Driving Engagement: iCitizen Aims To Create A More Informed Public

The School of Communication and Media introduced the new theme for this academic year that will give impetus to many discussions, events, scholarship and creative media projects: Driving Engagement.  Students, faculty and staff, media partners and community organizations will work on collaborative projects to probe the multifaceted forms of online and offline engagement, collect and create compelling, transmedia stories that document civic and community engagement in everyday life, and consider how modes of engagement can lead to movements that enhance democratic participation and social justice.

Given this “engagement” anchor for the academic year, on September 23, the school kicked off its Colloquium with a fitting guest and discussion, welcoming Alex Schreiner, civic engagement manager for the iCitizen mobile app. The Washington, DC-based app, functions to heighten democratic participation through social media and to connect users to their government officials and each other. The event was part of the School of Communication and Media’s Colloquium Series as well as Montclair State’s annual Constitution Day celebration, and was sponsored by the Office of the Provost.

Schreiner introduced the app to more than 200 students and faculty at the School of Communication and Media’s first colloquium. Some of the mobile app’s new functions may help engage the younger generations in political dialogue and provide that much needed “feedback loop” from constituents to the people that represent them.

“Everything in our lives is instantaneous these days,” Schreiner said as he spent roughly twenty minutes throughout the presentation answering students’ questions. “Why not make political polling instantaneous too.”

The iCitizen app allows users to picks and vote on the issues they care about and the app will filter to those issues. The hopes of the iCitizen team, according to Schreiner, are that it “passes the toothbrush test, that people will use it twice a day.”

The interactive session featured a guided tour of the mobile app as well as conversation about its functions and consequences for our behavior as members of a democratic society. Schreiner gave Montclair students a preview of the app’s second generation, which will be beta tested during October (with government officials) and November (with the public). This app offers an even wider range of tools for sharing information and connecting with others. Schreiner then engaged in a question and answer session with Montclair State students and talked with them afterword about any questions, suggestions or concerns they had with the mobile app.

Of most value with regard to the engagement theme is how the iCitizen app illustrates and enables civic participation in the age of social media,” Professor Dr. Todd Kelshaw, who was the discussion moderator for the event said. “The app not only provides access to information, but also access to each other.”