Understanding these new mechanisms of political participation is central to this book’s project.
Ethan Zuckerman (forthcoming) has asked his readers to take a long, hard look at these new mechanisms of political participation in order to better understand their underlying models of change and to assess which may be the most effective means of achieving particular goals: “If I care about racial justice, should I work to elect candidates from a particular political party, run for local office, participate in a march, write an op-ed or a blog post? Given my skills, capabilities and time, am I likely to be effective in bringing about the changes I wish to see through a given civic act?” To address these questions, Zuckerman contrasts the different tactics protestors used in the immediate aftermath of the police shooting of unarmed black teen Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, in August 2014. Zuckerman notes the complex interplay between traditional forms of street protest and social media responses designed to direct greater attention onto what had happened: “The protests in the streets documented online, and the online protests calling attention to events in the streets represent some of the ways in which civic media—the use of participatory media technologies for civic participation, political engagement or social change—has become a routine part of protest movements, opening participation in protests far beyond those physically present.”
Much like Occupy, Ferguson and subsequent protests against racialized police violence have generated new political symbols, tactics, and frames. Anusha Kedhar (2014), for example, has described the ways that the “Hands Up! Don’t Shoot” gesture has been performed not only in the streets of Ferguson but around the world as an expression of solidarity and as a means of embodying a particular subjectivity: “The hands up don’t shoot slogan implores the protestor not only to stand in solidarity with Michael Brown by re-enacting his last movements, but also to empathize by embodying his final corporeal act of agency. As a collective gesture, it compels us to take note of and publicly acknowledge the bodily proof of Michael Brown’s innocence.” Under the hashtag #iftheygunnedmedown, African Americans were encouraged to share contrasting photographs of themselves in different personas—dressed for work or graduation or military service as opposed to more casual street clothes—as a means of calling out how the news media’s selection of such images for publication can dramatically shape the public’s perception of Brown or others involved in police violence. This campaign allowed dispersed supporters to feel connected to the protest, offering a template for what meaningful participation might look like and identifying others who shared a similar worldview. The use of such tactics also reflects a growing awareness of the ways protestors have been able to coalesce and mobilize quickly via social media.2
Zuckerman argues that such social media campaigns often seek to change media representations as a means of shaping public perceptions and social norms. Such a model of change, Zuckerman argues, underlies many efforts to deploy social media because this approach builds upon the social affiliations and cultural practices many young people use on a daily basis. Such campaigns, he suggests, are easy to execute but hard to assess: “It’s one thing to measure how many millions of Facebook users changed their profile photo to the logo of an equality campaign, and another to determine whether those profile changes led to a change in public acceptance of equal marriage rights.” Moreover, such messages risk adding more clutter to an already vast media landscape, as citizens are pulled and tugged by many such efforts.
As we are writing, protests around the U.S. and around the world are escalating amid a growing awareness of a pattern of similar incidents in which black bodies have been subjected to brutal and discriminatory police force. We still do not know how effective these various tactics will be in sustaining an ongoing social justice movement; we also do not know by what criteria we should appraise their effectiveness. Rather than burning out, there are some signs that each of these campaigns has fueled the next (with the #BlackLivesMatter campaign following from the Trayvon Martin death helping to inspire the responses in Ferguson), adding new symbols and gestures to the mix (such as the choking “I can’t breathe” imagery associated with the death of Eric Garner, another black man, caught in a lethal police chokehold), and tapping mounting public frustration and rage. Whether this effort alters police practices or not will depend both on the ability of the mostly young civil rights leaders to transform a series of local causes into the basis for an ongoing movement, and on whether government officials are prepared to acknowledge and respond to these protestors. How do we weigh the impact of public awareness campaigns against the refusal of multiple grand juries to take legal action?
Throughout this book, we will be exploring in what senses these kinds of expressive practices might be politically meaningful, both for those who participate (for whom benefits might include developing their voices and skills as citizens) and for those who receive such messages (for whom benefits might include gaining access to alternative perspectives to those represented through more mainstream media channels). We also will call attention to some of the risks and limits of these particular tactics, and the model of change that inform them, as we sort through this underlying tension among an increasingly unresponsive government, a public with an expanded communicative capacity, and an emerging generation seeking to change the world.
A Crisis in Youth Participation?
In this book, the term “youth” refers to people in their teens or twenties. It defines not simply a stage of physiological or psychological development, but also a stage in the process of acquiring the skills necessary for political participation at an age where there is less than complete access to the rights of citizenship. This group includes high school students, who may not yet be eligible to vote, and college students and young adults, who do not yet have the right to run for many elective offices. That said, we regard the political work these young people are doing not simply as preparatory for adult roles but also meaningful on its own terms as an intervention into core debates of our time. We find that young people sometimes begin getting involved with these causes in their high school years and may be providing organizational leadership by their late twenties, suggesting a kind of ecology of participation that was important to capture through our research. The idea that people in this category have a distinct political identity is evoked by the popular 1960s slogan “Don’t trust anyone over 30.” But it is also signaled by various other political discourses about youth that dismiss young people for not embracing what older people see as appropriate forms of civic and political participation.
While our focus here is on youth, keep in mind that some of the organizations we study allow for cross-generational participation around shared interests and common goals. Also, we are looking at networks of young people who are coming of age at a particular historical, cultural, and technological juncture, and our analysis deals with their current political and civic lives, rather than some universalized notion of child development or idea of a generational identity that will remain fixed throughout the rest of their lives. We do not know what kinds of political lives these people will lead as they grow older, so our focus is on what they are doing now and not what kind of people they are becoming.
Youth are often seen as emblematic of the crisis in democracy—represented as apathetic about institutional politics, ill-informed about current affairs, and unwilling to register and vote. Peter Levine (2006) identifies a number of flaws in this narrative:
The narrative of decline overlooks creative developments, often led by youth, that may be building the foundations of civil society in the twenty-first century.… The decline story overlooks that various subpopulations engage on issues of special concern to them.… It overlooks certain positive trends in youth engagement, such as a steep rise in volunteering rate in the United States.… It treats a withdrawal from major institutions (such as elections and the press) as a decline, when these trends may actually reflect growing sophistication. Perhaps youth are deliberately and wisely choosing not to endorse forms of participation that are flawed. (15)
In short, Levine suggests, youth may be pursuing politics through different means than have historically been acknowledged within research on institutional politics or social movements. Scholars need new approaches for studying American public life,