How do we even talk about civic engagement?
Not quite new, but posting again here: this is a backgrounder we wrote a couple weeks back explaining our current approach to thinking about questions of civic engagement, and some context on how it is generally studied.
A Quick Backgrounder on Studying Civic Engagement
Not so much an article this week, but an initial series of observations we’ve found around language in our research.
One challenge we’ve noticed is just how loaded language around civic engagement is. The phrase “civic engagement” itself has a whole host of baggage, and a lot of that has to do with what we might even mean when we use a word like “civic”. Two other key words to flag are “community” and “citizen”.
These come up a lot because when we try and have conversations with folks, and even in the survey instruments often used in this space, words like “civic”, “community” and “citizen” are quickly thrown around and generate a whole host of reactions that probably need to be unpacked. To wit:
“Civic” often suddenly falls for the narrow definition problem. If you ask someone about what their “civic” role is, it immediately calls upon the ‘did you vote, do you volunteer’ mental model of engagement.
“Community” becomes a question of connection, and often presumes a sense of locality. Individuals might say they feel a low sense of community, and it’s revealed that while they don’t feel particularly connected to their physical neighborhood, they’re a part of multiple interest groups who meet weekly or bi-weekly, have social outings, etc.
“Citizen” immediately evokes duties that range from jury to voting.
Most of these observations are pretty obvious once named, but it becomes a real challenge then when trying to research civic engagement! We’ve seen numerous surveys approaching elements of engagement that use these words with scales (ANES has questions around how civically engaged we are etc).
our take
One recent design probe we launched (stay tuned for some updates on this!) tried to focus more on phrases like “local engagement” and “feeling connected to” and tried to frame it in terms of neighborhoods, groups and spaces.
Initial results show a whole variety of actions that seemed to resonate with participants outside the bounds of classic “civic engagement”… from noticing things in the park to street sales.
Part of our research then, in trying to build a more inclusive model of engagement, is around the very language we use to approach the question. So if you have any thoughts on how you might approach this, we’d love to hear from you.
Doing this different too this time!
Please consider replying and telling us what kinds of things you would think of if someone asked you:
Are you civically engaged? And how?
Are you engaged in your community? And how?
Are you an engaged citizen? And how?
Thank you!
A paper shared on the weekend at AAPOR (the American Association for Public Opinion Research) updates models on how to think about likely voters. We’ll give you our analysis and take on it next week
Research on civic engagement by non-citizens - some lit review and some initial findings.
Some results and analysis from our design probes around local community and engagement.
Thank you to all those who have already dropped a line and shared your thoughts. And thanks in advance to sharing this with anyone else you think might be interested.
If you think of feedback, suggestions, or people we should meet, please get in touch! You can email us at: 1stpersonprojects@thedifferenceengine.co