Twitterverse and political education

Been an interesting few weeks in terms of finishing off my Assignment 2 on research methodology and starting to think about where the Assignment 3 research project might take me.

I've been right in the thick of current campaigning about the cuts in young people's services and a lot of communication has taken place through Twitter. I've been amazed by the immediacy and power of the Twitterverse, including getting direct messages from Tim Loughton's Blackberry in answer to my challenges to him. 

ChooseYouth held a lobby of Parliament last week and asked everyone to tweet the minister at 2.30pm with a message about whether he would ring-fence budgets for youth services. Using the hashtag #p4youth, this message also successfully infiltrated the counter event being held by the government at the O2 and where Tim Loughton was speaking.

Reviewing the tweets later that evening, I was struck by the power and accessibility of this digital medium, hundreds of versions of the same message sent direct to Tim Loughton's Twitter account, delegates at the Positive for Youth event also getting on board, and then others who weren't involved in either event getting involved through re-tweeting.

So where does this take me in terms of my research. Would love to do some serious research about using Twitter for supporting campaigning and networking amongst young people but maybe this is premature or perhaps I need to find an organisation predisposed to doing this?

In Deweyian terms, this is about educators engaging with both the digital agenda and the outrage that many young people feel powerless to express in relation to cuts in services,   to  support them to get their voice heard and to see the power of their actions. 

"I believe that the only true education comes through the stimulation of the child's powers by the demands of the social situations in which he

finds himself. Through these demands he is stimulated to act as a 

member of a unity, to emerge from his original narrowness of action and feeling and toconceive of himself from the standpoint of the welfare of the group to which he belongs. Through the responses which others make to his own activities he comes to know what these mean in social terms. 

The value which they have is reflected back into them" 

 

Dewey, J. My Pedagogic Creed School Journal vol. 54 (January 1897), pp. 77-80

 

Youth workers have always used tools to promote learning, growth and development in young people. The world of digital media is no different but perhaps here we have an even better opportunity to get catch the attention of those who need to hear?