Civic Life In The Information Age

Defying the general belief that American citizenship is in decline, Sanford claims that Generation X is actually taking positions of civic leadership and authority as Baby Boomers retire. By exploring traditional instruments of social capital, civic culture and political science, she attempts to make us understand this maligned generation better.

Advances in information technology are transforming democratic governance. Power over information has become decentralized, fostering new types of community and different roles for government. This volume—developed by the Visions of Governance in the 21st Century program at the Kennedy School of Government—explores the ways in which the information revolution is changing our institutions of governance. Contributors examine the impact of technology on our basic institutions and processes of governance, including representation, community, politics, bureaucracy, and sovereignty. Their essays illuminate many of the promises and challenges of twenty-first century government. The contributors (all from Harvard unless otherwise indicated) include Joseph S. Nye Jr., Arthur Isak Applbaum, Dennis Thompson, William A. Galston (University of Maryland), L. Jean Camp, Pippa Norris, Anna Greenberg, Elaine Ciulla Kamarck, David C. King, Jane Fountain, Jerry Mechling, and Robert O. Keohane (Duke University).

This book reflects each contributor's vision of the future, visions that range from the enthusiastic and hopeful to the pessimistic and fearful.

This book explores young people’s civic experiences in contemporary American society, and how they navigate the political world in an era defined by digital media. Drawing on the experiences of young people before they have reached voting age, the book provides vital perspectives on citizenship and civic engagement of a part of the population that is often overlooked. The author engages with the tensions young people encounter in their everyday personal and civic lives, particularly in their understanding and experience of civic identity in ways that are shaped by society’s (mis)perceptions of youth. The book introduces a new framework of civic identity that has been directly informed by the lived civic experiences of young people themselves. The findings will be of great interest to researchers and students working in political science, sociology, youth studies, education studies, and media studies, as well as policy-makers, practitioners, and parents of young people.

This book argues that the declining nature of traditional forms of civic participation over the last half century are the result of the evolution of larger institutional, social, and historical forces that have favored the self-interest motivation at the expense of civic duty

Technology, and particularly the Internet, has caused many changes in the realm of politics. Mainstream media no longer has a monopoly on political commentary as social media, blogs, and user-generated video streaming sites have emerged as an outlet for citizens and political activists to openly voice their opinions, organize political demonstrations, and network online. The Handbook of Research on Political Activism in the Information Age includes progressive research from more than 39 international experts at universities and research institutions across 15 different countries. Each of the 25 scholarly chapter contributions focus on topics pertaining to the application of information technology, engineering, and mathematics to political activism. Through its analysis of the methods for political activism in the information age, the effectiveness of these methods, as well as emerging analytical tools, this book is designed for use by researchers, activists, political scientists, engineers, computer scientists, journalists, professors, students and professionals working in the fields of politics, e-government, media and communications, and Internet marketing.

This book constitutes the refereed post-conference proceedings of the 6th European Conference on Information Literacy, ECIL 2018, held in Oulu, Finland, in September 2018. The 58 revised papers included in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 241 submissions. The papers cover a wide range of topics in the field of information literacy and focus on information literacy in everyday life. They are organized in the following topical sections: information literacy in different contexts of everyday life; information literacy, active citizenship and community engagement; information literacy, health and well-being; workplace information literacy and employability; information literacy research and information literacy in theoretical context; information seeking and information behavior; information literacy for different groups in different cultures and countries; information literacy for different groups in different cultures and countries; information literacy instruction; information literacy and aspects of education; data literacy and reserach data management; copyright literacy; information literacy and lifelong learning.

This book calls for a renewed examination of the professions as public or semi-public institutions with significant influence on civic culture. It offers a treatment of twelve different professions, showing how each traditionally understood itself, how it functioned within society, and how it understands itself today.