I’m in Newark, New Jersey for a MacArthur Foundation conference on “Digital Media and Learning.” MacArthur is supporting a whole series of edited volumes on various aspects of this broad topic, including a book organized by Lance Bennett on digital media and civic engagement. For that volume, I have drafted a chapter about the benefits of using electronic media for civic purposes in schools. I also discuss the barriers to that kind of work. I examine a wide range of barriers, including the lack of training for teachers and limits on political advocacy; but I focus on the difficulty of building an appropriate audience for students’ products.