Tufts' Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) received two grants totaling close to $700,000 last month to conduct research on the political participation of different demographics and promote online civic activism.
The Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS), the largest federal organization dedicated to supporting service and volunteerism with grants, provided CIRCLE with the funds.
CIRCLE, a civic-participation research group housed in the Jonathan M. Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service, received $128,000, to be put toward measuring civic participation levels within certain demographics and $570,000 to build a social networking application that will connect civically engaged people.
CIRCLE will analyze data from the U.S. Census and surveys from various non-profit and for-profit organizations to compare levels of civic engagement between social groups.
The study is still in its planning phases, but it may examine factors including race, age, immigration status and education in analyzing fluctuations in political participation, according to Peter Levine, director of CIRCLE and director of research at Tisch College.
"We are very interested in inequality," he said. "People who, for example, go to college are more likely to participate [civically]. That's mostly a reflection of social class."
CIRCLE will also use the grant to build an interactive Web application for examining U.S. Census data on civic participation, although the center will subcontract the actual construction of the application.
Levine said that the government, membership organizations and volunteering college students could all use this information to figure out whom to target when encouraging voter turnout.
"The voting rate among Tufts students is going to be pretty high, and among Medford students, it's going to be very low," he said. "Tufts students should be trying to increase voting rate off-campus."
He added, "That's the reason for this research, so that you understand the problem and guide your action."
The project reflects Tufts' emphasis on students becoming involved in the political process, according to Nancy Wilson, director and associate dean of Tisch College.
"Much of their research isn't done because the faculty needs it but because the world needs it," Wilson said. "[CIRCLE's research] reinforces this image of Tufts of being a place of youth civic engagement and trying to understand it."
Wilson said that CIRCLE's research could help Tisch attract people who attribute their participation in a campaign to an issue but do not continue engaging civically for that issue after an election.
The influx of cash with the two CNCS grants supports part of CIRCLE's overarching project, Wilson said.
"There's a lot of work in this field of participation in terms of demographics," Levine said. "We at CIRCLE do these things all the time. [This grant project] is an incremental step for us."
He added, "I'd be more excited if I could tell you it was groundbreaking, but it's another piece of the puzzle."
With the $570,000 grant, CIRCLE plans to lead a project to build a social networking Web application that would build diagrams showing connections between people and local issues based on input from of the application's users.
Levine said the project would build a user interface for Facebook.com and MySpace.com using software called YouthMap.
YouthMap allows users to submit data on civic activists and the issues they are involved in, and generates networking diagrams from this input. The diagram's icons represent people; clicking on one shows a description of the person, with contact information.
Levine said this application will allow volunteers or activists working on a local issue to "find people who might be ready to work on it, who are well involved in the networks, or to find people at a [specific other] college for an issue."
"Tufts students are already working on a lot of really amazing initiatives with similar goals," said senior Danielle Damm, a scholar at Tisch College, and this software's coordinating capacity is "allowing people to be more efficient in their resources."
CIRCLE's Web application will be accessible to all people in the Boston area — people from Cambridge College, MIT, Bunker Hill, you name it," Levine said.
Damm said that she and CIRCLE would hold "information sessions and one-on-one meetings on the use of the application" with students and groups on campus, starting at the beginning of next semester.
"A big priority on launching the software is going to be making sure there's a diversity of students using it," she said.
The decision to make a YouthMap interface for Facebook and MySpace, rather than to engineer a new networking site, was based on the idea that "networks are more valuable the more people on them already," Levine said. "We have no interest in competing with large existing networks. We'd rather just plug in."
