Our democracy demands new approaches to news. Today’s youth can invent them–with tools already in their pockets.
Civic engagement begins with news. But legacy news media have lost touch with young people in the United States — with their priorities, their interests, even their style of communication. To youth, news is information that’s useful, interesting, and worth sharing. News means more to them than knowing what’s going on. It’s having a voice and it’s being heard — by peers and by adults — as they search for knowledge, exchange photos and videos, and comment on social media. WadadUSA will reinvigorate news and civic engagement using tools and practices youth already embrace, co-creating a national news network with and for young people.
Young people’s digital expertise is a strong foundation for the future of news.
American youth are information “prosumers” — producers and consumers, at once, of news in its dominant 21st-century mode, digital social interaction. WadadUSA builds on their inventiveness, skill, and sense of purpose with a connective, participatory community model, inviting university, high-school, and middle-school youth in local bureaus around the U.S. to collaborate in researching, reporting, and communicating news with their peers.
The future of news is connective, collective, and generative.
Research shows that news communicated through social media is more than acquired information. It connects individuals on the basis of common interests, forming and strengthening community.
WadadUSA‘s approach, Formative Journalism™, begins with caring–with mutual concern about events and conditions in the here and now. Then, as young people collaborate to gather information, create media, share, comment, and take action both on and off digital platforms, knowledge can grow into active civic engagement. Participants identify, research, and address real problems, seeking real solutions. Youth participation advances the developmentally critical work of identity formation, nurturing young people’s self-understanding as valued, responsible citizens.
A local response to a global challenge, crafted to serve U.S. youth.
News purposes and practices differ from nation to nation, as do the needs and interests of each country’s youth. That’s why WADADA News, a global initiative of the Netherlands NGO Free Press Unlimited, has seeded independent youth news projects in 21 countries and 14 languages since 2004. WadadUSA brings that mission to young people in the United States, guided by experts in youth media and journalism at Southern Illinois University and the City University of New York.
Join us!
With support from advisers and friends, we’re laying the groundwork of a national digital news network to engage and serve youth across the USA. We invite you to share your thoughts, ask questions, and follow our progress in launching WadadUSA—News for & by U.S. Youth.
KEEP ME INFORMED!