Online civic intervention: A new form of political participation under conditions of a disruptive online discourse

In the everyday practice of online communication, we observe users deliberately reporting abusive content or opposing hate speech through counterspeech, while at the same time, online platforms are increasingly relying on and supporting this kind of user action to fight disruptive online behavior. We refer to this type of user engagement as online civic intervention (OCI) and regard it as a new form of user-based political participation in the digital sphere that contributes to an accessible and reasoned public discourse. Because OCI has received little scholarly attention thus far, this article conceptualizes low- and high-threshold types of OCI as different kinds of user responses to common disruptive online behavior such as hate speech or hostility toward the media. Against the background of participation research, we propose a theoretically grounded individual-level model that serves to explain OCI

Between individual and collective social effort: Vocabularies of informed citizenship in different information environments

Information disorder and digital media affordances challenge informed citizenship as an ideal and in practice. While scholars have attempted to adapt the normative ideal to contemporary changes and challenges by introducing new metaphors and normative benchmarks, this study investigates citizens’ ideals and practices of informed citizenship by deploying the concept of citizenship vocabularies. Drawing on interviews with citizens from different information environments—Germany and Serbia—we offer a conceptual outline of informed citizenship as an individual and collective social effort. Our findings illustrate the role of the information environment in shaping citizenship vocabularies. We advance the idea of informed citizenship as a relational practice, arguing for a social ontological approach to theorizing informed citizenship today

The effects of narratives and popularity cues on signing online petitions in two advanced democracies

Online petitions have become a widespread vehicle for contemporary political participation. While research tends to focus on individual factors for potential petitioners that influence signing, less attention has been paid to the influence of the actual text of petitions. This paper uses data from an original web-based survey experiment in Australia and Germany to test the influence of content factors: narratives (i.e., stories based on individual experiences and emotions) and popularity cues (i.e., high numbers of signatures) across two issues: climate change and welfare policy. We find that narratives within petition texts involve readers through the mechanism of transportation and motivate them to sign petitions, as do popularity cues. The effects of narratives were found across both countries but tended to be stronger in Germany than in Australia. We argue that our novel framework can be used for future research on how the presentation of issues shape contemporary political participation

The Selective Catalyst: Internet use as a mediator of citizenship norms' effects on political participation

We test the mediating effect of media use on the effects of citizenship norms - shared ideas of what a good citizen is - on political participation. We do so by comparing France and Finland, two countries with distinct media trust levels. Results support the notion that Internet use works as a selective catalyst of political participation, as it is enhanced merely by engaged citizenship norms but not by dutiful citizenship norms. Within the nexus of citizenship norms, media use, and political participation, this article contributes to a better understanding of the normative premises for the Internet use to promote political engagement within differing media contexts

What Makes a Good Citizen Online? The Emergence of Discursive Citizenship Norms in Social Media Environments

The importance of citizenship norms—shared understandings of how citizens ought to participate in society—has been discussed at length in the past two decades, particularly in conversations around changing notions of citizenship in the digital age. Yet, most studies have gravitated between the two poles of dutiful and self-actualizing citizenship. In this study, we explore which citizenship norms people express related to their political participation in social media environments and which affordances and experiences in social media environments shape these norms. Through interviews and focus group discussions, we found that citizenship norms emerge in response to positive and negative experiences in social media environments. We found three groups of norms that are distinctive to the networked environments of social media: individual information care, discourse care, and considered contribution. These can serve as conceptual frames for understanding the normative underpinnings of discursive participation in social media environments from the perspective of ordinary citizens

Framing 0/1: wie die Medien über die 'Digitalisierung der Gesellschaft' berichten

Die Art und Weise, wie die Medien über Technik und die damit verbundenen Risiken berichten, wird immer wieder problematisiert. An diese Debatte knüpft die vorliegende Studie an. Es wird untersucht, wie das Thema Digitalisierung und digitale Technologien in ausgewählten Printmedien im Zeitverlauf dargestellt wird. Die Ergebnisse der Untersuchung zeigen u. a., dass diese Technologien kaum in der Kritik stehen. Die empirischen Ergebnisse in zwei Zeiträumen sind zudem strukturell weitgehend identisch. Die wenigen Unterschiede, die festzustellen sind, deuten auf eine tendenzielle Eintrübung des Images digitaler Technologie hin. Nichtsdestotrotz wird von den Medien insgesamt ein eher positives Bild der Digitalisierung gezeichnet. Allerdings gilt dieses Bild nicht für alle Bereiche: Sowie nicht nur der eher konfliktfreie Unterhaltungsbereich im Mittelpunkt steht, sondern politische Aspekte oder Fragen von Recht und Sicherheit thematisiert werden, wandelt sich dieses Bild. Methodisch zeigte sich zudem, dass die Kombination von holistischer und rekonstruktiver Frame-Ermittlung ein vielversprechendes empirisches Vorgehen darstellt