Finding gaps and building bridges: Mapping youth citizenship

This dissertation draws together the perspective of late-modern society with work in political communication and cultural sociology to tease out key implications of the current media environment for subjective understandings and practices of citizenship among young Americans. Using both in-depth interviews and nationwide survey data of youth and adults, this work provides new insights into how young people make sense of their own civic engagement.;The study proposes the concept of citizenship vocabularies that both constrain and enable thinking about civic agency and uses current and historical panel data to provide empirical support for the argument that broader citizenship vocabularies are linked to forms of civic action, particularly emerging forms such as political consumption and media engagement. Further, this work demonstrates that the uncertainty and the diversity of citizenship practices available to young people in late modern society have both hopeful and disheartening consequences for democracy. Analyses of civic norms related to political knowledge and the expression of personal values show how the same environment that provides incredible opportunities for the most motivated and competent of citizens throws up road blocks for the less interested.