By Any Media Necessary. Henry Jenkins
it will require struggles to broaden access to technological infrastructures and participatory skills, struggles against the corporate ownership and government regulation of communication channels, struggles to retain our collective rights to privacy and to free expression, struggles to be heard and respected by institutional power brokers, and struggles against various forms of segregation and marginalization.
Our research is helping to identify many ways that activist networks have “empowered” young people, especially those who are already culturally engaged, to embrace more active roles as citizens. Many youth are finding their civic voices through projects that encourage them to produce and circulate media. While we see much to celebrate here, we are also concerned about the precariousness of some of these publics, which contend with the same pressures that have disempowered other young people in the past. In a review of the existing literature, Jennifer S. Light (2015) concludes:
Time and again, it seems, when the cost has fallen young people have turned to new media as tools for political expression among themselves and to the broader community of adults. Yet, in keeping with the history of alternative media more generally—for adults, too, have been enthusiastic users—the youth who used media technologies but did not control media systems found traditional gatekeeping authorities—all adults—eager to assert control over and restrict technologies’ future use. (33)
Throughout the book, we consider a range of factors that limit the capacity for participatory politics, including issues of media literacy and civic skills (in the case of Kony 2012), digital access (in the case of the DREAMers), surveillance (in the case of American Muslims), and institutional entanglements (in the case of Students for Liberty). Perhaps most powerfully, we address the range of institutional constraints and ideological blinders—the larger power dynamics around race, gender, sexuality, legal status, or generation that make it hard for young people to meaningfully participate in the political process.
What Does Participatory Politics Look Like?
In a white paper for the MacArthur Youth and Participatory Politics Research Network, Cathy J. Cohen and Joseph Kahne (2012) define participatory politics as “interactive, peer-based acts through which individuals and groups seek to exert both voice and influence on issues of public concern” (vi). This report identified various forms of participatory politics, including the sharing of information through social media, engaging in online conversations through digital forums or blogs and podcasts, creating original content in the form of online videos or photoshopped memes to comment on a current issue, using Twitter and other microblogging tools to rally a community toward collective action, or deploying databases in order to investigate an ongoing concern. Participatory politics represent forms of political participation that are embedded in the everyday life practices of young political agents. Cohen and Kahne explain:
The participatory skills, norms, and networks that develop when social media is used to socialize with friends or to engage with those who share one’s interests can and are being transferred to the political realm.… What makes participatory culture unique is not the existence of these individual acts, but that the shift in the relative prevalence of circulation, collaboration, creation, and connection is changing the cultural context in which people operate. (3)
Joe Kahne, Ellen Middaugh, and Danielle Allen (2014) stress that their “notion of the political extends beyond the electoral focus” to include a “broad array of efforts” that range from “electoral” activities to “lifestyle politics” (1). More specifically, they propose the following activity types as characteristic of participatory politics:
Circulation. In participatory politics, the flow of information is shaped by many in the broader community rather than by a small group of elites.…
Dialogue and feedback. There is a high degree of dialogue among community members, as well as a practice of weighing in on issues of public concern and on the decisions of civic and political leaders.…
Production. Members not only circulate information but also create original content (such as a blog or video that has political intent or impact) that allows them to advance their perspectives.…
Mobilization. Members of a community rally others to help accomplish civic or political goals.…
Investigation. Members of a community actively pursue information about issues of public concern.… (41)
Cohen and Kahne have overseen two national surveys, each collecting data from roughly 3,000 survey respondents aged 15–25. The bad news is that despite the publicity around Obama’s courting of the youth vote, more than half (56 percent) of those contacted had not been involved in politics in any form over the 12 months prior to being queried. Somewhat more reassuring was that what they are calling participatory politics does not “distract” youth from forms of institutional political practices (such as voting, petitioning, street protest, or writing letters to the editor). On the contrary, Cohen and Kahne found that those who engaged in participatory politics (roughly 40–45 percent across all racial categories) were almost twice as likely to vote as those who did not.
Seeking to better understand how these various sets of practices entered the lives of American youth, the Good Participation team at Harvard University (Rundle, James, and Weinstein forthcoming), conducted in-depth interviews with 70 civically and politically active youth between the ages of 15 and 25. The youth they interviewed were more likely to engage, on a regular basis, with some of these practices (especially circulation, production, and investigation) than others (dialogue, feedback, and mobilization), while there was a wide range in the depth and degree of sophistication with which they were applying these practices.
Ben Bowyer, a member of the YPP survey team, also analyzed data from the Pew Internet and American Life Project that was collected following the 2008 and 2012 elections (Smith 2013). He found substantial increases in these participatory practices over this four-year period. For example, the number of youth posting pictures or videos related to social and political concerns increased from 10 percent to 21 percent; the number sharing political news through social media went from 13 percent to 32 percent; and the percentage who had started a group online supporting a cause went from 14 to 26 percent. By almost every measure, the percentage of youth engaged in participatory politics is growing at a rapid rate. Keep in mind that these practices often involved deeper commitments of time, energy, social capital, and other resources than many of the mechanisms of institutional politics (voting, for example), supporting our argument that at least some young people are not “disengaged” but rather are conducting politics through other means.
Reflecting what we’ve described as the participation gap, these skills and experiences are unevenly distributed among American youth. The good news is that these sets of participatory politics practices may be more broadly accessible across race than those practices associated with institutionalized politics. Cohen and Kahne found that 43 percent of white, 41 percent of black, 38 percent of Latino, and 36 percent of Asian-American youth participated in at least one act of participatory politics during the prior 12 months. By contrast, the difference in voting in 2008 between the group with the highest rate of turnout according to the U.S. Census Bureau—African American youth (52 percent)—and the group with the lowest rate of turnout—Latino youth (27 percent)—is 25 percentage points. These findings offer hope for forms of political participation that more fully reflect the demographic diversity of contemporary American society. However, there is still heavy stratification on the basis of educational background and some of the more “advanced” practices are much more likely to be performed by those with high educational, economic, cultural, and social capital than by those who are more disadvantaged. So while participatory politics does raise hope for fostering a more democratic culture, it can not in and of itself overcome some of the structural inequalities that have historically blocked many from participating in civic and political life.
In a critique of the concept of participatory politics, James Hay (2011) writes, “It would be too simplistic to generalize blogging, photo-shopping and social networking (media revolution) as the condition for an enhanced democracy” (666). Hay cites the Tea Party as an example of a more participatory—yet reactionary—approach to politics, a debatable proposition given how much this right-wing group relies on traditional hierarchies, established media