Regina Marchi

With Facebook, Blogs, and Fake News, Teens Reject Journalistic “Objectivity”:

This article examines the news behaviors and attitudes of teenagers, an understudied demographic in the research on youth and news media. Based on interviews with 61 racially diverse high school students, it discusses how adolescents become informed about current events and why they prefer certain news formats to others. The results reveal changing ways news information is being accessed, new attitudes about what it means to be informed, and a youth preference for opinionated rather than objective news. This does not indicate that young people disregard the basic ideals of professional journalism but, rather, that they desire more authentic renderings of them.

From disillusion to engagement: Minority teen journalists and the news media

Because most high schools that can afford to fund journalism programs are located in middle-class suburbs, the majority of research on teen journalists reflects the experiences of middle-class, predominantly white students. By examining two afterschool journalism programs serving youth from inner-city communities, this article discusses teen journalists who are predominantly low-income and racial minorities, examining their views about journalism and news media. In the process, it explores these teens’ notions of democracy and the public good, revealing how class location influences youth attitudes towards news media and civic participation.

Z-Radio, Boston: Teen Journalism, Political Engagement, and Democratizing the Airwaves

This article analyzes a youth organizations struggle to start a low-watt community radio station. The project was envisioned as a way to encourage at-risk youth to become media producers and gain technical and communication skills. It was also seen as a medium through which to communicate about important social and political issues affecting the stations predominantly low-income and minority constituency—concerns not prominently covered in the commercial media. Like hundreds of US urban communities excluded from operating low power FM stations under current FCC regulations, this group initiated a 100 milliwatt AM station with hopes of eventually becoming a 100 watt FM station if FCC regulations were to change. Funding, organizational, logistical, and regulatory issues are discussed, along with obstacles and successes of this initiative and the potential for such programs to engage youth in larger issues of democracy and non-commercial expression.

News Translators Latino Immigrant Youth, Social Media, and Citizenship Training

This article discusses how low-income Latino immigrant youth use the Internet for newsgathering. Contrary to previous assumptions about the digital divide, the youth almost universally owned cell phones and got most of their news online, although poverty affected the quality of their connectivity. However, a generational digital divide was evident, in which Internet-savvy youth had access to timelier and more diverse news than their parents. In a reversal of typical parent–child roles, the youth were “news translators” for their parents, explaining U.S. news stories and their implications. Moreover, in seeking, critiquing, creating, and posting content online, the youth gained participatory and deliberative skills useful for civic engagement in a democracy.

Crossing Borders with the Santo Niño de Atocha (review)

as E-Verify, the REAL ID Act of 2005, the Georgia Security and Immigration Compliance Act, and cross-deputization of law enforcement under Section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act—to make life much more difficult for southern Latinos. This shift provides a good context for understanding why so many Latinos are now describing life in the region in more ambivalent and contradictory terms than they used to, since they have come under increasing attack from natives (especially politicians and workingclass whites and blacks, as the various chapters illustrate) for their allegedly harmful cultural and criminal attributes.