The Internet and Civic Engagement: The Age of the Citizen-Consumer

Online-Kommunikation und politische Öffentlichkeit

“…Allerdings wurden solche Erwartungen schon häufig an Medieninnovationen herangetragen und bisher selten erfüllt (ein Beispiel sind die partizipatorischen Erwartungen Brechts an das Radio : Brecht 1975 (Browning 1995;Scammell 2000), finden sich andere, die mögliche Probleme und negative Konsequenzen des Netzes für die politische Kommunikation identifizieren (Noam 1999;Tsaliki 2002 (Gerhards & Neidhardt 1993: 61). Man kann diese Anforderung auch als freien Zugang zur Teilhabe am öffentlichen Diskurs verstehen, der unter den Bedingungen der klassischen massenmedialen Öffentlichkeit vielfach beschränkt war und in der Regel indirekt über professionelle Gatekeeper erfolgte.…”

Visual-Based Representation and Mediation in Digital Culture Impacts Political Participation, Issue Advocacy and Campaigning for Social Change

“…Margaret Scammell [5], writing in Political Communication, foretold at the dawn of mass World Wide Web acceptance, the keen corporate interest in the potential of the Internet. Web-based technologies determine how classes of 'citizen consumers' as described by Scammelllegitimised in their civic concern with consumer education in seeking goods and information -participate in public-spirited critique of consumption and this, she believes, implies the politicisation of consumption itself.…”

“…In that sense, the parallels between economic and political consumption have started to converge: what politicians and parties offer the citizen-consumer, as Scammell [5] states, is "inherently reciprocal" -the recipient audience must listen attentively to what's offered in order to process new information and gain the benefit of knowing before being included into the conversation stream [35].…”

Processes of Inclusion and Exclusion in the Sphere of Prosumerism

“…In recent years, political consumerism has greatly extended its reach beyond the well-established forms mentioned above such that, according to some researchers such as Scammell [33] and Bennett [34], it is now almost impossible to distinguish between the figures of citizen and consumer. Consumerism, intended as the individual choice of a social actor, rather than a collective public action, is currently considered as one of the most important topics of discussion within electoral policy, due to its growing relevance in the dialogue between the diverse actors in the political arena: citizens, representatives and government [35,36].…”