Description

YNPP Research Network is a network of scholars and practitioners from a range of disciplines working together to understand the ways youth participation in online networks is shaping and reshaping youth civic and political engagement in the public sphere.

The current low levels of youth engagement in traditional civic and political activities are in stark contrast to high levels of online engagement in the public sphere among young people. YNPP will work to identify how this online engagement with new media might be mobilized to achieve civic and political outcomes traditionally served by longstanding civic and political institutions, processes, and norms.

Based on a conceptual framework developed during phase one of the project, YNPP will carry out quantitative and qualitative research studies that examine:

1. The ways new media may foster a new paradigm for participation in the public sphere.
2. How frequently and how equitably youth engage in networked public participation.
3. The relationship between online participatory practices and political participation.
4. The mechanisms for promoting more frequent, more equitable, and higher quality youth political participation via participation with new media.

Youth participation in networked media is creating a new paradigm for youth engagement in the public sphere, which in turn is shaping youth civic, and political engagement in the 21st century. The impact of these transformations is still unknown. The ultimate goal of YNPP is to identify the ways these transformations brought about by new media might be used to create new opportunities for all young people to engage fully and effectively in the public sphere.

Phase one of YNPP launched in July 1, 2009.



Current YNPP Network Members
Dr. Danielle Allen, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton University
Dr. Cathy Cohen, University of Chicago
Dr. Howard Gardner, Graduate School of Education, Harvard University
Dr. Mimi Ito, University of California Humanities Research Institute, University of California, Irvine
Dr. Henry Jenkins, USC Annenberg School for Communication
Dr. Joseph Kahne, Civic Engagement Research Group at Mills College
Ethan Zuckerman, Berkman Center

Funding

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation under the Digital Media and Learning Initiative

Related Links
Digital Media and Learning Inititiative
DML Central
The Black Youth Project
The Good Work Project
The Berkman Center
YouMedia