Civic participation, community networks, and news media: A multi-method approach to civic participation

This dissertation examined the two dimensions of individuals' civic participation in a community context by employing multiple methods. The present study thematized the dynamics of civic participation by synthesizing four theoretical perspectives on social capital, public sphere, community network structure, and collective action, for the explication of civic participation both at the individual and collective levels. The first part of this dissertation examined individuals' demographic and contextual characteristics in their participation in civic affairs. Then, a case study was conducted of the long-term school-pairing controversy in Madison, Wisconsin. The case study specifically asked how multiple publics emerged and interacted with each other, what frames they retained over time, and how these frames were represented in the news media.;In order to investigate civic participation both at the individual and collective levels, multiple methods such as survey data analysis, in-depth interview, network analysis, and Galois lattice analysis were employed. Findings of the survey data analysis for the individual-level civic participation showed the significant impact of residential variables and communication behaviors on civic participation. Notably, the findings revealed the interaction effects between residential variables and media use: the relationship of local public affairs television use and total television viewing time to civic participation was moderated by neighborhood residential stability and individual length of residence, respectively.;For the case of the school-pairing issue, ten comprehensive frames and the seven distinctive publics were identified by the information derived from the interviews with 15 influential community actors. Galois lattice analyses of the interview data and the 199 articles of the two local newspapers from 1992 to 1997 showed that the two different master frames---racially integrated schools and neighborhood schools---were contested throughout the whole process of the decision-making on the school-pairing problem. The network analysis of the newspaper articles revealed that individuals from the cluster of institutional organizations and the cluster of parents who had children attending the paired schools were covered in the both newspapers more frequently than those from the other three clusters of school teachers, voluntary associations, and school variables and school children throughout the period under study.