Ethan Zuckerman's Bellwether Lecture at the Oxford Internet Institute, December 6, 2013

1. New Media, New Civics?
Ethan Zuckerman (@ethanz), MIT Center for Civic Media
Oxford Internet Institute,December 6, 2013

2. “Thank you, Facebook” – Tahrir Square (Reuters)

4. visualization
by Elena Agapie

10. civics in crisis

13. 48% of US adults take part in a civic activity
39% spoke out using offline methods
34% spoke out using online methods
39% engaged in some political activity via SNS
Online users don’t distinguish between
online and offline action
What correlates to civic participation
is socioeconomic status

14. 112th Congress
10% approval
61 bills passed
of 3914 proposed

17. If young people are disenchanted
with politics, rightly or wrongly,
how do we help them become
effective civic actors?

19. Are we bad citizens in an old paradigm,
or inept citizens in a new one?

20. participatory civics

23. $818m raised
4.9 million backers

24. civic
crowdfunding

25. civics is passionate

29. voice
thin
thick
instrumental

30. voice
thin
thick
instrumental

31. voice
thin
thick
instrumental

32. voice
thin
thick
instrumental

33. The Dream Nine

35. Bjarni Einarsson
Smári McCarthy
Brennan Novak

36. Carmen Rios

37. Khalida Brohi
Sughar Center

38. norms
code
markets
laws

39. norms
markets
code
laws

40. voice
thin
thick
instrumental

41. voice
thin
thick
instrumental

42. Voice leads to (instrumental) engagement
image by John D. Fisher

43. Voice begets voice
image by John D. Fisher

44. Voice sets agenda
image by John D. Fisher

45. Voice builds movements
image by John D. Fisher

46. voice
thin
thick
instrumental

48. Zeynep Tufekçi

50. “Sen de Gel” – “You, too, come”

54. interlocking public

55. the pointillist public sphere

58. Civics is changing. How do we help the young people like those
inspired by The Hunger Games use digital tools
to become participatory, passionate and effective civic actors?

59. thanks!
@ethanz
ethanz@mit.edu