Introduction: Communication and Civic Engagement in Comparative Perspective

The present era is defined by sweeping changes in economies, social institutions, political party systems, and communication processes in many nations. These changes go by various names from globalization to poststructuralism. The impact of these tectonic shifts in the political foundations of nations is greatly debated. In particular, considerable uncertainty surrounds the effects of various changes on the importance of politics for individual citizens and for the kinds of civic activities that people engage in and even regard as political. This is an important time for communication scholars to develop comparative frameworks that bring conceptions of social change together with how people located in various cultural, demographic, and audience groups define their relations to government and, more broadly, to civil society. At stake is our understanding of the role of communication in shaping these political relations, and in shaping the attitudes of citizens about politics, government, and society itself.     

A Model Linking Community Activity and Communication With Political Attitudes and Involvement in Neighborhoods

Although people tend to mobilize around local problems and restrict their political involvement at other times, the political communication literature generally has focused on national politics and elections. This is particularly surprising in investigations of political involvement since it is at the community level that people should feel more efficacious. Also, both mass and interpersonal communication should be more significant locally given their importance in strengthening community ties. The study reported here focuses on these relationships in a community context, with a survey of six inner-city neighborhoods and six suburbs classified on status using location and census data. Results point to a much more positive role for the media in community politics. Those most likely to rely on neighborhood newspapers as sources are less disillusioned with government, suggesting that the most "grassroots" of print media are more efficacious in their impact than the other channels. Also, readership of a daily newspaper is particularly strong as a predictor of both community political involvement and faith in community civic involvement. Results of the macro analysis suggest that urban sprawl may have consequences for how media affect political involvement. In the data here, distance from the center city and stratification are closely tied--the further out the community, the higher its status. Results by neighborhood structure indicate media specialization as well as a greater dependence on media versus interpersonal influence in the political arena. Thus, we see that political involvement and attitudes are more strongly related to reading the daily newspaper in the more distant suburbs than in the center city.     

Political Inequalities Start at Home: Parents,Children, and the Socialization of Civic Infrastructure Online

We use a two-wave panel survey of parent-child dyads in the United States to connect online democratic divides with the unequal socialization of political interest in the home. We test a model connecting parent socioeconomic status to the amount of political communication in the home and the subsequent development of youth political interest over the course of an election cycle. We develop the theoretical concept of online civic infrastructure to foreground how interest-driven social media use in adolescence may shape future opportunities for civic and political engagement by building network connections and opening up flows of communication that carry news, political information, and opportunities for mobilization.     

Values,Communication Behavior,and Political Participation

This article examines how communication patterns mediate the influences of values on political participation. We find that the positive effects of postmaterial values on participation are mediated through reading public affairs content in newspapers. In contrast, materialist values negatively affect participation through watching television entertainment. Interpersonal discussion in which disagreement occurs mediates both the positive effect of reading public affairs and the negative effect of materialism on political participation. We also provide what may be a better explanation of the influence of communication patterns on political participation by going beyond acquisition of factual political knowledge. We show that individuals' efforts to think about news and search for additional information and perspectives modify what people "get from" media. Reflecting about news and integrating information from various sources promote better understanding of the political world and may provide a stronger cognitive base for political participation than factual political knowledge.     

Steven Chaffee and the Future of Political Communication Research

This article discusses four basic characteristics of Steven Chaffee's research: going beyond the "common research wisdom," careful explication of concepts, avoiding unsubstantiated charges against the media, and investigation of the social aspects of communication. The evolution of political socialization research is used as an example of how these characteristics have strengthened Chaffee's contribution to that area and to the larger field of political communication. It is argued that the future of this field would benefit from emulation of these characteristics. Continuing problems of political communication research are noted, and various emerging problems are discussed.     

Civic Engagement,Pedagogy, and Information Technology on Web Sites for Youth

Scholars of political socialization are paying increasing attention to how the Internet might help cure the civic disengagement of youth. This content analysis of a sample of 73 U.S.-based civic Web sites for youth introduces a framework for evaluating Web sites' strategies for fostering active communication for citizenship. We offer the first systematic assessment of the extent to which a broad range of Web sites aim to develop young people's abilities to use information and communication technology (ICT) as a vehicle for civic participation and to engage with ICT as a policy domain that encompasses issues (such as freedom of speech and intellectual property rights) that shape the conditions for popular sovereignty online. The study finds low levels of interactive features (such as message boards) that allow young people to share editorial control by offering their own content. In addition, few sites employ active pedagogical techniques (such as simulations) that research suggests are most effective at developing civic knowledge, skills, and participation. We also find little attention to ICT policy issues, which could engage budding citizens in debates over the formative conditions for political communication in the information age. We conclude with suggestions for civic Web site designers and hypotheses for user studies to test.     

Attention to Counter-Attitudinal Messages in a State Election Campaign

Research following the "selective exposure" model has focused on avoidance of political messages with which a person might disagree. But positive attention to such "counter-attitudinal" messages is worthy of study, in part because normative theories of democracy value exposure to information that might disturb citizens' political predispositions. Surveys of youth (N = 417) and parents (N = 430) examine attention to newspaper, television, and Web messages about candidates. While there is somewhat more attention to messages about and for a person's favored political candidate or party, forms of political involvement (knowledge, curiosity, and discussion) that predict this "attitude-consistent" attention also predict counter-attitudinal attention at least as strongly. Parents' education and students' exposure to civics lessons also predict both kinds of attention. These results suggest that attention to counterattitudinal political messages is worthy of further study as an important goal of political socialization and a criterion of citizen performance in democracy.     

Politics as Cultural Practice

This essay reflects on the notion of politics and political communication as a form of cultural practice. This requires locating political practice in both space and time and paying close attention to empirical details--"drawing what you see." These precepts are illustrated in a discussion of different practices of voting in American history. The author argues that the study of political communication should include finding and observing people doing, and not just expressing or thinking about, politics.     

The Homologous Evolution of Political Communication and Civic Engagement: Good News,Bad News,and No News

We examine the speed and extent to which members of the U.S. House of Representatives adopt emerging Web-based communication technologies. Given the growing centrality of communication for governance and the Web's growing role in effective public outreach, a rational actor approach would suggest that members of Congress should aggressively exploit online communication technology. And this should especially be true for freshman members. We test these expectations using two waves of data coded from the official Web sites of the U.S. House of Representatives, for the years 2006 and 2007. We observe that incumbents show considerable path dependence in their Web site technology adoptions, while the sites of the freshmen who won election in 2006 are largely independent of the Web designs of their corresponding predecessors. This independence does not mean, however, that freshmen are fully exploiting communication technology. Instead, the Web design practices of freshmen appear to be governed by the distribution of existing practices among incumbents, a process we label “distributional path dependence.” This surprising null finding suggests that members have Web-based communication practices that are governed by informal norms socially constructed among congressional offices and that the institution is slow to adapt to emerging communication technologies.     

History and Political Communication: An Introduction

This essay introduces a series of articles that explore the relation of history to political communication research. It is shown that as a field of study political communication has tended to ignore historical methods and sensibilities. This tendency is traced to the field's roots in social psychology, political science, and early mass communication research. However, although political communication tends to ignore historical research, it often depends upon implicit, unquestioned historical narratives. Thus, a more robust historical imagination is encouraged not only because it may produce more and better historical research, but also because it may assist in the development of tools for reflecting on the way political communication already deploys historical narratives.     

Jump-Starting Democracy: Adult Civic Education and Democratic Participation in Three Countries

In countries emerging from authoritarianism into democracy, citizens have little preparation for participating in the new political dispensations they face. Adult civic education promises a way to jump-start the lifelong socialization experience that their counterparts in the long-established democracies enjoy. But do these brief crash-courses in democracy really have any impact? Recent surveys of civic education efforts sponsored by the United States Agency for International Development in the Dominican Republic, Poland and South Africa find that those taking part in the programmes do participate significantly more in local level politics and, to a somewhat lesser extent, in politics more generally as well. There is also evidence that non-elites can benefit more from such programmes and begin to close the participation gap that separates them from traditional elites. The overall gains in participation are, however, modest. But given that political participation in absolute terms has been quite low in both old and new democracies, it can be argued that even modest gains are important and make investment in civic education worthwhile.     

大湄公河次区域国家2013年政局述评

2013年对大湄公河次区域国家来说可谓是不平静的一年，5个次区域国家发生了许多事情：越南《反贪污腐败法》开始实施；6月，缅甸昂山素季在世界经济论坛会议上明确宣布竞选缅甸总统，而2008年宪法关于总统候选人或其配偶子女不得是外国人的规定成为她竞选总统的障碍，于是她在这一年走上了谋求修宪之旅；在泰国，2013年上半年政局稳定，下半年发生了反政府示威活动，2014年的泰国政局注定不会平静；柬埔寨首相洪森在7月28日结束的大选中再次当选。     

A Spiral of Cynicism for Some: The Contingent Effects of Campaign News Frames on Participation and Confidence in Government

This article explores the impact of strategy-based campaign coverage on turnout and confidence in government. Recent theoretical advances suggest that variables such as sophistication and involvement frequently moderate media exposure effects. We hypothesize that the impact of strategy frames will be moderated by political involvement and sophistication. In an experiment, we precisely isolate and manipulate particular story elements that have been said to foster public cynicism: the strategic interpretation of candidate motives, the presence of polling results, and the use of war or game metaphors to describe the campaign. Relative to the issue-oriented coverage, strategy frames boost the number of strategy-based comments people offer when describing the campaign and depress issue-based commentary. As expected, framing effects on turnout, trust in government, civic duty, and the perceived meaningfulness of elections are moderated by involvement and sophistication. Nonpartisans and those with less than a college degree are significantly demobilized and alienated by strategy-based coverage, while partisans and the highly educated are mostly unaffected.     

Palestinian youth and non-formal service-learning: a model for personal development,long-term engagement,and peace building

Palestinian youth face developmental, cultural, and political barriers that impede them from fully engaging in civic life. Non-traditional, youth-centred pedagogies of engagement, like community-based service-learning, have shown their potential to motivate marginalised populations and provide space and roles for them to form individual identities while developing civic skills. Using data collected through focus-group interviews, this article considers the impact on West Bank youth who participated in an NGO's community-based service-learning leadership programme. Six themed findings are discussed, and the author suggests that non-school-based service-learning may have a central role to play in the civic-identity development of Palestine's most populous group of citizens.     

Political-economic determinants of electoral participation in India

ABSTRACT

Elections bestow popular legitimacy to the democracies and, accordingly, electoral participation is an important indicator of the quality of democracy and civic engagement. Understanding what factors drive citizens’ decision to vote is central to the theory and practice of democracy and has implications for voter mobilization efforts of political parties and government agencies. We study the individual level determinants of electoral turnout in the 2004 Lok Sabha elections exploiting a nationally representative India Human Development Survey-2005 (IHDS-2005). We find convincing yet mixed evidence in support of political-institutional factors, and some variables of the psychological, mobilization, socialization, and resource models in explaining voter turnout. Public confidence in state government, newspapers, and judiciary, television watching, participation in civic body meetings, local conflict, caste conflict in neighborhood, local political connections, and caste association membership significantly increase the predicted probability of turnout. Factors like time family lived in the place, age, holding of below-poverty-line (BPL) cards, and receipt of public benefits increase voter turnout; whereas, business association membership, being female, metro-city resident, business being the main income source, urban residence, and the age quadratic reduce voter turnout. Separate analyses of the rural and urban, male and female contexts largely obtain the same line of results.     

Public Opinion Infrastructures: Meanings,Measures, Media

A model of public opinion is presented that incorporates and highlights historical knowledge. This model suggests that public opinion is best viewed as an infrastructure consisting of measurement tools, media, and conceptions of public opinion. Using this model, it is possible to gauge opinion, reading "backward" from analysis of cultural artifacts (e.g., film or art) and thereby detecting conceptions of public opinion at work in a given period. The usefulness of this model is demonstrated in a brief analysis of the American film, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, which can be treated as a register of a particular infrastructure of public opinion operative in the 1930s.     

The Failure of the Indian Federation's Process of Civic Nation Formation

The States Reorganization Act of 1956, which reformed India's state boundaries primarily along linguistic lines, derailed civic nation creation in postindependence India. Thereafter, regional politicians were given a linguistic community with occasional ethnic congruence as their vote bank. This post-1956 political reality incentivized regional identity formation for regional politicians consolidating political power and eroded the influence of the independence era English-educated secular elite. In addition, the 1956 act made it a strategic rational choice for regional political elites not given their own states, to fight for the formation of new states. The hypothesis demonstrated in this article follows: The States Reorganization Act of 1956 made it the rational choice for regional political and intellectual elites to consolidate power based upon linguistic regional identities, making the central independence era goal of an overarching civic nationalism for the Indian federation impossible.     

Civic Mobilization in Divided Societies and the Perils of Political Engagement: Bosnia and Herzegovina's Protest and Plenum Movement

This article explores how civic mobilizations that emerge in deeply divided societies navigate their ethnopolitical frameworks and assesses their capacity to effect civic political change within such contexts. The article examines these questions through the case of a citizens’ protest and direct democracy movement that emerged in the postwar state of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2014. It concludes that the movement adapted to its ethnicized political environment by adopting an approach of limited political engagement and that, rather than trying to effect short-term political change, it chose to pursue a long-term shift in civic consciousness.     

Political Communication on Arab World Television: Evolving Patterns

This article identifies political communication patterns taking shape on Arab world television. Three distinct patterns of political communication are described. In the traditional government-controlled television pattern, official government policies seem to inspire the form and substance of TV's framing of events and issues. In the reformist government-controlled television pattern, while official stands set the parameters of news coverage, professional newswork practices unfamiliar in traditional government-controlled television are well noted. In the liberal commercial pattern, American-style journalism seems to define television's handling of events and issues. To shed light on these patterns, the writer conducts a supplementary analysis of how three television broadcasters representing the three political communication patterns - Syrian Satellite Channel (SSC), Abu Dhabi Satellite Channel (ADSC), and Al-Jazeera Satellite Channel (JSC) - frame national and regional politics in their news programs.     

The Effects of Political Talk Radio On Political Attitude Formation: Exposure Versus Knowledge

The effects of political news on the mass audience are usually difficult to establish empirically. Recent models of mass communication effects have held that political knowledge is a better indicator of media reception than traditional measures of exposure. This claim is tested in two studies of attitudes toward Democratic and Republican leaders during the 1996 U.S. presidential primary campaigns. The impact of messages from three types of political talk radio (PTR) is examined: Rush Limbaugh, other conservative hosts, and liberal/moderate hosts. Political knowledge and exposure to talk radio are found to be equally good predictors of attitudes toward political leaders when studied separately. However, when tested against one another, exposure is the more effective measure. Agreement between Rush Limbaugh's messages and his audience's attitudes toward political figures is consistent and strong. Biased processing of PTR content by audience members with partisan predispositions contrary to those of the host is also examined.