Wellsangels

I’ve been trying to think a little more theoretically and in the direction of a paper for this class. This is very much a sketch, comments are much appreciated.

Thinking back to an earlier week, Seth opened a great discussion of the sources of political socialization, particularly emphasizing the role of group memberships. I added to that the role of media in political socialization. Building on that idea—and some research I’m doing on online civic learning—I’m thinking about how the media that young people come into contact with shape their social worlds and influences their views and actions as citizens. This seems like a useful topic for research because of the shrinking importance of group membership, and the saturation-levels of media presence, in young people’s lives. The general question I’m thinking about:

What kinds of media use (esp. during youth/young adulthood) are related to what kinds of citizenship?

Of course, it won’t be possible to draw a clear causal arrow between media use and citizenship styles, so I’m opting for the ‘related to’ relationship—but I will admit I have some degree of a causal relationship in mind.

To understand how different kinds of media use have different effects, we need to divide media use up into usefully different types. I see two important dimensions along which media use can be divided: (1) what kinds of media do people use? And (2) why do people use the media they do?

With respect to what kinds of media people use, I see four types:

• Mass media (broadcasting): Newspapers, TV, radio, uses of internet resources that imitate those things

• User-generated media (user-to-many): blogs, online forums, individuals’ websites, mass emailing, flickr, del.icio.us, twitter, etc.

• Interpersonal media (user-to-user): telephone, texting, one-to-one email

• Networking media: social networking

The user-generated media category suggests the need to distinguish different uses (of even the same types) of media, especially content creation vs. mere media consumption. So it might be useful to conceptualize the production or consumption of each type of media separately—or, for a fuller uses and gratifications approach, we might distinguish several categories of reasons people use media to begin with:

• Social/interactive: connect with other people like me/stay in touch with friends

• Entertainment: read something/watch something/listen to something simply for pleasure

• Informational: stay up to date with what’s going on in my community/in the world

• Expressive: get my thoughts out there

• Functional: business (pay bills, order books)

Obviously splitting media use up in these ways is not new. But does it help me come up with interesting questions?

A big question has been whether (or what kinds of) online relationships will build the kind of social capital that leads to (a certain form of) engagement. This would suggest that using networking media may lead to one form of citizenship, while using informational media, or expressive media, may lead to others—or may not have a comparable effect.

I think that Mutz’s deliberative vs. participatory citizenship distinction is helpful in encouraging us to see tensions inherent in most aspects of citizenship. One of the most important questions here might be the one underlying her research: What kinds of media use expose users to a variety of viewpoints? (or, just as easily, What kinds of media are chosen by users who enjoy learning from a variety of viewpoints?) In contrast, what kinds of media expose users to a narrow range of views and opinions (and, What kinds of media do are chosen by users who enjoy having their views reinforced?)

Questions like those might lead to a fuller model/theory with more specific measures of deliberative and participatory citizenship as outcomes (e.g. tolerance for others’ views, participation in politics).

A final, and extremely important, observation is that some uses of the media are mainly focused on creation and participation, and others involve only consumption. Henry Jenkins suggests that the act of participating in the creation of media will be a transformative experience for contemporary young people. This suggests a couple of questions about user-generated media:

How does the experience of participating in the creation of media affect individuals’ citizenship styles, skills, and perceptions of themselves as citizens?

How does the presence of information created by peer users in an individual’s media diet influence their acceptance and interpretation of information, or their general media use?