Information *and* Engagement: 2 Sides of a Democracy Coin
After a year of thoughtful consideration and conversation, the Knight Foundation’s Commission on Trust, Media, and Democracy recently issued a series of recommendations for restoring trust in our media and democracy. A theme that resonated throughout the report was a focus on active citizenship — and a recognition that “the office of citizen” must be treated as central to how democracy functions.
I was thrilled to see such an integrated focus on citizenship (aka civic engagement) in a report largely commissioned to explore media and information. Too often, these practices are considered separate buckets, rather than intertwined and complementary aspects of democracy. One line in particular has stuck with me from the report’s summary: “an assault on the notion of truth is a fundamental attack on our ability to self-govern.”
I have the privilege of leading PACE — Philanthropy for Active Civic Engagement — a network of funders that support the sustaining elements of U.S. democracy and civic life. We believe American democracy will thrive when all of its people are informed and engaged in the process of creating it.
At PACE, we talk a lot about civic engagement, and what it means to practice democracy within a larger system of values, institutions, and norms. And while it’s easy to default to thinking about civic engagement as a clear, specific activity conducted on a specific day to achieve a specific outcome, we really believe it’s something much larger. For us, civic engagement means understanding the right and the responsibility of living in a self-governing society. It means being informed, being connected to each other and our institutions, knowing how to take action on what matters to you, and having the agency and empowerment to do so.
The Commission’s citizenship recommendations speak closely both to the work of PACE and to my own experience in the civic engagement field — civic education, engagement across divides, and national service.
Civic Education
Today, America’s schools are focused on ensuring our young people are college and career ready — and have lost and/or minimized a focus on ensuring they are also “citizenship ready.” And as we do begin to recalibrate this focus, it will be important to expand our approach to education — enabling us to advance civic education in school, as well as opportunities for families and community groups (including libraries, museums, and nonprofits) to support this type of learning and engagement outside of school. Furthermore, if we begin with the premise that media and information are pillars of civic participation, there is tremendous opportunity to incorporate digital and media literacy as a key focus of civic education practice. The recently-developed CivXNow Systems Map, can help us understand the interrelated levers that may help us achieve a quantum leap in civic learning for all young people.
One place I might suggest thinking more about through the recommendations is around both equality and equity. We know young people with access to robust civic learning opportunities are much more likely to become civically engaged throughout their lives. We also know that there are stark disparities in access to civic learning opportunities — and that many of those disparities occur along lines of race and class. Those two facts together mean that if we’re not careful about how we approach implementation of civic education efforts, our system could reinforce, or even further, the inequities that are dividing our society today.
Engaging Across Divides
As an organization that aims to create a big tent in service of democratic practice, and to think about what’s both up- and down-stream of politics, the importance of bridging divides among both institutions and citizens comes up a lot in our work. And it’s honestly one of the hardest spaces to hold right now, for many reasons. One thing we’re hearing is that the suggestion of “reaching across divides” is often easy to boil down or over-simplify to “can’t we just be more civil?” And while civility is important — and an art that does feel it’s been lost in much of our current discourse and interactions — it’s important that civility does not become an end unto itself. Because civility is only the beginning; civility alone does not solve the deeper challenges that inspired the calls in the first place, nor does it invite us to imagine or aspire to new conditions together.
There are numerous groups working to build bridges and solutions — and while not an exhaustive repository, there are a few I’d like to add to the list of resources in the report:
- The Solutions Journalism Network — and the leadership of Amanda Ripley, in particular — for her efforts to help us pose better questions that “complicate the narratives” to make sure we’re not missing important nuance or context in understanding problems and divisions we seek to bridge.
- Spaceship Media for their “dialogue journalism” and moderated online dialogues and Better Angels for the work they’re doing to address hyper-partisanship in personal relationships
- The Einhorn Family Charitable Trust and their “Helping People Get Along Better Fund”
National Service
I am an AmeriCorps Alum, and in its original iteration, PACE was known as the “Grantmakers Forum for Community and National Service.” So personally and professionally, I support this recommendation on many levels. There is tremendous power in service, for the people participating, for the communities impacted by it, and for the fabric of our democracy — the Commission report does a good job of capturing the multiple layers of benefits, and the work of Service Year and others to advancing this goal.
One layer of the case statement for service that PACE has been thinking about over the years through our “Civic Pathways” work is how we can shift the paradigm from thinking about service as something that is done to or for communities to something that individuals in those communities can embrace as a pathway to change their own circumstances, particularly economically.
In short, I’m heartened by the thorough, tangible, and civic nature of these recommendations, humbled by the work head, and appreciative of the spectrum of people and organizations already working to make them a reality. In the words of the Tony Marx and Jamie Woodson, Co-Chairs of the Commission: “The foundations of the American form of government are built on the assumption that truth will prevail from a fair deliberation among people of goodwill, coming together for a common purpose.” There is urgency in this political moment to be sure, urgency to act and to act together. I work alongside people of goodwill, who hold these democratic values deeply, and I continue to believe that achieving a common purpose is possible. Together.
Editor’s Note: This piece was adapted from remarks given during a Commission session at the 2019 Knight Media Forum
