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By Any Media Necessary: Mapping Youth and Participatory Politics

Book Companion

Who?

The Media, Activism, and Participatory Politics (MAPP) project is comprised of a group of multidisciplinary scholars based at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. We were funded by the MacArthur Foundation to develop a series of case studies of innovative networks and organizations that have deployed tactics of  participatory politics to get young people involved in efforts to heighten  public awareness and promote social change. A series of individual reports on these networks and organizations were released through the MacArthur research network on Youth and Participatory Politics (YPP).

What?

By Any Media Necessary represents the culmination of this research, comparing and contrasting across the individual case studies in order to propose a fuller  conceptual model for thinking about how such organizations scaffold and sustain participatory politics. Research on the case studies included in this book was carried out over a period of four years and included interviews, participant observation and media content analysis.

Why?

Our cases were selected because these groups and networks were youth driven communities with low thresholds to participation, made effective use of new media platforms, sought strategies that bridged the cultural and the political, and represented a broad spectrum of demographics, causes, and organizational structures.

How?

Working with the Institute for Multimedia Literacy at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts, MAPP researchers developed a series of multimedia resources (and testing a range of classroom practices) that will support educators -- in school and out -- who want to help foster civic learning. This digital extension allows readers to experience By Any Media Necessary, putting into practice core insights from our research into participatory politics. We invite you to explore each of the chapters in this pathway, getting to know the people, organizations, and media artifacts that inspired this project.

Contents of this path:

This page is referenced by:

By Any Media Necessary: Mapping Youth and Participatory Politics

Over the past few decades, we’ve seen dramatic increases in grassroots access to the means of cultural production and circulation and improvements to the infrastructure required for collective action (Jenkins, Ford, and Green, 2013). This participatory turn in culture has been mirrored by shifts in the ways citizens are collectively and individually exerting power within the political process. Young men and women who learned how to use their cameras recording skateboarding videos, to mashup images to make cute cat pictures, to edit making fan videos, are now turning their skills towards political speech and grassroots mobilization. These “creative activists” are often speaking to each other through images borrowed from commercial entertainment but remixed to communicate their own messages; they are often deploying social media tools and platforms, sometimes in ways that challenge corporate interests; and they are forging communities through acts of media circulation. The conclusion of Henry Jenkins’s 2006 book, Convergence Culture, proposed that a networked society would soon be applying what they learned through play within participatory culture towards more purposeful realms, such as education, religion, and politics. The "By Any Media Necessary" book explores new forms of political activities and identities that have emerged from the practices of participatory culture and are impacting how American youth think of their civic identities.

Building on (and contributing to) the MacArthur Foundations Youth and Participatory Politics Network's concept of participatory politics, our team, based at the Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism at the University of Southern California, has been tracking a range of different organizations and networks that have been effective at getting young people involved in civic and political activities through their deft use of networked political practices and participatory culture frameworks.

This online experience supports and expands on the book and is organized along the following paths, please choose one depending on the experience you are looking for:

Book Companion - This path is a companion to the "ByAny Media Necessary" book and provides readers with opportunities to further explore ideas and examples it contains.

Themes - This path highlights key conceptual themes that emerged through our research and other work.

Featured Campaigns- This path introduces campaigns that we encountered through our work.

Media Type - Do you want to learn what media to use for what purposes? Follow this path to encounter media type specific examples.

Genres - Are you interested in how comedy intersects with civic action? Are you looking for examples that would inspire your civically oriented music video? Then this genre specific path is for you.

Activities - Are you an educator or community organizer looking for ideas of what you can do to help scaffold innovative participatory civic practices? This path navigates curated activities from other groups and organizations.

Media Library - Browse through the vast collection of media examples curated by the MAPP project.

Visualization of Paths

This page references:

“Decreasing World Suck”