Journal of Communication ISSN 0021-9916 ORIGINAL ARTICLE Informed Citizenship in a Media-Centric Way of Life Maria E. Grabe & Jessica G. Myrick The Media School, Indiana University – Bloomington, Bloomington, IN 47405, USA Two trends are prominent and universal to contemporary democracies: Voting rates are in steady decline while media use is growing. A transdisciplinary vantage point might help to redirect research trajectories that lead to alarming conclusions of democratic crisis. To that end, dominant ontological positions will need revision or perhaps replacement. Tis essay calls for (a) knowledge to be explicated beyond the written word, with serious considera- tion of the information value of images in the conceptualization of informed citizenship; (b) the deliberate entanglement of emotion with knowledge acquisition and political participa- tion in explication and operationalization of active citizenship; and (c) reconsideration of electoral activities as the index of active citizenship, especially in the context of interactive media. Keywords: Democratic Teory, Knowledge Gain, Civic Participation, Visual Communication, Emotions. doi:10.1111/jcom.12215 Built on the Baconian ideal of knowledge as power, democracy is a form of self-governance aforded by rational thought and informed voting decisions during elections. Constitutional rights like freedom of expression and public access to infor- mation refect the veneration of information (and its acquisition) in democracies (Starr, 2004). Four-plus centuries afer Bacon’s proclamation, the free fow of infor- mation about social issues is treated as a precondition for meaningful participation (Barber, 1973; Hamilton, 2005)—something without which democracies cannot thrive. As the labeled fourth estate, news media’s role in democracy grew in prominence and research attention over time. Enlightenment-inspired conceptualizations of journalism peg this profession as the primary catalyst of informed citizenship and its esteemed status rests on a sequence of assumptions: (a) objective and factual information constitute serious journalism and produce knowledge of considerable Corresponding author: Maria E. Grabe; e-mail: mgrabe@indiana.edu Journal of Communication 66 (2016) 215–235 © 2016 International Communication Association 215