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Sense of community, political participation, and civic engagement: An examination of the relationships between local daily newspapers, news websites, and their communitiesAtkins, Daniel Aaron 02 August 2016 (has links)
Newspapers have been shown to have positive correlations with their readers, sense of community, political participation, and civic engagement. Using McMillan and Chavis, Sense of Community Theory and its accompanying SCI-2 as well as questions on demographics and media use, political participation, and civic engagement, this thesis conducts a survey study of two community newspaper readerships in differing locations within the continental United States. This study aims to discover and develop further understanding of the social, political, and community-building effects of community dailies and their mirrored-content news websites. First, it examines media consumption preferences and measure the sense of community (SOC) felt by readers of print-edition newspapers and their mirrored-content websites. Second, it examines the differences in SOC felt by print and website readers. Third, it examines the influence of SOC and print-news website-reading on political participation, and fourth, it examines the influence of SOC and print newspaper-website reading on civic engagement, both with the intent of discovering how SOC might mediate this relationship. This thesis will provide contextual information and build a case for the relevance of community dailies in an ever-increasingly fast-paced, technocentric society. Findings include a significant relationship between SOC and both print and online readers, and the question of whether readers of both print and online community news feel a stronger SOC than either on its own is answered. Further findings include newspaper website-reading shares a significant relationship with both political participation and civic engagement, and print does not. Implications and limitations are discussed. / Master of Arts
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Är elever förberedda för ett aktivt medborgarskap? : En studie i politiskt engagemang hos sistaårselever på studie- och yrkesförberedande programEdgren, Amanda January 2024 (has links)
The curriculum emphasizes the importance of social science teachers to affect students to be active, democratic and participating citizens. At the same time the interest in politics among students has been on a steady decline since the beginning of the 21th century. Apart from the diminishing interest in politics, studies have shown that students are given different civic skills and competencies depending on their choice of educational path. This study takes an interest to understand what affects students' engagement in democracy and politics, and how it differs between last-year students from study preparatory and vocational education. This study also aims to understand how the programs differ in the experience of social science teaching and how it has affected their civic engagement. This study utilized qualitative group interviews with students from both educational paths, the results of this study illustrate that differences in political engagement, depending on educational path, do exist. The differences in education of social science has given different prerequisites to be politically engaged for study preparatory- and vocational students. / <p>Godkänd 2024-04-05</p>
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Revisioning the Central Delaware Riverfront: the effects of regime change on waterfront planning in Philadelphia, PASergeant, Kathryn Lynn January 1900 (has links)
Master of Regional and Community Planning / Department of Landscape Architecture/Regional and Community Planning / Stephanie A. Rolley / This report will examine the effect that shifting political ideologies have had on the redevelopment process for Penn’s Landing and how citizen activism influenced planning reform along the Central Delaware Riverfront. It addresses the historical development that lead to the demise of Philadelphia’s port industry and waterfront commerce. The study discusses the influences that mayoral administrations from the 1950s to present day have had on planning for Penn’s Landing. The report reviews the public forums held by Penn Praxis to change the course of planning from a top-down approach to a grassroots effort and evaluates the progress that has been made in the years following the forums. An analysis of the political ideologies of Philadelphia’s mayoral administrations is made to determine that the most effective approach to advancing waterfront redevelopment along the Central Delaware Riverfront involves discovering the right balance of private investment and public involvement.
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社團參與、政黨鑲嵌與政治行為之變遷─以台灣社會變遷調查為資料分析 / the changes of civic engagement, embeddedness of political parties and political behaviors─an example of the Taiwan Social Change Surveys林亞鋒, Lin, Ya Feng Unknown Date (has links)
社團參與在當代社會早已成為非常重要的議題,不論是西方還是台灣學界都有許多相關的研究。不同於西方社團參與的形式,台灣距離政治民主化只有短短的數十年,社團參與在過去威權統治以及現在民主開放的影響下,產生了複雜的運作機制。一方面,政治上的開放使得社團參與遭遇的限制大幅減少,各式各樣社團呈現蓬勃發展的趨勢,目的性的結社成為了最重要的社團參與形式;另一方面傳統文化下的擬式血源性社團並沒有因為威權體制崩解而失去活力,在地方選舉中依舊保有關鍵的地位。
為了探究台灣解嚴後社團參與的獨特意義,以及民主化之後是否又面臨什麼樣的改變?本文以參與社團所形成的網絡結構作為分析方法,從社團和政黨的網絡鑲嵌性以及社團網絡的社會資本效果,嘗試找出社團網絡的結構及變遷。
透過研究本文呈現了幾個重要發現:首先,研究結果指出台灣社團參與沒有欣欣向榮的發展,在參與者的比例有下降的趨勢,而且教育程度並無顯著提高,反駁了先前的研究;其次,在1992、1997以及2002年三次調查中,政黨和社團的鑲嵌性變化不大,大致上國民黨是強烈鑲嵌在社團網絡之中,反之民進黨則一直處於邊陲的地位,政黨輪替並沒有造成太大的改變;第三,草根性社團仍是台灣很重要的社會力基礎,其成員參與其他社團的比例相當高,不過受限於成員特殊性的影響,使得連結性有不少的侷限;最後,社團網絡確實會有社會資本的效果,不論是從連結能力還是不同結構位置的社團都被證實,但是在台灣這樣的社會資本卻是帶有選擇性的,整體上參與社團的人確實會比較傾向投給泛藍的陣營。 / Civic engagement in modern societies has been an important academic issue, both in Western countries and Taiwan. Unlike that in the Western societies, the civic engagement in Taiwan has a more complex operating mechanism in that authoritarian ruling in the past and democratization of Taiwan in the recent decades have a joint effect on the associations. On the one hand, because democratization greatly reduced the constraints on civic engagement, all kinds of associations have become prosperous and goal-oriented associations become the most important form of civic engagement. On the other hand, under the influence of traditional culture, primary associations still keep their power even with the collapse of authoritarian regime; they still play a key role in the local elections.
This thesis analyzes the network structure formed by associations to understand the special meaning of civic engagement in Taiwan after the abolition of martial laws and the changes the network may encounter after the democratization. It looks at three investigations of Social Change Survey in 1992, 1997, and 2002 to find the structure and change from the network embeddedness of associations and political parties and from the effects of social capital obtained by association network.
This thesis presents the following important findings: First, the associations in Taiwan are not as prosperous as mentioned in previous research. The data show that the proportion of participants among Taiwanese civilians decreases and the educational degree of the members does not significantly increase. Second, in the three surveys, the embeddedness of political parties and associations does not show obvious change. Generally speaking, KMT still strongly embed in association network, while DPP remains isolated from the network. The shift of political power does not cause strong effects. Third, the grassroots associations still are important basis of social forces, having a high ratio of members joining other associations. However, because of specialties of their members, the capacity of the grassroots associations is limited. Finally, association network has its effects on accumulating social capital, which can be shown by the capacity of association network and by the structural locations of different associations. However, such social capital in Taiwan is selective. Generally speaking, people who join the associations tend to support the pan-blue parties.
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Civic engagement in Europe : a multilevel study of the effect of individual and national determinants on political participation, political consumerism and associational involvementAcik-Toprak, Necla January 2009 (has links)
Active and engaged citizens are the backbone of a strong democracy and a vibrant civil society. Yet recent trends of low electoral turnout in Europe and decreasing levels of civic engagement have called into question the legitimacy of governments and the stability of democracy in the long term, particularly in Europe. Against the background of such developments this research sets out to provide a comparative study of civic engagement and analyse the variations in civic engagement between countries. The study is mainly based on the analysis of the European Social Survey 2002, covering 35,000 individuals from 19 European countries and applies advanced statistical modelling techniques including Multiple Correspondence Analysis MCA) and Multi-level modelling. Although there is a good deal of research examining civic engagement using individual level data or aggregate level data, very few studies have combined both approaches. This study addresses this gap and applies multi-level modelling to examine the relative importance of an individual’s socio-demographic characteristics and his/her country in determining levels and types of civic engagement. Thus, it has the advantage of identifying whether civic engagement is significantly affected by country characteristics or the converse, whether a person’s characteristics (age, education, social class etc.) are all that is needed in order to account for the variations in civic engagement. The innovative application of MCA to explore indicators of civic engagement has led to the identification of three dimensions of civic engagement; political activities, political consumerism and associational involvement. Moreover, by projecting all activities on a two-dimensional map it become evident that citizens who tend to carry out ‘individual’ types of political consumerism such as ‘buycotting’, boycotting and signing petitions are also more likely to be involved in New Social Movement organisations. These significant results shed new light on activities usually regarded as ‘individualistic’ type of activities and suggest viewing them in the context of a wider array of collective actions. Furthermore, in addition to the standard contextual measures such as economic development, welfare regime, income inequality, and levels of democracy, this study introduced two innovative policy measures. To consider the impact of government policies on levels of civic engagement measures of governments’ support of the voluntary sector and civic education at school (comparing the education policies of 19 European countries from 1945-2002) were developed. The results confirmed the importance of both individual level characteristics as well as country level characteristics in explaining civic engagement in Europe. However, differences between countries were reduced to a greater degree when contextual factors were introduced. Particularly the welfare state, showed the greatest effect. This implies that socio-economic conditions and in particular social policy and the degree to which it reproduces egalitarian structures determine to a great extent citizen involvement. In other words the results of this study suggest that the national context matters and that governments can and do shape the nature and levels of civic engagement.
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College Students' Development of Civic Commitment: Experiences of Service Learning Across the College YearsBrickner-McDonald, Kailee Ann 01 January 2017 (has links)
Functional democracy in a just society requires citizens who are complex thinkers and skilled, caring leaders. This study examines how undergraduate college students become committed citizens, the kind demanded by our changing world. In particular, it addresses the developmental and experiential factors that influence students' journeys of commitment to the public good, and how students understand their lived experiences integrating these diverse influences. Framed by my constructivist epistemology, I used the qualitative tradition of narrative inquiry to address these questions. I interviewed twelve highly engaged students about their experiences in diverse community-based work and learning over four years of college. I share narratives of each participant, then use cross-case analysis to identify themes across their experiences. I learned how they came to identify their roles in society and how key developmental and experiential influences shaped their processes of becoming civically committed. Students experienced growth in three main areas: Connection (their sense of ownership around community work); Mattering (their sense of belonging among change makers and others); and Purpose (their sense of direction in making social change). This study allows educators within higher education to better understand the complex processes of civic commitment development and how to holistically support college students in fostering a sense of civic identity and responsibility that leads to lifelong nurturance of their commitment to the public good.
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Politics of community in Shakespeare's comic commonwealthsBeattie, Laura Isobel Helen January 2018 (has links)
This thesis explores the politics of community in five Shakespearean comedies: The Comedy of Errors (1594), The Merchant of Venice (1596-8), Measure for Measure (1603-4), The Tempest (1611) and The Two Noble Kinsmen (1613). The idea of community addresses many issues usually thought to belong to 'high politics'. Thinking about this topic therefore enables us to articulate a notion of the political firmly grounded within the functioning of the commonwealth at a local level and as a state of interpersonal relations. This thesis has three key aims. Firstly, it argues that the plays highlight the responsibility of all community members, no matter their gender or status, in shaping and contributing to their political environment by displaying civic virtue, working to obtain justice and influencing their ruler's behaviour. By so doing, it focuses on the processes of civic engagement and the political implications of everyday life within a community which have often been neglected in readings of Shakespeare's work thus far. Secondly, this thesis illustrates the inseparability of ethics and politics. It demonstrates throughout that relationships between individuals within a community can have widereaching implications, whether that be in terms of the existence of trust between friends, family members or fellow citizens; the importance of consent existing between subjects and ruler; or the ability of fellow-feeling to confer a sense of agency upon subjects. Lastly, it contends that Shakespeare's assessment of the commonwealth in his comedies, with its emphasis on civic values and on the relationship between the community and the individual, remains attuned to Aristotelian and Ciceronian thought, in contrast to the Tacitean influences critics have detected in the darkness and scepticism of his tragedies and histories. Shakespeare's comedies therefore question the commonly accepted paradigm in early modern intellectual history that Tacitus' prominence increased greatly in the intellectual climate of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, while Aristotle's and Cicero's diminished. Moving away from the predominant focus on the tragedies and histories in analyses of Shakespeare's political thought, this thesis foregrounds the significance of citizenship, the household and friendship and reassesses the role of the comedies in Shakespeare's thinking about politics.
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E-GOVERNMENT AND CIVIC ENGAGEMENT IN SAN DIEGO COUNTYYbarra, Marcos A 01 September 2017 (has links)
Due to technological advances, local city governments are relying heavily on websites and the Internet to connect with citizens. This project will discuss the relationship between e-government and civic engagement in San Diego county and its effectiveness. E-government is defined as the delivery of a city government’s information and services to its citizens through its website. Civic engagement involves active participation from the citizens and is defined as the interaction between the city government and its citizens. This project will analyze the 18 city websites of San Diego county to determine the effectiveness of each city’s website in providing e-government and civic engagement services. Each website will be rated and ranked, and a detailed recommendation on how the 5 lowest ranking cities can revise their websites to increase civic engagement will be provided. It will be shown that novel approaches such as online civic engagement, financial transparency, and personalized mobile apps not only enhance civic engagement in several city government websites but also receive positive user feedback and high resident satisfaction ratings.
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Expanding Planning Public Participation Outreach Through Social NetworkingHarris, Wesley Brian David 01 June 2011 (has links)
Public participation is not a form of civic responsibility that it once was. With not only fewer people taking part in the public participation process, there is a trend towards an older (45 years and older) group of residents that come to such meetings or workshops. Plans, such as Specific Plans or General Plans often take years to implement and require all generations to give feedback on what is needed for the future. Additionally, within the last decade, there has been a rise in social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter. These websites emerged as informal virtual places for friends to connect, but have slowly evolved into a tool for businesses, and more importantly, government to connect with constituents. This study explores the relationship between the decline of public participation with findings to support the reasons residents do not take part in the process, and the rise of social media as a tool for engagement with findings to support how cities nationwide use Facebook. Social media provides a two-way form of communication between the community and the local government which aides in promoting genuine participation. Additionally, social media allows for efficient outreach and noticing of meetings or public workshops. As opposed to newspaper or website noticing, websites such as Facebook allow for local governments to target a specific audience by location, age, or interests. Findings indicate that although many cities developed a Facebook Page to engage the “younger generation”, all ages became fans of the City operated Facebook Page. In addition, the findings show that the true potential of Facebook as a participatory tool have not been discovered. cities are developing their own ways of using it as a tool as there is no formal best practices manual for City planning departments. The findings of this study have provided the necessary information to develop a best practices manual for planning practitioners to utilize. The manual provides information on developing a Facebook Page as well as the implications of the technology.
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Causes of Low Voter Turnout of the Hispanic Population in Southwest TexasMorrow, Shawn Steven 01 January 2015 (has links)
The Hispanic population in central Texas tends to have low levels of civic engagement as compared to other groups in the same area, which leads to disproportionate political marginalization. Prior research has focused on characteristics of voters and nonvoters, but has failed to explore the lack of political mobilization among Hispanic voters. The purpose of this study was twofold; first to better understand the nature of Hispanic voters' political marginalization, and second, explore why participation levels are so low among this group. This general qualitative study applied critical race theory to explore the barriers perceived by Hispanic voters related to political marginalization that may contribute to low voter participation. Data were collected through interviews with 20 randomly selected Hispanic people residing in central Texas. Interview data were transcribed, inductively coded, and then organized into themes. The key research findings identified 3 themes that potentially explain low civic engagement; a general distrust in government, a deficiency of civics education in the public school system, and specific cultural preferences that may contribute to low levels of participation in voting and politics. Findings also revealed that there is little understanding of the voting process, and few public initiatives to encourage the Hispanic voter community to vote or otherwise engage in participatory democracy. Recommendations to policy makers to promote positive social change include increasing funding for civic education, and creating voter outreach programs. Policy makers and politicians should also seek out ways to build trust in the political process throughout the Hispanic community.
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