The Young Generation, New Media, and Democracy
Lauren Stone

I am a recent graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University and the communications manager at the National Strategy Forum. The responsibilities of this position provide me with the opportunity to be immersed in national strategy and national security-related matters.

Since I began at the NSF a year and a half ago, I have noticed that my peers have varying levels of understanding of international relations and national security issues. For those of us who are motivated to become informed, we often find it difficult to sift through the abundance of media to access balanced, objective, non-partisan information. It is like trying to get a drink of water from a fire hose.

What is clear, however, is that today’s young generation is pioneering the digital age. With a wealth of easily and rapidly accessible information, we are facile at using this information to engage or disengage, to become active in civic life or dissociate ourselves from it. Despite our technological savvy, we face several tough choices and challenges in navigating the modern media environment.

We need to understand how young adults gather information, become informed citizens, and utilize new media and advanced information technology for the greater public good.

How the young generation gets information

Never before have so many young Americans been so "plugged in." And never has there been so much dispute over what we’re plugged into. Though we may think of today’s young generation as "tuned out," apolitical, and apathetic, young adults today are increasingly accessing information through new media and technology – Internet portal sites, handheld devices, blogs, iPods, and instant messaging. The percentage of young people who check online news websites is growing. Young people are developing new interactive relationships with media that take us beyond our local communities into virtual online communities. How is the young generation responding to this new media environment – is it becoming isolated or engaged?

The young generation’s news consumption preferences indicate that young people "want news their way." Young adults tend to reject traditional print media and other "top down" news. We read news about and written by ordinary people; we prefer to skim brief articles about local and entertainment news as opposed to reading lengthy, analytical national and international news articles; and we want "news we can use" – how the war in Iraq affects prices at the gas pump. What is driving our information choices is increasingly personal – our pocketbooks and niche interests. These observations raise the question: are today’s young people doing enough to develop theircivic duty to set aside personal interests to become informed citizens?

A related concern is whether young people will carry good information consumption habits into adulthood. According to the Northwestern University Media Management Center’s Readership Institute, young people who do not commit to accessing news by their mid-20’s may never develop this habit. This is not just a financial problem for media executives – it threatens informed citizenship, the underpinnings of American democracy.

Becoming a well-informed generation

In the past, the challenge was getting good information. Today, it is accessing objective and accurate information. The young generation has never known a world without the 24-hour news cycle, the Internet, and cell phones. We do not likely view today’s media environment with the same skepticism as older generations. The young generation needs to develop critical analysis skills to identify good and misleading information. Why?

• Media proliferation: There are more available news sources, which, in some cases, deliver biased or slanted news coverage.

• Citizen journalism: Citizens who are not professionally trained journalists distribute unvetted information via weblogs (blogs) and websites.

• Less trust, transparency, and professionalism: The traditional "gatekeepers" of the mainstream media suffer declining readership (some predict that newspapers, in their present format, may not be around in 30 years). Will emerging news sources employ journalistic values – accuracy, balance, and contextualization?

The term "informed" is vague and misleading – even those who consider themselves informed can sometimes be misinformed. But, being "well informed" suggests a higher level of critically evaluating news from multiple sources. Becoming "well informed" depends on whether we develop effective news gathering, news judgment, and information analysis skills. It is important that we teach younger generations how to think critically when gathering information – spotting biases, comparing alternative sources, and rejecting inadequate sources. The following questions may be helpful:

• Who is the writer? Does he/she have a bias?

• Is the author believable? Is the author selling something?

• What sources did the author use? What sources did the author not use? Is there a wide array of sources? Does the article present all sides of the issue?

• Are there noticeable gaps in information?

• What can you do with this information?

• What’s new and what’s good?

Connecting to our world through new media

An increasing number of young adults of my generation are pioneering the combination of "information + action" to make an impact in their communities and country. New media offers us the opportunity to connect with other young people, share information, and organize efficiently and effectively toward a specific goal.

Moveon.org, a left-wing online political organization, is an example of effective grassroots political organizing through the Internet. It currently has an estimated 3 million members, many of whom "have not been political before." Moveon.org, however, distributes highly partisan information supporting the Democratic Party agenda. Another web-based organization, Unity08 (www.unity08.com), is a political group that formed in response to the polarization between Republicans and Democrats. It has launched an online effort to garner support for an independent president/vice president ticket for the 2008 presidential election. Additional political groups, including Republican ones, are also organizing and mobilizing voters on the Internet.

Young people can use information technology to learn more about the world. In addition to reading US news sources, we should check international news coverage from other countries’ media. It doesn’t take a signficant amount of time to keep up with news anymore. Content aggregators, such as Google.com, consolidate information from multiple websites onto one page. Americans need to use technology to look out at the world, and not only because young people around the world are using technology to look at the US. Understanding our world helps us make informed decisions.

We can use new media resources to increase interactivity between people from countries around the world. In Japan, news websites can be accessed through cell phones. We may soon be able to transmit information from websites such as Flickr, Photobucket, Amazon, and YouTube from cell phone to cell phone around the world. We should anticipate the future development of innovative and powerful cross-cultural communication technology.

Today’s young generation has the information-gathering tools and a wealth of information. What will we do with these privileges? We have the freedom to use new media to become well-informed citizens and participate in civic life. The converse is also true – we have the freedom to remain uninformed. We need to begin thinking about the information we access, where and how we access it, how we evaluate it, and how we use information to engage in our communities, our country, and our world. •

Lauren Stone (23 years old) is former Editor of the National Strategy Forum Review and Communications Manager at the National Strategy Forum.