The Civility Trap: Citizen Engagement in Mediated Public Spheres
Andy Perrin, Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, will be speaking October 29th as part of the Monday Seminar Series from 12:00-1:30 in room 101, West Duke Building.
Concern over incivility and truthfulness in political life have become commonplace. Meanwhile, audience segmentation and self-selection into homogeneous political networks mean that citizens have limited substantive engagement with disagreeing ideas. Using some data from letters to the editor and theory about public deliberation, Perrin considers whether these worries about incivility and truthfulness are misplaced and may exacerbate the dearth of substantive debate over political differences.
Perrin is a cultural and political sociologist. He both studies and teaches democratic citizenship in the United States, with a focus on the cultural and social underpinnings of democracy–what do people need to know, be, and do to make democracy work? His current research is on public opinion, letters to the editor, and democratic citizenship. He is a regular contributor to Scatterplot, the sociology blog.