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Schudson contends that monitorial citizens might even be “better informed than citizens of the past in that, somewhere in their heads, they have more bits of information.”

Far more people will be monitorial, rather than informed, citizens––and, thanks to social media and high-volume news operations, they will be easily alarmed and distracted.

Schudson proposes a model for citizenship that he believes to be more true to life: the “monitorial citizen”—a person who is watchful of what’s going on in politics but isn’t always fully engaged.

“The monitorial citizen engages in environmental surveillance more than information-gathering,” he writes.

In theory, the social-media age could make us better monitorial citizens.