1 Concepts and Assumptions

What is citizenship? 

It’s important that we look at different definitions of citizenship because, although we all may have a good understanding of the term, we may not be thinking of citizenship in exactly the same way. For example, I might consider a “good citizen” to be someone who makes an effort to ensure that other people are treated well. However, my friend may think of a “good citizen” as someone who is informed and engaged with political issues. Since there is no clear right or wrong answer, it helps if we all get on the same page by examing some different ways that citizenship is defined and then putting them together into one working definition.

People can think of citizenship as one of three different things (Lister, 1997) including status, rights, or obligations.

Status requires membership. Examples include national citizenship status (e.g. I have an American passport because my citizenship status is “American Citizen”). However, this citizenship status could also include other kinds of status like identity or culture. For example, I might consider myself a citizen of my neighborhood because living here gives me that status (e.g. an “insider” of the community).

Also according to Lister, there are three different kinds of rights regarding citizenship: civil, social, and decision making. Civil rights are any rights that involve the freedom and equality of autonomous people. Social rights include rights to publically owned or operated institutions such as education, healthcare, and public parks. Decision making rights ensure that citizens are able to participate in social, economic, and political cultural decision making. Keep in mind that these rights are not mutually exclusive. For example, some rights for decision making can impact civil or social rights. However, all of these rights have something in common in that each of them should increase individual people’s freedoms as much as possible as long as they are not infringing on other people’s freedoms.

Likewise, there are three different types of obligations. Civic obligations include behaviors such as voting, participating in jury duty, and paying taxes. These are all related to government efforts to maintain an active democracy. Social duties include both avoiding harm to fellow citizens and shared resources (e.g. following laws) and actively working toward good for the community or nation we are a citizen of (e.g. recycling, preventing the spread of illness to others, etc.). Work duties can be paid or unpaid and include taking care of other citizens and working to provide products and services necessary for the group to survive and thrive.

There are sometimes reciprocal obligations to citizens from the government. For example, if people are expected to feel an obligation to work, those same people may also feel that their community or government should make efforts to provide job opportunities.

Thus, while there are many aspects of citizenship, let’s consider the following: Citizenship is a status that comes with a responsiblity to balance rights and obligations in ways that benefit the public good. In a democractic society, you can also think of citizenship as efforts to maximize individual rights without harming the rights of others, which also includes a balance.

Let’s look at a few examples of citizenship behaviors.

• • A person with voting eligibility (a status) has the right to cast their ballot to participate in decision making. So voting is an example of citizenship behavior.
  • Staying informed about current events could also be considered a citizenship behavior because our behaviors very often have an impact on other people. For example, consider the Covid-19 pandemic. People who were unaware of the consequences of spreading the virus would be more likely to spread the virus to other people, thus decreasing other people’s health in a potentially deadly way.
  • Being self-reflective about our own cognitive biases can also be a positive citizenship behavior because it can help us make good decisions. For example, someone who is against regulating pollution may update their beliefs after they learn more about how pollution is impacting the planet. Being willing to update their beliefs (and support for policies) based on new evidence is an example of a citizenship behavior.

For more examples of citizenship behaviors, see http://daringtolivefully.com/good-citizen. Here, Marelisa Fabrega lists a variety of actions people can take to engage in 10 different topics that she considers to be important for citizenship. See the summary below for her categories and some examples of citizenship behaviors for each.

1. Patriotism: Brush up on your country’s history, obey the rule of law, learn the national anthem
2. Personality Qualities: Be honest, responsible, and respectful
3. Productivity: Work for an existing company, start your own business, create public art
4. Community Involvement: Shop locally, attend community events, join a community clean up project
5. Stay Informed: Read a variety of news sources, watch biographical movies about people who helped shape the world
6. Vigilance: Call your local representative to make sure they are meeting their obligations, join a protest, hold leaders accountable with your vote
7. Participation in Politics: Volunteer, run for local office, attend a townhall meeting
8. Mentoring: Talk to your own kids about civics, join a mentoring program, tell your grandma about misinformation online
9. Stay Well-Rounded and Open-Minded: Meet new people, engage in discussions with people who have different lived experiences
10. The Home: Keep to a budget, don’t waste electricity, set personal development goals

Note that what makes a behavior a positive citizenship behavior is not always clear, especially when people are not aware of how their actions impact others. Often, we must rely on communication such as peer-reviewed research and professional journalism to help us make important decisions about finding the balance between rights and obligations.

What is the relationship between media and citizenship?

One of the reasons people engage in citizenship behaviors is that the feel a sense of patriatrism and the shared goals surrounding it. However, the way we define being patriotic can differ, which in turn can impact citizenship behavior. For example, if someone defines patriotism as vocally expressing love for your country, their idea of good citizenship behaviors may differ from someone like Frederick Douglass who defined patriotism as making an effort to improve your country. The media can influence citizens’ motivation for patriatic action as well as the way they think about patriatism in their own life. For example, comedian, Hasan Minhaj discussed in how the media can make Asian-Americans feel disenfranchised from voting (Hasan Minhaj Clip). 

These shared goals may also drive a sense of community. Nord (2001) describes journalism not just as a means of sharing information, but journalism can also be a mode of communication for people to create a sense of community.

Additionally, people can be motivated or informed from media, which makes them more likely to participate. Also, mass media may encourage people to have discussions with others about the news they learned about, which even further increases the likelihood that they will participate in democratic processes (Eveland & Scheufele, 2000).

Motivation: Media can make people feel more or less engaged in society. For example, if certain demographics of voters are not being reached out to by political figures, they may be less inclinded to feel like part of the conversation and thus less likely to vote. They may also feel low motivation to engage in citizenship behaviors because they lack trust in our government (Neblo, 2021).

Information: Knowledge via new media technologies should lead to an increased amount of participation in democratic processes. For example, when the internet first became popular, many people expected that the increased access to information would result in an increase in democratic engagement. Yet, this isn’t what we see happening. Some of the reasons for this disconnect include that mass media often lacks practical, mobilizing information (e.g. information on where to vote, how to get a permit for a rally, where to attend town hall meetings, etc…), news coverage is getting longer and more complex, and there can be a decreased interest in discussion, due in part to hyperpartisan media combined with cognitive biases that prevent people from engaging with a wide vareity of media (Lister, 1997). Also, not all media outlets bring the same quality of information to viewers. For example, cable news can be less informative than professional journalistic newspapers.

There can also be a lack of information on citizenship in schools. As Neblo, an Ohio State Univeristy professor of political science, stated, “Students need to experience discussing politics in ways that go beyond just rehearsing talking points for the home team. The goal is to find areas of agreement where we can, but perhaps more important, to have better, more productive disagreements; to appreciate that people of intelligence and good will can continue to differ deeply; and that we are not enemies, but merely rivals in our interpretations of the commonwealth”. Individual states can dictate what information students learn, or don’t learn, about citizenship in schools. For example, in Texas, there has been a push to reduce the amount of information that students learn about the history of slavery and racism in America (Romero, 2021).

Why does this relationship matter?

Democracy works best when we have more of it, and the media can lead people to be more informed, active, and responsible citizens.

Informed: Staying informed is often the first step in being an active citizen. Yet, we’ve seen general citizenship behaviors in America decrease since the 1960’s, and news consumption is also decreasing (Olsen, 2021) for both Democrats and Republicans. Let’s look at an example of misinformation and an example of the media bringing a topic into the national conversation.

Staying informed can be difficult though, especially when we are exposed to so much information on a daily basis. Here is an example of a time that poor media coverage caused confusion (and a lack of correct information) which ended up compounding by further communication issues (for more details, see Politifact Article). On January 6th, 2021, there was an attack on the United States Capitol building. The attackers included people who expressed wishes to do physical harm to Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC). After the attack, AOC did a live talk on social media to describe her experience during the attack. In this talk, she stated very clearly where she was and how she felt during the attack. She had been in her office, which is not in the Capitol Building, but is a few buildings down from it. During the attack, she could hear people in the hallway outside her office and was afraid because she didn’t know at that moment if they were attackers or police officers. Newsweek wrote an article about AOC’s talk which got important facts wrong, including stating that AOC said that there were attackers in the hallway outside her office door (in fact, she said she wasn’t sure who the people in the hallway were). Another person working for The Congress, Representative Nancy Mace, responded condemning the misinformation in Newsweek. She said “AOC made clear she didn’t know who was at her door. Breathless attempts by  media to fan fictitious news flames are dangerous. My office is two doors down. Insurrectionists never stormed our hallway. Egregious doesn’t even begin to cover it.” Fox News, however, took Representative Mace’s comments out of context, making it sound like she was condemning AOC (rather than Newsweek). They published an article that truncated her comment to “I’m two doors down from AOC, and no insurrectionists stromed our hallway”. Mace then retweeted this Fox article, without comment or context, which many people, including AOC interpreted as Mace showing support for the article. This unfortunate misrepresentation by both Newsweek and Fox News played out like a real-life version of the “telephone game” in which information gets more distorted as it travels to more people, and it ended up causing two women in Congress to each think that the other was on the offensive. The quasi-feud also spilled over into each person’s supporters.

On the other hand, an example of a newspaper helping to keep people informed was The New York Times (2021) article that surprised many readers because they were not aware that the National Football League (NFL) had been using a race-based method of calculating settlements to former players who had been harmed by playing (Belson). The wide-spread outrage to the different benchmarks for demensia diagnoses led to the NFL stating that they were committed to finding race-neutral alternatives to access whether a person should be paid in damages. Note: it is difficult to access how much more frequently the NFL had approved settlements for White players than Black players because, as of this writing, the NFL has not shared any of that data with the general public. Yet due to newspaper coverage, the issue remains in the public conversation.

Active: It is especially important to stay active regarding the fast-paced changes in communication technology. As technology evolves, we need to have rules, regulations, and guidelines to keep up with the technology. For example, the editorial board at The Washington Post shared a piece about how facial recognition can impact citizens and the potential consequences of not creating regulations for it (2021). These consequences included at least three Black men being wrongfully arrested based on faulty facial recognition matches. The article also described citizens of China being afraid to peacefully protest for fear that facial recognition software will be used by the government to find and punish them. Note: The article in the Washington Post also mentioned some positive outcomes of facial recognition technology, such as helping victims of human trafficking, and thus advocated for regulation, not a total shutdown of facial recognition software.

Media and citizens have a recipricol impact on each other when it comes to staying active. Not only can media motivate and aid in people’s decisions to engage in citizenship behaviors, but people can support the media’s ability and motivation to be active as well. For example, libel laws are put into place to reduce disinformation in the media, however, sometimes newspapers can get factual information incorrect, especially when news is relatively new. This creates difficult circumstances when a newspaper may get some information wrong, but the mistake was not intentional. If newspapers were never sued for libel, there would be little motivation to be truthful. On the other hand, if newspapers are sued when minor misinformation is shared, rather than having a chance to correct the misinformation, newspapers may be disinclined to share current, breaking news. See Ferdman (2021) for details on The New York Times v Sullivan case and The Fire for a history of free speech in America.

Responsibile: It is difficult to think of examples of social issues that are not influenced by politics (and vica versa), thus, social issues are political issues. For example, disability accessibility is a social issue. To illustrate, please imagine that you support having a new government building be accessible to people who use wheelchairs, perhaps by having more elevators and ramps. Likely, you will need to vote for local politicans who will make this happen (or run for office yourself!). Even if the law already states that buildings must be accessible, those laws need someone to enforce them, making this social issue a political one as well. Another example is pot holes in roads. Funding for public roads is a political issue, so even people who think they are “not political” are impacted by politics. The media also influences stigma toward marginalized groups, which can impact social issues like health care (see Imbler, 2021 for an example of how stigma has limited healthcare for transgender youth).

A rather recent example of responsible citizenship involves the debate between people’s individual rights to decide if they want to be vaccinated for the Covid-19 virus and citizens’ responsibility to avoid passing along a deadly virus to other people in society. Newspapers can help people navigate this balance by examining current issues through a historical lens (see Leonhardt, 2021) and providing clear information about the safety and benefits to others of vaccines.

An example of media working in a way that is irresponsible for citizenship includes the creation of online hate groups. For example, Knight’s article in The Columbus Dispatch (2021) describes an online community of men who identify as “Incel” or “involuntarily celebate” which was associated with a man who obtained weapons and made a plan to mass murder women. Since then, several social media sites have either created new rules or better enforced pre-existing rules to crack down on Incel activities that could lead to violence.

We need to have the media to act as a part of checks and balances. For example, without investigative journalism, we never would have known about Nixon’s role in the Watergate scandal.

Scientific Study

We will be examining the relationship between media use and democratic citizenship behaviors in the context of the social sciences. Social sciences are fields that study human behavior. This includes fields like psychology, economics, history, and communication. To study human behavior, it is generally necessary to work under the premise that we live in an objective reality that is measurable. This means that there is a right answer to questions we may have about what is going on in the world. For example, if my friend and I heard a statement by Politician ABC, I might repeat what I heard by saying  “Politician ABC said they like cats better than dogs.” However, my friend might disagree,  “No, Politician ABC said they like dogs better than cats.” In this example, one of us is right, but we can’t both be right about this singular statement. We can go back and review the speech and find out which one of us remembered the statement correctly. What my friend and I wouldn’t do is debate whether the two of us are living in parallel universes, one of which is the opposite as the other. Rather, we would accept that the polician actually said something, and although we may have heard it from different perspectives, there is a correct answer to the question “What did the politician say?”

By assuming that we live in an objective, measurable reality, we can study the relationship between media engagement and citizenship in meaningful ways. For example, we can do research to look at whether social media use is related to voting frequency or whether disinformation causes people to support policies that are not in their best interest. We can then use that information to make better choices about how we engage with media in our daily lives.

It is useful to seek the truth of this objective reality through the use of the scientific method because instead of relying on subjective feelings, research has systematic methods to help ensure that we are finding the right information. Scientific research is not perfect. However, it is the best method we have to explore how one thing (e.g. media) impacts another (e.g. citizenship behaviors). One problem with using scientific research is that it takes a long time to study an issue systematically. So, if you’re looking for scientific research about an event that happened this morning, you’re unlikely to find any.

Journalism

We can also use journalism to examine this relationship between media and citizenship. The information you get from a professional journistic source is likely to be well vetted. However, it does not go into as much detail and review as scientific research. It is, however, much more current. So, if you’re looking to find out about the events of the day, good quality journalism is your best bet!

We’ll cover more information about the methods of both scientific research and journalism in later chapters.

References

Belson, K. (June 2021). NFL concussion settlement will drop race-based assessment for payouts. The New York Times.

Editorial Board. (June 2021). If facial recognition is not regulated  now, it will never be used responsibly. The Washington Post.

Eveland, W. P., & Scheufele, D. A. (2000). Connecting news media use with gaps in knowledge and participation. Political Communication, 17, 215-237.

Fabregta, M. (n.d.). How to be a good citizen-Ten ways to show good citizenship. daringtolivefully.com/good-citizen.

Ferdman, S. (July 2021). Revisiting New York Times vs Sullivan in the age of disinformation. The New York Times.

Imbler, S. (2021 Sept 28). For transgender youth, stigma is just one barrier to health care. The New York Times. 

Knight, C. (July 2021). Ohio man charged in ‘Incel’ plot to kill women in Ohio State mass shooting. Cincinnati Enquirer.

Leonhardt, D. (2021 September 30). The Right to Health. The New York Times. 

Lister R. (1997) What is Citizenship?. In: Campling J. (eds) Citizenship: FeministPerspectives. Palgrave, London

McCarthy, B. (February 2021). Ask Politifact: Where was Alexandria Orcasio-Cortez during the Capitol riot? Politifact. 

Neblo, M. (March 2021). A shop-like class needed to educate citizens. The Columbus Dispatch.

Nord, D. P. (2021). Communities of Journalism: A History of American Newspapers and Their Readers.

Olsen, H. (July 2021). News consumption is plummeting: That’s both good and bad news for democracy. The Washington Post.

Romero, S. (May 2021). Texas pushes to obscure the state’s history of slavery and racism. The New York Times.