Abstract

The EDigiPolis project aims to deconstruct essentialist portraits of youth engagement and disengagement, applying innovative methods to approach youths’ politico-educational trajectories, actions, and concerns, while testing new strategies and participatory models of research, politics, and education.
EDigiPolis addresses youths' politico-educational concerns and (dis)engagement repertoires through the integrated application, refinement, and testing of innovative methodologies, platforms, and software. Building on a synergistic interaction between artificial intelligence and ethnographic fieldwork, this approach proceeds through a quasi-experimental study and a participatory methodology to co-create youth-led, actionable, and context-sensitive solutions.

- Phase 1 is titled “Public Sphere – Mapping Local Politico-Educational Problems and Deciphering Dis/Engagement Repertoires”. It builds on an innovative computational analysis of big data with detailed ethnographic studies, both online and offline, to reveal the key issues faced by young people from diverse geographic areas, with varying experiences in politics and education, as seen through social media imagery.
- Phase 2 is titled “Public Sphere, Schools and Communities: Learning and Engaging with Local Political Problems”. Here, we look for youths’ public spheres that echo the contexts where they live and learn: the schools and communities. Digital tools – visual and textual – will be combined to promote structured, reasoned debates on problems identified by young people.
- Phase 3 is titled “Public Sphere, Schools, Communities and Stakeholders: Co-constructing local politics and citizenship education”. In this final phase, the project, grounded on a cumulative logic that builds up to actionable solutions for problems identified by youth, brings together various participants: young activists, NEETs, students, and representatives of diverse arenas in which social change is produced.

TEAM

CIIE/FPCEUP: Carla Malafaia (PI), Isabel Menezes, Tiago Neves, Pedro D. Ferreira, Norberto Ribeiro, BIPD, BI
IPV: Maria Figueiredo, Susana Amante, BI
CSD/UHelsinki: Eeva Luhtakallio, Taina Meriluoto

CONSULTANTS

Shakuntala Banaji, The London School of Economics and Political Science, UK
Maria Fernandes-Jesus, University of Sussex, UK

CoPIn

PCEP - Participation, Communities and Political Education

Funding

This project is cofunded by the Innovation and Digital Transition Programme - COMPETE 2030, Portugal 2030 and the European Union (ERDF), and by national funds, through FCT, the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology | Call for Scientific Research and Technological Development (IC&DT) Projects in All Scientific Domains 2023 (MPr-12-2023 - ICDT/2023)
Grant no. COMPETE2030-FEDER-00925800

Keywords

Educational and political engagement
Citizenship education
Digital debates
Visual participation

Principal Investigator

Carla Malafaia

Co-Principal Investigator

Team

Carla Malafaia

Isabel Menezes

Norberto Ribeiro

Pedro Ferreira

Tiago Neves

Partners

CIIE/Faculdade de Psicologia e de Ciências da Educação da Universidade do Porto
Instituto Politécnico de Viseu
Centre for Sociology of Democracy of the University of Helsinki (collaborating institution)