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This study examines the public participation in the implementation of the Historic Urban Landscape (HUL), a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) approach for urban development. HUL has six Critical Steps and four Tools Categories relating to community engagement, knowledge and planning, regulatory system and financial instruments. The HUL public participation component has materialized variably across the adopting cities, challenged by the local implementation capacity. In response, we have singled out two research questions revolving around the participants’ characteristics and participation methods.

This study instrumentalizes case studies as a research methodology and thematic literature as a theoretical context. The HUL projects for Ballarat, Australia and Cuenca, Ecuador have been selected as sources of published information because they exhibit comparative differences in completing community engagement. We have compared the community engagement accounts of the two cities.

The Ballarat and Cuenca HUL project accounts point out to commonalities and variances in responding to the HUL public participation mandate. The findings for the participants’ characteristics involve project setting, participants categories and participants empowerment; the findings for the participation methods involve initial preparation, domestic and international expertise and public conversation.

The results of the study help define public participation practices in HUL project implementations. The results present an opportunity for city officials, HUL project planners and field administrators for making informed decisions particularly in relation to the two public participation domains, the participants’ characteristics and the engagement methods.

The primary objectives of this article are to systematically explore whether and how certain WeChat use motives could lead to bridging social capital, bonding social capital and civic engagement among young people.

The data was collected from a large-scale online survey of 1208 young people in mainland China. Zero-order correlation analyses and structural equation modeling were carried out to examine the corresponding hypotheses.

Obtained findings show that WeChat use for informational and social motivations are positively associated with bonding and bridging social capital. Moreover, bonding social capital could mediate the relationship between WeChat usage for informational and relational motivations and civic engagement.

Theoretically, this article underlines the unique social and technological affordances of WeChat by exploring mobile social media use and how it would contribute to the quality of democracy by fostering young people's engagement in civic life. Practically, bridging and bonding social capital play significant roles in enhancing young people's civic engagement, which could be the meaningful resource for mobile social media designers, managers and government officials.

These obtained outcomes underlined the vital role of these newly emerging communication technologies in fostering democratic involvement and production of social capital in contemporary socially networked society.

The library and information science profession finds itself grappling with substantial difficulties and hurdles when addressing the trustworthiness and accuracy of information disseminated through social media platforms. This study aims to highlight the educational authority of librarians and propose a framework for librarians to establish their identity, understand the meaning behind their practice and integrate their expertise through knowledge practices, ensuring their relevance and effectiveness in the social media environment.

This study delves into a conceptual framework rooted in philosophical inquiry, seeking to establish a harmonious connection between interrelated concepts of civic roles, professional identity and knowledge practices. It draws upon both original research findings and a review of existing literature in the field.

Civic responsibilities reflect the professional identities of librarians. Evidence of knowledge practices collected from scientific literature emerged to be the important characterization of how librarians uphold their image as educational authorities. It describes the meaning of civic roles and professional practice.

The study sheds light on how librarians maintain their reputation as educators and the knowledge practices that underpin their civic responsibilities amidst the pervasiveness of information disorders.

The framework presented in the study offers a timely and relevant contribution to the complex realm of social media information disorders, a challenge that librarians grapple with regularly. It highlights the emerging role of librarians in society to assert their identity and recognize their civic responsibility in addressing this pressing issue that society faces.

Social media offers youth a virtual platform to build community and amplify underrepresented voices. Online spaces are often used to respond to societal issues and adopt various roles. This article aims to focus on Laura's case, spotlighting the intersection of online activism by a youth of Color, and social media literacies used to demonstrate civic engagement around contemporary social justice issues.

Through case study methods, the author examined how a youth of Color used social media to employ critical literacy practices as tools for civic engagement, advocating for social justice, and navigating the complexities of identity work in online spaces, spotlighting Laura, a self-identified Mexican and Ecuadorian Latine 18-year-old activist, to understand how social media shapes multimodal literacy practices, how youth build culture, engage in literacies and craft civic identities online.

Findings examine Laura’s social media literacies toward social justice activism, contributing to the understanding of youth activism, digital identity and civic engagement. Findings will also examine how Laura enacts online literacy practices related to her racialized identities, and how she engages in activism and civic participation related to social justice issues. These findings contribute to the understanding of youth activism, digital identity and civic engagement.

This paper focuses on Laura’s practices within the larger frame of politics, digital space and youth culture. Moreover, it also highlights the potential of youths' multifaceted social media literacies to redefine the educator's role by fostering youth identity and social justice literacies.

Drawing primarily on the Japanese context, this study aims to highlight this setting to emphasise the potential for tertiary-level self-access language centres to develop lifelong global citizenship, self-reflection and cross-cultural collaboration.

This inquiry calls on the community of practice approach to account for the shared interests motivating lifelong cross-cultural participation, the quality of social engagement between actors, and the material and cognitive tools called upon to realise global citizenship’s shared enterprise.

As argued here, embracing various cultures and inclusive participation can lead to a broader understanding of global citizenship, avoiding narrow-minded views of globalism through shared knowledge and critical practices. Further, self-access provides a cost-effective, technology-mediated alternative to bilateral student mobility, whereby digital community-building occasions cross-cultural practice that may be extended throughout a learner’s life, irrespective of their financial status or place of study.

This study is one of a select few drawing on the community of practice framework within the context of lifelong global citizenship. Nevertheless, such an approach remains primed for future development. With a social constructivist philosophy in view, the authors suggest complementary qualitative research approaches that highlight the socially situated nature of both disciplines.

This study aims to explore how people with concurrent mental health and substance use disorders and lived experience of deep social marginalization perceived barriers and facilitators to mainstream social participation. The purpose of this study is to identify meaningful and relevant learning content for a virtual reality-based intervention to promote social participation in this group.

This formative qualitative study was conducted in Norway during Autumn 2022. Nine in-depth individual interviews with adults recovering from dual diagnosis were conducted, audiotaped, transcribed and analysed using reflexive thematic analysis in a collaborative analysis process.

Results indicated that social alienation, poor social skills, stigma, low self-esteem and social anxiety were key barriers to social participation in this group. This study suggests a need to learn appropriate social behaviour in mainstream society, in addition to better employability skills, civic literacy and health literacy to improve utilization of social opportunities.

This study implies that virtual reality-based interventions for promoting social participation in people with dual diagnosis should primarily focus on learning and practising appropriate social behaviour in shared public spaces before practising advanced social skills such as employability skills in simulated work environments. Learning and practising social skills appears decisive for using more complex social opportunities, such as in education, health, social services and work.

This research provides suggestions for the content of a novel virtual reality-based intervention to promote social participation among people in recovery from dual diagnosis.

This paper aims to investigate how the construct of digital citizenship is approached in the field of organizational studies.

A scoping review was conducted following the PRISMA-ScR recommendations. Six bibliographic databases were searched without time restrictions to identify primary studies that addressed the concept of digital citizenship and its biases in the field of organizational studies.

Twenty studies met the inclusion criteria. The results suggest that the field of organizational studies has not yet carried out an in-depth analysis of the topic. Research opportunities include understanding the meanings of digital citizenship from citizens' perspectives, examining differences between citizens' and government views on digital citizenship and exploring how organizational contexts impact digital citizenship practices.

The results provide a valuable effort to frame this topic in a field of knowledge that has an intrinsically interdisciplinary nature and evolves to understand increasingly complex organizational processes.

This study explores the value of sports films for engaging youth in issues related to patriotism, justice, equity and liberty. The authors analyze how two sports films, 42 and Battle of the Sexes, have pedagogical potential and value in secondary social studies methods classes, as well as what criteria educators might use when selecting films (and television series) for classroom use.

Using content analysis, the authors respond to the following questions: (1) What critical themes related to civic education surface in the sports films 42 and Battle of the Sexes? and (2) What framework might guide the use of selecting sports films and sports film clips for educators' civic educational use?

Five themes surfaced in the films 42 and Battle of the Sexes: economics as a force for social change; racism and anti-Blackness, athletes as more than athletes, resisting oppression, and sexism and homophobia. Instruction related to these themes has the potential to engage students in critical, awareness-based approaches to civic education.

Sports films show promise for engaging youth due to their interests in the medium of film and in sports, both as participants and spectators. Across the world, athletes face questions and issues related to patriotism, justice, equity and liberty on courts, fields, tracks and rinks, These questions and issues are deeply embedded in civic education. This study is among the first of its kind to explore the pedagogical potential of sports films.

The purpose of this study is to examine how young people imagine civic futures through speculative fiction writing about artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. The authors argue that young people’s speculative fiction writing about AI not only helps make visible the ways they imagine the impacts of emerging technologies and the modes of collective action available for leveraging, resisting or countering them but also the frictions and fissures between the two.

This practitioner research study used data from student artifacts (speculative fiction stories, prewriting and relevant unit work) as well as classroom fieldnotes. The authors used inductive coding to identify emergent patterns in the ways young people wrote about AI and civics, as well as deductive coding using digital civic ecologies framework.

The findings of this study spotlight both the breadth of intractable civic concerns that young people associate with AI, as well as the limitations of the civic frameworks for imagining political interventions to these challenges. Importantly, they also indicate that the process of speculative writing itself can help reconcile this disjuncture by opening space to dwell in, rather than resolve, the tensions between “the speculative” and the “civic.”

Teachers might use speculative fiction writing and the digital civic ecologies framework to support students in critically examining possible AI futures and effective civic actions within them.

Speculative fiction writing offers an avenue for students to analyze the growing civic concerns posed by emerging platform technologies like AI.