Search results for "civic engagement"

Journalism and fake news in the Covid-19 era. Perspectives for media education in Italy

2020

In this article, drawing from the data collected by the AGCOM during the pandemic crisis, we argue that the emergence of COVID 19 has made more evident the new relationships between the informative cybercascades, the significant need of news during a crisis, the presence of disinformation online, and the relevant consequences on collective narrations, often producing a generalized panic. We also argue that infotainment can be considered a critical turning point in the relationship between true and false in the news because of its fusion of facts, drama, and emotional narrative frames so that it is no longer possible to separate reality from media reconstruction of it. We finally argue that …

Citizens’ Participation : Palermo, an Italian Case Study of Civic Engagement

2019

Since the 1990s, much of the international literature on participation has been focused on the disaffection of citizens to- ward politics (Rosanvallon, 2008, 2011); the connection be- tween representative democracy and deliberative democracy (Macaluso, 2007); the presence of citizens in policy making and the new forms of participation. However, in the last few years, the civic engagement experiences have been numerous in the whole world. We can distinguish between top–down and bottom–up forms of governance promoted by citizens.In this paper we discuss some forms of bottom–up participation of citizens.

Understanding Civic Engagement on Social Media Based on Users’ Motivation to Contribute

2021

Social media offer various opportunities for civic engagement by, e.g., liking, sharing, or posting relevant content. Users’ motivation to contribute to relevant topics is quite divers and can stem from an intrinsic motivation to do good or external incentives such as being recognised and rewarded by other users. In our study, we adopt self-determination theory, which defines motivation as broad continuum ranging from intrinsic motivation to external regulation. We conducted a quantitative survey with 667 Facebook users to identify how the different kinds of motivation impact the users’ behaviour in terms of reading, liking, sharing, commenting, and posting topics relevant to civic engageme…

Service-learning in the Spanish university system : A study based on deans? perception

2019

The third mission of the University consists of returning to society part of what it receives. This way of understanding the relationship between society and university involves the use of new teaching/learning methodologies, in which teachers cease to be mere transmitters of knowledge, and students acquire an active and cr itical role in response to the social needs. Service - Learning is a methodological strategy that combines the theoretical training in a field of knowledge and the implementation of the knowledge acquired through provision of a service to the community. This methodology is appropriate to make that third mission of the university institution possible. The objective of thi…

In facebook we trust? Social media and political engagement, between Italian and Tunisian youth

2020

The article shows the results of a qualitative research on the use of social media by Tunisian and Italian youth, which is part of a broader project on Mediterranean digital culture. More precisely, this work is based on a series of focus groups, and aims at analyzing political participation, engagement and citizen journalism, by focusing on two countries deeply affected by digital propaganda – in Italy, with the growing popularity of Five Star Movement among young people, and in Tunisia with all aftermaths of the Arab Spring. Twelve focus groups were realized, with a total of 96 interviewed. As a result, we will consider two main findings: a critical use of social media, on the one hand, a…

Perceptions of institutions and social capital accumulation: A social categorization and shared agency‐based approach. Evidence from the Russian Fede…

2021

Analyzing Online Social Support Networks. The Case of Italian Time Banks on Facebook

2019

With the advent of the Internet, social support has changed in nature and size, and new forms of social help have emerged, that reshaped the meaning of this concept. In the last years, social support has been mainly investigated within the theoretical framework of relational sociology, using network analysis techniques (Crossley, 2011; Donati, 2011; Mische, 2011; Tronca, 2013). An interesting expression of social support networks and civic engagement is the phenomenon of time banks that has had a broad diffusion in the mid-1990s, after important changes in postindustrial society. These organizations are now trying to exploit the potential of the Internet and social networking sites as a mea…

Online Communication with Citizens. Should Latvian Public Institutions Learn from Foreign Experience?

2021

Civic engagement is a core value of democracy that approves legitimacy of democracy itself and decisions made by public institutions. In Latvia, civic engagement rates are decreasing, thus for public institutions it is important to find new ways how to engage citizens in the decision-making process. In the twenty-first century, it means that public institutions should also be present in social media. The objectives of the article are to identify foreign experience how public institutions are using social media for civic engagement and evaluate the reasons for Latvian public institutions to learn from this foreign experience. Accordingly, methods of the research are analysis of scientific pu…

Individual Differences in Adolescents’ Civic Engagement: The Role of Civic Discussions with Parents and Environmental Sensitivity

2023

The main goal of the current study was to examine the direct and moderating effects of civic dis-cussions with parents and environmental sensitivity using both the total score and its specific di-mensions (i.e., Aesthetic Sensitivity, AES; Ease of Excitation, EOE; Low Sensitivity Threshold, LST) on youth civic engagement (attitudes and behaviours). The empirical analysis relied on a ques-tionnaire-based survey conducted on a sample of 438 adolescents (30% males), aged between 14 and 18 years (M = 16.50, SD = 1.36). We used a structural equation model (SEM) with latent vari-ables and the latent moderated structural equation (LMS) method to test our hypotheses. Our re-sults showed that civic …

Unpacking the link between family socioeconomic status and civic engagement during the transition to adulthood: Do work values play a role?

2017

We investigated whether the link between family-of-origin socioeconomic status (SES) and civic engagement in young adulthood is mediated by youth’s work values, i.e., the desired characteristics of their current or future jobs. We used data from a Finnish study: 2004 (age 16–18, NT1 = 1,301); 2011 (age 23–25, N T2 = 1,096); and 2014 (age 25–27, NT3 = 1,138). A lower family SES in 2004 was negatively related to youth’s civic engagement in 2014. Lower family SES predicted the importance that youth attached to extrinsic job rewards (e.g., good pay) in 2011, but not the importance of intrinsic job rewards (e.g., learning opportunities). Extrinsic work values, in turn, predicted lower civic enga…