research-article

Puget sound off: fostering youth civic engagement through citizen journalism

Authors:

Shelly Farnham,

Chris TugwellAuthors Info & Claims

CSCW '12: Proceedings of the ACM 2012 conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work

Pages 285 - 294

https://doi.org/10.1145/2145204.2145251

Published: 11 February 2012 Publication History

Abstract

Social media technologies provide unique channels to empower youth to become more civically engaged. Puget Sound Off is an online blogging and networking site focused on helping youth connect, collaborate, and take action around local community issues. We performed an evaluation study seeking lessons learned from a real world deployment. We found that a core group of youth became highly engaged with Puget Sound Off, and that both usage and identification with the community was positively correlated with civic engagement. Youth reported an appreciation for the opportunity for meaningful discussion around issues that mattered to them. We found however that growth of Puget Sound Off was slow, in part due to the constraints of deploying to youth in a real world context with concerns about inappropriate use. We end with recommendations for fostering growth and civic engagement in related social media technologies.

References

[1]

Ballantine, A., Bennet, L., Freelon, D., McCaffrey, S., Norman, K., Parham, N., and Wells., C. News 2009, Volume 9. Center for Communication and Civic Engagement (2009).

[2]

Bennet, W. L., Wells, C., & Freelon, D. Communicating citizenship online: Models of civic learning in the youth web sphere. A Report from the Civic Learning Online Project (2009). Available online at: http://www.engagedyouth.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/communicatingcitizeshiponlinecloreport.pdf

[3]

Bennet, L., & Xenos, M. Young voters and the web of politics 2004: The youth political web sphere comes of age. CIRCLE Working Paper 42 (2005).

[4]

Carroll, J. M., Rosson, M. B., Zhou, J. Collective efficacy as a measure of community. In Proc. CHI 2005, ACM Press (2005), 1--10.

Digital Library

[5]

Center of Communication and Civic Engagement. http://ccce.com.washington.edu/

[6]

Chen, D., & Lee, C. To reinforce or to mobilize? Tracing the impact of Internet use on civic engagement in Taiwan. In Proc. ICEGOV 2008, ACM Press (2008), 394--402.

Digital Library

[7]

City of Seattle. http://seattle.gov/

[8]

Facebook Statistics. http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics

[9]

Farnham, S. D. & Churchill, E. F. Faceted identity, faceted lives: Social and technical issues in being yourself online. In Proc. CSCW 2011, ACM Press (2011).

Digital Library

[10]

Figueiredo, M., & Camara, M. Empowering rural citizen journalism via Web 2.0 technologies. In Proc. C&T 2009. ACM Press (2009), 77--84.

Digital Library

[11]

Flanagan, C. A., Syvertsen, A. K., & Stout, M. D. Civic measurement models: Tapping adolescents' civic engagement. Circle Working Paper 55, CIRCLE (2007).

[12]

Foss, M., Choi, J., Bilandizic, M., Satchell, C. Collective and network sociality in an urban village. Proc. Mintrek 2008, ACM Press (2008), 178--183.

Digital Library

[13]

Glaser, M. Your Guide to Citizen Journalism. Public Broadcasting Service. Available at http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2006/09/your-guide-to-citizen-journalism270.html (2006).

[14]

Kahne, J., Middaugh, E., & Schutjer-Mance, K. California civic index {Monograph}. New York: Carnegie Corporation and Annenberg Foundation, (2005).

[15]

Kavanaugh, A., Zin, T., Carroll, J., Schmitz, J., Perez-Quinones, M., Isenhour, P. When opinion leaders blog: New forms of citizen interaction. In Proc. International Conference on Digital Government (2006), 79--88.

Digital Library

[16]

Keeter, S., Zukin, C., Andolina, M., & Jenkins, K. The Civic and Political Health of the Nation: A Generational Report. College Park, MD: Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (2002).

[17]

Kim, B., Kavanaugh, A., Perez-Quinones, M. Toward a model of political participation among young adults: The role of local groups and ICT Use. In Proc. ICEGOV 2007, ACM Press (2007), 205--212.

Digital Library

[18]

Lenhart, A. Arafeh, S., Smith, A., MacGill, A., Writing, technology, and teens. Pew Internet and American Life Project. (2008).

[19]

McCarthy, J., Farnham, S., Patel, Y., Ahuja, S., Norman, D., Hazlewood, W., Lind, J. Supporting community in third places with situated social software. In Proc. C&T, 2009, ACM Press, (2009).

Digital Library

[20]

Puget Sound Off http://pugetsoundoff.org

[21]

Rainie, L. Internet, broadband, and cell phone statistics. Pew Internet and American Life Project, (2010).

[22]

Smith, A., Schlozman, L., Verba, S., Brady, H. The Internet and civic engagement. Pew Internet and American Life Project, (2009).

[23]

Wilkinson, Derek. The Multidimensional Nature of Social Cohesion: Psychological Sense of Community, Attraction, and Neighboring. American Journal of Community Psychology, Vol. 40, (2007), 214--229.

[24]

YMCA of Greater Seattle, Puget Sound Off Digital Connectors program. http://www.ysummer.org/program.cfm?rc=teens&pc=pugetSoundOff

Cited By

Aubin Le Quéré MNaaman MFields J(2024)Not Quite Filling the Void: Comparing the Perceptions of Local Online Groups and Local Media Pages on FacebookProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36373778:CSCW1(1-22)Online publication date: 26-Apr-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3637377
Chordia IBaltaxe-Admony LBoone ASheehan ADombrowski LLe Dantec CRingland KSmith A(2024)Social Justice in HCI: A Systematic Literature ReviewProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642704(1-33)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613904.3642704
Pyun MKim Y(2023)Social Media Dependency and Civic Engagement Among Older Urban Adults in KoreaAsian Communication Research10.20879/acr.2023.20.01820:3(175-193)Online publication date: 31-Dec-2023
https://doi.org/10.20879/acr.2023.20.018
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Puget sound off: fostering youth civic engagement through citizen journalism
1. Human-centered computing
  1. Collaborative and social computing
    1. Collaborative and social computing systems and tools
      1. Asynchronous editors
      2. Synchronous editors
2. Information systems
  1. Information systems applications
    1. Collaborative and social computing systems and tools
      1. Synchronous editors

Recommendations

To reinforce or to mobilize?: tracing the impact of internet use on civic engagement in Taiwan
ICEGOV '08: Proceedings of the 2nd international conference on Theory and practice of electronic governance

Since the 1990s, Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have become popular instruments for delivering government services, encouraging citizen participation, and improving public trust. However, although governments around the globe have ...
Can blogs function as rhetorical publics in Asian democracies? An analysis using the case of Singapore

764 blog posts posted during the 2011 Singapore General Election were analyzed.Blogs function as weak publics to surface otherwise excluded discourse.In developing norms as rhetorical publics, they facilitate discursive conversations.Through such ...
The Impact of Online News Consumption on Young People's Political Participation

The informational usage of media has been identified as one of the most important factors that facilitate citizens' participation in political activities. This relationship becomes exceptionally intriguing in the 21st century, which is characterized by ...

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

CSCW '12: Proceedings of the ACM 2012 conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work

February 2012

1460 pages

ISBN:9781450310864

DOI:10.1145/2145204

General Chairs:
Steven Poltrock
Boeing Research & Technology
,
Carla Simone
University of Milano-Biccoca
,
Program Chairs:
Jonathan Grudin
Microsoft Research
,
Gloria Mark
University of California, Irvine
,
John Riedl
University of Minnesota

Copyright © 2012 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Sponsors

SIGCHI: ACM Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 11 February 2012

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Research-article

Conference

CSCW '12

Sponsor:

SIGCHI

CSCW '12: Computer Supported Cooperative Work

February 11 - 15, 2012

Washington, Seattle, USA

Acceptance Rates

CSCW '12 Paper Acceptance Rate 164 of 415 submissions, 40%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 2,235 of 8,521 submissions, 26%

Upcoming Conference

CSCW '25

Sponsor:
sigchi

Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing

October 18 - 22, 2025

Bergen , Norway

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

17
Total Citations
View Citations
505
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)15
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)0

Reflects downloads up to 05 Jan 2025

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Aubin Le Quéré MNaaman MFields J(2024)Not Quite Filling the Void: Comparing the Perceptions of Local Online Groups and Local Media Pages on FacebookProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36373778:CSCW1(1-22)Online publication date: 26-Apr-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3637377
Chordia IBaltaxe-Admony LBoone ASheehan ADombrowski LLe Dantec CRingland KSmith A(2024)Social Justice in HCI: A Systematic Literature ReviewProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642704(1-33)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613904.3642704
Pyun MKim Y(2023)Social Media Dependency and Civic Engagement Among Older Urban Adults in KoreaAsian Communication Research10.20879/acr.2023.20.01820:3(175-193)Online publication date: 31-Dec-2023
https://doi.org/10.20879/acr.2023.20.018
Baú V(2023)Reality TV and civic engagementCreative Industries Journal10.1080/17510694.2022.2161239(1-21)Online publication date: 2-Jan-2023
https://doi.org/10.1080/17510694.2022.2161239
Gui FTsai CCarroll J(2022)Community AcknowledgmentProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/34928396:GROUP(1-18)Online publication date: 14-Jan-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3492839
Fowler JZachry MMcDonald D(2022)Fostering CommunicationProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/34928346:GROUP(1-23)Online publication date: 14-Jan-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3492834
Gooch DPrice BKlis-Davies AWebb J(2021)A Design Exploration of Health-Related Community DisplaysProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/34491595:CSCW1(1-22)Online publication date: 22-Apr-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3449159
Nelimarkka M(2019)A Review of Research on Participation in Democratic Decision-Making Presented at SIGCHI Conferences. Toward an Improved Trading Zone Between Political Science and HCIProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/33592413:CSCW(1-29)Online publication date: 7-Nov-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3359241
Thomas LPritchard GBriggs PTellioglu HTeli MNathan L(2019)Digital Design Considerations for Volunteer RecruitmentProceedings of the 9th International Conference on Communities & Technologies - Transforming Communities10.1145/3328320.3328368(29-40)Online publication date: 3-Jun-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3328320.3328368
Alvarado Garcia ALe Dantec C(2018)Quotidian ReportProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/32742862:CSCW(1-18)Online publication date: 1-Nov-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3274286
Show More Cited By

View Options

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Publication

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

eReader

View online with eReader.

Media

Figures

Other

Tables

View Table of Contents