Abstract

Whilst various studies have examined participation on the Internet as a key element of a new emergent civic engagement, informally or formally through national and local governments’ online measures, less has been done to measure or suggest ways of overcoming social and technological constraints on online civic participation. Additionally, few studies have looked at the relationship between the actual implementation of such initiatives in classrooms and the messages which are conveyed indirectly as a result of teachers’ own conceptions of classroom strategies, which are perhaps better described as a “hidden curriculum”. This paper reports on these constructions through a set of detailed quantitative and qualitative case studies of the implementation of civic engagement through online activity in several regions of Portugal. The data, obtained through questionnaires, were used to produce novel composite scores reflecting the participatory and media literacy strategies of schools, as well as teachers and students’ media literacy and online civic actions. We present empirical results from a study population consisting of 12 public secondary school principals, 131 teachers, and 1,392 students in grades 11 and 12, suggesting that students’ online civic engagement and media literacy levels are affected by their teachers’ classroom practices and further training and by the implementation of a project-based approach to media education.

Abstract

Digital media are present in all areas of society, even configured as a new space for political socialization. This is especially applicable in the case of young people due to their high use of new technologies, as they are also trained with the necessary skills to do so. In this context, social networks have prompted the emergence of a new type of political participation: which takes place online. Therefore, this study delves into the relationship between the socialization that occurs in the network, digital skills and political participation online and offline. A quantitative survey-based methodology was used with university students from three Ibero-American countries: Mexico, Spain and Chile. The fieldwork was conducted between the months of December 2017 and June 2018. The results obtained show that young people consume mainly digital media, which does not prevent them from being critical with the quality they deserve. In this sense, the political participation actions in which they are involved are mostly developed in the network, thus participating to a lesser extent offline. Therefore, young people enter the world of politics through the consumption of information on the Internet, which favors a subsequent online political participation.