The importance of civic engagement and how public participation in politics has changed will be a couple of the topics covered when Diana Carlin speaks at Emporia State University Monday evening.
Carlin will be in Room 330 of Visser Hall at 7 p.m. Monday to give the 25th Annual George R.R. Pflaum Lecture, “Creating a Healthy Public Sphere: Lessons from the 1996-2008 U.S Elections.”
“‘Civic engagement’ is how you get people involved in the public policy that affects them and their communities and their lives,” Carlin said in an interview Friday afternoon. “It’s about ways of encouraging people to participate, whether it’s a letter to the editor or a council meeting or being on a blog, but it’s about the importance of average citizens being engaged in discussions about public policy and participating in voting.”
And it’s not just about voting, either. Carlin says it also involves being aware, being part of the process and being able to make informed decisions. Carlin pointed out how technology has led to a vast increase in public participation, especially from the group of people aged 18 to 30.
“There’s been a real change in attitude from that group,” Carlin said. “They realize that public policy does matter, and they also realize that they can have an impact with their votes.”
Carlin conducted a study of non-voters in 1997 and found that people age 18 to 30 weren’t so much disengaged from public policy and political participation, but rather they didn’t take part because they thought it didn’t impact the average person, that all politicians were alike, and they weren’t going to participate in what they saw as a broken system.
After the 2000 and 2004 elections, Carlin said, people started to see that their votes did matter.
“They recognized that public policy does affect their daily lives,” she said. “There’s been a major change in the level of participation and engagement of young people.”
Carlin pointed to the 2008 election as an example of how technology has changed the level of participation in politics.
“You look at Obama’s campaign, and he raised close to $400 million, and the average contribution was $80,” she said. “McCain had a lot of small donors, too. Prior to that, people really believed that it was the checks and the lobbyists and the money people who controlled this. So it has sort of shifted some of the sense of power.”
Carlin also will discuss how technology and public participation has changed the way elected officials operate in the public sphere.
“It has changed how elected officials interact with people. They have Web sites now, they have e-mail addresses,” Carlin said. “There are a lot of things that have happened that I think have made people aware of what their elected representatives are doing, how they’re representing their constituents, how they’re responding to feedback.”
It’s a two-way street, Carlin said, and the more the public becomes engaged in political issues, the more responsive elected officials will have to become.
Carlin is professor of communication studies at the University of Kansas. Her visit is sponsored by the ESU’s Department of Communication and Theatre, Lambda Pi Eta and ESU Special Events. Admission is free, and the lecture is open to the public. For more information, e-mail scatt@emporia.edu.