Civic Media: Technology, Design, Practice (The MIT Press)

by Eric Gordon

Citizenship and education are tied to media literacies because civic life is composed of the skills and dispositions that young people use to engage with media for personal and public means. As the spaces for formal education have trouble keeping pace with technological advancements (Rheingold, 2012), how students learn to participate in civic life becomes a question of increasing importance, and that is less dependent on formal schooling alone. Education scholar Renee Hobbs summarized the aims of media and digital literacy in a report for the Aspen Foundation, in which she highlights the need for young people to “recognize personal, corporate and political agendas” and be “empowered to speak out on behalf of the