The Digital Citizen

2008 ◽  
pp. 108-115
Author(s):  
Zizi Papacharissi
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Role Model ◽  
Political Activity ◽  
The Public ◽  
Media Technologies ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Public Sphere

The objective of this article is to sketch out the profile of the digital citizen. The premise for this article rests upon utopian views that embrace new media technologies as democratizers of postindustrial society (e.g., Bell, 1981; Johnson & Kaye, 1998; Kling, 1996; Negroponte, 1998; Rheingold, 1993) and cautionary criticism that questions the substantial impact new media could have on reviving a dormant public sphere (e.g., Bimber & Davis, 2003; Davis, 1999; Hill & Hughes, 1998; Jankowski & van Selm, 2000; Jones, 1997; Margolis & Resnick, 2000; Scheufele & Nisbet, 2002). Concurrently, declining participation in traditional forms of political involvement and growing public cynicism (e.g., Cappella & Jamieson, 1996, 1997; Fallows, 1996; Patterson, 1993, 1996) position the Internet and related technologies as vehicles through which political activity can be reinvented. Still, conflicting narratives on civic involvement, as articulated by the government, politicians, the media, and the public, create confusion about the place and role of the citizen in a digital age. The digital citizen profile, therefore, is defined by historical and cultural context, divided between expectation and skepticism regarding new media, and presents hope of resurrecting the public sphere and awakening a latent, postmodern political consciousness. This article outlines these conditions, reviews perceptions of the digital citizen, and proposes a digital citizen role model for the future.

The Digital Citizen

2011 ◽  
pp. 315-320 ◽  
Author(s):  
Z. Papacharissi
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Role Model ◽  
Political Activity ◽  
The Public ◽  
Media Technologies ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Public Sphere

The objective of this article is to sketch out the profile of the digital citizen. The premise for this article rests upon utopian views that embrace new media technologies as democratizers of postindustrial society (e.g., Bell, 1981; Johnson & Kaye, 1998; Kling, 1996; Negroponte, 1998; Rheingold, 1993) and cautionary criticism that questions the substantial impact new media could have on reviving a dormant public sphere (e.g., Bimber & Davis, 2003; Davis, 1999; Hill & Hughes, 1998; Jankowski & van Selm, 2000; Jones, 1997; Margolis & Resnick, 2000; Scheufele & Nisbet, 2002). Concurrently, declining participation in traditional forms of political involvement and growing public cynicism (e.g., Cappella & Jamieson, 1996, 1997; Fallows, 1996; Patterson, 1993, 1996) position the Internet and related technologies as vehicles through which political activity can be reinvented. Still, conflicting narratives on civic involvement, as articulated by the government, politicians, the media, and the public, create confusion about the place and role of the citizen in a digital age. The digital citizen profile, therefore, is defined by historical and cultural context, divided between expectation and skepticism regarding new media, and presents hope of resurrecting the public sphere and awakening a latent, postmodern political consciousness. This article outlines these conditions, reviews perceptions of the digital citizen, and proposes a digital citizen role model for the future.

Mass Media, Elections, and Good Governance

2017 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Godwin Ehiarekhian Oboh
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Good Governance ◽  
The Public ◽  
General Elections ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Mass Participation ◽  
Tripartite Relationship

This paper explores the tripartite relationship between the media, elections and good governance in the contemporary Nigerian politics. It examines the growing impact of the media (especially with the emergence of the new media) on the various ways in which Nigerian political parties, politicians as well as governments present themselves to the electorate both for the purposes of electioneering campaigns and promotion of government policies as agenda for development. The paper foregrounds the critical roles that the media have to play in order to open up the public sphere and facilitate mass participation in governance with the implication of enhancing democratic values and cultures in Nigerian democracy. In this regard, particular focus is paid to reporting the 2007 general elections and the influence of the Nigerian newspaper proprietors and the government on the editorial stance of the media on the elections. It was noted that the government owned newspapers tended to reflect the position of the authoritarian model, while their private owned counterparts operated along the lines of the libertarian perspective while reporting on the elections.

Issues of Digital Disempowerment and New Media Networking (NMN) in Relation to E-Government

2011 ◽  
pp. 92-115 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth L. Hacker ◽  
Eric L. Morgan
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Political Participation ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Political Dialogue ◽  
The Public ◽  
Media Technologies ◽  
Digital Democracy ◽  
Emerging Media ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Relationship

Emerging media technologies are increasingly reconfiguring the public sphere by creating new spaces for political dialogue. E-democracy (digital democracy) and e-government can be usefully served by these emerging technologies; however, their existence does not automatically equate to increased political participation. There is still a need to develop specific and theoretically-oriented approaches to a newly reconfigured public sphere. Employing a structurational perspective, this essay addresses the relationship between political participation, emerging media, new media networking, and e-democracy. While new media networking increases the potential for political participation, depending on various factors such as access, usage and skills, the potential exists for increasing disempowerment as well. The chapter concludes with recommendations for the use of new media networking in ways that enhance e-democracy.

Hall of Mirrors: Media, Democratization, and the Public Sphere in Maranhão, Brazil

2018 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 208-223 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julián Durazo Herrmann
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Regime Change ◽  
Freedom Of Expression ◽  
Sources Of Information ◽  
The Public ◽  
Critical Elements ◽  
Strong Interference ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Public Sphere

Freedom of expression and access to diverse sources of information are seen as critical elements of democracy, although their concretization on the ground is subject to strong interference. Recent regime change in Maranhão, one of Brazil’s poorest states, has led to the emergence of new media and some expansion of the public sphere. The traditional oligarchy continues to dominate the media, however, and the opposition media replicate its exclusion of nonelite actors. The Maranhão experience confirms that normative approaches to the media either as automatic contributors to democracy or as instruments of elite manipulation have little value for understanding media dynamics. Liberdade de expressão, bem como o acesso a diversas fontes de informação, são considerados elementos críticos da democracia, ainda que a concretização desses fatores esteja sujeita a forte interferência. A recente troca de regime no Maranhão, um dos estados mais pobres do Brasil, tem levado ao surgimento de uma nova mídia e a uma certa expansão da esfera pública. Contudo, a oligarquia continua dominando a mídia tradicional e a mídia alternativa imita a prática de exclusão de atores não pertencentes à elite. A experiência do Maranhão confirma que tratamentos normativos que veem a mídia como contribuinte automática do processo democrático, ou como instrumento de manipulação da elite, teem pouco valor para se entender a dinâmica da mídia.

The Contentious Public Sphere

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ya-Wen Lei
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
The State ◽  
The Internet ◽  
The Public ◽  
Political Critique ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Government ◽  
Uncertain Future ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Legal Subjects

Since the mid-2000s, public opinion and debate in China have become increasingly common and consequential, despite the ongoing censorship of speech and regulation of civil society. How did this happen? This book shows how the Chinese state drew on law, the media, and the Internet to further an authoritarian project of modernization, but in so doing, inadvertently created a nationwide public sphere in China—one the state must now endeavor to control. The book examines the influence this unruly sphere has had on Chinese politics and the ways that the state has responded. It shows that the development of the public sphere in China has provided an unprecedented forum for citizens to influence the public agenda, demand accountability from the government, and organize around the concepts of law and rights. It demonstrates how citizens came to understand themselves as legal subjects, how legal and media professionals began to collaborate in unexpected ways, and how existing conditions of political and economic fragmentation created unintended opportunities for political critique, particularly with the rise of the Internet. The emergence of this public sphere—and its uncertain future—is a pressing issue with important implications for the political prospects of the Chinese people. The book offers new possibilities for thinking about the transformation of state–society relations.

scholarly journals Private/Public Space of New Media

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alla Drozdova ◽  
◽  
Natalia Stepanova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Private Life ◽  
Third Party ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Multiple Network ◽  
The Individual

Today, we have a situation that the new media environment has reshaped our conception of reality while changing social spaces, modes of existence, and the functional mechanisms of the private sphere. In the space of new media, the boundary between privacy and publicity is redefined with the emergence of multiple network communities having become a subject of observation and evaluation, collective discussions, and even third party interventions. In the current situation, the privacy/publicity boundary can be defined both through the societal/the individual, and through such concepts as visible/invisible. The new media era sees the personification of online publicness, therefore the very sphere of private life gets consumed by the public sphere open both for being discussed and for being controlled by the government, market, and advertisement. The public sphere has fallen under the power of certain private/vested interests, which only transiently become common, coinciding with the interests of other groups, but not the public sphere. The ambivalent nature of new media, while based on personalisation and filtration, obviously determines the ambiguous and controversial relationship of the public and the private. Thus, the private not only reflects, but also represents the public, whereas the public implements privacy up to its inherent special intimate atmosphere and intonation. This fast-changing virtual reality requires the development of conceptual tools for analysing new content and forms of social and personal life, one of which is the relationship between publicity and privacy.

Issues of Digital Disempowerment and New Media Networking (NMN) in Relation to E-Government

2012 ◽  
pp. 1631-1654
Author(s):  
Kenneth L. Hacker ◽  
Eric L. Morgan
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Political Participation ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Political Dialogue ◽  
The Public ◽  
Media Technologies ◽  
Digital Democracy ◽  
Emerging Media ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Relationship

Emerging media technologies are increasingly reconfiguring the public sphere by creating new spaces for political dialogue. E-democracy (digital democracy) and e-government can be usefully served by these emerging technologies; however, their existence does not automatically equate to increased political participation. There is still a need to develop specific and theoretically-oriented approaches to a newly reconfigured public sphere. Employing a structurational perspective, this essay addresses the relationship between political participation, emerging media, new media networking, and e-democracy. While new media networking increases the potential for political participation, depending on various factors such as access, usage and skills, the potential exists for increasing disempowerment as well. The chapter concludes with recommendations for the use of new media networking in ways that enhance e-democracy.

The Challenges of Hosting Televised Deliberations in Ethiopian Media

2021 ◽  
pp. 194016122110202
Author(s):  
Gebru K. Kiflu ◽  
Adem C. Ali ◽  
Hagos Nigussie
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Addis Ababa ◽  
Capital City ◽  
Basic Knowledge ◽  
Commercial Television ◽  
The Public ◽  
Political Landscape ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Public Sphere

This paper explores the factors constraining public service and commercial television channels in constituting the public sphere in Ethiopia. It focuses on three television stations and their respective programs, such as the Ethiopian Broadcasting Corporation's Ethiopian television (ETV)'s Medrek, Fana Broadcasting Corporation's Zuria Meles, and LTV's Sefiw Mehidar. The data was collected starting from 2019 to 2020 in Addis Ababa, the capital city of Ethiopia, where the three TV stations are located. These programs were designed to entertain different views, including ideologies, policies, and strategies to be deliberated and critiqued. They have created opportunities for debate and discussion as the Ethiopian media did not have new program formats for public deliberation-related shows previously. However, results showed that these platforms remained ineffective to entertain a diversity of views. One of the major challenges for this is that the production process encounters multiple obstructions from the media, the guests, and the government authorities. Guests fear to deliberate their views openly and prefer to remain abstinent. Also, the hosts lacked the courage, professionalism, and basic knowledge about the topics for discussion. Government authorities do not want the programs to be critical and deliberative. Equally, failures to achieve an inclusive public sphere are the outcomes of the unstable political landscape in the country. Therefore, due to different factors, including a highly controlled media landscape in Ethiopia, creating platforms for public debate seems unattainable.

Challenging representations of Muslims and cultural métissage in the ethnic comedies L’Italien (2010) and Mohamed Dubois (2013)

2021 ◽  
pp. 095715582110091
Author(s):  
Ramona Mielusel
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Social Critique ◽  
The Public ◽  
French Culture ◽  
French People ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Legislative Measures

In this article, I am looking at two popular ‘ethnic’ comedies, L’Italien (2010) and Mohamed Dubois (2013), that promote dialogue and conviviality between Franco-Maghrebi and Franco-French people in France while questioning the societal feasibility of legislative measures of inclusiveness, visibility and equality of chances promoted by the government in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Considering some challenges in the representations, the comedies offer, at times, a social critique of certain stereotypical views on Islam and the destiny of Muslims on French soil, but they conclude in an optimistic tone supporting the idea that there is cultural métissage in France and that Muslims and Christians do mix in today’s diverse France. The popularity of these comedies attests to the fact that there is a need to bring up the issues of Islam in France and of the cohabitation between Muslims and Christian French citizens in the public sphere. I suggest however that while the Franco-Maghrebi’s ‘essentialist identity’ is challenged in the films, there are still neo-colonialist tensions in the artistic productions that entail ambivalence towards the Muslim characters. In a Franco-French dominated film-consuming culture, the Franco-Maghrebi characters are still subject to mimicry, which consistently maintains their subordinate position in the French culture.

Corporate Politics in the Public Sphere: Corporate Citizenspeak in a Mass Media Policy Contest

2017 ◽  
Vol 59 (4) ◽  
pp. 579-611 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Nyberg ◽  
John Murray
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Mining Industry ◽  
Political Activity ◽  
Corporate Political Activity ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Public Sphere

This article connects the previously isolated literatures on corporate citizenship and corporate political activity to explain how firms construct political influence in the public sphere. The public engagement of firms as political actors is explored empirically through a discursive analysis of a public debate between the mining industry and the Australian government over a proposed tax. The findings show how the mining industry acted as a corporate citizen concerned about the common good. This, in turn, legitimized corporate political activity, which undermined deliberation about the common good. The findings explain how the public sphere is refeudalized through corporate manipulation of deliberative processes via what we term corporate citizenspeak—simultaneously speaking as corporate citizens and for individual citizens. Corporate citizenspeak illustrates the duplicitous engagement of firms as political actors, claiming political legitimacy while subverting deliberative norms. This contributes to the theoretical development of corporations as political actors by explaining how corporate interests are aggregated to represent the common good and how corporate political activity is employed to dominate the public sphere. This has important implications for understanding how corporations undermine democratic principles.

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