A Waste of Time or Digital Social Capital - 25 July 2012

A Waste of Time or Digital Social Capital?


The term civic engagement has been used to reflect many different approaches to citizenship, whether local or global, including a variety of activities - from informal individual activities to formal collective ones.

Both blogging and commenting on blogs may be considered forms of civic engagement. In an interview for The Chronicle of Higher Education, Berekely’s Howard Rheingold emphasized the need to encourage students to blog, saying that 21st century civic education is “participatory media-literacy education”, distinguishing passive consumers of broadcast media content from active citizens who blog, share videos, comment on newspaper articles online, etc. (“Why Professors Ought to Teach Blogging and Podcasting”).

On the other hand, not everything posted by ordinary citizens is influential at this point in time, as explained by Ryan Rish of MIT in the paper “User Generated Content of an Online Newspaper: A Contested Form of Civic Engagement”. Regretting that user-generated content, such as feedback provided on online newspaper sites, is not currently considered a legitimate form of civic engagement, he expects greater impact for future civic and participatory journalism. While civic journalism involves professional journalists encouraging interactive news reporting, participatory journalism places citizens more centrally, involving them in the collection, analysis and publishing of news and ideas. Focusing his study on an online school newspaper in the U.S., Ryan reports that “Members of the local school district leadership discounted user-generated content associated with the online newspaper as a legitimate form of communication with school district officials, while users of the online newspaper and the editorial staff of the newspaper argued for the user-generated content to be considered a form of community conversation”.

Digital social capital or a waste of time? You decide.


Posted by May Mikati on 25 July 2012, 4:34 PM

Online Civic Engagement - 02 July 2012

Online Civic Engagement


Over a year has passed since I started blogging. What keeps this blog going when many academics fear blogs as unconventional, non-peer-reviewed forms of publication?

Since blogs are open to the world, anyone can scrutinize their content and comment on it, including experts – something not entirely different from peer review. Additionally, blogging may be seen as a form of civic engagement. It is useful not only in teaching and building community with one’s immediate environment but also in outreach to a broader community. And don’t forget, it’s much faster than other forms of publishing.

One blogger and teacher, Michael Kuhne, sees wikis such as Wikipedia as a form of civic engagement: “When it works, Wikipedia is this great social experiment where people with a vested interest in an article (actually, their interest is not the article itself, but what the article (re)presents) can exchange ideas, debate, deliberate, and create. How many civic institutions exist today that can promise the same?” (“What Does Wikipedia Have to Do With Civic Engagement?”). Traditionally, civic engagement has taken the form of non-profit contributions to society, usually by powerful groups of people providing services to their communities through channels such as charities, scouts, social welfare groups and religious organizations.

The Pew Research Center reported in 2009 that, in the U.S., the internet was still mirroring traditional socioeconomic power relations. The more advantaged are more likely to be civically engaged (whether online or not) just as the situation has been historically. Yet things are changing: “There are hints that forms of civic engagement anchored in blogs and social networking sites could alter long-standing patterns that are based on socioeconomic status” (Smith et. al, “The Internet and Civic Engagement”).

In future postings I shall continue to reflect on the idea of civic engagement online – a thought-provoking subject.


Posted by May Mikati on 02 July 2012, 5:23 PM