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

这项研究探讨了民主参与是否随着人们越来越多地参与数字信息源而发生变化。报告重点关注的背景是，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获得的政治支持。这项研究阐述了什么样的关系，如果有的话，之间存在着不断变化的媒体使用和选举的变化。该研究项目向学者和决策者广泛传播关于媒体技术如何改变民主参与的形式和规范的研究结果和数据。这项研究通过广泛提供数据，吸引了更广泛的受众，这可以促进制定新的公共教育举措和运动，以增加民主和公民对话。它还对本科生和研究生进行科学数据收集和分析方法的培训。该项目结合了在线和离线研究方法。研究人员将进行为期12个月的密集民族志研究，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发生变化，以及公民参与如何在当地和全国范围内更广泛地形成。与此同时，将利用在推特和选定的聊天室中进行的数字人种志来跟踪面对面与数字环境之间在修辞和参与风格方面是否有明显的差异。除了改变政治参与的形式，这项研究还探讨了人们对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NSF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.