Networking young citizens: learning to be citizens in and with the social web

Web 2.0 technologies or ‘social web’ (eg. Facebook, Twitter) are said to have democratic potential in engaging, mobilizing and communicating with young citizens worldwide. Yet there is limited research, especially in Australia, to confirm these claims. The Networking Young Citizens project investigates the way Web 2.0 technologies contribute to young people’s citizenship participation. Documenting the way young people talk about and use Web 2.0 to participate in their social networks, and the way schools talk about and use Web 2.0 technologies to support citizenship teaching and learning in schools, reveals actual and possible ways of using the social web to form young citizens.