By Any Media Necessary: Mapping Youth and Participatory Politics

Book Companion

The Media, Activism, and Participatory Politics (MAPP) project emerges from this same multidisciplinary conversation. 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 were released through the YPP network. 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. 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.

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.

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