BRINGING KIDS IN 2CSI 2500 FALL 2018 CLASS 6

2225 CASE STUDY

AUSTRALIA: AYF

▸ AYPAC 1997-1999 NYR - seen as too critical of gov’t focus on employment and poverty

▸ NYR 1999-2007 - too centralized and restrictive

▸ AYF 2008 -2014 - 10 youth and a website

establish a decentralized online youth forum that would encourage youth to post responses on a range of preselected national and global topics

▸ visits to website declined quickly

▸ Empowering YOUth Initiatives

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AYF - PURPOSE AND CHALLENGE

▸ government-driven political communication projects in Australia tend to be more structured, adult-led and managed in contrast to youth preferences (capabilities) for more creative and independent engagement, affordances that have, prior to the AYF, rarely been discussed or implemented by the federal government (3)

▸ perceived gap between government and youth understandings of political participation (3)

▸

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AYF - CHALLENGES - BUREAUCRACY▸ historically entrenched political values (1) - longstanding governmental preference for the bureaucratic control

and centralization of youth political communication meant that digital technology would always have a measured impact on youth participation. (13)

▸ government efforts to regulate consultation within the AYF (2)

▸ participants in this AYF study were not public officials. Rather, they occupied an interesting liminal space. While they assumed the role of government elected youth representatives, they were also members of the Australian youth public with affiliations to various state and grassroots youth groups. As such, their perspectives were informed by a degree of knowledge about both the internal organizational structure of the federal government and their subjective expectations (desired capabilities) of political participation as young citizens. The experiences of these members, including their range of attitudes and shared meanings from working in the AYF, were in many ways, empirical accounts of how young people directly grappled (via bricolage) with the perceived gap between government and youth understandings of political participation. ((2-3)

BECAUSE WE LIVE IN DIFFERENT PARTS OF AUSTRALIA . . . IT WASN’T SIMPLE TO JUST HAVE A MEETING NEXT WEEK. IT COST A LOT OF MONEY TO FLY SOMEONE FROM SAY PERTH OR 11 OF THEM ALTOGETHER AND THE GOVERNMENT COULDN’T PAY FOR THAT. NO MEETINGS WITH MINISTERS OR MINISTER ADVISORS ARE COMMUNICATED ONLINE FOR REASONS THAT I AM NOT REALLY AWARE OF. BUT YEAH . . . THESE WERE SOME OF THE INSTITUTIONAL AND LOGISTICAL CONSTRAINTS INVOLVED . . . WE TRIED TELEPHONE CONFERENCES BUT THEN THERE WERE LIMITED AVAILABILITIES TECHNICAL WISE AND NOT ALL GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS HAD THE TIME TO ENGAGE IN THAT.

Member 5, 12 October 2010

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AYF: CHALLENGES - BUREAUCRACY

▸ organizational regulations

▸ hierarchical nature of the deliberation process

▸ strict protocol put in place to communicate with Minister

▸ cf flexibility (capabilities) afforded by online media platforms to non-government, citizen- driven initiatives — e.g. MoveOn

▸ organizational hybridity - simultaneously exhibit quite diverse ways of...mashing together and combining narrowly channelled actions with looser ones (bricolage)

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AFY: CHALLENGES - BUREAUCRACY ▸ rhetoric of technological change, versatility and advancement in political participation (anticipated

capabilities), while encouraging, may not always be fully applicable to how online government projects operate (7)

▸ 9 of the 10 interviewed members described their involvement with the AYF as having less to do with addressing youth issues and more to do with tackling the structural limitations of governmental bureaucracy (8) - (refocus from substantive concerns to instrumental ones)

▸ entrepreneurial initiatives undertaken by members to get around government rules and regulations and achieve specific objectives reflect what Wilson (2010) refers to as ‘social creativity’

▸ social creativity demands a sense of experimentalism (bricolage), to search for possibilities of overcoming barriers even without the guarantee of successful outcomes. This instinct for experimentalism

I BECAME INVOLVED IN THIS BECAUSE I DIDN’T FEEL ANYTHING WAS BEING DONE. I BELIEVE THERE WAS A LACK OF DEBATE ON POLICY . . . I KNOW THAT THERE IS THE (FORMAL) OPPORTUNITY IN THE AYF TO BRING UP ANY ISSUE YOU WANT. BUT I AM NOT SURE HOW MUCH THAT HAPPENS WITH ALL THE REGULATIONS IN PLACE. I THINK THERE MUST BE A BALANCE BETWEEN YOUTH ISSUES AND THE BIGGER PICTURE IN TERMS OF ACTUAL POLICY FORMULATION. MY MEDIA SET-UP (CAPABILITY) HAS TRIED TO FILL THAT OTHER VOID; OF YOUTH VOICES IN NON-YOUTH ISSUES. THE KEY DIFFERENCE IS THAT MY SIMPLE SET-UP IS NOT RUN BY THE GOVERNMENT AND IDEAS GET EXCHANGED FASTER.

Member 6, 7 October 2010

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The paradox between government efforts in fostering greater online interactivity (through initiatives like the AYF) and its reluctance to relinquish control over engagement could be examined further.

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AFY: CHALLENGES - UNCERTAIN OBJECTIVES

▸ uncertainty expressed here did not stem from not knowing what the objectives of the AYF were, rather it was a higher order ambiguity over how to use the data and information from these participatory cultures in an informed and purposeful way to realize government objectives (9)

▸ What could governmental institutions like the AYF take from online posts, apart from the issues raised in their manifest content?

▸ sending youth voices to the government and using youth voices

▸ translate everyday speak into political speak

I AM STILL NOT SURE AS TO WHAT THE AYF IS MEANT TO ACHIEVE. FROM MY LEVEL OF CLOSENESS I FIND THAT FEELING RATHER ODD (LIMINAL). WHAT EXACTLY IS THE AYF USED FOR? I DO NOT THINK IT’S A TRANSPARENCY ISSUE. I DO NOT THINK ANYTHING IS HIDDEN. BUT THEY ARE KIND OF UNSURE AS TO WHAT TO DO WITH IT. WHAT DO WE DO WITH ALL THESE POSTS APART FROM SENDING IT TO THE GOVERNMENT? AND THIS IS WEIRD CONSIDERING THAT THESE RESERVATIONS ARE FELT BY OFFICIALS WORKING IN THE AYF, LIKE ME.

Member 4, 14 October 2010

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AFY: CHALLENGES - OTHER

▸ leadership change - change in Ministers

▸ social media: Government conservativeness in using and applying social media to the AYF was not down to a case of incompetence or ignorance but part of a deliberate decision to maintain control over youth public deliberation. As such, the influence of online media on youth political communication had more to do with organizational practices and decisions surrounding its implementation rather than with the technology itself. (12)

▸ It was clear that the potential of media technology in encouraging diverse forms of mobilization did not matter as much as the internal organizational practices and attitudes, in shaping political and social outcomes. (13)

THE DEMOCRATIC GAP BETWEEN YOUTH AND GOVERNMENT LED UNDERSTANDINGS OF POLITICAL PARTICIPATION IS ESSENTIALLY NOT A MEDIA PROBLEM. RATHER, IT IS A SYSTEMIC POLITICAL PROBLEM THAT HAS COME TO CONTEXTUALIZE HOW ONLINE YOUTH POLITICAL COMMUNICATION PROJECTS ARE USED AND IMPLEMENTED AT THE FEDERAL LEVEL OF GOVERNMENT.

Pillay, p.13

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Taft: “Adults talk too much”

Intergenerational Collaboration

• CHILD-LED ORGANIZATIONS

• MANTHOC

• started 1976

• founded MNNATSOP in 1996

• work outside state-based participatory systems

• stated commitment to children’s participation and intergenerational dialogue

ESPOUSED THEORY

• tensions around the twin central importance of ‘voice’ on the one hand and ‘intergenerational collaboration’ on the other

“the good thing about the organization is that we are always questioning,

always clarifying that the importance of the organization is what is

happening amongst the kids, and that the kids are the decision-makers in the

daily life of the organization.”

Capability to engage in substantively rational rather than just instrumentally rational discussions?

“but the colaboradores have an important role in the organization as well because while we are the ones who suggest things, and we are the

ones who decide, the colaboradores, a lot of the time, with the decisions we make, they help us make them better,

more clear, more coherent, more concise.”

“What is important is an attitude of continuous dialogue, but beginning from

what we have understood, from what the kids have suggested to us ... Dialogue doesn’t

begin because I tell them what I think but because I listen to what they think about

something, and then, from there, I have the responsibility to disagree, to confront, to say that I agree, or whatever. Dialogue doesn’t necessarily mean deciding from the very beginning that the kids are correct. But neither does it mean deciding that I am

correct.”

“thanks to MANTHOC, I can go speak in public. I am not embarrassed. I can go out and I can speak ... and people

admire how well we speak and explain ourselves ... I am happy

because I learned. I am not afraid to speak anymore. I can speak to adults,

I can say what I think.”

Fostering intergenerational dialogue: practices

Encourage kids voices via questions

Directly appeal to kids to speak up

Use activities that help all kids express their ideas - eg. Write down idea on paper

Separate kids and adults in some meetings and events

Discouraging intergenerational dialogue:

Adults (colaborador) providing initial orientation

Adults talking too much

In the end adults still continue of dominate meetings and discussions

What is to be done?