I am a Master's student studying civic engagement and socially engaged art at the Graduate School of Education at Harvard and am excited to study civic media here. I'm new to the "media" world, and am nearly a luddite when it comes to digital skills. This said, it was a pleasant surprise to find that although I can't construct digital spaces, I can speak the language of participation, social engagement and organizing, which seems to means something around here.
Before landing in Cambridge, I worked with arts-based storytelling and educational programming in New Mexico. Some of the principles that I learned in that work, such as engaged research and multiculturalism, seem aligned with the basic principles of civic media. I am eager to learn about others, like transmedia organizing, hactivism and constructing democratic space; broadening my understanding of this discourse will, I believe, deepen my impact as an educator, organizer, and researcher in the field.
In our first class, we used intertwinkles.org to tease out ten points of unity around what we collectively understood civic media to be. I always love a collaborative challenge and am particularly tickled by consensus; despite a deep belief in deliberative democracy, my impatience often gets the best of me when it comes to group decision making. We deliberated our points and came up with just five minutes left to determine which statements were core concepts of "civic media". We got hung up on semantics, debated assumptions and struggled to locate accountability. I found myself trying to listen but watching the clock, seated anxiously at the edge of my seat. "Can we leave 'transparency' a bit ambiguous and move on?" I asked, hoping my frustration wasn't visible. "I just want to make sure we have time to address all the points put forward." Our group hadn't spoken yet (we were slated to be last).
Had my impatience come across as dominating? Did I prematurely shut down an important process for my own need of completion? Such questions can linger in the consensus processes and, in fact, I believe they should in the minds of those committed to social action and deliberative democracy.
To dance between action and process, listen deeply, speak honestly, and find a common path forward is a noble goal of social movements. I'm not suggesting that doing so is a principle of civic media, nor a necessary core tension of this work.
But, it's a good place to start.
Civic media