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Undergraduate and graduate students were enrolled in an upper-division online experiential learning course organized as a technology company start up at a public university in the US. Students participated in an academic department's social media team, publishing a weekly newsletter and producing and curating content for multiple social media outlets designed for public and university audiences, a website for the department's students, and a career portal. Responses to survey questions provided support for Experiential Learning Theory's cyclical learning model. In addition, students viewed the entrepreneurial approach to the team as both liberating and challenging as they engaged with each other and the communities in which they were embedded. Although communication with their student supervisors, faculty supervisor, and other team members contributed to their positive evaluation of their learning experience, the tech start-up approach of task autonomy was the most important factor. Students came to recognize and embrace the multifaceted nature and ubiquity of learning opportunities. In addition, they developed key transferable skills, including effective writing, social media literacy, critical thinking, teamwork, problem solving, decision making, self-management, and leadership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of the internet in large-scale demonstrations, as witnessed in the Arab Spring, has been debated and reflects continued interest in the intermingling of social movements and digital technology. Yet behind these large photogenic events stand other less obvious social activities that may be equally profound, particularly in the form of alternative institutional frameworks that better meet the social needs of individuals than current models. We categorize these “dissident” frameworks as “parallel poleis” as developed by Czech philosopher and activist Vaclav Benda and offer two case studies to support this contention. At the heart of parallel poleis lies the notion that digital technologies are uniquely positioned to reflect and facilitate the political expressions of individuals due to low-cost transactions, ease of use and large social network reach possibilities. The sociopolitical ramifications of a parallel polis as conceptualizing the social–technical interaction warrants further discussion. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Rhetorician Michael Calvin McGee exemplified the scholar embracing all tools and ideas, the fragments that make up the human existence, in exploring and explaining the world. The author argues that bridging the gaps that separate these fragments, or what intellectual T. Gitlin called sphericules, are the essence of what constitutes public scholarship. Starting from intellectual J. Habermas' description of the public sphere the author explore how interdisciplinarity holds the keys to bridging the gaps between publics. The author supported this with a discussion of the history of academe in the U.S. and the brief survey of the new infrastructures being built to expand fields of exploration and the dissemination of scholarly knowledge. He envisioned the potential of the Internet not only as a novel way to disseminate information, but also as a phenomenon that would change the way people communicate. The Internet has the potential to form bridges between the fragments of human existences. It is not an end all, be all, utopia nor is it the dystopian killer-app of hegemony.

This article focuses on the revival of low power radio services after Federation Communication Commission (FCC) lifted a 22-year ban on licensing FM Radio stations under 100 watts. Low Power FM, also known as Micro Radio, is technically defined as stations which broadcast over the 100 milli-watt experimental limit and under the 100-watt minimum power required prior to legalization by the FCC. In contrast, full power stations transmit at 6000 watts and higher. The FCC had not issued licenses to radio stations that broadcast under 100 watts since 1978. The modern period of unlicensed or Micro Radio began in 1985. A blind African American named Mbanna Kantako in Springfield, Illinois, coined the term for his small station that served the sprawling housing project he lived in. After a half-hearted attempt by the FCC in 1989 to shut him down, he faded into the background, happy to simply run his station and serve his community. This kind of FM activity remained low throughout the rest of the decade.

This article discusses about the micro radio movement and its activism on the Internet. Radio is one of the first and most influential communications technologies. It has a level of intimacy and immediacy that has only now been replicated in with the Internet. The Micro Radio Movement sprouted out of the need of poor or marginalized communities, ignored in the mass media, to communicate with themselves. This electronic bond brings these communities together, unmediated by the imperatives of commercial media or the agenda's of traditional public radio. However, the Micro Radio Movement did not explode into a highly organized, yet decentralized, force in American communication regulatory policy until it discovered the Internet. This paper explores, what has been, to date, the high-water mark of coordination and organization of the Micro Radio Movement, the creation of a Low Power Radio Service by the Federal Communications Commission in January of 2000. The author discusses the rise of Low Power or Micro Radio and the FCC's initial response to it; second he explains the FCC's rulemaking system and the means for accessing this system; third the different factions and conflicts of the Micro Radio Movement is explored; fourth the creation of the Group Statement on Micro Radio and other comments on the FCC rulemaking is discussed, and finally, he explores the implications of this type of grass roots organizing and cooperation and the current state of Low Power Radio.