categorize their engagement as political or social in nature.  Media engagement is not the same as civic engagement. (Bennett, 2008 p4)

            “The engaged youth paradigm implicitly emphasizes generational changes in            social identity that have resulted in the growing importance of peer networks          and online communities.

Youth have abandoned many of the more traditional venues and media outlets for a more individualized and partitioned engagement online. Bennett goes on to say that “. So there may be ways in which the Internet promotes participation, but undermines the“civic.”

I tend to fall somewhere between the two descriptions of youth being either engaged or disengaged and would say time will tell if the promise of the individuals who have not had a voice until recently will take the opportunity to spread their ideas in a meaningful, constructive and civic minded way. We have seen examples of movements do just that and have real impact, and yet we also have the other examples of a disengaged youth who have declining rates of civic engagement and their social networking is generally about more trivial matters and does not rise to the level of civic engagements.

Referenes

Bennett, W. Lance. “Changing Citizenship in the Digital Age." Civic Life Online: Learning How Digital Media Can Engage Youth. Edited by W. Lance Bennett. The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2008. 1–24. doi: 10.1162/dmal.9780262524827.001

Recuero, R. (n.d.). Raquel recuero - digital youth, social movements, and democracy in brazil [Online forum comment]. Retrieved from http://connectedlearning.tv/raquel-recuero-digital-youth-social-movements-and-democracy-brazil