Civic Education for Democracy During Crisis : Measuring State Media Engagement

Abstract

Informed by a research problem of explaining the relationships between the specificity of civic education and public support for authoritarian politicians, this paper aims to propose and test an analytical tool for measuring media engagement in civic education. It contributes methodologically to studies on civic education by delivering a tool that applies to identify and trace state media’s efforts to shape either democratic or autocratic citizenship models. Thereby, it allows monitoring current challenges to civic education for democracy in individual countries. The test contributes empirically to the studies on state-orchestrated civic education by revealing civic education for autocracy in pandemic-driven Poland. It enriches the knowledge of the use of Polish state media by the anti-democratic ruling actors to maintain the status quo.