Índice de 1551

Putnam’s arguments surrounding the ‘decline of social capital’ are expounded in three key sources (1993, 1995, 2000). The arguments are that:

• civic behaviour including active membership in community groups is down • joining groups and positive social outcomes are inextricably linked

• the generation of key ‘joiners’ is dying off

• there is a trend toward replacing associational time with time spent watching television • the trend should be challenged, so that:

o civic engagement of Americans will be like that of earlier generations o bridging social capital will be greater

o the workplace will be more family-friendly and community-congenial o communities will be more integrated

o a new, pluralistic, socially responsible ‘great awakening’ will be spurred o leisure time will be spent less passively

o more Americans will participate in cultural activities and political service.

Putnam’s notion of declining stores of social capital (Bowling alone, 1995, 2000) is in part based on the identification of television as causal in the ‘erosion’ of social capital, contrasting TV viewers’ low levels of social capital with that of newspaper readers, who record high levels of social capital. Putnam stated that

The links between civic engagement and television viewing can be instructively compared with the links between civic engagement and newspaper reading. The basic contrast is straightforward. Newspaper reading is associated with high social capital, TV viewing with low social capital. (Putnam, 1996, p. 14)

While Putnam found no correlation between viewing and reading, as some people do quantities of both:

Pure readers’ (that is people who watch less TV than average and read more newspapers than average) belong to 76% more civic organizations than ‘pure viewers’ (controlling for education, as always). Precisely the same amount applies to other indicators of civic engagement including social trust and voting turnout. ‘Pure readers’, for example, are 55% more trusting than ‘pure viewers’ (1996, p. 15).

Putnam’s identification of the two, newspaper readership and social capital, is grounded in a theoretical and histological background surrounding communications and democratic practice (de Tocqueville, 1887). It is also consistent with media theory and research (Janowitz, 1967; Blexrud, 1972; Tichenor et al., 1980; Stamm et al., 1983; Stamm, 1985; Becker & Fredin, 1987), theory and research in community (Park, 1922; Hilary, 1955; Linn, 1971), and social capital (Bourdieu, 1986; Coleman, 1988, 1990) as explained earlier in Chapter 2. Putnam’s argument on declining social capital is supported by Coleman (1993) who argued that social capital is diminishing. Coleman considers social capital to be ‘a public good’, a community resource of benefit to all members in certain closed networks. Wall et al. (1998) state that Coleman ‘sounds a clarion call for society to restore social capital in the face of diminishing primordial organizations and the rich stock of social capital found within them’ (Wall et al., 1998, p. 309). Whereas, the relationship between newspaper readership and social capital is in turn perceived as engendering civic involvement, political action and trust (Putnam, 1996). The relationship appears both in literature agreeing with and building on Putnam’s position (Levi, 1996; 1996; Lappe & Du Bois, 1998; Galper, 2002), and disagreeing with it (Ladd, 1996; Norris, 1996; Paxton, 1999; Sulivan, 2002).

Norris (1996) examined how far the use of different media sources related to types of political activism. Among her findings was a high correlation between television viewing and political inactivity. Though the correlation between whether media use and political activism continues after controlling for education, gender, employment status, race, age and family income of the audiences, she also showed newspaper readership is significantly associated with indicators of activism and voting. Further, her findings showed that reading newspapers was positively associated with knowledge, efficacy and civic interest.

Time displacement studies of television use related to civic engagement (Moy, Scheufele & Holbert, 1999) support and agree with Putnam that television viewing undermines civic

engagement. They suggest specific dimensions of media use and social capital need to be clarified to identify the mechanisms by which the media enhance or erode social capital.

European social capital theorists have examined trends in Europe and find no decline in social capital, which has raised comment on the American ‘exceptionalism,’ (Hall, 1999; Freetag, 2001; Rothstein, 2003). The British National Statistics paper (2001): Social Capital: A review of the literature, concludes that the decline identified by Putnam in America is not mirrored in the United Kingdom; ‘some civic organisations have declined (e.g. membership of the Women’s Institute) but other forms of engagement are rising, particularly single issue groups’ (p. 3).

In reply to the notion of erosion of civic engagement, Norris (1996) drew attention to the focus on media as an indicator of decline or otherwise in social capital. Norris suggested that lack of political participation was more a question of American democracy experiencing a ‘crisis of legitimacy’, with angry voters disillusioned by Washington policies. Other theorists argued a complex range of factors that contributed to growing cynicism and apathy about American politics and engagement (Fallows, 1996; Postman, 1985; Hart, 1994, as cited in Norris, 1996).

Sullivan’s (2002) study in the United States, based on attitudinal changes from the General Social Survey 1972–1994 and the 1960 and 1990 censuses, also challenges the notion of decreasing social capital. He found that people’s attachment to their communities has not changed much compared to 25 years ago; and as an example, voter participation has remained at about the same level over the past 25 years. ‘Participation in traditional volunteer organizations has decreased, this time it is being replaced by citizens getting involved in new ways. American social capital may have changed some but it does not appear to have declined’ (2002, p. 3)

Lappe and Du Bois (1997) regard the declining capacity for problem solving in civil society in the United States, rather than declining social capital, as the major concern. They suggest that it is not necessarily ‘the lack of civic duty, but rather lack of “a sense of power” that curbs a strong civil society’. Therefore, they propose, instead of constructing social capital as ‘the sum of our informal, associative networks, along with trust [where] the former, it is assumed, generates the latter’, social capital should be understood as ‘the collective intelligence of society’ to envision and create community. From this perspective, agency, as the capacity to exert power, is a central concept. The perspective relates directly to empowerment and communitarian theory (Christians et al., 1993; Braithwaite, 1994, as cited in Berstein et al., 1994; Gutierrez, 1994, as cited in Bernstein et al., 1994).

Sirrani and Friedland (1995, 2002) discuss Verba, Schlozman and Brady’s (1995) studies which represent partial agreement with Putnam on declining social capital (1998). Sirrani and Friedland’s findings (2002) disagree with Lappe and Du Bois, in that they recognise that there is still much data validating Americans’ ‘deserved reputation’ for high levels of involvement in voluntary associations. They conclude that there is evidence that participation has increased at the community and local problem-solving level, though a decrease in voter turnout has not been accompanied by the same participation and growth seen in citizen activism.

E. Cox (1998), like the British National Statistics Paper (2001), in discussing diminishing civic responsibility also questions the choice of indicators of declining social capital used by Putnam (1993a, 1995, 2000). Although Putnam points to a broad range of declining associations and institutions to support his arguments, Cox (1995) feels that Putnam did not identify or include more current trends in social interaction and technology also noted in the earlier section by Narayan (2000) as the major revolution associated with the twentieth century; the information revolution. Cox’s argument places social capital in a more broadly defined context of institutions and civil society, seeing society as a web of connections, both thick and thin, which link through workplaces, localities, common interest, and political institutions. All can be linked by telephone and electronic means as well as by face-to-face contact. ‘We build our sense of belonging and our reference points through our connections to others. We build our trust levels through the quality of these interactions’ (Cox, 1995, p. 5).

Giving weight to the European view of ‘American exceptionalism’ and also in agreement with Cox (1995) and Norris (1996), Paxton (1999) considers the response to Putnam’s papers addressing the decline of social capital is underpinned by a classic concern of Americans regarding the deterioration of democracy, and questions the notion of decline. She challenges Putnam’s three indicators (the first 3 bullet points in the list presented in this section) of declining social capital, believing that they should be seen instead as outcomes. Specifically, citizens’ rates of joining voluntary associations, citizens’ trust in one another, and citizens’ rates of voting are declining; therefore we should see a subsequent decline in certain public goods, such as an efficient democracy (Paxton, 1999).

A significant outcome for this thesis of the debate over declining social capital is its focus on an underlying premise of the relationship between newspapers and social capital: that newspaper readership is equated with high social capital (Putnam, 1993a, 1995, 2000; Norris, 1996, 2000; Lappe & Du Bois, 1998; Sullivan, 2002). This premise draws on earlier media, community development and political science theory and research. Earlier and more

current studies shown that civic and political involvement, as well as voting in local elections, is positively related to subscribing to local and regional newspapers (Viswanath et al., 1990, McLeod et al 1999; McCleneghan, 2002). Concerns with diminishing social capital in the United States, appear strongly related to concerns with decreasing political participation, seen as a proxy for decreasing democratic deliberation. This same concern with decreasing democratic deliberation appears to underpin the public/civic journalism movement, which arose in the early 1990’s noted in Research Question 2, and again, is further linked to decreasing numbers of daily newspaper noted in Research Question 1.