Glossary
- Alternative citizenship styles – ways in which in the current social, political and media environment, young people perceive, express and act upon their citizenship in ways that substantially differ from the conceptions of their parents’ generation and from “legacy citizenship models”, with important consequences to civic education, and to the larger political system (Kligler-Vilenchik)
- Audiences vs. publics - audiences are produced by acts of measurement, by the number of eyeballs attracted or in terms of the amount of money raised. Publics, on the other hand, actively direct attention onto messages they value: “a public not only offers attention, it calls for attention.” Publics, Sonia Livingstone (2006) tells us, are “held to be collectivities, more than the sum of their parts, while audiences by contrast are merely aggregates of individuals.” (Dayan/Livingstone)
- Boundary publics - Iterative, ephemeral experiences of belonging that circulate across the outskirts and through the center(s) of a more recognized and validated public sphere. (Mary Gray)
- “By any media necessary” - Evoking the vow of Malcolm X, the phrase refers to the way the most highly motivated youth, those most eager to change the world, are taking advantage of any and every available media channel to tell their stories.
- Civic Imagination - The capacity to imagine alternatives to current social, political or economic institutions or problems
- Civic learning - developing a deeper understanding of issues and debates and acquiring the skills needed to act meaningfully in response to these concerns
- Clicktivism - A viewpoint that sees the use of online petitions and social media as a substitute for on the ground political action or in terms of the application of the metrics and methods of the marketplace (number of clicks) as a means of measuring success. The Clicktivist critique often describes online campaigns as involving limited risk or effort and having limited impact on institutional politics.
- Collective identity - an individual's cognitive, moral, and emotional connection with a broader community. It carries with it positive feelings for other members of the group (Polletta et al., 2003)
- “Coming out” - Using blogs, podcasts, and user- generated video, undocumented youth declared their legal status openly to their peers, teachers, and friends, many for the first time
- Compassion fatigue - political messages get carried by dramatic and simplified videos and then diminish again as participants feel the tug of yet another story and another appeal for action
- Content worlds - the network of characters, settings, situations, and values that forms the basis for the generation of a range of stories, in the hands of either a commercial producer or a grassroots community (Jenkins, 2012)
- Context collapse - the imagined audience might be entirely different from the actual readers of a profile, blog post, or tweet (boyd & Marwick)
- Critical literacy skills - investigating and forming opinions, reviewing potential counter-arguments and countering them
- Détournement / cultural fluency -“the better you know a culture, the easier it is to shift, repurpose, or disrupt it. To be successful, the media artifact chosen for détournement must be recognizable to its intended audience” (Zack Malitz)/ Stephen Duncombe
- DIY citizenship - the use of web-based media and engagement in practices like citizen journalism can have a direct impact in shaping political and social movements (Boler)
- Drillability - ways that the data-base structures of the new media environment sometimes make it possible to drill deeper into a piece of media and develop a fuller understanding of its content and context (Mittell, 2013)
- Fan activism—harnessing fan enthusiasm toward real world change. Jenkins (2012) defines it as “Forms of civic engagement and political participation that emerge from within fan culture itself, often in response to the shared interests of fans, often conducted through the infrastructure of existing fan practices and relationships, and often framed through metaphors drawn from popular and participatory culture”.
- Fannish practices - Activities conducted by members of fan communities in relation to their object of affection, either collectively or on their own
- Fragile archive - Counter to the popular notion that material shared online (video and photo representations especially) will “last forever,” many materials created for activist purposes may be no longer accessible
- Generational approach – An approach to the understanding of continuity and change within social movements that focuses on generational replacement, movements’ internal recruitment mechanisms and collective identity (Whittier)
- Institutional supports – ways in which grassroots organizations are linked to and may benefit from well-established, networked, and funded organizations.
- Latent capacities - Networks normally sustained through the exchange of funny stories, music videos, and cute cat pictures, Zuckerman suggests, can quickly move into political conversations when required (Zuckerman)
- Levers of change – different levers of power can be used for different activist goals, e.g. legislative, influencing authority figures, shifting public opinion. (Zuckerman)
- Mechanisms of translation - practices (sometimes, but not always, intentional) through which groups tap into the passions and social ties that bring participants in fan communities together, and provide means to connect those passions to debates around social change. (Kligler-Vilenchik, 2013)
- Media, Activism, and Participatory Politics research team - part of the YPP network. Developed a series of case studies of innovative networks and organizations that have deployed tactics of participatory politics. By Any Media Necessary represents the culmination of this research.
- Millenials - Identifed as a generation of youth born “in or after 1982,” millenials have been front and center in debates focused on generational attitudinal and socio-cultural shifts.
- New digital civics model - moving away from legislative theories of social change, or an “old civics” model, and adopting a model that teaches us how to raise attention for causes, how to use distributed populations to propose solutions to problems, and how to synchronize supporters around a strategy (Zuckerman)
- Participatory culture - a range of shared activities and social engagements, ranging from fan fiction writing and crafting to gaming guilds, through which people collectively carve out a space for cultural expression and learning. Such groups are characterized by “relatively low” barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement, strong social support for creating and sharing and for the development of “voice,” informal practices which provide mentorship and training for would-be participants, and where contributors feel that what they share with each other matters.
- Participatory politics - interactive, peer-based acts through which individuals and groups seek to exert both voice and influence on issues of public concern. Participatory politics might take various forms, including the sharing of information through social media, engaging in online conversations through digital forums or blogs and podcasts, creating original content in the form of online videos or photoshopped memes to comment on a current issue, using Twitter and other microblogging tools to rally a community towards collective action, or tapping databases in order to investigate an ongoing concern.(Cohen & Kahne)
- Precarious publics - a possible gap within participatory politics between voice and influence. Youth have to weigh perceived benefits of participation against possible outcomes on a fragile and easily tipped scale.
- Public spheres of the imagination - When fans use virtual worlds to discuss, reimagine and seek to change the primary world. Conversations that promote rational and egalitarian discussion as ideals, but combine them with the “cognitive estrangement” enabled through the imagination (Saler, 2012)
- Social surveillance - ongoing eavesdropping, investigation, gossip and inquiry that constitutes information gathering by people about their peers (Marwick)
- Spreadability - the ways that content may be circulated actively across social media through a process which is partially shaped by top-down actions taken by professional media producers and partially by bottom-up choices made by individuals and grassroots communities pursuing their own goals (Jenkins, Ford and Green 2013)
- Storytelling – A collective activity in which individuals and groups contribute to the telling, retelling, and remixing of stories [or narratives] through various media platforms. (Brough & Shresthova)
- Surveillance – Systematized monitoring systems put in place by companies and authorities
- Taste publics - are “generally focused on works, texts, or programmes; the performance of these publics is generally 'verdictive' (evaluative).” Also seen as “identity publics” because of the ways they forge common identities around shared interests (Dayan)
- Theory fans - have a passion for theory that goes beyond a passive acceptance of whatever they are given by publishers and conference organizers, reap intellectual as well as emotional benefit from theory (McKee)
- Thick vs. thin engagement - Using a matrix consisting of two axes, describing engagement as thin vs. thick, and symbolic vs. impactful, Zuckerman defines thin engagement as “actions that require little thought on your part: sign a petition, give a contribution”. Thick engagement, on the other hand, asks “for your creativity, your strategic sensibilities, your ability to make media, research, deliberate or find solutions.” (Zuckerman)
- Transmedia mobilization - a process whereby a social movement narrative is dispersed systematically across multiple media platforms, creating a distributed and participatory social movement ‘world,’ with multiple entry points for organizing and for the purpose of strengthening movement identity and outcomes (Costanza-Chock)
- Universe of taste - a widely defined shared common ground, that each individual can choose his or her own flavor of it
- Youth and Participatory Politics (YPP) network - A multidisciplinary research network established in 2009 by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation focused on better understanding the role of new media in young people’s lives and politics.