The POPC Citizen: Political Information in the Fourth Age of Political Communication

A woman checking messages on her phone while standing next to a newspaper rack. A girl waiting in line scrolling down the Facebook timeline, stumbling upon a video clip about the outcome of the recent US presidential elections. A young man playing a game on his tablet, with TV news running in another window. These are just three everyday scenarios that illustrate how today’s “permanently online, permanently connected” (POPC) communication environment has created new conditions for the access to and consumption of political information. A myriad of options to choose from regarding the form and content of communication make it easy to acquire political information continuously, but also to avoid political content given the many other interesting things to do online. At the same time, social networking sites (SNS) have made it more difficult to abstain completely from political information, as they often push news to unsuspecting users. With the permanent potential to activate social ties through SNS and instant messaging services, the political information of citizens has become embedded into their mediated social networks whose members like, share, and comment on it. The implications of widespread digitization and mediatization for the political domain are so profound and far-reaching that they have recently led Jay Blumler (2016) to announce a new “fourth age of political communication.” Political communication in the fourth age is characterized by “yet more communication abundance” (p. 24) compared to the preceding ages, particularly due to new, mobile-access devices that have led to an ever more intense competition for audience attention. The fact that the Internet has gone mobile reinforces developments it initiated much earlier: Mobility increases the frequency of communication and thus the frequency of situations in which more or less conscious choices regarding the modes and content of communication are necessary. Because people often initiate and process digital communication in parallel with an ongoing “offline life,” communication acts may also become more impulsive and automatic (van Koningsbruggen, Hartmann, & Du, this volume), and attention paid to content more superficial than in the past.