#SundayCivics

Switch to the good side every first Sunday of the month — Digital Independence Day

On the first Sunday of each month we organise Digital Independence Day. This is when we reclaim our digital freedom and switch to democracy-friendly digital alternatives.

Sunday Musings

Jesus the Rule Breaker

Pure Thought on Paper | Chris Ware

Olivier Schrauwen’s graphic novel Sunday is, like Ulysses, an attempt to capture the thoughts, experiences, memories, musings, and mania of one man over a single day. It is also, like Ulysses, a masterpiece.

Volunteering and Civic Action: Boundaries Blurring, Boundaries Redrawn

The aim of this introduction to the special issue is to call into question the presumed conceptual divide between volunteering and civic action and suggest an analytical tool and four perspectives that bring to light the varying meanings of popular engagement. Volunteering and civic action are laden with different moral meanings, are associated with different theoretical approaches and, just as important, have been assigned different roles in society. This conceptual divide is reflected in the academic debate. Only rarely, however, has the academic debate explored and discussed how the meaning of volunteering and civic action has changed historically. Therefore, we argue for a contextual and relational interpretation of the different forms of popular engagement instead of the application of essentialist definitions of volunteering and civic action. In order to examine the variety of popular engagement without being caught up in pre-made or taken-for-granted conceptualisations of volunteering and civic action as two separate forms of popular engagement, we propose approaching variations of popular engagement with respect to two criteria: first, to what degree popular engagement is enacted in institutionalised spheres of politics or in social public spheres and, second, to what degree actions of popular engagement are controversial or operating in line with what is widely agreed upon and dominant in public opinion. Moreover, we argue that history, discourses, politics and a relational approach are four crucial perspectives in order to reveal the varying meanings of popular engagement.

What We Fund - Knight Foundation

Knight Foundation funds four interconnected programs that support thriving communities and is shaped by how information, culture, and civic life intersect.

Novus

A community of founders and builders that meet every week to work on projects with impact and scale.

CivicPulse

CivicPulse is a nonpartisan nonprofit seeking to promote more effective local and state governance through improved access to reliable data and research.

Our Civic Signals research | New_ Public

The Civic Signals are 14 indicators of healthy online spaces, based on years of research into what makes online communities work.

PARA

Civic social infrastructure for communities, governance, and public participation.

We Are Civic Media

A discipline-crossing introduction to civic media via accounts from grassroots practitioners “Civic media” is the use of contemporary technologies to connect communities, inspire action, build civic capacity, and sustain social change efforts. Written by artists, creators, storytellers, organizers, and others working at the intersections of technology, social justice, and culture, this book summons civic media through the lived experiences of its contributors. Latoya Peterson delves into the therapeutic power of gaming; Akilah Hughes discusses identity and community through the lens of her campaign to change her high school's racist mascot; and Tyree Boyd-Pates emphasizes the potential power of museum curation to challenge power dynamics and bridge digital and physical realms. Through the experiences of these grassroots practitioners and many others, We Are Civic Media offers accessible insights for those interested in understanding, respecting, and practicing civic media.