This is a hopeful trend. It is an application of technology that enhances citizenship and diversifies political discourse. An individual citizen contributed her ideas to the discussion of issues important to the populous, and provoked others to think and reflect and discuss. The fact that the citizen was still in high school makes this example especially interesting to educators.

Mass media pre-emption

In an era when the town meeting has disappeared, where political discussions have become the province of the mass media, where citizens seldom engage in personal or small-group discourse on the issues of the day, this example seems unusual. We have let national talk-show hosts, editorial-writers, and professional commentators do our talking for us. Rather than explaining and arguing among ourselves about the local and national issues we need to deal with, we watch and listen to others on the television, radio, or mass web sites spout their opinions and pontificate their politics. There's less give and take among citizens themselves.

The founders of our republic, who worshiped the power and responsibility of the people to discuss important issues among themselves, could not have anticipated the pre-emption of political discourse by the media. But they did harbor concerns about the potential of the mass medium of their day -- newspapers -- to foul the climate of rational discussion among citizens. Thomas Jefferson warned his colleagues that "Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper...Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle." The founders preferred the purity of the educated individual citizen to the potential pollution of the press when it came to political discourse.

What would they have thought of the fifteen-year old contributing to a national political debate through a digital video produced on a computer and distributed in guerilla fashion over the Internet? Would they have preferred this manner of discussion to the prognostications of Rush Limbaugh or the editorials of The New York Times?

The Teacher's Role

And what is your take on this issue? If you as a teacher wanted to encourage the kind of citizen-initiated discourse featured here, what could you do in the classroom to encourage its development?

While television, radio, and newspapers are one-way mass media, controlled by the owners of the presses and transmitters, with the viewer's role restricted to passive reception, the Internet is an interactive micro-mass-medium, with the potential for individual expression to reach a mass audience, and for reflection and response. A teacher who wanted to encourage students to participate as a citizen through these new media might consider the following:

• Teach students to express serious political ideas through all of the digital media: writing; slide shows of images; voice; video; podcasts; and new forms that combine all these forms. Include assignments in standard courses that make students apply story-telling skills and produce interesting works. See Can I Present That? and Video Projects and Podcasting in this series.
• Teach students to use the world wide web to educate themselves on the issues of the day. Show them how to find facts as well as opinions, and to evaluate the bias and reliability and authority of the sources they find. See Internet Briefing and Authority in this series.
• Set up opportunities for digital discourse in your classroom and school. Teach students to use the communications possibilities of the new media to discuss important citizenship issues. Set up a wiki where students can discuss a curriculum issue. See Wikis in the Classroom and Educational Messaging in this series.
• Encourage students to participate or join local political organizations, such as the town or city Republican or Democratic parties or community groups, and volunteer to develop political communications for them. Many of our students are more adept at producing digital videos and radio clips than the adult members of these groups.
• Make your students aware of the stifling role of the mass media in political discourse. Let them compare the content and style of mass-media political communication with their own productions.