MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

A wealth of data is generated daily concerning various aspects of political culture (Almond & Verba, 1963, 1980) through social networking and other aspects of Web 2.0 to comment posts on numerous news and blog entries. All of these aspects of communication could be useful in understanding the transformation of political culture in the United States giving the evolution of journalism, and in particular, where communication of the news has become an much more of an interactive process. Has an increase in the availability of more information made for better, more knowledgeable citizens? Has the Internet become like the modern day equivalent of the New England town-hall meeting? This research cannot answer the latter but can more adequately examine the former. First, political culture refers to “attitudes toward the political system and its various parts, and attitudes toward the self in the system (p.13).” The political culture of a nation is the particular distribution patterns of orientation toward political objects among the members of the nation, and may or may not be congruent with the structures of the political system. In other words, it is about what people perceive (or think they know) about politics and the political system and how they feel about politics, the political system, and his or her place in the system. The focus of this research would be a qualitative assessment of reader comments made on particular political news articles across a range of political topics and Internet sites (based on ideological orientation) and how these comments relate to the specific aspects of the cognitive and affective orientations of the political (Civic) culture, and what insight this might provide to political conduct within the civil society of the United States.