The Path to Informed Citizenship: Curricular and Co-Curricular Media Literacy Efforts in American State Colleges and Universities

Introduction

Civic engagement is a continuing need for students in higher education. Since Robert Putnam (2000) pointed to a decline in civic engagement reducing social capital in the early 2000’s, efforts at the university and community levels have sought to bring the disengaged back into their communities in a constructive manner. Civic engagement involves skill and it is built of multiple foundational skills; among the more important of these skills are media and literacy. This manuscript will explore the progress and direction of media literacy programming as a civic engagement initiative at institutions with a specific civic engagement commitment.

Over the span of more than a decade, state comprehensive colleges and universities have participated in a nationwide project to advance many aspects of student civic engagement. Known as the American Democracy Project (ADP), the effort, under the aegis of the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU), has built a multi-campus effort to build and bolster civic engagement skills among college students (Anonymous, 2006). Eight sub- programs, America’s Future, Civic Health, Civic Agency, Deliberative Polling, eCitizenship, Political Engagement Project, Global Engagement, and Stewardship of Public Lands, have all emerged from the ADP collaborative.