Communication, Community, and Democracy: Toward a Theory of the Communicatively-Integrated Community

For democracy to work, community is necessary. This argument is not obvious. If democracy simply consists in a sufficient number of individuals turning out to vote to generate legitimacy for governments, then the proposition doesn't necessarily hold. But historian Robert Wiebe (1995) argues that the essence of democracy, in America at least, is self-rule. I think this is true, but the definition of self-rule implicitly asks: what is the self that rules and how is it formed? The democratic self is composed of two separate but related bodies. The first are publics of citizens. The second are the communities in which they live. The public concerns the problem of what sort of rule should we have as democratic citizens; the community what kind of selves are needed as the agents of democracy. This essay is centrally concerned with the second half of the equation: how individuals and groups form democratic selves, or identities, and under what conditions of life. The answer is that they do so in communities, and, as I will argue, democratic groups are more likely to form in communities that are integrated through communication. But at least a few words about the publics of democracy are necessary before we begin this larger argument

A Public Voice for Youth: The Audience Problem in Digital Media and Civic Education

Part of the Volume on Civic Life Online: Learning How Digital Media Can Engage Youth.Students should have opportunities to create digital media in schools. This is a promising way to enhance their "civic engagement," which comprises political activism, deliberation, problem-solving, and participation in shaping a culture. All these forms of civic engagement require the effective use of a "public voice," which should be taught as part of digital media education. To provide digital media courses that teach civic engagement will mean overcoming several challenges, including a lack of time, funding, and training. An additional problem is especially relevant to the question of public voice. Students must find appropriate audiences for their work in a crowded media environment dominated by commercial products. The chapter concludes with strategies for building audiences, the most difficult but promising of which is to turn adolescents' offline communities -- especially high schools -- into more genuine communities

Building Bridges Between Communication Studies and Community: A Praxis-Approach

In an effort to demonstrate the field’s usefulness and essentiality to our world, communication studies’ praxis orientation needs to be clearly pursued and publicized. Implementing service-learning into the communication studies classroom could achieve this goal. Through extending the scholarship of Britt (2012) and Pollack (1999), this article proposes that communication educators ground and articulate their service-learning pedagogy from three different paradigmatic lenses; the experiential paradigm, the social change paradigm, and the citizenship paradigm. Moreover, communication administrators ought to understand the different paradigmatic foundations, which drive service-learning enactment, in an effort to not privilege one perspective over another. The service-learning literature is vast and discusses service-learning’s history, definitional ground, and benefits. This article responds to one criticism of service-learning and provides a way in which communication educators and administrators could respond. By implementing service learning from a clearly articulated paradigmatic foundation, the pedagogy’s praxis orientation is strengthened, opening up the opportunity for more bridges to be built between academy and community

Region Community in Communication Theory

The aim of the report is to determine how local and regional newspapers represent local communities and how their communicative integration has been promoted. Mass media, establishing community cognition about its existence, involvement into the community, identification and belonging to the community, represent a perfect model of interaction between community and communication. During the content analysis of the press publications of local newspapers of Latgale region the typological characteristics and classification are emphasized, the role of the press in the development of the region inhabitants is defined, the direction and structure of the editorial board activities, newspapers’ content, authors and genres are inspected. The practice of local journalism varies in different places; there are some common trends but specific characteristics are noticed in each local community. They are being affected by social context, which is characterized by regional values and culture, since they correspond to the community and individual interaction as well. It is possible to see differences both in community structure, spread and in expressions of local newspapers within the region

Towards a Communicative City: Applying a New Framework for Understanding Communication and City

ince the Industrial Revolution with the productivity change brought by technology and modern mass media the distance between time and space has been shortened and the imagined urban community has been brought about Newspapers television and other mass media can not only have information functions but also unite and connect people into a whole through the communication network thus promoting the integration of urban communities However with the development of the internet and the explosive growth of urban population the rise of individualism has made the connection of traditional urban society declared unorganized and the traditional mass media has also lost its unified integration ability Bruhn 2011 8 The city has fallen into an unprecedented communication crisis and the construction of a coordinated and unified relationship between different individuals has become an urgent problem to be solved In other words the global expansion of the modernization process has led to the fragmentation of society and people find themselves in a modern world that has lost contact with the roots of communicability Internet technology which originally hoped to improve the efficiency of social communication has instead intensified social friction conflict and differentiation and communicability has become a significant dilemma faced by the media societ

Why we find little evidence of digital fragmentation, but should not stop researching it

Während Massenmedien üblicherweise integratives Potenzial zugeschrieben wird, wird dem Internet eher eine schädliche Wirkung auf den gesellschaftlichen Zusammenhalt unterstellt. Entsprechende Metaphern zu "Filterblasen" und "Echokammern" haben inzwischen auch in den öffentlichen Diskurs Einzug gehalten. Studien, die entsprechende Wirkungen einer digitalen Fragmentierung nachweisen, sind allerdings bisher eher selten. Der empirische Forschungsstand stützt Befürchtungen zu einem deutlichen Verlust an gesellschaftlichem Zusammenhalt durch das Internet somit nicht. Allerdings gibt es bei Extremgruppen am politischen Rand Anzeichen für digitale Fragmentierung. Angesichts des heterogenen Forschungsstands systematisiert der Beitrag theoretische Annahmen und empirische Befunde und argumentiert, dass die Erfassung digitaler Fragmentierung und ihrer Wirkungen weiter notwendig ist.While mass media are generally ascribed integrative potential, scholars assume negative effects on social cohesion for the Internet. Respective metaphors such as "filter bubbles" and "echo chambers" have meanwhile found their way into public discourse. However, empirical research that documents detrimental effects of digital fragmentation remains the exception. The state of research thus does not support fears about a stark loss of social cohesion due to the Internet. Yet there are groups on the fringe of the political spectrum that appear to be digitally fragmented. Given these heterogeneous results, the article systematizes theoretical assumptions and empirical findings and argues that it remains necessary to assess the extent and effects of digital fragmentation

Community Literacy, Labor Market Intermediaries, and Community Communication Ecologies

Arguing that we fail both parents and students if we continue to think of community literacy as a dichotomy between school and work, this article illustrates Labor Market Intermediaries (LMIs) as sites of community literacy. Th e investigation of LMIs in a particular community (Greater Lafayette, Indiana) allows for a more thorough understanding of community literacy outside of traditional sites such as schools, community centers, and adult education programs; in turn, the article argues that such an understanding may lead to more productive involvement by literacy educators in our communities

Local news and audiences’ wellbeing:the roles of motivation, satisfaction, and trust

Local news plays an important role in generating a sense of community attachment. However, the relationship between local news and wellbeing is less explored. Based on a national survey of 6,367 Australians, this study found that trust in and satisfaction with local news were linked with higher personal and community wellbeing. News-related factors (motivation, satisfaction, trust) were more strongly related to community wellbeing than to personal wellbeing. Accessing local news for community-related reasons was the strongest predictor of wellbeing. Guided by uses and gratifications theory, this study provides new insights into the role of local news in peoples’ lives, and emphasises the need to protect local news from further decline.</p