Comparative Ethnography of Face-to-Face and Digital Political Participation

这项研究询问，随着人们越来越多地接触数字信息来源，民主参与是否正在发生变化。它关注的背景是，记者和学者将选举变化归因于数字平台的创新，以及通过社交媒体和用户主持的网站和论坛培养的政治支持。这项研究的目的是探讨媒体使用变化与选举转变之间的关系（如果有的话）。这个研究项目向学者和政策制定者广泛传播有关媒体技术如何改变民主参与的形式和规范的发现和数据。该研究通过广泛获取其数据，吸引了更广泛的受众，这可以促进新的公共教育倡议和运动的发展，以增加民主和公民对话。它还训练本科生和研究生科学数据收集和分析的方法。这个项目结合了线上和线下的研究方法。研究人员将进行为期12个月的密集人种学研究，包括参与者观察和访谈，以调查信息传播的途径，最广泛使用的媒体平台，这些平台是否随着时间的推移而改变，以及公民参与如何在地方和全国范围内更广泛地形成。同时，在Twitter和选择性聊天室中进行的数字人种学将用于跟踪面对面与数字环境之间是否存在可观察到的参与修辞和风格差异。除了政治参与形式的转变之外，本研究还探讨了人们对其国家身份的不断变化的体验，以及数字新闻和媒体如何重塑国家身份和归属感。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This study asks whether democratic participation is changing as people increasingly engage with digital information sources. It focuses on a context where electoral shifts have been attributed by journalists and scholars to the innovation of digital platforms and to political support fostered through social media and user-moderated websites and forums. This study sets out to what relationship, if any, exists between changing media use and electoral shifts. This research project disseminates findings and data widely to scholars and policy makers about how media technologies may be altering forms and norms of democratic participation. The study engages a broader audience by making its data widely accessible, which can foster development of new public education initiatives and campaigns for increasing democratic and civic dialogue. It also trains undergraduate and graduate students in methods of scientific data collection and analysis. This project combines online and offline research methods. The researcher will conduct twelve months of intensive ethnographic research including participant observation and interviews to investigate pathways of information dissemination, what media platforms are most widely used, whether these have changed over time, and how civic participation takes shape more broadly, both locally and nationally. Concurrently, digital ethnography conducted on Twitter and in selective chat rooms will be used to track whether there are observable differences in rhetoric and styles of participation between face-to-face versus digital contexts. In addition to shifting forms of political participation, this study explores people’s changing experiences of their national identity, and how national identities and belonging may be reshaped by digital news and media.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.