Theme 3: Research and theory, post 1

Journal: American Behavioral Scientist

The journal is devoted to understanding social and community stigma.

Article: Media Literacy as Core Competency for Engaged Citizenship in Participatory Democracy

I chose the paper Media Literacy as Core Competency for Engaged Citizenship in Participatory Democracy, written by Paul Mihailidis and Benjamin Thevenin. The paper aims to explore digital media literacy as core competence for engaged citizenship in participatory democracy. The paper talks about the new media landscape, and how it is changing what it means to be an engaged citizen. The article looks at the history of being a “good citizen” and the traditional indicators for civic engagement (attending town hall meetings, voting in local elections etc.), and examines what participation looks like for societies increasingly linked by media technologies.  

The article is solely based on previous research and does not provide any quantitative or qualitative research of its own. The aim of the article is to open up for discussion about media literacy and emphasizes how important the discussion is today. The article analyzes previous research, and develops three critical media literacy outcomes (critical thinkers, creators and communicators, agents of social change).

I found the article very interesting and providing several important points about our society and the correlation between media and democracy. However, I would prefer the article to provide more depth of what will be. The article doesn’t provide many solutions, it offers some light predictions, but doesn’t answer the question how. The article concludes that citizen with the capacities to collaborate, participate, and express online stand a better chance of becoming critical thinkers, creators and communicators, and agents of social change, and through that empowering democracy in a digital age, but again, the article does not provide any answers to how this would come to be.

The article doesn’t provide any research of its own, and it would have been interesting to read more research and get a more depth knowledge of, for example, how media literacy is taught in schools, or how citizen decide what to share and not to share online.

1.     Briefly explain to a first year university student what theory is, and what theory is not.

There are some disagreements about what theory is, although more knowledge about what theory is not. Theory cannot be defined a theory if it doesn’t answer the question why, a theory not references, data, variables, diagrams and hypotheses.

So what does identify a strong theory? Theory is the answer to queries to why, it’s about what makes events, acts, thoughts, and structure occur. According to Sutton and Staw, a strong theory “delves into underlying processes so as to understand the systematic reason for a particular occurrence or nonoccurrence”.

2.     Describe the major theory or theories that are used in your selected paper. Which theory type (see Table 2 in Gregor) can the theory or theories be characterized as?

According to table 2 in Gregor, I would say the text by Mihailidis and Thevenin are explanation and prediction and analysis. The article brings up several example as to what is, and is heavy on analysis, however the article does explain relationships, it looks at the engaged citizen and analysis how we interact online today and how we engage in politics and society via media technologies, as well as offers predictions of how to have the best chance to empower democracy in the digital age. I would say the article has a weak theory, it’s heavy on what is, and why, but doesn’t provide as much on how, where and what will be.

3.     Which are the benefits and limitations of using the selected theory or theories?

The benefit of using EP theory is that the reader will get a comprehensive view of a phenomena. It answers many of questions fundamental for research and offers solid framework for further studies.

The benefit of using analytic theory is that the reader gets a good and clear idea of what is, in this case regarding media literacy and how the digitalized society might affect democracy, and it serves as a good basis for further research, predictions, and explanations. However, as it doesn’t go deeper it might leave readers unsatisfied. The downside of using analytic theory is that it only offers limited information of a phenomena, and it can be hard to make predictions based on it alone. Analysis is valuable when little is known in the field, and as social media, sharing on Facebook, liking tweets etc. are a fairly new phenomenon, there is limited research done in the area.