LC

Civic Declines, Civic Potential – New Modes of Civic Engagement in a Time of Crisis

Liberal-Representative Democracy & Citizen Tension

  • Representative democracy contains an intrinsic tension between:
    • Government by elected officials, and
    • The direct, deliberative involvement of citizens.
  • This tension creates intellectual space for thinking about “active citizenship” and the civic institutions that can support it.
  • Effective civil society requires:
    • Robust civic institutions,
    • Pro-civic communication that welcomes wide participation,
    • Large-scale mediating systems that let millions share a common civic experience.
  • Historically, professional news journalism has been the key mediator, operating as the so-called “Fourth Estate.”

Fourth-Estate Functions & Long-Running Critiques

  • Ideal functions: transparency, accountability, balanced debate, narrative of public affairs, access for civic organisations to the public sphere.
  • Critical traditions (dating back to 1920s):
    • News reproduces the political–economic–cultural status quo (Hallin, Herman & Chomsky).
    • News is partial/contingent, shaped by professional norms, epistemologies, staffing, resources (Gans, Reese, Tuchman).
    • Neoliberal market forces commodify news, foster hyper-commercialism and corporate conglomeration (Bagdikian, McChesney).
  • Hallin’s “high modernism” (post-WWII) = peak public trust in professional journalism—now contested in the era of mass social media.

Crisis in Traditional Media

Structural Drivers

  1. Deregulation of ownership & foreign investment rules.
  2. Market-driven competition => consumer orientation & tabloidisation (punditry, celebrity).
  3. Rise of PR/strategic-comms sectors able to “feed” under-resourced newsrooms.
  4. Digital disruption: cheap, networked Internet platforms siphon advertising.

Internet-Specific Impacts

  • Classified-ad loss to sites like Trade Me.
  • Search advertising dominated by Google (≈ 90\% share of that segment; search ≈ 60\% of NZ ad spend).
  • Surveillance-based, predictive ad models (Zuboff’s “surveillance capitalism”) accelerate revenue flight.
  • Traditional outlets carry heavy fixed costs—newsrooms, studios, transmitters—that platform companies do not.

NZ Examples & Adaptive Experiments

  • Highly concentrated ownership; extremely vulnerable to shocks (e.g.
    • Bauer Media shut down NZ Listener, North & South, Metro in 2020;
    • NZME cut \approx200 jobs).
  • Paywalls: NZ Herald’s “Premium” model; hybrid free + subscription at Newsroom; The Spinoff uses “partnership” and “membership” plus donation appeals.
  • State-backed answers: Local Democracy Reporting (RNZ + NZ On Air + NPA, 2019); new public-interest journalism fund (2021).
  • Competition watchdog: Commerce Commission blocked NZME–Stuff merger (2017; Court of Appeal 2018) to preserve plurality.

Civic Decline Narratives

  • Putnam’s “Bowling Alone” thesis: falling membership in associations ⇒ civic atrophy.
  • NZ indicators: low voter turnout, fewer church/union/party members, declining trust in media/business/politicians (Duncan, Vowles).
  • Vacuum partly filled by professional political comms & US-style attack politics (Hager’s Hollow Men, Dirty Politics).
  • Emergent “post-truth” vocabulary: “fake news,” “alternative facts,” low-trust info ecologies manipulated by actors from Russian hackers to ISIS.

Online Civic Engagement & Youth

Contesting “Youth Disengagement”

  • Surveys show lower party membership / election turnout ≠ lack of political impulse.
  • Key research (Loader, Vromen, Henn, Fyfe) finds vibrant but different forms of engagement.

From Dutiful to Networked Citizenship

  • Old “dutiful” model: join parties/unions, consume mass-mediated political culture.
  • New “networked” model (Loader et al.):
    • Individualised, lifestyle-driven, issue-specific, relational.
    • Operates through social media and ad-hoc digital actions (e-petitions, boycotts, micro-donations, volunteering, expressive posts).
  • Bennett & Segerberg: shift from “collective-action frames” to “personal-action frames” where \text{self-expression}\to\text{collective effect} via networks.
  • Concern: Is this “slacktivism”? Debates (Christensen, Halupka, Mozorov) warn against using old yardsticks that miss new dynamics.

Anatomy of Online Progressive Campaigning Organisations

  1. Hybridity (Chadwick): merge classic social-movement repertoires (protests, lobbying) with agile digital organising.
  2. Entrepreneurialism (Vromen & Coleman): episodic, opportunity-driven, rapid-response campaigns; multi-issue portfolio; “repertoire switching.”
  3. Data-Intensive Micro-Mobilisation: sophisticated CRMs & analytics derived from Obama campaigns; fine-grained member profiling.
  4. Affective Storytelling (Papacharissi):
    • Ganz’s “Public Narrative” formula – Story of Self → Story of Us → Story of Now.
    • Creates morally urgent, values-based appeals (“manufactured community,” Eaton).
  5. Branding & Market Orientation: campaigns are “products”; organisations act as “norm-preneurs” (Hall) aiming to shift what is considered normal/acceptable.
  6. Ladder-of-Engagement (Kanter): \text{awareness}\;\to\;\text{low-cost e-action}\;\to\;\text{donations}\;\to\;\text{offline action}.

Strengths vs Risks

  • Strengths: flexibility, scale, low barriers, quick mobilisation, bridges online ↔ offline.
  • Risks: binary storytelling, emotional over rational, potential oversimplification; presence of anti-civic/dark networks (neo-fascist, terrorist propaganda).

Case Study: Generation Zero (NZ)

  • Origin: youth delegation to 2010 UN Climate Conference; founded 2011.
  • Vision: non-partisan, solutions-focused climate action; “from all backgrounds,” though empirical studies show core base = young, white, urban, middle-class, centre-left.

Organisational Infrastructure

  • Robust supporter database, analytics, graphic design, social media channels, mainstream-media strategy.
  • Imported tool-kits from GetUp!, MoveOn, Organizing for America.

Campaign Milestones

  1. Early flash-mobs, stunts (funeral processions for fossil fuels).
  2. Shift to digital engagement & brand clarity.
  3. Signature campaigns:
    • “Congestion-Free Network” – Auckland PT rethink.
    • “50/50” – split national transport budget equally.
    • “Density Done Well,” “Fix Our City,” “K Rd Protected Cycle Lanes,” “Chamberlain Park” – local planning issues.
    • Rapid-response “Send the Cycle Lanes Some Love” post-COVID cycling boom.
    • Flagship legislative win: Zero Carbon Bill → Climate Change Response Amendment Act 2019.

Hybrid & Entrepreneurial Traits

  • Mix of online petitions, email blasts, submission templates, plus offline events & lobbying.
  • Uses personal-action frames to make staid policy (transport budgets) resonate with youth identities.
  • Maintains a “dutiful” dimension: tools that nudge supporters toward formal democratic acts (voting, official submissions).

Implications & Future of Civic Engagement

  • Traditional media crisis + civic declines ≠ civic death; instead, terrain is reorganising.
  • Online progressive campaign orgs (Generation Zero, MoveOn, GetUp!, 38 Degrees, Action Station) illustrate new norms:
    • Individualised yet networked participation,
    • Affective, story-led mobilisation,
    • Entrepreneurial advocacy bridging markets and politics.
  • Policymakers and scholars must reconsider what counts as “active citizenship,” recognising that \text{personal identity} + \text{digital networks} \to \text{collective civic impact}.
  • Ongoing tensions: sustaining high-quality journalism, mitigating “post-truth” harms, and ensuring story-based activism does not hollow out deliberative complexity.

Numerical & Statistical Highlights (LaTeX Notation)

  • Google’s share of NZ search-based advertising: 90\%.
  • Search advertising ≈ 60\% of total NZ ad spend.
  • NZME redundancy round (COVID-19 era): \sim 200 jobs.
  • Commerce Commission judged Stuff–NZME merger would cause “substantial loss of quality & plurality”; cost–benefit calculus deemed not in public interest.
  • Stuff management buy-out reportedly for NZ\$1.
  • Online petition/email vs physical protest heuristic: 10{,}000\;\text{emails} < 10{,}000\;\text{people in the street} (Hall, 2019).

Ethical, Philosophical & Practical Considerations

  • Surveillance capitalism: platforms profit from commodified user data, often at democracy’s expense (Zuboff).
  • Attack politics and PR manipulation erode trust; investigative journalism becomes more vital yet less funded.
  • Affective mobilisation can energise but also polarise; campaigns must balance emotional resonance with factual rigor.
  • Regulatory gaps: laissez-faire stance leaves local journalism vulnerable to global capital and tech monopolies.
  • Dark networked publics (ISIS recruiting, neo-fascist forums) show that connective action is norm-agnostic; civic health depends on values, not merely connectivity.