#youthaction

Ben Kirshner , University of Colorado School of Education, USA Ellen Middaugh , Mills College, USA

A volume in Adolescence and EducationSeries Editor Ben Kirshner, University of Colorado
Social media and digital tools permeate the everyday lives of young people. In the early
stages of commentary about the impact of the digital age on civic life, debates revolved
around whether the Internet enhanced or discouraged civic and political action. Since then
we have seen new media move to center stage in politics and activism--from the 2008 US
election to the 2011 Arab Spring to the Occupy movement. We have also seen new patterns
in how different sub-groups make use of digital media. These developments have
pushed people to move beyond questions about whether new media are good or bad for
civic life, to ask instead: how, under what conditions, and for whom, do new digital tools become resources for political critique
and action by the young?
This book will provide a platform for a new wave of scholarship about young people's political participation in the digital
age. We define "youth" or "young people" as roughly between the ages of 12 and 25. We include perspectives from political
science, education, cultural studies, learning sciences, and youth development. We draw on the framework developed
by the MacArthur Research Network on Youth and Participatory Politics (Cohen, Kahne, Bowyer, Middaugh, &
Rogowski, 2012), which defines participatory politics as, "interactive, peer-based
acts through which individuals and groups seek to exert both voice and influence on
issues of public concern."