The biggest enemy to American democracy: lack of citizen participation
AUBURN, Ala. — Thomas Jefferson once said, “an educated electorate is the foundation of democracy,” but how has that foundation changed since America’s infancy over 200 years ago? As the 2024 election swiftly approaches, a troubling trend has emerged that poses a significant threat to that very foundation of American democracy: the alarming decline in citizen participation.
“So for me, the very core of what I see being the root problem is an uninformed electorate and an electorate that is guided purely by emotion,” said Joseph Bellardo, an Auburn University student who aspires to become a state politician in Tennessee.
There are a wide variety of factors that are potential contributors to the watered-down participation within the American electorate. One of which is the increased lack of public trust in American governments, both locally and federally.
Bellardo added, “Without citizens being able to go and discover truth, and not truth in terms of what they believe truth is, what the actual truth is — objective fact — then that weakens our democracy. American citizens are inherently distrusting. They are distrusting of their government, and most importantly, they are distrusting of other people.”
According to the Pew Research Center, when the National Election Study first evaluated the American people’s trust of the federal government, three-quarters of Americans trusted them to do the right thing “almost always or most of the time.” Today, that number has decreased to roughly 30%.
There is one consistency that can be found within the two political parties. Democrats or Democrat-leaning independents tend to have more trust in the federal government as opposed to Republicans, who have had relatively low levels of public trust over time.
Notably, the outcome of government organizations and participation in American democracy influence one another. In fact, research has found that public trust and citizen participation have a somewhat symbiotic, yet complex, relationship.
In his article, “Public Participation and Trust in Government: Results From a Vignette Experiment,” academic scholar Jesse W. Campbell examined how policy performance is positively related to trust in the government and public participation in the policy making process is also connected to trust in the government.
“The face-to-face nature of participation builds trust by breaking down barriers to communication, facilitates perceptions of government transparency and tends to enhance trust when it increases the perception of ethical behavior and public service competence,” Campbell said.
While examining the current state of public trust in the federal government alongside how closely trust and citizen participation are correlated, naturally the next question is, “why aren’t citizens participating?”
It’s safe to say the current-day political sphere has also been impacted by the growth of social media as a news source for the average American voter. Consequently, these platforms have made fake news and misinformation spread like wildfire.
A study examining the habitual sharing nature of social media, conducted by the University of Southern California last year, discovered that there is a considerable impact these platforms have on the user’s ability to critically think about the information they intake and spread during platform usage. In fact, these media platforms are structured to subliminally motivate the user to share content they find.
The research revealed social media’s similarity video games; social media platforms are designed to keep the user active on the platform. This works by targeting the reward system within the user's brain as content is shared. As a result, instantaneous sharing leads to more active users, but a larger spread of misinformation.
The impact that this misinformation can have on the American electorate is a bigger issue than what meets the eye. Not only does misinformation spread inaccurate information, thus impeding on the voters perception of what is true, but it also leads to news avoidance.
Research conducted by Ariel Hasell, an assistant professor within the University of Michigan Communication Department, discovered that the fear of misinformation combined with the influx of information available to the public leads to new avoidance and, therefore, a less informed voter.
According to Hasell, “In an information environment characterized by both low trust in news media and abundant political information, it can be difficult for citizens to make sense of information.”
In other words, if people lack trusted news sources, they may find the process of consuming news to be difficult, and their habits could be influenced by how well they feel they can understand the information.
“Our results show that the perception that it is difficult to evaluate information in crowded online environments is significantly associated with increased active news avoidance and news fatigue over three waves of the survey,” Hasell revealed.
With the abundance of resources to receive information as a voter, the American people can easily get lost in what information is worth their time and what information isn’t.
Anna Hovey, president of the Auburn Chamber of Commerce, has seen the damage this information cycle has caused at a local level.
“There is a lot of effort being made to put information out there, but it is up to the user to sign up to receive that information or participate in receiving that information,” Hovey said.
She explained the abundance of resources readily available to the Auburn community, but it seems like no one is willing to access that information on their own.
“We all have the challenge of communicating to audiences, and because people don't have good attention spans, they’re very quick to judge and not quick to really know what's going on,” she said.
With low public trust, a far too diluted information space and a major shortage of critical thinkers within America’s instant gratification society, it makes sense why some citizens would draw back in their participation in American democracy.
So now the question becomes, “well, what do we do?”
While the answer to this question seems almost unattainable, it’s important to go back to the basics of what a democracy is and why America has one.
“Democracy is built upon the very ideas that we would disagree with each other and that through our disagreements with each other, our country would be made better. Unfortunately, in this time in American history, we’ve forgotten how to disagree,” Bellardo said.
Healthy and sound debate among constituents is a good thing, as it is the foundation of a democracy. In fact, it is what makes America such a powerful country. It allows its citizens not to conform, but rather to have the ability to be informed and use that to contribute to the country’s future.
Bellardo added, “Our country back in the day called the United States the American Experiment for a reason. And, miraculously, for over 250 years, our democracy endured and fought and continued to exist. That democracy is under threat like never before, and it’s not under threat by an external enemy — it's under threat in a very tangible sense because our very people are unable to disagree.”
The American electorate has understandably slipped into damaging habits that infringe on the growth of the country in the long run.
Participation in American democracy is what gives power to the people and is foundational to what this country was created upon. It is up to U.S.citizens to choose America’s outcome through critical thinking, asking the right questions and actively participating American democracy.
Eva Bianco - Nov. 4, 2024