The purpose of this study was to examine participants&rsquo / civic engagement behavior of a non-formal training on democracy and human rights through the case of Toplum G&ouml / n&uuml / ll&uuml / leri Vakfi (TOG) Democracy and Human Rights Project. In order to achieve this, a survey was conducted to the participants who attended the trainer&rsquo / s training of TOG&rsquo / s Democracy and Human Rights Project. The entire population who completed the trainer&rsquo / s training at that time consisted of 154 TOG volunteers, and all population were aimed to be reached for data collection. The study initiated with a needs analysis study to explore what elements were needed to be evaluated in the survey with regard to TOG&rsquo / s administrative group. Next, based on those findings, literature review on civic engagement and the indicators adapted by the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) a questionnaire containing both open-ended and close-ended items was developed to measure participants&rsquo / civic behaviors. The data were collected through an online survey tool, Survey Monkey, an accessable number of population (N=56) was reached and a return rate of 43.4 percent was enhanced. The results revealed that participants of trainer&rsquo / s training of TOG&rsquo / s Democracy and Human Rights Project could be regarded as active citizens who engage in civil society, participate in political actions, pay attention to current events and follow the news regularly. In addition, findings showed that there was a decrease in the frequencies in terms of participation in the civil society in time. Lastly, implications for further research on participants&rsquo / civic participation from non-formal education perspectives are highlighted.

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.

As ferramentas de mídia social possibilitam a criação de ambientes colaborativos, comunidades virtuais e mecanismos de interação, como bate-papos e registro de comentários. Algumas organizações públicas estão se apropriando dessas ferramentas para ampliar suas formas de participação, inclusive desenvolvendo plataformas próprias. Mas como uma mídia social promove engajamento nos usuários de uma comunidade inserida nela? Assim, para estudo dessa questão foi selecionada a plataforma Participa.br, que foi disponibilizada pelo governo federal brasileiro em 2013, cujo intuito é oferecer meios para que cidadãos interajam entre si e participem do processo de desenvolvimento de políticas públicas. O objetivo desta pesquisa é analisar o uso de uma mídia social do governo, a partir de uma de suas comunidades, para verificar de que maneira esta promoveu engajamento. Empregou-se a netnografia, como estratégia de pesquisa, sobre um único caso. Ela se refere à observação e análise em profundidade de interações em uma rede social. Além disso, para a triangulação e contextualização dos dados resultantes da análise das interações, foram realizadas entrevistas com alguns dos usuários participantes das discussões na comunidade, a fim de conhecer suas percepções sobre a plataforma e de sua participação; e análise de documentos e notícias sobre a comunidade e a plataforma. Obteve-se, então, a dinâmica de participação e engajamento de uma comunidade de usuários, algumas evidências de engajamento civil, alguns dos atributos do processo de engajamento e as características que indicassem a presença de senso de comunidade entre os usuários participantes. Por fim, foram verificados quais e como os blocos funcionais, característicos da plataforma, influenciaram o engajamento dos participantes da comunidade estudada. / Social media tools enable us to create collaborative environments, virtual communities and interaction mechanisms, as chats and comments posting. Some public agencies are applying these tools in ways to broaden forms of participation. They are also developing their own social media platforms. However, how is social media used for promoting engagement in users from one of its communities? Thus, in order to address this question, it was selected the platform Participa.br, which aims to offer conditions to citizen interaction and participation in public policy development process. This platform was released by the Brazilian federal government in 2013. The objective of this research is to analyze the interactions in a community of users from a governmental social media, verifying how it has promoted engagement. A single-case netnography was chosen as the research strategy for this study. This strategy refers to observation and deep analysis of the interactions in a social media site. Besides that, it was applied data triangulation and contextualization on the results obtained in the interactions analysis. Therefore, interviews were done with some of the users that took part in the discussions in the community, to understand their perceptions about the platform and about the discussions. Analysis of documents and news about the community and the platform was done as well. After that, it was possible to describe the participation and engagement dynamics of the community users, some evidences of civil engagement, some of the attributes from the engagement process and characteristics that would indicate the presence of sense of community among the participants-users. Finally, it was verified how and which of the functional blocs featuring the platform influenced the engagement in the participants of the chosen community.

As ferramentas de mídia social possibilitam a criação de ambientes colaborativos, comunidades virtuais e mecanismos de interação, como bate-papos e registro de comentários. Algumas organizações públicas estão se apropriando dessas ferramentas para ampliar suas formas de participação, inclusive desenvolvendo plataformas próprias. Mas como uma mídia social promove engajamento nos usuários de uma comunidade inserida nela? Assim, para estudo dessa questão foi selecionada a plataforma Participa.br, que foi disponibilizada pelo governo federal brasileiro em 2013, cujo intuito é oferecer meios para que cidadãos interajam entre si e participem do processo de desenvolvimento de políticas públicas. O objetivo desta pesquisa é analisar o uso de uma mídia social do governo, a partir de uma de suas comunidades, para verificar de que maneira esta promoveu engajamento. Empregou-se a netnografia, como estratégia de pesquisa, sobre um único caso. Ela se refere à observação e análise em profundidade de interações em uma rede social. Além disso, para a triangulação e contextualização dos dados resultantes da análise das interações, foram realizadas entrevistas com alguns dos usuários participantes das discussões na comunidade, a fim de conhecer suas percepções sobre a plataforma e de sua participação; e análise de documentos e notícias sobre a comunidade e a plataforma. Obteve-se, então, a dinâmica de participação e engajamento de uma comunidade de usuários, algumas evidências de engajamento civil, alguns dos atributos do processo de engajamento e as características que indicassem a presença de senso de comunidade entre os usuários participantes. Por fim, foram verificados quais e como os blocos funcionais, característicos da plataforma, influenciaram o engajamento dos participantes da comunidade estudada. / Social media tools enable us to create collaborative environments, virtual communities and interaction mechanisms, as chats and comments posting. Some public agencies are applying these tools in ways to broaden forms of participation. They are also developing their own social media platforms. However, how is social media used for promoting engagement in users from one of its communities? Thus, in order to address this question, it was selected the platform Participa.br, which aims to offer conditions to citizen interaction and participation in public policy development process. This platform was released by the Brazilian federal government in 2013. The objective of this research is to analyze the interactions in a community of users from a governmental social media, verifying how it has promoted engagement. A single-case netnography was chosen as the research strategy for this study. This strategy refers to observation and deep analysis of the interactions in a social media site. Besides that, it was applied data triangulation and contextualization on the results obtained in the interactions analysis. Therefore, interviews were done with some of the users that took part in the discussions in the community, to understand their perceptions about the platform and about the discussions. Analysis of documents and news about the community and the platform was done as well. After that, it was possible to describe the participation and engagement dynamics of the community users, some evidences of civil engagement, some of the attributes from the engagement process and characteristics that would indicate the presence of sense of community among the participants-users. Finally, it was verified how and which of the functional blocs featuring the platform influenced the engagement in the participants of the chosen community.

<p>This paper delves into the current definitions and ideas of the Service-Learning pedagogy and how it ties into community engagement. The importance of service learning and community engagement is talked about in this paper as well as the proven benefits of both. The goal of this paper is to answer and better understand students’ relationships to service-learning courses such as why they take them and how to better engage them in the learning</p>