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Relationship to the Knight Commission Report

In the preceding paper, I have recommended the steps that I consider most important and that I feel most qualified to discuss. I have omitted other promising strategies, such as working with community foundations and changing federal policies, because I am less informed about them. Overall, I have offered five strategies that are connected to, but not perfectly in line with, the civic engagement recommendations (11–15) of the Knight Commission report, Informing Communities: Sustaining Democracy in the Digital Age. The following chart is intended to show how they relate.

Proposed Strategies	Knight Commission Recommendations
	11. Reflect entire diversity of communities	12. Engage young people	13. Community summits	14. Enhance public spaces for deliberation	15. Local online hubs
1. Civic Information Corps	Because the Corps would recruit non-college-track youth, it would be diverse. It would also produce culturally diverse content.	The Corps would enlist young people.	The Corps could help organize such summits.	Corps members would learn to support such spaces.	The Corps could manage a hub in each community, providing individuals with formal roles as webmaster, content editor, outreach coordinator, etc.
2. Universities as information hubs	Universities must not only educate their own students but form genuine partnerships with communities.	University students are predominantly young. Higher ed also has a role in enhancing K–12 civic education.	Universities can be the sites for such summits, and their faculty, staff and students can support them.	Universities can provide sites for deliberation.	Websites that aggregate universities’ research on local issues would be hubs.
3. Invest in deliberation	Discussions are not equitable or diverse unless investments are made in training, moderation, and recruitment.	The best examples include separate pathways for young people to enter deliberation.	Summits would be the apex of a deliberative culture.	Spaces are one important aspect of investment (but so is training).	The online hubs should promote discussion.
4. Generate public “relational” knowledge	By displaying the network structure of communities, we make it possible to identify excluded groups and address inequitable power relationships.	High school students have been engaged in creating such knowledge, with educational benefits.	Understanding the community’s network structure would help prepare for a representative summit.	A public map of relational information is an important topic of conversation, and online deliberative spaces can be attached to the map itself.	The hubs should present relationships as well as data and opinions
5. Organize to defend the knowledge commons	The tragedy of the knowledge commons most seriously affects marginalized people, who have the biggest stake in defending free and high-quality information.	Part of an adequate defense is educating the next generation to value public knowledge. We can also tap their enthusiasm for digital culture.	Policies related to information are appropriate topics for deliberation.	Spaces need to be public in the sense that associations can afford them and free speech is protected. (Unlike, say, shopping malls)	A hub supported by a university would benefit from its resources, including its legal and political power.