Civic Disengagement Research Articles

Exploring the Role of Fear, Civic Disengagement, and Economic Disenfranchisement Within Communities that Experience Gun Violence.

A growing body of research has documented how gun violence can affect mental and physical health outcomes among adults. Likewise, the literature is also beginning to reveal negative psychological effects related to distress and hypervigilance and sociological implications around diminished community engagement and economic opportunity. However, there remains a need to fully explore the role of fear related to the experience of gun violence. Through a qualitative inquiry consisting of community resident focus groups and community leader interviews, this study examined how participants' perceptions of fear related to their exposures to and experiences of gun violence. The findings highlight the pervasive emotional experience of existing in a fearful, distressed, and/or anxious state within certain communities, and how civic disengagement, neighborhood disconnection, and economic disenfranchisement exist in communities that disproportionately experience violence.

Rethinking Religion and Political Participation: The Case of Voting Among Religiously Unaffiliated Americans

Abstract Is civic disengagement correlated across institutions? One case of this question is a long-observed “secular voting gap” where religiously unaffiliated Americans are less likely to vote than their affiliated counterparts. This work often uses self-reports or exit polls that cannot measure variation within the unaffiliated. Using an improved measure of validated voter turnout in four presidential election years (2008, 2012, 2016, and 2020), I find estimates of the secular voting gap are attenuated by demographic controls. More importantly, the mechanism that explains this finding is that more frequent church attendance associates with a lower probability of turnout among respondents who are unaffiliated, and results vary by voting method. These results support a theory of civic disengagement as a domain-specific process and demonstrate the substantive value of revisiting classic findings about religion and political behavior amid social change.

Students’ Onboard Experiences: Basis for Improved Shipboard Training Program Policy

The Philippines is a major provider of seafarers, with the majority of Filipino sailors serving on merchant ships all around the world. To stay competitive in the global market, most shipping companies recruit maritime students through a variety of processes and provide them with the necessary knowledge, expertise, and skills. The experience of maritime cadets/cadettes in the workplace aids them in realizing and grasping the employment needs onboard merchant vessels. This quantitative research study assessed the onboard experiences of PMMA cadets in order to improve the academy's shipboard training program and policy. A researcher-made survey questionnaire via Google form was used to gather data from the 162 First Class cadets/cadettes who were graduating midshipmen of S.Y. 2020-2021. The study found out that the cadet-trainees were exposed to technical tasks during their shipboard training. In terms of challenges onboard, they never at all experienced sexual and verbal harassment and abuse. Accordingly, they have very low experience related to civic disengagement. Inculcating high tolerance in shipboard training related to work stress and condition is one of the strengths of the PMMA Shipboard Training Program and the assignment and availability of training officers on board was noted as one of its weaknesses.

Politics of indifference

This article examines the changing sociological meaning of indifference in urban China after the tragic death of a two-year-old girl in a road accident in 2011. My analysis suggests that, in China where the political state had tried to claim credit for all altruistic behaviors, anxiety about indifference allowed citizens to sidestep socialist ethics in conversations about civic mobilization. University students used the language of feeling and mourning to reinvent the protagonist, culprit, and victim in the accident, thereby developing new rationales for committing good deeds without acknowledging the moral leadership of the state. As opposed to the standard association of indifference with civic disengagement and social disintegration, this article suggests that indifference has civic potential to connect. Like skepticism, cynicism, and disappointment that people might develop in response to the genre of socialist heroism, indifference could anchor civic articulation of alternative futures that were yet to take shape.

Towards a Democratic Theory of Silence

Contemporary democratic theory is focused on empowering the voices of citizens in collective decision-making. The opposite of voice is silence. Increasingly, citizens are remaining silent rather than vocally participating in politics. Among democratic theorists, silent citizenship is equated to civic disengagement and disempowerment. I expand this view by theorizing the conditions under which silence is also a political expression. My analysis identifies four types of silence that can politically communicate. The resulting framework draws out the communicative dimension of silence, providing new tools to assess the unique interpretative challenges and dangers that silent citizenship presents for a democratic system.

Audit failure and corporate corruption

Patron-clientelism and corruption were traditionally viewed as problems endemic to underdeveloped marginal countries with weak states, powerful self-serving elites, and widespread civic disengagement. However, recent decades have seen a dramatic increase in corruption scandals in the Global North, particularly its more developed banking and financial sectors. Paradoxically, this has occurred despite a massive expansion in auditing by international accountancy firms (KPMG, PwC, Deloitte, EY) who often portray themselves as warriors of integrity, transparency, and ethical conduct. How are these trends connected? Drawing on anthropological studies of Mediterranean patron-clientelism, I illustrate how collusive relations between accountancy firms and their clients create ideal conditions for corruption to flourish. Finally, I ask how can these accountancy scandals help us rethink patron-clientelism in an age of “audit culture”?

Exploration of immigrant in-service and pre-service teachers’ conception and practice of citizenship in the United States

This study is aimed at exploring public school in- and pre-service teachers’ conception, understanding and practice of citizenship in the United States. Using a case study design, this study documents how two public school in- and pre-service teachers as immigrants in the Midwest, the United States conceptualize and practise citizenship in their daily lives. The findings indicated social isolation and civic disengagement are the main factors impacting their development of citizenship. In addition, the findings illustrated immigrant in- and pre-service teachers take different actions for citizenship at their personal and professional level than non-immigrant in- and pre-service teachers.

Voting Alone? The Political and Cultural Consequences of Commercial TV

We investigate the long-term impact of early exposure to Berlusconi’s commercial TV network, Mediaset, on voting behavior and civic engagement in Italy. To do so, we exploit differences in Mediaset signal reception across Italian municipalities due to the network’s staggered introduction over the national territory and to idiosyncratic geomorphological factors. We find that municipalities exposed to Mediaset prior to 1985 exhibit greater electoral support for Berlusconi’s party in 1994, when he first ran for office, relative to municipalities that were exposed only later on. This difference, estimated between 1 and 2 percentage points, is extremely robust and tends to persist in the following four elections. This effect can hardly be attributed to differential exposure to partisan news bias since, prior to 1985, content on Mediaset channels was dominated by light-entertainment programs and no news programs were broadcast until 1991, by which time the network was accessible to the entire population. Instead, we present evidence that early exposure to commercial TV was associated with a substantial decline in social capital consistent with the diffusion of a culture of individualism and civic disengagement that favored the political success of Berlusconi.

Hostility and civic moral disengagement: Cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression as moderators

ABSTRACT The present study focuses on explaining the incremental role of emotion regulation and hostility in the tendency of young adults to use moral disengagement strategies to avoid self-condemnation for their immoral conduct. We aimed to extend the area of investigation concerning the moral effects of emotion regulation and hostility, by exploring the association between hostility and civic moral disengagement (CMD), and the moderating role of emotional regulation strategies within this association. One hundred and sixty-three young adults aged 16 to 30 were administered a global measure of moral disengagement, namely the Civic Moral Disengagement scale, the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire and the Buss-Durkee Hostility Inventory. Our results confirmed that cognitive reappraisal moderates the relation between hostility and CMD. We conclude that young adults’ tendency to reappraise emotional events, when conjoined with high levels of hostility, might enhance their tendency to build convenient moral justifications for their immoral conduct, which in turn might have significant behavioral consequences.

Gender Differences in Acculturative Stress and Habitual Sleep Duration in Korean American Immigrants.

Korean American immigrants (KAIs) face diverse sociocultural stressors in the acculturation process. While stress is known to cause short sleep, little is known about how acculturative stress affects sleep differently for KAI men and women. The purpose of this cross-sectional study was to examine gender differences in the association between diverse domains of acculturative stress and sleep duration among KAIs. Middle-aged KAIs were recruited in community settings and online. KAIs completed validated measures of acculturative stress (homesickness, social isolation, employment barriers, discrimination, civic disengagement, and family problems) and sleep duration. Multiple linear regression analysis was performed and stratified by gender. 343 KAIs participated (mean age = 41 ± 10years, 47% female, 11% short sleepers [< 6h]). After adjustment for covariates, higher homesickness (β = - 23.19, p < 0.05) and lower civic disengagement (β = 17.75, p < 0.05) were associated with shorter sleep duration in women, while higher isolation was associated with shorter sleep duration in men (β = - 13.73, p < 0.05). Discussion: Results suggest gender-specific associations between acculturative stress and sleep duration. Future research should take into account gender differences in the experience and effects of acculturative stress when developing interventions to improve sleep health in KAIs.

Social Media Learning as a Pedagogical Tool: Twitter and Engagement in Civic Dialogue and Public Policy

ABSTRACTBoth social media use and the civic disengagement of college students continue to be on the rise, posing instruction challenges around how and what students are interested in learning in their college classrooms. This pedagogical case study examines the effectiveness of using Twitter to develop a Personal Learning Environment (PLE) that incorporates the use of social media learning—specifically using social media to expose students to a greater depth and breadth of contemporary topics—as a tool of instruction in a political science curriculum. I assess whether social media learning equips students with media literacy skills that aid them in engaging in civic dialogue, understanding public policy, and identifying stakeholders on all sides and aspects of an issue—potential precursors to deeper civic engagement. I find that students seem to overestimate their ability to learn about political issues and are skeptical of social media. However, the use of social media as a component of a PLE (1) provides a pathway for enhanced media literacy and deeper learning, (2) makes learning about an issue more appealing, and (3) engages students who are less interested in a traditional classroom delivery.

The Lives of Campus Custodians: Insights into Corporatization and Civic Disengagement in the Academy

The Lives of Campus Custodians: Insights into Corporatization and Civic Disengagement in the Academy

Service Cynicism: How Civic Disengagement Develops

How does civic disengagement develop? This article examines the theory that the dissatisfaction and disengagement citizens develop toward one government agency can extend to an alternative agency. Leveraging police precinct-level data on 311 calls and criminal complaints from 2004 to 2012 in New York City, it investigates whether government responsiveness to municipal issues predicts citizens’ willingness to submit criminal complaints to the police. The study finds that predictors of disengagement with law enforcement extend beyond negative interactions with law enforcement alone. Rather, the time it takes local government officials to fix a 311 request for services, such as filling potholes and abating noise, shapes the likelihood that residents will file misdemeanor criminal complaints. Thus policymakers must account for the policy environment beyond their agency’s domain to alleviate citizens’ dissatisfaction and disengagement with government overall.

Citizenship education discourses in Latin America: multilateral institutions and the decolonial challenge

Understanding multilateral institutions’ role in the construction of desirable goals for educational reform is a key element to grasp the weight globalisation has on local practices of education. Comparative studies of civics and moral education point to the idea of ‘citizenship’ as a site revealing not only the political economy but also the cultural politics involved in the globalisation of education. Through political discourse analysis, this paper analyses key multilateral agencies’ discourses on citizenship education for Latin America. It traces the concerns, diagnoses, definitions and proposals of what citizenship education is (or should be) in agenda-setting documents and policy reports promoted by these organisations. Drawing on Latin American decolonial theories, it challenges concerns with civic disengagement and convivencia underpinning multilateral citizenship education discourses. As a counterpoint, it presents research from scholars highlighting alternative – often overlooked – participatory and decolonial pedagogical experiences present in Latin America that open new standpoints for citizenship education comparative research in the region.

Vlogging on YouTube: the online, political engagement of young Canadians advocating for social change

ABSTRACTYouth are often perceived as passive and disengaged from civic and political life. However, many researchers have countered such discourses of youth passivity and isolation, highlighting young people's active and interactive political engagement through less traditional outlets, especially online. In this article, we are influenced by a poststructural orientation to agency to identify themes across the social change-oriented YouTube channels of eighteen young Canadians. The themes we have identified counter a dominant focus on youth civic disengagement, political apathy, and isolation, instead highlighting the diverse political issues young Canadian vloggers address, the strategies they use, their multiple subjectivities, the interaction and support of their online community, and the relevance of inequality. We show how YouTube has become an important venue for the production and dissemination of youth perspectives.

Civic Participation Reimagined: Youth Interrogation and Innovation in the Multimodal Public Sphere

This chapter challenges dominant narratives about the civic disengagement of youth from marginalized communities by reconceptualizing what counts as civic participation in public life and how youth are positioned as civic agents. We examine ideologies that undergird traditional forms of civic education and engagement in the United States and offer an alternative vision of civic life grounded in recognition of systemic inequality and struggle for social justice. We consider the ways in which digital media has fundamentally transformed the public sphere and expanded opportunities for youth civic expression and action, as well as the ways that youth participatory action research literature offers a framework for civic education that forefronts youth experience and voice. Our analysis culminates in the development of a new conceptual model for civic learning and engagement that pushes past participation into the realms of interrogation and innovation.

The Lives of Campus Custodians: Insights Into Corporatization and Civic Disengagement in the Academy by Peter Magolda

The Lives of Campus Custodians: Insights Into Corporatization and Civic Disengagement in the Academy by Peter Magolda

Reaching Citizens’ Engagement by Services: Swiss Use Case

Collaboration with citizens and users plays an increasing role in the transformation of public services towards new forms of production and delivery. Thus there is a need to modernize the civil service to accelerate innovation in governments, as civil servants will also have an important role to play. Digital civic engagement platforms can provide a more attractive and accessible means for participation. We believe that neither an exclusive top-down approach nor a bottom-up approach can address the current needs. Instead a hybrid approach should be designed. This paper presents a novel approach to address the issue of current civic disengagement. This approach is illustrated through four different use cases in the Swiss context.

Using economic analysis to increase civic engagement

Two well-established insights of economic analysis are applied to four case studies on civic disengagement: the use of incentives implicit in supply-and-demand analysis and marginal analysis. The case studies comprise social security, housing benefit, hospital consultant outpatients and free school meals (FSMs). The case studies support the propositions that incentives can work or are thought to do so, and that the higher the take-up, the larger the benefit. But other factors can override, and significant proportions do not respond in the predicted way. In the case of the spare room subsidy, the policy-makers’ goals were arguably unrealistic. In the case of Working Tax Credit and Pension Credit, the reasons are far from clear. Marginal analysis is used to quantify how much it could cost to increase take-up, when the take-up of a means-tested benefit is already nearly universal, as it had been for FSMs among primary school pupils. The chosen method, universal free provision for P1–P3 children, would seem disproportionate, unless the main reason for this policy has been to impact all children, and not just those who had been means tested. This case study shows the importance of marginal analysis when designing policies to increase civic engagement.

Using administrative innovation to address missed consultant outpatient appointments

An administrative innovation for booking outpatient appointments has been introduced in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, variously known as ‘patient-focussed booking’ (PFB) and ‘partial booking’. It has three distinct features: patients must confirm their wish to have an appointment; patients are given a choice of date, time and place for the appointment; and the appointment is booked only a short time in advance of the due date. Previous studies have shown a reduction in missed booked appointments, either because the patient could not attend (CNA) or did not attend (DNA). Our results, covering a more recent period, confirm these findings, and show they can be sustained for longer periods. The requirement that patients must confirm their wish to have an appointment can lead to some referrals not ending up as booked appointments. Some may choose to withdraw; others simply did not reply, ‘non-responders’. Either way, those that do not are referred back to their GP. This study finds non-response was much less common that previous studies. However, it was common enough to offset the effect of PFB on missed booked appointments due to CNA and DNA. To that extent, the innovation did not make much change to civic disengagement, except for providers who are now better able to plan clinics.