Culture: Digital Natives, Civil Spaces
A new youth media literacy is emerging. As the authors of cultural products, today’s young people are driving a rapid expansion of participative media—as well as a shift in the authority of authors. While this new literacy demands more personal skills in both producing media and evaluating them critically, it is also enabling more collaborative and commons-based forms of civic engagement.
- Tessa Finlev's blog
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New Political Identities
The combination of niche groups and new social networking tools is creating powerful new civic actors. These groups tend to build commons resources that they can leverage for power in the public and private spheres alike.
For example, biocitizens form groups that share common experiences with disease and disease treatments to treatment guidelines that were formerly set by designated experts.
New diasporas leverage identity tools and global mobility to spur transnational civic engagement; for example, activist diasporas will become increasingly efficient at rapidly mobilitizng public opinion and channeling money to address sustainability issues that represent a local minority but a global majority.
Transgeographic citizens share economic, cultural, and linguistic interests across national borders, and will increasingly use share resources--money, technology, and social capital--to influence global policies.
Some of these new identities will be developed specifically in opposition to practices that are perceived as unsustainable and outside the "local commons." An example is the emergence of organizations that monitor and oppose big-box retailers.
