The Youth and Media (YaM) project at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard serves as the research, learning, and development partner to the Chicago-based, core group of McCormick’s Why New Matters grantees.

The Youth and Media (YaM) project at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University serves as the research, learning, and development partner to the Chicago-based, core group of McCormick’s Why New Matters grantees. The collaboration between the Berkman Center and the McCormick Foundation is aimed at supporting the Foundations’ youth-oriented audience and content initiatives in general and the Why News Matters program in particular. The proposed activities have been designed as an integral part of the McCormick Foundation’s explicit effort to coordinate field-building collaborations and partnerships.

Through a series of research briefs customized to the needs of the Why News Matters grantees, the Berkman team is “translating” cutting-edge research for the Chicago group to incorporate such findings and insights into their local practices in the sense of continued learning and joint program development. Additionally, the Youth and Media team informs and supports McCormick’s investment in news literacy education in underserved communities through a series of specifically targeted focus group interviews in the respective Chicago communities, with a focus on online news behavior.

About the Berkman Center

The Berkman Center’s mission is to recognize, study, and engage the most difficult and fundamental problems of the digital age and to share in their resolution in ways that advance the public interest. We are dedicated to open-minded exploration, which positions us well to see around corners and imagine a wide array of potential issues and outcomes, even as the technologies and the ways people use them continue to change in dramatic fashion. Fundamental to our work is the study of the relationship between Internet technologies and democratic values, including civic participation, access to knowledge, and the free flow of information, and in particular the intersections of digital technologies, civic engagement, learning, journalism, and young people. As an entrepreneurial nonprofit, we seek to practice rigorous scholarship targeting policymakers, practitioners, users, technologists, the marketplace and beyond.

Impact

• YaM will make relevant research more accessible to the Chicago community.
• YaM will support best practices among the Chicago group through contributions in workshops and learning calls.

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