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By Any Media Necessary: Mapping Youth and Participatory Politics

An Action Plan for Achieving Success in Participatory Politics webinar and twitter chat

An Action Plan for Achieving Success in Participatory Politics, the second webinar of the By Any Media Necessary: Scaffolding & Sustaining Participatory Politics webinar and twitter chat series, was held on February 17, 2015, hosted on the Connected Learning website. Talitha Baker (formerly of Invisible Children), Allen L. Linton II (Black Youth Project), Nicole Mirra (Postdoctoral Scholar at the UCLA Graduate School of Education), and Marium Mohiuddin (American Muslim Youth) joined moderator/hosts Diana Lee and Raffi Sarkissian to discuss themes such as once success has been defined, whether for a one-time campaign or an ongoing effort, what are some of the best methods for actualizing those goals?

The participants discussed the following framing questions during the webinar:

To start us off, please share one of the most difficult challenges you have faced or researched in a political/social/civics project?
When starting a new action/campaign/project, what are your first steps? After setting goals and objectives, what would be your advice to an individual or group on next steps? How do you identify opportunities where active intervention makes sense or seems achievable?
When implementing an action/campaign/project, whom do you look to for feedback or advice? How much do you take outside feedback into account? How important is public perception to your particular work? And how do you manage their expectations of what you’re trying to accomplish? How important is the news media’s perceptions of what you have accomplished, and what’s the best way to handle their inquiries?
Often, we occupy multiple spaces at one time: activist, scholar, teacher, artist--we can simultaneously be many different things. How do you negotiate wearing multiple hats? What are some of the challenges that you have run into or seen when juggling multiple roles within an organization?
How do you manage resources and attention when an action/campaign becomes bigger/more visible than you anticipated? Alternatively, what do you do if your action plan is just not gaining any traction?
What are some strategies for dealing with staff/volunteer burnout? How do you keep energy going during a longer campaign, or after setbacks?
Looking back at your own work, is there anything that stands out that you would do differently?
What would be your one piece of advice to someone thinking about putting a political idea or a social justice campaign into action?

If the first webinar was about conceptualizing the different forms that success can take and what the end result might look like, this second one was about the journey to actualize that success and some of the challenges young adults may face. Conversation mostly revolved around making a difference within the US education system and some of the challenges that young adults face within school. Nicole Mirra discussed some of the challenges facing youth-led research projects, particularly the perception of young people as “cute” or “fun,” rather than as truly engaged, active members of the community that should be listened to. Her conviction was that citizenship does not start when you turn 18 and young people participate in many different ways politically, often through digital media. Allen L. Linton II built upon Nicole’s words by adding that there is often stigma around digital media tools in schools which creates a disconnect between teachers and students. For Allen it is imperative to gauge teacher attitudes and comfort levels in engaging with new media and participatory politics and work with schools and school districts. Magazine editor Marium Mohiuddin provided an alternative solution. In Marium’s experience the establishment of youth summits for American Muslim youth outside of school have provided a space for young people to find their own political voices. For all of the panelists, the challenges of activism and organizing, are not “new” because of social and digital media. The structures are different and things move faster, but many of the core challenges are the same.

Drawing from themes that emerged from the second webinar, the MAPP team created a list of follow-up questions to be discussed in a corresponding twitter chat the following week on February 17. Led by Jon Barilone of the Connected Learning Alliance, with support from MAPP team members Alexandra Margolin, Raffi Sarkissian, Diana Lee, and Ritesh Mehta, participants used #ByAnyMedia to discuss questions such as:

What examples of successful political activism do *you* look towards for inspiration & insights?
When starting a new action/campaign/project, what are *your* first steps?
What can you/your community do if your action plan is just not gaining any traction?
Do you have any advice for youth activists who are not taken seriously because of their age?
What are some easy mistakes or ‘rookie moves’ to avoid when it comes to modern-day activism?
How important is public perception to your work? And how do you manage others’ expectations?
What are some challenges to using a participatory model in your work? What’s your 1 Tweetable piece of advice to those who want to start a political/social/civic action?

Don’t have time to watch the full webinar or read through the twitter chat? The MAPP team also published highlights from this series on Henry Jenkins’ blog, and key moments from Webinar & Twitter Chat 1 and Webinar & Twitter Chat 2.

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