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New Media’s Role in Participatory Politics
Social network sites, websites and text increasingly serve as a conduit for political information and a major public arena where citizens express and exchange their political ideas, raise funds and mobilize others...
Categories: Civic Engagement, Digital Citizenship“The irony is the more personal your story is, the more universal it is. And, the more you keep that nuance that makes your story personal, the more it will spread,” Nirvan...
Categories: Digital Citizenship, Digital LearningBrazil Internet ‘Bill of Rights’ Protects Web Users
Leading the way toward protecting individual rights and freedom of expression on the Internet, the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies has approved a Bill of Rights, “Marco Civil.”The landmark legislation now awaits approval...
Categories: Digital Citizenship, EquitySpritz is a startup that wants to change how people read on small screens. The startup has created an app that feeds texts to readers one word at a time, arranged so...
Categories: Digital Citizenship, EdtechThe Rise of Writing Literacies, Implications for Libraries
The look of any library — school, academic, or public — is always dependent on local needs in a community, but the feature that has traditionally characterized all types of libraries is...
Categories: Connected Learning, Digital CitizenshipFeminist Theory, Online Action, and Networked Learning
“It’s not just about studying and learning,” says Pitzer College student Susanna Ferrell. “It’s also about activism,” adds fellow student Jade Ulrich, both of whom were beta testers for a Distributed Open...
Categories: Digital Citizenship, Digital LearningDefending the Humanities in the Digital Age
Taking Care of Things: Reclaiming What is Lost in Our Defence of Humanities[1] If this were a book, this section would be the preface. If it were an academic paper, a footnote. If...
Category: Digital CitizenshipRolezinhos: Flash Mobs, Social Media and Teens
A new movement — the "rolezinhos" (meaning something like "hang out somewhere" or “little strolls”) — has taken hold in Brazil. Through social media, the rolezinhos started as a simple call for...
Categories: Digital Citizenship, EquityThe 5 Most Interesting Writing Developments for 2014
It is a common theme to complain about the way that writing (or reading or math) skills are declining as our society becomes increasingly digitized. In this post, I look at some...
Categories: Digital Citizenship, Digital LearningCapabilities of Movements and Affordances of Digital Media: Paradoxes of Empowerment
From the “Indignados” in Spain, to “Occupy” in the United States, from Tahrir Square in Egypt to Syntagma Square in Greece, from Gezi Park in Turkey to #Euromaidan in Ukraine, the recent...
Categories: Civic Engagement, Digital CitizenshipGoing Beyond ‘Learning to Code’: Why 2014 is the Year of Web Literacy
In January 2012 the Mayor of New York tweeted, along with thousands of other people, that he planned to 'learn to code' during the course of that year. Whether or not he...
Categories: Digital Citizenship, Digital LearningLibraries as ‘Sponsors of Literacy and Learning’: Peeling Back the Layers
In my last two posts, I have reflected on a rationale for looking at the work of libraries through Deborah Brandt’s concept of sponsors of literacy as well as the philosophical and...
Category: Digital CitizenshipNew Media, New Civics? The Bellwether Lecture at the Oxford Internet Institute
The Oxford Internet Institute was kind enough to invite me to give the inaugural lecture in their Bellwether Series. The OII’s director, Professor Helen Margetts, introduced the series explaining that she hoped...
Categories: Civic Engagement, Digital Citizenship“But I just want to remind everybody, we did not wage this long and contentious battle just around a website.”– Barack Obama, “Remarks by the President on the Affordable Care Act,” Oct....
Category: Digital CitizenshipHuman Rights and Social Media in India: Blank Noise
On a recent visit to Sarai, a Delhi research think tank housed in the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, I met a number of female university students who described participating...
Categories: Digital Citizenship, Equity
