Reconsidering Informed and Participatory Citizenship in the Current Media Ecosystem

Abstract

The focus of this chapter is on how changes in the media landscape have forced the reconsideration of the way in which ‘memory’, ‘knowledge’, and ‘informed citizenship’ are understood, defined, and researched. Thus, for example, journalism needs to take account of the phenomenon of so-called news grazing (the active consumption of news by flipping through channels and skipping unwanted material) and that of incidental news exposure (unintended exposure to news when media users go online for non-news functions). Traditional views of informed citizenship (as simply acquiring appropriate facts and information) are challenged by calls to include applied understanding and comprehension of social issues and emotional responses to those issues. The chapter is critical of an excessive reliance on verbal tests of memory and stresses the need to develop visual measures, given that the human brain is better adapted for visual than verbal processing. © Oxford University Press 2021.