Challenges that Digital Citizenship will Help Overcome

Democracy, Digital Citizenship, and why it Matters

Before delving into the features of the site, it is important to understand why we should care about what it does. We are a society that strives to be a champion of political democracy and more developing nations around the world have become increasingly democratic. People value democracy because it is believed to protect the rights of the population. By definition, democracy is governance by the population, with power distributed across the citizenry rather than centralized in the hands of the few. The United States, and many nations striving to achieve democracy, use representative democracy to elect leaders who are expected to make laws protecting the rights and interests of their constituents. The key point of defining democracy related to digiciti.org is that success of democratic governance requires participation from well-informed citizens. The site creates a more accessible and appealing means of political participation than we have ever seen before, offering an opportunity to form a more active and well informed citizenry. Countries using a representative democracy would likely have legislative outcomes better matching the will of the people when more of the population participates in elections and pays closer attention to political issues. Quality of life for all citizens, and a measure of whether a country is more or less democratic depends on an informed and active electorate.

Participation in the US

Knowing that the quantity and quality of participation is so important to having a truly democratic society, it is critical to recognize that the US, along with many nations, has a significant opportunity to improve in this regard. Many experts would make the normative argument that the U.S. electorate does not sufficiently participate in political deliberation (meaning political thought, communication, and expressive action such as voting). Debating issues and expressing political views is important but there is arguably no political action of greater importance to a citizen than casting a vote.

The U.S. Census Bureau reported that only 61.8% of the eligible public voted in the 2012 presidential election (considered a good turnout by historical standards) which means 38.2% of eligible voters did not participate in the critical action of selecting the president (census.gov, 2012). During non-presidential election years the voter turnout percentages for congressional elections tended to be closer to 35% since the early 70s, which means that roughly 65% of the voting eligible population consistently did not participate in selecting members of congress (census.gov, 2012). This argument assumes that voting is a strong measure of civic engagement in the political process and contends that we have great room for improvement as a nation striving for democratic governance.

There are many factors that affect voter turnout but surely having increased access to information and making participation easier can only improve it. State and local participation also has great room for improvement across the country. The site hopes to increase voter turnout as well as the voter’s sense of effectiveness in making change or defending the status quo.

Awareness in the US

The other concern of maintaining an informed electorate is tied to participation and democracy. Democracy depends on the expectation that increased participation correlates with increased issue awareness which helps voters to take positions and obtain their desired policy outcomes. Unfortunately, there are many examples showing that the U.S. electorate is poorly informed on political issues.  One such example is found in a 2013 poll in Louisiana which found that 29% of respondents believed Obama was responsible for mishandling the response to the hurricane Katrina, while only 28% believed G.W. Bush was responsible, and the majority claiming uncertainty (Siddiqui, 2013). President Obama was not in office until 3 years after Katrina and yet more people, in the very state that suffered from the disaster, blamed him for mismanagement than the actual president at the time (Siddiqui, 2013).

In November 2014, the Senate narrowly rejected the Keystone XL pipeline bill and most of the public believed the project was a vastly more Republican sponsored action, but in truth it has received strong bipartisan support (Edwards-Levy, 2014). Louisiana’s Democratic senator Mary Landrieu was one of the strongest supporters of the bill, but “Americans are about four times more likely to think of Keystone as being supported by Republicans in Congress as they are to say it has bipartisan support” (Edwards-Levy, 2014). Opponents sensationalizing the evils of the Republican Party have consistently aligned them with “big oil” interest groups undermining the will of the population, but in the case of the Keystone project, it is very much untrue and perhaps widespread knowledge of the fact that it actually received bipartisan support would have improved its chances for passage.

Another example of our ill informed electorate can be found in the widespread misinformation regarding the Affordable Care Act. A Politifact article revealing the “top 16 myths about the healthcare law” does an excellent job of illustrating how vulnerable an electorate can be when they are steadily misinformed to believe claims that Obamacare supports “death panels”, or has the IRS take over the system with excessive access to personal information (Holan, 2013). Prominent political figures made a wide variety of misleading claims to form these myths. National surveys from 2010 and 2012, analyzed by a Stanford University study on public understanding of the ACA, led researchers to conclude that if the public had perfect understanding of key elements in the law, “the proportion of Americans who favor the bill might increase from the current level of 32% to 70%” (Gross, 2013).

Such figures about low participation and limited issue awareness of the electorate show us that political deliberation can be improved, and that doing so would likely improve upon the awareness of the electorate thus increasing the strengthening our democracy. These are examples where increased political awareness would affect how the electorate makes decisions. As illustrated by the politically opposing examples, both liberals and conservatives stand to benefit from improved public knowledge on issues. Surely this is an important enough factor to warrant the creation of a well-known website that offers concise non-biased access to political information, as well as access to info from peers.

Trends of Online Political Activity

To analyze online political deliberation and how it has formed, as well as to assess the future of online interactions, it is prudent to review the progress of widespread adoption of the internet. The first internet network was founded by the U.S. military in the form of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) (Dusold, 1996). This was used internally within the military and was focused on transmission of data or communications in emergency or conflict situations (Dusold, 1996). Today, the internet is used across the globe, by regular civilians, for a wide variety of functions ranging from business and research, to entertainment. Pew Research found that “As of May 2013, 70% of American adults ages 18 and older have a high-speed broadband connection at home”, and this trend has steadily increased since 2000 as broadband replaced dial-up and the internet became an increasingly important household resource (Zickuhr, 2013). This trend of increasing usage is also true within the political arena as Pew Research reports that in Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign cycle 26% of the U.S. adult population used social networking sites (SNS) for some form of political activity (Smith, 2013). In the following election cycle for 2012 they found an increase of 13% with 39% of the public having used SNS for political activity (Smith, 2013). A sum total of public online political activity is difficult to measure because there are so many ways that individuals can partake in political activities above and beyond SNS websites. There are countless debates, blogs, interest group websites, news media, and government sites which offer information and opportunities to express one’s views. Digital Citizen would take these fragmented means of expression and customize them for political interaction, combine their unique features to make a convenient site that consolidates effective political tools and information, and intertwine public information provided by the government with user made content. It will satisfy the growing demand for a means of online political expression.

There is a well-studied trend showing that people over 65 tend to be more politically active than younger age groups. U.S. Census reports show that voter turnout rates in presidential elections for people aged 18-20 was only 41% for the 2008 election, which was its highest percentage in recent history, while 68.1% of Americans ages 65 and older voted (census.gov, 2012). The gap in turnout rates has often been much higher, and in non-presidential election cycles the gap is extremely high (census.gov, 2012). In 2010 congressional elections, voters age 18-20 only turned out at 16.4% while voters age 65 and up were at 58.9% (census.gov, 2012). In every election year there is a clear pattern of higher voter turnout correlating with increased age (census.gov, 2012). Over the next few years, generation X, and the “dotcom generation”, which have been more connected to the internet than any previous generations, will grow into more politically active age groups and participate via the online mediums they grew up with. The millennial generation, which has largely been connected to the internet since their youth, will reach retirement age and have an even higher probability of further increasing online political activity with the continued trends of increasing online activity and increased political action with age. Society will have a high demand for the Digital Citizen site that will only grow larger in the near and distant future.

One of the most elusive areas of opportunity to increase participation has been amongst the youth. Presidential elections have seen some recent improvement with 18-20 year olds voting at 31% in 1996, to a turnout of roughly 41% in 2012 (Taylor, 2013). Some may speculate that the internet has already helped the youth increase their involvement. The youth, are more active online than any previous generation and if we hope to encourage more turnout amongst young adults, “We have to meet people where they are. And where they are right now is playing games and spending time on social-networking sites” (Newsom, 2013). To “meet them where they are” we provide online avenues for them to get involved on their terms.