Easy Citizenship: Television's Curious Legacy

Roderick P. Hart

The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 1996, vol. 546, issue 1, 109-119

Abstract: This article argues that television has reduced the burdens of citizenship for the average American and that that reduction is dangerous. Television does all of this by overwhelming viewers with the sights and sounds of governmental life and by supersaturating them with political information. All too often, however, this tumult creates in viewers a sense of activity rather than genuine civic involvement. In addition, television constantly tells the story of specific persons in specific situations, thereby producing a kind of highly individuated, cameo politics that distracts viewers from common problems and public possibilities. Television does this work, and much more, in a highly entertaining fashion and is often genuinely informative. But television also produces an overwhelming passivity in viewers even while making them feel politically involved. The article argues that the American polity needs real, not hypothetical, involvement if it is to meet its civic obligations.

Date: 1996
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0002716296546001010 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:anname:v:546:y:1996:i:1:p:109-119

DOI: 10.1177/0002716296546001010

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().