Defining the Good Citizen: Online Conceptions of American Members of the Yahoo! Answers Community

Abstract

Educators invest serious effort in bringing their students to adopt the notions of the 'good citizen'. Based on the growing impact of informal learning through social media, especially when asking for online help in civic education assignments, previous studies called for investigating the role of online platforms as arenas of informal civic education. This paper takes up this gauntlet, analyzing inputs of American members of the Yahoo! Answers online community in response to students' queries concerning the definition of the 'good citizen'. The results show a passive and conformist concept of the 'good citizen' that corresponds with previous studies' findings about this image in educational programs and among pre-service teachers, contrary to formal statements regarding the goal of civic education. The paper suggests that there is a feedback loop between offline and online platforms concerning the 'good citizen', which calls for the attention of educators and researches.

The topic of terrorism on Yahoo! Answers: questions, answers and users’ anonymity

“…Answers was selected as the data source. For one, it is one of the most widely used CQAs, whose archives are searchable to anybody with internet access (Keynan and Lazar, 2017). Terrorism-related content available on such a popular platform deserves scholarly attention.…”

“…Answers does not require users to identify themselves. The option to remain anonymous removes the psychological barrier of posting anything – including potentially sensitive entries (Keynan and Lazar, 2017). This allows terrorism-related content to be studied in terms of user anonymity.…”

“…Using inductive content analysis (Keynan and Lazar, 2017;Miles et al, 2013), the dominant themes of the questions will be identified. While some questions are anticipated to be fairly innocuous, others could be sensitive or even abusive, opening the door for impassioned answers presented single-sidedly (Jane, 2014;March and Marrington, 2019).…”

“…They serve as a continually growing repository of topic-specific information. Over the years, scholars have studied a variety of topics on CQAs that run the gamut from civic education (Keynan and Lazar, 2017) and eating habits (Bowler et al , 2012) to non-suicidal self-injury (Lewis et al , 2012).…”

The Story of the Ideal Citizen in Turkey: A Narrative Inquiry on the Perspectives of Prospective Social Studies Teachers

“…Öğretim programlarında resmedilen vatandaş profiliyle birlikte ulusal ve uluslararası alanyazında, birçok araştırmacı vatandaşlık kavramının gerçekten ne ifade ettiğini incelemeyi amaçlamışlardır (Abowitz ve Harnish, 2006;Castro, 2013;Castro ve Knowles, 2017;Dedebali ve Daşdemir, 2019;Demirbaş ve Aydınözü, 2020;Dere, 2019;Dere, Kızılay ve Alkaya, 2017;Doğanay, 1993Doğanay, , 2009Doğanay, , 2010Egüz ve Kafadar, 2020;Ersoy, 2012Ersoy, , 2013Ersoy, , 2014Geijsel, Ledoux, Reumerman ve ten Dam, 2012;Giron, 2012;Haste, 2004Haste, , 2010Ho, Alviar-Martin, Sim ve Yap, 2011;Journell, 2010;Keynan ve Lazar, 2017;Kızılay, 2015;Malkoç, 2020;Martin, 2008Martin, , 2010Masyada, 2013;Öntaş ve Koç, 2020;Patterson, Doppen ve Misco, 2012;Şimşek, Tıkman, Yıldırım ve Şentürk, 2017;Tan, Mahadir Naidu ve Jamil, 2017;Thapa, 2016;Thornberg ve Oğuz, 2016;Wells, 2015;Westheimer ve Kahne, 2004;Yazıcı, 2011;Yeşilbursa, 2015).Yurt içinde yapılan çalışmalar incelendiğinde, toplumsal katılımı öncelik haline getiren güncel olayları ve politik gelişmeleri eleştirel bir açıdan ele alan vatandaş tipinin benimsenmediği görülmektedir (Baloğlu Uğurlu, 2014;Dere vd., 2017;…”