NJCH Action Grant Proposal

The Digital Citizenry Project: Reimagining a Framework for 21st Century Civic Engagement

 Submitted by Mary Balkun and Marta Deyrup, Seton Hall University

Describe your project, articulating the goals of the project. What is the timeline for implementation? What public events, materials, or programs will be included in or created by your project?

The goal of The Digital Citizenry Project is to foster conversations across four towns — East Orange, Orange, South Orange, and Maplewood — about what it means to be an engaged citizen in the 21st century. The project will provide an opportunity for the towns to work cooperatively on a timely issue of mutual interest. We will take advantage of social media tools (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram) to broaden current conversations, engagement, and collaboration from the local/institutional/governmental level to an intra-town level. We can see today just how essential these forms of communication are to sustaining community.

This is a continuation of a successful pilot project coordinated with the Village of South Orange (9/17-5/18): a series of conversations and local programming on the topic of engaged digital citizenship. Subsequently, we received a 2019 NJCH Incubation Grant to develop plans to expand this project. Working with stakeholders and community leaders in the four towns this past year, we have developed a series of events to run simultaneously in the towns Sept. 2020 through June 2021. These will be opportunities for open dialogue about what it means to be an engaged citizen today, how that can happen, and why it is important in a democratic society. Besides using existing technologies and infrastructures and raising awareness about available tools and platforms (websites, discussion boards, blogs), we will incorporate open access technologies that encourage engagement (Zoom, Facebook, annotation tools).

The events involve three infrastructures in the towns: libraries, local government, and schools. The most important of these is the public libraries, which serve as conduits for information, collaborative centers, and digital centers.

  1. Four Towns/One Book: simultaneous in-person and online discussion of a single book – adult and high school
  2. Coordinated library programming aligned with national “events”: Media Literacy Week, Digital Learning Day, Maker Month.
  3. Half-day symposium of civic leaders and technology experts on “Civic Engagement in the Digital Age.” This will be webcast and recorded for posting on the project website.
  4. High school/middle school essay contest: “What Does it Mean to be a Digital Citizen?”
  5. Digital Citizenship Week: Seton Hall University will host a series of free online mini-courses, available free to citizens of the four towns.
  6. “Toolkit for Engaged Citizenship”: a repository of plans, materials, reading lists, templates so other towns can replicate the project, to be posted on the project website.
  7. End of Year 4-Towns Gathering for Sharing/Planning

Why is this project important to your organization? How does it advance your organization’s mission and goals?

Seton Hall University is a liberal arts institution with humanities education at its core. While its stated mission is on preparing students to live as servant leaders in a global society, the university is committed to helping all people take their place in our increasingly digital society. It is also committed to producing lifelong learners at all stages who are cognizant of the implications of digital access through a principled and ethical engagement with technology. As part of this effort, the university is committed to bringing the humanities to the broader public, and has been engaged in several important digital humanities initiatives in and around campus. These include the work of the English department’s Center for Humanities and the Public Sphere, which hosts events and seminars that are open to the public, and the university’s active participation as a founding member of the New Jersey Digital Humanities Consortium, whose members represent fifteen regional colleges, universities, and research institutions. This group’s work is centered on broad based education about the digital humanities.

Our proposed project will continue the university’s extended mission of using its resources to work with those in the surrounding communities and its commitment to active engagement with those communities. This commitment has resulted in such cooperative projects as the annual SouthNext event, with the Township of South Orange; student service projects with grade schools in cooperation with United Vailsburg; and environmental projects in South Orange and South Mountain Reservation. This is the kind of cooperation and engagement we are hoping to continue to foster with our project, as well as engaged citizenship. Ideally, the collaboration between the university and the four participating towns will contribute to a better understanding between members of the Seton Hall community and Essex County residents, one that is built on humanities values.

What are the humanities ideas involved and formats being used? What role has or will the humanities scholar play in the project?

The very notion of “digital citizenship” has its roots in the humanities. While the term is relatively new, and the definition of what it means to be a digital citizen is still emerging, at the heart of this idea are the humanities principles that guide our sense of justice, equity, and fairness, and that inform critical thinking and objective analysis. Our approach in this project— a “linked chain” model of joint programming, as opposed to a hierarchical model—encourages the towns to build on one another’s strengths and resources. This type of collaboration, especially across boundaries, is also essential to the humanities. Finally, the various events planned as part of the project are rooted in and build on the humanities traditions of public discourse, critical thinking, synthesis, empathy, and creativity.

In our increasingly digital society, in which ordinary citizens are bombarded daily with an onslaught of misinformation and news of cyber-hacking that threatens our democratic process, it is through application of these humanities principles that 21st century citizens may be able to ferret out truth from fiction, understand the moral and ethical implications of digital access, and discern the validity of the applications by which one gains such access. In addition, by bringing together residents of four towns in conversations of multiple kinds we hope to build an understanding of the unique challenges each town faces, and foster awareness that leads to mutual cooperation. The dialogues and interactions we plan are the primary format for engagement in the humanities. What technology makes possible is that citizens of each town can engage in conversation, despite distance or other barriers. While not everyone may have access to technology at home, it is available through the libraries, which are themselves central to the humanities.

One key deliverable, the Toolkit for Engaged Citizenship, is a humanities-based format. It will involve creating and posting informative materials, a discussion forum, and templates so other towns can develop their own planning committee and events. The multidimensional and multilateral exchange of ideas and open dialogue format of this project reflect the goals of all humanities discourse.

Drs. Balkun and Deyrup are humanities scholars by training, both professors at SHU. They will be involved in all phases of the project and will bring their humanities expertise to bear on planning for these events. The project may also involve additional humanities scholars, as needed, from the Art, English and History departments.

Who is your program designed for and why? Why will the content matter to the people who will participate in it? Will your intended audience (or their representatives) be involved in the creation or implementation of your project?

This program centers on four neighboring communities in Essex County: South Orange (pop. 17,000), Maplewood (pop. 25,000), East Orange (pop. 65,000) and Orange (pop. 30,800). Although these towns have very different demographics, they are largely representative of this part of northern New Jersey. Essex County has a total population of approximately 800,000 with a medium household income of $63,000. The racial composition is fairly similar in the towns of South Orange and Maplewood, each town being approximately 60 percent white and 30 percent African American. The town of Orange has a 75% African-American population and a 13% white population. The town of East Orange is 85% African-American and 9% Latino.

Our program targets a wide cross-section of these residents: K-12 students and teachers; university students and faculty of the largest Essex County educational institution, Seton Hall University; public librarians and their library users; members of town government; senior citizens; and working adults. The goal is to engage as wide a number of individuals as possible in order to influence engagement in democratic processes and explore ways to improve communication within and between the towns. We believe the socioeconomic differences between the towns can enrich the conversations and result in greater understanding and engagement.

The project will be coordinated by an organizing committee consisting of representatives selected from the different town constituencies. The committee will plan and oversee a year-long series of events with special relevance in this election and census year. As its name, The Digital Citizenry Project, implies, these events will involve creative use of digital media to enhance involvement by and collaboration between residents. Digital agency has not been broadly explored in terms of democratic processes, since most town institutions contain silos of communication. In addition, digital citizenry programs tend to be geared to middle and high school students, not adults. This project focuses primarily on engaging adults and providing them with information about and opportunities to use digital technology. The impact of this digital agency will be documented at the end of the grant in a white paper.

Based on our planning process during 2020, the questions this program seeks to answer are of interest to all the constituencies: How local libraries can advance digital engagement; how young and older people alike understand their responsibility as citizens in a digital age; and what forms of communication can best serve the needs of civic organizations and their constituents.

How will you get the people you want to participate in this program? What outreach and publicity strategies will you employ?

We have a variety of strategies planned for public outreach and publicity for the events running in the four communities. These are based on what we learned during our pilot project with South Orange, as a result of our conversations with local leaders and town representatives, and through our research into the most widely available and viable tools and outlets. Since our audience is the general public, we plan to advertise as broadly as possible, using a variety of media types, both traditional and electronic. Because the digital is an important component of our program, we plan to use several forms of social media as well as community outlets, such as town websites and Twitter accounts. The organizational committee, supported by our student assistant and a graphic design specialist, will develop/design material for the following:

      1. In libraries:
        • Posters
        • Announcements at library events
        • Advertisements on the library websites
      2. Digital advertising in the following forums:
        • Town websites (town.org, town “Patch” sites)
        • Action committee sites (i.e. SO-MA)
        • Twitter
        • Town message boards
        • Town council web sites
        • Cultural websites
      3. Announcements at town hall meetings
      4. Posters in shops and other public places/spaces
      5. Outreach to middle and high school guidance counselors and department chairs to advertise the essay contests
      6. A Facebook group created for the project
      7. Announcements on the SHU-hosted NJCH grant website
      8. Announcements on local television stations (Steve Adubato is associated with Seton Hall)
      9. Advertisements on WSOU, the Seton Hall University award-winning radio station

      What is your plan for evaluating how well your project realizes its goals? How will you identify and measure the impact this project has on your audience(s) and/or organization?

      The program goals and outcomes will be evaluated as follows:

      • Surveys at the conclusion of each event, both in paper and electronically, to gauge effectiveness/gather feedback. These results will be evaluated by the organizational committee
      • Six months after the conclusion of the program, a survey of all participants — including the community leaders to get feedback on the following:
        • Have any of the institutions/organizations continued to use any of the digital collaboration tools introduced, and which ones?
        • Did the project have any discernible impact on citizen engagement?
        • Did the community building we hoped for take place?
        • Did some of the outliers—senior citizens, for example—become more comfortable using these tools?
        • Has joint programming continued?
        • Is anyone using the Digital Toolkit materials?
        • Is there a greater awareness of tools, of ways to engage, of the issues in digital citizenship?

      Indicators of success will be the following:

      • Evidence of improved communication both within and across towns
      • Increased involvement of town members in town blogs and forums
      • New bonds between towns in the form of continued/new projects
      • Communication outside the current civic/library/educational silos
      • Greater confidence using social media tools/platforms

      In all surveys, respondents will be asked to identify their town residence so we can compare results.

      There will be a final debriefing of the organizing committee to determine the impact the program on the various towns and plans they have to continue these collaborative efforts.

      The final product will be a white paper of the results to be posted on the grant website.