Why We Engage: How Theories of Human Behavior Contribute to Our Understanding of Civic Engagement in a Digital Era
Why We Engage: How Theories of Human Behavior Contribute to Our Understanding of Civic Engagement in a Digital Era
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我们为何参与：人类行为理论如何有助于我们理解数字时代的公民参与
DOI：
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发表时间：
2013
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
Martina Balestra
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文献类型：
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作者：
Eric Gordon;Jessica Baldwin;Martina Balestra
随着数字通信技术在过去几十年中的发展，网络结构和可访问性与硬件和软件进步的融合使个人能够以各种甚至相互矛盾的方式进行互动。他们可以探索，隐藏，接触，评估，连接，谈判，交换和协调，比以往任何时候都更大。此外，这已经转化为越来越多的用户以前所未有的方式与信息交互，并且由于设备的便携性，在全新的物理位置。Twitter、Facebook和Foursquare在不同的应用程序平台上同时更新彼此的照片和地点的印象;移动的锻炼应用程序允许用户跟踪自己的运动以及查看他们地理附近的其他人跑步的地方; Yelp用户可以阅读社交网络朋友和社区中陌生人对特定餐厅的选择性评论; Facebook上的朋友可以看到他们的同龄人买了什么，听了什么，读了什么--从他们能够访问互联网的任何地方。这些应用程序中的大多数都跨平台更新，既可以最大限度地覆盖用户的社交群体，又可以高度选择性地将信息定向到其社交网络的子集。正如快速发展的连通性和通信技术正在改变个人在社会领域的体验一样，参与公民生活的意义也在发生变化，无论是人们如何参与还是如何衡量。公民参与包括个人关注公共生活的所有方式，以及个人如何了解和参与个人直接私人或亲密领域以外的所有问题和背景。从社交媒体到移动的报道，新技术和相应的社会实践提供了不同的方式来记录、分享和放大这种关注。影响公民生活的媒体对象或工具可以分为两大类：一类是专门为社区参与而设计的（例如，用于地方规划的数字游戏或向市理事会提供反馈的应用程序），另一类是随后用于社区参与的通用工具（例如Twitter或Facebook在阿拉伯之春或伦敦骚乱中的作用）。此外，这些工具可以调解公民、地方组织或政府机构之间的任何数量的关系。以数字为媒介的公民参与涵盖了从使用社交媒体组织实际抗议活动（例如，占领），使用数字化工具黑客机构（例如，匿名），使用城市生产的移动的应用程序来访问和共同生产政府服务，使用数字平台进行审议。与其试图在这样一系列的可能性中确定公民媒体工具是什么样子（通过关注深入的例子或案例研究），我们将转而关注数字化工具如何扩展公民生活的背景和参与的动机，以及在数字时代参与公民生活是什么样子。我们提出这一文献综述作为一种手段，探索人类行为的理论与参与公民生活的动机和利益的交叉点。我们汇集了来自行为经济学，社会学，心理学和传播学研究的文献，以揭示传统上如何理解公民行为者，机构和决策过程，以及新兴媒体工具和实践如何迫使他们重新思考。
As digital communication technologies have evolved over the past few decades, the convergence of network structure and accessibility with hardware and software advances has allowed individuals to interact in various, even contradictory, ways. They can explore, hide, reach out, evaluate, connect, negotiate, exchange, and coordinate to a greater degree than ever before. Furthermore, this has translated to an ever-increasing number of users interacting with information in unprecedented ways and, due to device portability, in totally new physical locations. Twitter, Facebook, and Foursquare update each other simultaneously across application platforms with near-real time photos and impressions of places; mobile exercise applications allow users to track their own movements as well as view where others in their geographic vicinity went running; Yelp users can read selective reviews from social network friends and strangers in their community on a specific restaurant; and Facebook friends can see what their peers bought, listened to, and read - from anywhere they are able to access the Internet. Most of these apps update across platforms enabling both maximum reach across a user’s social group as well as a highly selective direction of information to a subset of their social network. Just as the rapidly evolving landscape of connectivity and communications technology is transforming the individual’s experience of the social sphere, what it means to participate in civic life is also changing, both in how people do it and how it is measured. Civic engagement includes all the ways in which individuals attend to the concerns of public life, how one learns about and participates in all of the issues and contexts beyond one’s immediate private or intimate sphere. New technologies and corresponding social practices, from social media to mobile reporting, are providing different ways to record, share, and amplify that attentiveness. Media objects or tools that impact civic life can be understood within two broad types: those designed specifically with the purpose of community engagement in mind (for instance, a digital game for local planning or an app to give feedback to city council) or generic tools that are subsequently appropriated for engaging a community (such as Twitter or Facebook’s role in the Arab Spring or London riots). Moreover, these tools can mediate any number of relationships between or among citizens, local organizations, or government institutions. Digitally mediated civic engagement runs the gamut of phenomena from organizing physical protests using social media (e.g., Occupy), to using digital tools to hack institutions (e.g., Anonymous), to using city-produced mobile applications to access and coproduce government services, to using digital platforms for deliberating. Rather than try to identify what civic media tools look like in the midst of such an array of possibilities (by focusing on in depth examples or case studies), going forward we will instead focus on how digital tools expand the context of civic life and motivations for engagement, and what participating in civic life looks like in a digital era. We present this literature review as a means of exploring the intersection of theories of human behavior with the motivations for and benefits of engaging in civic life. We bring together literature from behavioral economics, sociology, psychology and communication studies to reveal how civic actors, institutions, and decision-making processes have been traditionally understood, and how emerging media tools and practices are forcing their reconsideration.