Media Engagement: A Tool for Civic Lifestyle

Media has long been the bullseye of negative critique and arguments targeting digital activity as passive. However, technological times surround us and it is more useful to observe how these platforms can be beneficial, than to become victims of an instrument created by and for man.
Criticisms made towards this technological era include users that never truly engage in their society or real world. However, the standards that were used to identify civic duty (voting, paying taxes) are only a fraction of what can now be considered engaged citizenship, a term which involves independent and assertive citizens concerned with others (Mihailidis & Thevenin 3).
This contemporary vision forges citizens that use media to live engaged civic lifestyle

(Mihailidis & Thevenin 3). Some examples like the Arab Spring or other networked social movements can be used to regard new ways of civic participation that lead to change (Mihaikidis & Thevenin 6).
Media can be viewed in a different way, and it starts with new generations learning to situate the texts and information that these networks facilitate (Mihaikidis & Thevenin 1). Media literacy will help decode where these messages were created, the biases of the authors and realities from which they were written(Mihaikidis & Thevenin 8). Consequently, new media literates will become critical thinkers who can use digital platforms rather than being used or tricked by them. It is through the empowerment and criteria of users that content will rise up making media a first stage that will lead to transformation.
In Superpowers to the people, H.

Jenkins talks about how civic imagination is the collective ability to imagine common futures(Jenkins et al., 11). Through a series of cases which expand on how the superhero narrative has been appropriated by different groups that wish to let their voice be heard, it is clear that imagination opens a space for resistance and better possibilities. Fan communities portray new models of cultural participation as they reformulate and create movements because they see themselves as agents of social change(Gordon & Mihailidis 6).. Such is the example of the DREAMers, a young undocumented community seeking education that used the figure of Superman to open a dialogue around citizenship rights(Jenkins et al., 7). Their testimonies gave a face and a voice to a reality and condition that before was not much more other than a subject that needed to be addressed. Imagination turned into a voice that could and would be listened to. These movements show how civic participation, personal experience and media can unite to achieve engaged discourse. They have become credible solutions that through collaboration and strategy can give hope and create a public narrative that brings action and change(Ganz

4).
It is through media literacy that accurate interpretation of texts will be uncoded, enabling critical thinkers to transform the present state by imagining and building creative solutions to engage and form a civic life. Media has been able to positively change society and open dialogue across borders, interests and ages. Targeting media as a tool will enable each voice, “share”, “like” and community to create and form a space of possibility and interest without which change could not be possible.