Civic Engagement Measure

A Civic Engagement Measure is an political engagement measure for a citizenry.

• Context:
  • …
• Counter-Example(s):
  • Business Lobbying.
• See: Civic Technology, Bowling Alone, Volunteerism, Personal Responsibility, Representative Democracy, Canvassing, Buycott.

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References

2016

• (Wikipedia, 2016) ⇒ http://wikipedia.org/wiki/civic_engagement Retrieved:2016-2-9.
  • Civic engagement or civic participation is the encouragement of the general public to become involved in the political process and the issues that affect the community.

2016

• (Wikipedia, 2016) ⇒ http://wikipedia.org/wiki/civic_engagement#Forms Retrieved:2016-2-9.
  • Civic engagement can take many forms — from individual volunteerism to organizational involvement to electoral participation. It can include efforts to directly address an issue, work with others in a community to solve a problem or interact with the institutions of representative democracy. Another way of describing this concept is the sense of personal responsibility individuals feel to uphold their obligations, as part of any community. “Youth civic engagement" has identical aims, only with consideration for youth voice. A study published by the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning & Engagement at Tufts University, divided civic engagement into 3 categories: civic, electoral, and political voice. Scholars of youth engagement online have called for a broader interpretation of civic engagement that focuses on the purpose behind current institutions and activities and include emerging institutions and activities that achieve the same purposes. These civic engagement researchers suggest that the reduction of civic life into small sets of explicitly electoral behaviors may be insufficient to describe the full spectrum of public involvement in civic life. An alarm was sounded at the beginning of the 21st Century about changes in civic participation patterns by Robert Putnam in his provocative book, Bowling Alone. Putnam argued that despite rapid increases in higher education opportunities that may foster civic engagement, Americans were dropping out of political and organized community life. A number of studies suggested that while more youth are volunteering, fewer are voting or becoming politically engaged.

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