A civic culture as a form of social communication

This article addresses the concept of a civic culture as a form of social communication. The notion of culture is constructed with reliance on a communicative approach. Culture is studied in the framework of the above approach through an exchange of meanings between individuals, which is achieved by the use of a language as a form of conveying meanings to enable other individuals to perceive them. A civic culture represents a form of political culture which is most favorably combined with a democratic political system. It is presented herein as a configuration of three constituent elements, namely, a basic political meaning (other meanings could be added thereto to produce specific features of a given political system), civic competence (which is taken to mean exposure to political meanings encountered in society and ability to utilize them to facilitate discussion), as well as a high intensity of information flows in public spaces (which results in acquisition of political meanings and language). The two latter elements can be referred to as basic element stabilizers both in the short and in the long run, respectively. The article proceeds to trace the structural component of a civic culture in three time periods. In the Antiquity, it was formed in democratic city-states such as Athens in which the agora (a central meeting space) served as a platform for shaping common experiences, and civic competence was required from all individuals with access to ecclesia (the municipal assembly). In the modern period marked by an absolute majority of representative democracies, the role of the agora belonged to mass media and civil society institutions, while civic competence was required more from social leaders and somewhat less from other citizens. Lastly, the postmodern period is marked by tendencies jeopardizing the existence of a civic culture at national levels. Such tendencies are globalization, an ever-increasing role of the Internet, emerging network society, and expanding individualism. The author concludes that the structure of social communication is changing in response to the above tendencies, which entails a need for an alternate approach to view effective communication (according to a civic culture type and, perhaps, on a level of area-based settlements).

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