Lenny Gonzales

By Lillian Mongeau

Nearly seven million young people will be newly eligible to vote this November. And contrary to what most might think, a recent study of how these voters engage in politics using new media shows they’re paying close attention.

“A lot of what we’re trying to understand is the way in which [using new media] might be related to the ways in which young people are being active politically,” said the study’s co-author, Joseph Kahne.

Of the 3,000 young people age 15-25 surveyed in the study, Participatory Politics: New Media and Youth Political Action, 41 percent reported using these online activities to engage in political discussions or actions. That could be anything from sharing a video of Mitt Romney giving a speech to the NAACP, to signing a petition on Change.org asking Seventeen Magazine to quit photo-shopping pictures of its models, to tweeting about the violence in Syria.

“Lots of the sort of fundamental things that people have to do to be politically active happen online” now, said Kahne, a professor at Mills College in Oakland, California, who’s part of the MacArthur Research Network on Youth & Participatory Politics (YPP). “If they think that sending an email to their friends is the same as showing up and voting, that could be a problem. But in fact, what we found in our study is that young people who were engaged in participatory politics were twice as likely to report voting as people who weren’t engaged.”

Last winter, “online activism” became the subject of searing critique after a video about African warlord Joseph Kony made the rounds. The error-ridden video racked up close to 20 million views on YouTube and Vimeo in just a few days and raised millions in real dollars for the non-profit that produced it. Critics were quick to site ill-informed youth as the primary culprits.

Kahne’s study, which was co-authored by Cathy J. Cohen of the University of Chicago, focused more on the fact that the conversation was taking place, and its real-world impact, than the content of the conversation young people were having.

“Even when [using new media] is becoming a part of all our practices, we still often imagine it the way they used to be,” Kahne said. This, he said, is a mistake. So much of the flow of information and discussion of new ideas and mobilization of movements from Occupy to the Tea Party are happening online now, and it would be folly to ignore the shift.

WHAT DIGITAL DIVIDE?

The other primary finding of the study showed that the digital divide between young people of different ethnicities appears to be shrinking.

“Overwhelmingly, white (96%), black (94%), Latino (96%) and Asian American (98%) youth report having access to a computer that connects to the Internet,” the study reported.

And when all types of political engagement—participatory politics and institutional politics like voting or helping with a campaign—are taken into account, it’s black youth who are the most engaged.

“So overall, we think that we really have to rethink the digital divide,” Kahne said. “It doesn’t follow this kind of conventional wisdom that says whites or upper-income people are the ones doing all of this stuff.”

Several youth organizations in Oakland, where Kahne is based, have taken the task of getting kids engaged in politics to heart. In partnership with the school district’s educational access television station, KDOL, these organizations have hosted several conversations between students and local leaders.

Seventeen-year-old Damari Lawrence participated in one of these panels with Oakland Mayor Jean Quan last year. After the interview, he said, “I saw that I really wasn’t caring about politics and what goes on in the world. I understood then that these politics have effects—immediate and sometimes long-term—on me and the community.”

Lawrence interns for the KDOL-based Media Enterprise Alliance, which teaches students video and multimedia production skills. The program also helps students create news reports on issues of interest to them and their peers.

Lawrence said a lot of kids may think they aren’t interested in politics. “But there’s a good, significant portion of teenagers out there who have an interest that could be built upon,” he said.

The message to politicians hoping to pull in the youth vote this fall? Get online. The kids are waiting for you.

Pottermore

[Correction 6/24]: Updated to note that the writer of Transmythology blog is Simon Pulman, not Henry Jenkins, an expert in participatory culture, Harry Potter’s fan fictions sites, and their role in fostering learning and social justice.

Within days of announcing the new Harry Potter website, Pottermore, the “official counterpart” to the wildly popular book series’ fan fiction sites has more than 125,000 followers on Twitter and more than 3,700 likes on Facebook.

Why the frenzy when so many other fan fiction sites — more than 1 million — are already devoted to the wizard fantasy? Some ideas:

1. Pottermore will be the first place where readers can buy digital versions of the book.
2. New, unpublished material by J.K. Rowling herself will be on the site.
3. Savvy marketers are building up anticipation by announcing the site’s existence three months before its launch.

With all this, who wouldn’t be excited?

But I suspect that behind all the marketing wizardry, one of the main reasons for the excitement stems from the fact that fans will get to interact with Rowling, the original creator of the series.

“Without her presence, the whole endeavor would be instantly dismissed by fans as unofficial, inauthentic and perhaps even a little cynical,” writes Simon Pulman, an entertainment brand developer on his blog Transmythology.

But in order to breathe genuine life into Pottermore, it will have to mirror the fervor of unofficial fan sites — without the slick marketing ploys of the big moneymakers, Pulman writes.

The biggest struggle will lie with avoiding the ultimate fate of most “official” fan communities. Because IP [intellectual property] owners are used to working in release cycles and focusing on return on investment, official communities tend to be focused around major releases. They launch with fanfare and users migrate to check out the initial content… before gradually returning to the fan sites from whence they came, frustrated by lack of updates and more oppressive monitoring of what they can say and do.

In order to succeed as a community, Pottermore will have to be more like Facebook than the typical movie website. It needs to focus on nurturing a community in the long run, and it must maintain momentum after the initial hype and ebook sales have died down. Fans, within reason, should not feel restricted or censored. Moreover, it cannot let its competitive advantage – direct contact with Rowling – lapse. While Rowling should maintain a degree of distance and mystery, she must pop up now and again at unexpected times to keep the community energized. New story content needs to be released incrementally and, ideally, should be substantial.

And like unofficial fan sites, those who run Pottermore will have to be involved constantly, nurturing discussions and keeping interest alive. “It’s a genuine challenge,” Pulman writes.

But if Pottermore is able to pull it off, what then will happen to all those unofficial Harry Potter fan fiction sites?

Here’s Rowling announcing Pottermore: