Citizen Competence

In light of this week's readings, I find it quite difficult to point out which 'issue' of the democratic citizenry deserves the most attention and concern. For awhile, it was the public's ignorance, lack of civic engagement and political skill that were the problems of focus, but in consideration of these articles, apparently being uninformed or ignorant can actually be modified and improved on. Misinformation, on the other hand seems to be a dead end. I feel that since a majority of the public holds firmly to their preconceived views and beliefs even in the face of new and corrected factual information, and elected officials and the media will continue to present information in a one-sided manner, that we should simply focus on what we can change - the uninformed and the ignorant.

The Kuklinski article mentions that public officials and the media hardly present information in a neutral manner because they want to prevail their own interests and entertain viewers, so they will use particular rhetoric and emotion to elicit certain responses. Jerit & Barabas also touch upon the way in which negative and threatening circumstances tend to be most salient in people's minds and therefore receive the most attention, such as with the social security and health care debates. These strategic and skewed displays of information may trigger misconceptions, but it led me to think of something more positive.

While reading these articles, I thought of one particular study that was presented in a couple of my classes over the last few years - Freedman's argument that campaign ads are information supplements to those citizens who are lowly informed. Campaign ads are full of emotion and vivid imagery and are usually presented in a way to which viewers will perceive the opponent in a negative light. So according to this week's authors, the viewers would most likely be misinformed about the candidates. However, the study proves that those who are unfamiliar with the political arena actually gain information about those who are running, become more interested in the election, have more to say about candidates and are more likely to vote. Those who are already moderately informed did not gain as much from the political campaign ads. In other words, these emotional displays of information at least attracted the attention of those who were less familiar with politics. In this sense, it creates a starting point for the uninformed and can possibly lead to their larger presence in the civic sphere. Much like what ebe6k had mentioned, we can't punish the sources for the way they display information or stop strong partisans from believing what they want to believe, so maybe we can at least acknowledge how the uninformed may benefit from these emotionally charged displays of information.