What Does It Mean to Be a Good Citizen? Citizenship Vocabularies as Resources for Action

2012 ◽  
Vol 644 (1) ◽  
pp. 70-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kjerstin Thorson
Keyword(s):  
Young Adults ◽  
Political Participation ◽  
Political Socialization ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Conceptual Mapping ◽  
Good Citizen ◽  
Political Consumption

This article introduces the concept of citizenship vocabularies and argues that these vocabularies serve as resources for civic and political action. Drawing on interviews with young adults, the author presents a conceptual mapping of citizenship vocabularies. Examples show how citizenship vocabularies play a role in constraining or enabling emerging repertoires of participation such as political consumption. The article concludes by briefly outlining an agenda for exploring the connections among political socialization, citizenship vocabularies, and political participation.

What is Political Participation?

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan W. van Deth
Keyword(s):  
Political Participation ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Contextual Information ◽  
The Core ◽  
Alternative Approach ◽  
Connective Action ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Political Consumption ◽  
Use Of Internet ◽  
Core Features

Vibrant democracies are characterized by a continuous expansion of the available forms of participation. This expansion has confronted many researchers with the dilemma of using either a dated conceptualization of participation excluding many new modes of political action or stretching their concept to cover almost everything. Demarcation problems are especially evident for many newer, “creative,” “personalized,” and “individualized” modes of participation such as political consumption, street parties, or guerrilla gardening, which basically concern nonpolitical activities used for political purposes. Moreover, the use of Internet-based technologies for these activities (“connective action”) makes it almost impossible to recognize political participation at first sight. Because social, societal, and political developments in democratic societies have made the search for a single encompassing definition of political participation obsolete, an alternative approach is to integrate the core features of political participation in a conceptual map. Five modes cover the whole range of political participation systematically and efficiently, based on the locus (polity), targeting (government area or community problems), and circumstance (context or motivations) of these activities. While the rise of expressive modes of participation especially requires the inclusion of contextual information or the aims and goals of participants, attention is paid to the (dis)advantages of including these aspects as defining criteria for political participation. In this way, the map offers a comprehensive answer to the question “what is political participation” without excluding future participatory innovations that are the hallmark of a vibrant democracy.

Citizen now: organizing for action

Citizen Now ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth C. Matto
Keyword(s):  
Young Adults ◽  
Political Participation ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Survey Research ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
News Coverage ◽  
The Public ◽  
Alternative Approach ◽  
San Bernardino

The research presented in this chapter offers an alternative approach to studying and appreciating youth political participation - one that considers the issues or problems motivating political action and the groups through which this political action takes place. Survey research shows that the economy is an issue of top concern not only for the public at large but also for young adults. Three groups focused upon the effects of the economy on young adults emerged in analysis of news coverage of Millennials: Young Invincibles, The Can Kicks Back, San Bernardino Generation Now. Using a qualitative methodological approach, these groups serve as case studies of Millennials responding to a public issue. This chapter offers a description of each group’s origin, mission, and resulting structure.

Political Periods and Political Participation

1979 ◽  
Vol 73 (3) ◽  
pp. 737-750 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Allen Beck ◽  
M. Kent Jennings
Keyword(s):  
Young Adults ◽  
Political Participation ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
American Politics ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Panel Study ◽  
Conventional Wisdom ◽  
The Political ◽  
Data Sets ◽  
Left Wing

Analysis of complementary data sets, a 1965–1973 panel study of young adults and their parents and the 1956–1976 Michigan presidential election series, shows that the late 1960s and early 1970s were a deviant period where participation in American politics was concerned. During this time, the young were more active politically than their elders, substantially increasing their participation from previous years, and Americans on the ideological left participated more than those at other positions along the ideological continuum. While this surge of left-wing activism was not restricted to the young, it probably accounts for the relative participation advantage enjoyed by the young. These findings challenge the “conventional wisdom” about patterns of participation in America. They are best explained by recognizing that the opportunities for political action among the American citizenry are not fixed, but instead vary with changes in the political stimuli across different periods.

scholarly journals Collective Protest and Expressive Action Among University Students in Hong Kong: Associations Between Offline and Online Forms of Political Participation

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank Reichert
Keyword(s):  
Young Adults ◽  
Hong Kong ◽  
Political Participation ◽  
Political Action ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Online Participation ◽  
Political Activities ◽  
Positive Effects ◽  
Past Experiences

Youth have often been described as politically apathetic or disengaged, particularly with respect to more conventional forms of participation. However, they tend to prefer non-institutionalized modes of political action and they may express themselves on the Internet. Young people have also been recognized as having a “latent preparedness” to get politically active when needed. This paper reports forms of offline and online participation adopted by young adults in Hong Kong who were surveyed shortly before the anti-extradition bill social movement of 2019 and 1 year later. The results tentatively suggest that young adults may not be very active in politics when they do not perceive the need to bring about change. However, they are involved in expressive activities and on the Internet more broadly, and ready to turn their latent participation into concrete political participation when they are dissatisfied with government actions and believe it is their responsibility to act against laws perceived to be unjust. Cross-sectional and cross-lagged panel analyses show that youth’s participation in offline political activities is associated with their online participation. Positive effects of past experiences in each mode on participation in offline and online political activities show the mobilizing potential of social media and provide support for the reinforcement hypothesis, though previous participation in offline activities appears as a better predictor of political participation when compared with prior participation on the Internet.

Between the Social and the Political

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 90-98
Author(s):  
Pia Rowe ◽  
David Marsh
Keyword(s):  
Political Participation ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Political Action ◽  
The Political ◽  
Conventional Theory ◽  
Important Relationship ◽  
The Social ◽  
Action Language

While Wood and Flinders’ work to broaden the scope of what counts as “politics” in political science is a needed adjustment to conventional theory, it skirts an important relationship between society, the protopolitical sphere, and arena politics. We contend, in particular, that the language of everyday people articulates tensions in society, that such tensions are particularly observable online, and that this language can constitute the beginning of political action. Language can be protopolitical and should, therefore, be included in the authors’ revised theory of what counts as political participation.

The Politics of the Mundane

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
ROBERTO F. CARLOS
Keyword(s):  
Young Adults ◽  
Longitudinal Study ◽  
Political Participation ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
Children Of Immigrants ◽  
Political Activity ◽  
Immigrant Communities ◽  
Representative Survey ◽  
Political Inequality ◽  
Political Events

Extensive research on political participation suggests that parental resources strongly predict participation. Other research indicates that salient political events can push individuals to participate. I offer a novel explanation of how mundane household experiences translate to political engagement, even in settings where low participation levels are typically found, such as immigrant communities. I hypothesize that experiences requiring children of Latinx immigrants to take on “adult” responsibilities provide an environment where children learn the skills needed to overcome the costs associated with participation. I test this hypothesis using three datasets: a survey of Latinx students, a representative survey of young adults, and a 10-year longitudinal study. The analyses demonstrate that Latinx children of immigrants taking on adult responsibilities exhibit higher levels of political activity compared with those who do not. These findings provide new insights into how the cycle of generational political inequality is overcome in unexpected ways and places.

scholarly journals Resolving the puzzle of conspiracy worldview and political activism: Belief in secret plots decreases normative but increases non-normative political engagement.

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roland Imhoff ◽  
Lea Dieterle ◽  
Pia Lamberty
Keyword(s):  
Political Participation ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
Political Activism ◽  
Political Extremism ◽  
Logical Conclusion ◽  
The World ◽  
Legal Forms ◽  
Intentions To Participate ◽  
Willingness To Engage

It is a hitherto open and debated question whether the belief in conspiracies increases or attenuates the willingness to engage in political action. In the present paper, we tested the notion, whether a) the relation between belief in conspiracies and general political engagement is curvilinear (inverted U-shaped) and b) there may be opposing relations to normative vs. non-normative forms of political engagement. Two pre-registered experiments (N = 194; N = 402) support both propositions and show that the hypothetical adoption of a worldview that sees the world as governed by secret plots attenuates reported intentions to participate in normative, legal forms of political participation but increases reported intentions to employ non-normative, illegal means of political articulation. These results provide first evidence for the notion that political extremism and violence might seem an almost logical conclusion when seeing the world as governed by conspiracies.

What does it mean to be an “engaged citizen”?

Citizen Now ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth C. Matto
Keyword(s):  
Political Participation ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Youth Participation ◽  
Theoretical Frameworks

This chapter begins the critical synthesis of the study of youth participation by considering the competing conceptual definitions that have been utilized to describe engagement and have served as the basis of contrasting theoretical frameworks of youth participation. This chapter charts how the concept of engagement has evolved from a "bulls-eye" approach focused on direct forms of political action, to one that differentiates these modes into quadrants or a "box-like" approach, to a broader "umbrella-like" depiction in which a number of activities both political and non-political fall under the category of engagement. This background leads to a discussion of the study of youth political participation and conclusions that have been drawn about its quality that are then plotted along a continuum ranging from "disengaged", to "engaged differently", to "better engaged".

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