Unlocking the potential of social media for participation, content creation and e-engagement. Students’ perspectives and empowerment

In the last years, interest in the potential of social media and social networking sites for young people’s participation to public spaces has gained momentum. These media have been seen as adequate to support the development of participatory culture. However, some studies have questioned their participatory power and demonstrated that online participatory culture is still at an early stage. This chapter aims at providing an overview on current studies on the relationship between the social media landscape and the participatory culture, and to contributing to the debate through the investigation of students’ attitudes towards online participation, content creation and civic engagement in an Italian case study. Therefore, in the first part, it illustrates the theoretical background focusing on the different forms of participation and content creation, the notion of civic engagement and the role of social media. In the second part, it presents the methodological approach developed to explore adolescents’ attitudes and discusses the preliminary results of the study, while considering its implications for education and citizenship. Indeed, since there are no deterministic links between social media usage and active engagement, the main conclusion of the chapter is that education, especially media education, should play a major role in supporting adolescents’ civic engagement and empowerment.