Open AccessHOW MOBILE MEDIA ENABLED AND LIMITED ONLINE CIVIC PARTICIPATION AMONG LOW-INCOME U.S. YOUNG PEOPLE DURING THE PANDEMIC
Author(s) -
Johnny Ramirez,
Carlos Jiménez,
Lynn Schofield Clark
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
selected papers of internet research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2162-3317
DOI - 10.5210/spir.v2021i0.12114
Subject(s) - civic engagement , precarity , sociology , psychological intervention , pandemic , ethnography , everyday life , digital media , online and offline , public relations , political science , economic growth , gender studies , covid-19 , psychology , politics , medicine , disease , pathology , psychiatry , anthropology , infectious disease (medical specialty) , law , economics
This paper presents comparative research from two youth-centeredinterdisciplinary ethnographic research projects in media studies, social work, andeducation. Originally designed as in-person interventions meant to provide digital medialiteracy and civic leadership development activities for 35 Latinx, Black, Indigenous, AsianAmerican and White young people between ages 15-20 living in low-income neighborhoods, theexperience of the COVID-19 pandemic forced both projects to take place online. Whereas eachproject found some benefits to holding endeavors in an online rather than an in-personenvironment, this paper centers on similar patterns that emerged across the projects in howand why differing participants dropped out over the one-year period between March 2020through March 2021. The central research question of this paper is: what are the prospectsfor and barriers to online civic participation activities in the everyday lives of youngpeople who, along with their families, are experiencing economic precarity and other formsof marginalization? The paper explores how mobile media were put to use for coping witheveryday life during the pandemic, revealing some assumptions about both coping and onlinecivic engagement that were dismantled.The analysis of these experiences force a reckoningwith structural inequities that existed prior to the pandemic and that were furtherexacerbated because of it. The paper thus unearths new questions regarding how to designonline civic participation activities involving young people with multiply intersectingexperiences of both marginalization and resilience.