Abstract
Youth civic identities and social media practices are changing rapidly, and civic organisations are struggling to exploit the potential of social media to reach youth. One major challenge concerns the generational culture gap between the networked culture of today’s youth and the top–down culture characteristic of many civic organisations. This study presents lessons learnt from three cases where young designers (22–26 years) were engaged to develop social media concepts for civic organisations. Drawing on this experience, we present lessons learnt on how design by youth for youth may help to bridge the generational culture gap concerning civic engagement through social media. It is suggested that design may benefit from not only being informed by youth but also created by them. Through the design cases, we contribute to how civic organisations might innovate in their social media approach to better reflect the fast-changing networked youth culture.
Highlights
Civic organisations have traditionally played an important part in civic engagement and democracy (Putnam, 2001)
While social media are seen as a promising arena for civic organisations to facilitate youth civic engagement (Brandtzaeg, Haugstveit, Lüders, & Følstad, 2015; de Zuniga, 2015; Wells, 2014), civic organisations are struggling to adapt to the changing networked media and civic cultures of young people (Brandtzaeg et al, 2015; Delli Carpini, 2000; Loader, Vromen, & Xenos, 2014)
This paper investigated how civic organisations can bridge the generational culture gap to support young people for civic engagement in social media through the use of design
Summary
Civic organisations have traditionally played an important part in civic engagement and democracy (Putnam, 2001). Civic organisations need to innovate to adapt to contemporary youth culture They find it difficult to devise appropriate strategies for civic engagement that are suited to the networked culture of young people (Brandtzaeg et al, 2015; Loader, et al, 2014). The communicative infrastructure within civic organisations may be illsuited for adapting to the ways in which new forms of civic engagement are enacted and performed This underlines the need for technology design that is tailored for civic organisations, which might enable these organisations to better adapt to youth civic practices. Young designers developed new concepts for three Norwegian civic organisations to help them strengthen youth civic engagement through social media
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