Thesis (M.A. in communication)--Washington State University, August 2009. / Title from PDF title page (viewed July 28, 2009). "Edward R. Murrow College of Communication." Includes bibliographical references (p. 33-42).

In recent years, New Media such as internet not only impacted old media but also widely used by citizenship. For example, Thousands of internet users set up a voluntary "Morakot Typhoon disaster network center" raised supplies and reported the latest disaster in remote mountainous areas in 2009. January 2011 People in Egypt also used a network of new media to raise citizen to demonstrate their anger of government, they finally attracted international attention. These phenomena have demonstrated new media's power and influence. ¡@¡@This study explores the factors and cognitive attitudes of citizens when they through a network use new media to participate in public affairs. The factors were chosen from literatures and corresponded to PAM (integrated public affair management framework). Five decision-making variables (cues) of this study are "selfish - altruism", "support from peer", "self-ability", "anonymous degree ", and "the issue of topic". Questionnaire was based on Social Judgment Theory, SJT. Both physical survey questionnaires and internet questionnaires were disseminated to new media users. Total questionnaires are 152 and valid questionnaires are 88. Through statistical software policy PC to understand the subject's decision-making for these five variables in the cognitive approach. The results are as follows: 1. In the average weights, the most important cue for all groups is "anonymous degree" followed by "self-ability", "selfish - altruism", "support from peer", and "the issue of topic". 2. In the judgment functions, all groups have positive attitude toward the three cues: "selfish - altruism", "self-ability" and "anonymous degree". All groups have U-curve attitude toward the cue:"support from peer". All groups have positive attitude and U-curve attitude toward the cue:"the issue of topic".

This thesis focuses on the topic of active citizenship in democratic societies. An emphasis is placed on the clarification of the role of the citizen as an engaged participant in the political process at the local level. This issue is contextualized within the theory of democracy, which legitimacy is fulfilled by the citizen participation. The empirical part is devoted to the research of the citizen participation in the Dutch city of Utrecht, where the way of cooperation between citizens and public officers was investigated in the process of public policy making. The aim of this thesis is to evaluate the form and the contribution of the civic participation in Utrecht. Keywords democracy, democracy at the local level, participatory democracy, citizen, participation, codecision, cooperation, relationship between the citizen and the politician, level of participation

The theoretical part of this presented text specifies circumstances of social exclusion of caring families and the system of supportive measures in the Czech republic that should prevent the above mentioned social event. In compliance with the title of the work there has been a goal set: to identify the risks causing social exclusion of families caring for children with a disability.. To get the most complex view of the said problems the author undertook a partial inquiry by both social workers, by whom she was assessing the limits of their knowledge and skill potential, and by political representatives of municipalities, by whom she concentrated on the causes of limited application of municipal policy determining social exclusion of families caring for children with a disability. The above mentioned goal of this research was carried out by means of sociological qualitative and quantitative methods. The investigator was at the same time interested in how the caring families themselves used the means of civilian participation relating to improvement of their life situation.