PROPERTY OF THE MIT PRESS FOR PROOFREADING, INDEXING, AND PROMOTIONAL PURPOSES ONLY Gordon—Civic Media 24 Connecting Pedagogies of Civic Media: The Literacies, Connected Civics, and Engagement in Daily Life Youth and Civic Engagement in Digital Culture A host of large-scale civic movements over the past decade have employed digital tech- nologies as facilitators for the organization, engagement, and participation of citizens in democratic processes. The Arab Spring, (Eltantawy and Wiest 2011; Khondker 2011), the Obama 2008 and 2012 campaigns (Gerodimos and Justinussen 2014), Occupy Wall Street, the Ice Bucket Challenge, and the Kony 2012 movement are often cited as major catalysts for driving interest into the role of young people and social networks in civic engagement (Castells 2012; Milner 2010). Recent protest movements in Turkey, Greece, Ukraine, and Hong Kong have codified a certain category of civic uprising that, while not dictated solely by social media, utilizes social media to organize and facilitate infor- mation, and to document actions and events for the world to see. These large-scale events, however, overshadow compelling local grassroots uses of connective technologies for engagement in civic life. In 2012, in Scotland, a 9-year-old student named Martha Payne started a blog where she documented her school lunches visually through photos and commentary. She began to share her blog, “NeverSeconds,” with her friends and community, and soon her photos about the poor conditions of school food spread far and wide. She gained over 2 million followers and raised over 5,000 GBP for a school caféteria in Africa. Her popularity, however, exposed conditions that were uncomfortable for local officials, who ordered the blog to be removed citing privacy issues and the use of a camera in the school (Russell 2012). As Martha’s followers heard about the decision to close down Martha’s site, they took to Twitter to voice their concerns and put pres- sure on local officials to reverse their decision. Within weeks, Scottish council leader Roddy McCuish “instructed senior officials to immediately withdraw the ban on pictures from the school dining hall” (Bryant 2012). Since then, Martha’s blog has reached over 10 million people, she has traveled to Malawi to visit the schools where her funds reached, and she has put pressure on Scottish officials to improve their school lunch offerings. Paul Mihailidis and Roman Gerodimos 9970_024.indd 371 12/11/2015 5:59:05 PM