Does the internet motivate young people to get involved in politics and civic participation?
If you are involved what difference does the internet make?
What organisations are using the web to encourage more civic information, understanding and involvement?
How are these organisations using the web and designing their sites to talk to young people and get them interested and involved?
Is it really true that young people are not interested and involved? Are they using the internet in ways that might surprise us?
Does involvement on line mean involvement off line?

CIVICWEB is a research project funded by the European Union (Framework 6).

The main aims are to study:

• The production of civic sites,
• The nature and characteristics of the sites,
• The uses and interpretations made of such sites by different social groups of young people
• The relationship between online activity and civic participation ‘offline’.

The following organisations are working together on CIVICWEB

Centre for the Study of Children, Youth and Media, Institute of Education (LKL), University of London (IoE)

Media constitute youth and children’s most significant leisure-time pursuit. This centre organises research into and teaching about how diverse groups of children and young people use and make media. We believe that public debate on these issues needs to be informed by serious, in-depth research. CSCYM is co-ordinating CIVICWEB.

Lund University, Sweden
Universiteit van Amsterdam, Netherlands
Central European University Budapest, Hungary
Universidad Autonoma de Barcelona, Spain
University of Ljubljana, Slovenia
Istanbul BILGI University, Turkey