Before you can change the world, you have to be able to imagine other possibilities and see yourself as a political agent. This is what we call the civic imagination. Through interviews with more than 200 young activists, the USC Media, Activism, and Participatory Politics research group has documented the ways some innovative organizations are helping American youth to become more civically engaged and politically active. In many cases, this new political language appropriates and remixes storytelling elements borrowed from popular culture — from the Hunger Games to Harry Potter to Superman — in order to develop shared frameworks through which they can change the world. What if we saw fantasy not as escapism but as a tool for promoting social justice? Henry Jenkins, John Seely Brown