Peter Levine

Truly engaged citizens produce heterogeneous cultural products. Engaged people clump together in communities and associations, each of which inevitably takes on a distinct character.

The Internet and other new electronic media have allowed people to produce and disseminate their own ideas, which can be diverse and relevant to their communities (geographical or otherwise). Never has it been as cheap or quick to generate text, sound, or moving images for public access. This opportunity for creativity has great civic potential; it could turn people from spectators and consumers into innovators and creators.

Adolescents, whose civic participation is especially important. Young Americans are heavily represented in innovative online activities such as blogging and wikis.

Much of the exciting youth media work that one can find by searching on the Web is createdin after-school and community-based programs that have support from foundations. Theseprojects are crucial laboratories and will play a lasting role by allowing youth to undertakeprojects too controversial for schools.

Buckingham & Harvey

Young people have more opportunities for 'self-expression' through the making of their productions than what might have been the case in school.

- We need to know much more about how young people learn media language.- The relationship between instruction by the teacher and discovery on the part of students.- The interaction between self-expression and the need to communicate with actual or potential audiences.