The Networked Young Citizen

Social Media, Political Participation and Civic Engagement

Brian D. Loader, Ariadne Vromen, Michael Xenos

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781138781146
• eBook ISBN: 9781317696933
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Democracy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The future engagement of young citizens from a wide range of socio-economic, ethnic and cultural backgrounds in democratic politics remains a crucial concern for academics, policy-makers, civics teachers and youth workers around the world. At a time when the negative relationship between socio-economic inequality and levels of political participation is compounded by high youth unemployment or precarious employment in many countries, it is not surprising that new social media communications may be seen as a means to re-engage young citizens. This edited collection explores the influence of social media, such as YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, upon the participatory culture of young citizens.

This collection, comprising contributions from a number of leading international scholars in this field, examines such themes as the possible effects of social media use upon patterns of political socialization; the potential of social media to ameliorate young people's political inequality; the role of social media communications for enhancing the civic education curriculum; and evidence for social media manifesting new forms of political engagement and participation by young citizens. These issues are considered from a number of theoretical and methodological approaches but all attempt to move beyond simplistic notions of young people as an undifferentiated category of 'the internet generation'.

Introduction: The Networked Young Citizen

Social Media, Political Participation and Civic Engagement

Brian D. Loader, Ariadne Vromen and Michael A. Xenos

DOI: 10.4324/9781315778594-1

The accusation that young people are politically apathetic and somehow failing in their duty to participate in many democratic societies worldwide has been refuted by a growing number of academics in recent years (Loader, 2007; Marsh, O’Toole, & Jones, 2007). Undoubtedly many young citizens have indeed become disenchanted with mainstream political parties and with those who claim to speak on their behalf. But this should not be misinterpreted as a lack of interest on the part of youth with the political issues that influence their everyday lived experience and their normative concerns for the planet and its inhabitants. As the recent waves of protest demonstrations by young people in all their different forms and contexts testify, the suggestion that the next generation of citizens is any less politically engaged than previous ones seems at least premature. How, then, are we to understand the actions and political values of the future custodians of our polities and what are their implications for democratic governance?

There can be little doubt that the institutions and practices of modern representative government have been subject to growing disillusionment from young citizens. A reluctance to vote at elections, join political parties or have a high regard for their politicians all suggest that many young people are turning away from mainstream politics in many countries (Fieldhouse, Tranmer, & Russell, 2007; Van Biezen, Mair, & Poguntke, 2012). Instead, participation in social movements, rallies, protests, consumer boycotts all point to the possible displacement of traditional models of representative democracy as the dominant cultural form of engagement by alternative approaches increasingly characterized through networking practices. The political identity and attitudes of young citizens are thereby seen to be increasingly shaped less by their social ties to family, neighbourhood, school or work but, rather, by the manner in which they participate and interact through the social networks which they themselves have had a significant part in constructing. Central to this model of ‘networked individualism’ (Rainie & Wellman, 2012) is the role played by the Internet and network communication technologies. Of particular relevance, and the primary focus of this edited collection, is the potential of social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube for influencing the political deportment and civic engagement of what we describe as the networked young citizen.

ASSEMBLING THE NETWORKED YOUNG CITIZEN

The debate on citizenship is replete with discourses that exhort young people to adopt the dutiful practices of participation that correspond to the regulatory norms established by earlier generations. Thus, active citizens should vote at elections, respect their representatives, join political groups and engage in voluntary activities in their civic communities. It is a model of the citizen as someone who should be seen to support the representative system through their dutiful actions but whose voice should not be heard. Indeed, the very future prospects for democracy are seen to depend upon the support of the electorate as performed and reproduced through these acts of citizenship. Small wonder, then, that the political class in many democracies is so concerned about the disaffection of so many young people with these norms of participation (Putnam, 2000; Stoker, 2006).

This emergent disjuncture between conventional representative government and the everyday concerns of young people was vividly captured in a television discussion between the forthright BBC interviewer Jeremy Paxman and the charismatic, and opinionated celebrity actor and comic, Russell Brand in the autumn of 2013. Brand had been invited by the New Statesman political magazine to be a guest editor for one of its issues and so was asked to discuss his political views on the late-night current affairs programme Newsnight. Whilst he is a sometimes controversial figure, this was the first time that Brand had entered the world of ‘celebrity politics’ (Street, 2004). Often condescending in his style of interrogation, Paxman on this occasion appeared to be genuinely engaged by Brand’s arguments. What seemed to surprise Paxman in particular was Brand’s admission that he had never voted and that he exhorted young people to follow his example. In this excerpt Brand justifies his view.

I’m not voting out of apathy, I’m not voting out of absolute indifference, and weariness and exhaustion from the lies, treachery, deceit of the political class that has been going on for generations and which has reached fever pitch where we have a disenfranchised, disillusioned, despondent underclass that are not being represented by that political system so voting for it is tacit complicity with that system. And that is not something I’m offering up.

In many respects, through this intervention in print and on television, Brand is following a familiar path taken by other popular celebrities entering the political sphere. As John Street has described it, ‘celebrity politics is a code for the performance of representations through the gestures and media available to those who wish to claim “representativeness”’ (Street, 2004:445). Thus, despite the fact that Brand does not explicitly claim to speak on behalf of younger people, his accomplished use of the media to challenge the conventional perspectives of democratic engagement can be interpreted as just such an attempt to speak more legitimately than politicians for young citizens whose voice is seldom heard (Coleman, 2002). In this sense his performance, as seen on television and more widely through YouTube, can be regarded as an act intended to disrupt the normative repetitive depictions of the dutiful citizen. Instead, when asked by Paxman to give an alternative to a model of democracy as voting, he gave a response which foregrounds an emerging contemporary political aesthetic through which young citizens can engage.

The time is now, change is occurring, we are at a time when communication is instantaneous and there are communities all over the world. The Occupy movement made a difference, even if only that it introduced to the popular public lexicon the idea of the 1% versus the 99%. People for the first time in a generation are aware of massive corporate and economic exploitation. These things are not nonsense and these are subjects which are not being addressed… Until they are taken seriously… why would I encourage a constituency of young people who are indifferent to vote?

The ‘representativeness’ of Brand is here expressed as an attempt to claim that the political class is failing to address some of the most important challenges confronting young citizens. Instead, alternative communication channels and modes of action, such as those enacted during the Arab Spring, or the Occupy movement, express the voice of young citizens around the world.

Whilst less dramatic or entertaining than Brand’s narrative, a ground-swell of academic opinion has also suggested that the political attitudes of many young people in many parts of the world can increasingly be characterised by a less deferential and more individualised (Beck, 1992; Giddens, 1991; Inglehart, 1990), self-actualizing (Bennett, Wells, & Rank, 2009) and critical disposition (Norris, 2002) which marks a departure from the dutiful norms of citizenship (Dalton, 2008). Such cultural changes in political participation are shaped of course by wider economic and social forces and they do not happen overnight. Moreover, the decline in mainstream engagement has been on-going for some time in many countries (Norris, 2002). Instead of regarding them as the death knell of western models of democracy, however, it may be more useful to see them as potentially heralding a recalibration of modern political institutions and practices in ways that are more sensitive to the dissatisfaction felt by many young people with their political systems. Young citizens may, as a consequence, be finding new ways to voice their opinions and garnering new agents of representativeness, such as Russell Brand, to envision their views.

What, then, does our emerging networked young citizen look like? How can we recognise these actors? Drawing from the literature (Bang, 2004; Beck, 1994; Bennett, Wells, & Freelon, 2011; Giddens, 1991) it is helpful to take a number of key features to assemble what we call the networked young citizen. Networking young citizens are far less likely to become members of political or civic organizations such as parties or trades unions; they are more likely to participate in horizontal or non-hierarchical networks; they are more project orientated; they reflexively engage in life-style politics; they are not dutiful but self-actualizing; their historical reference points are less likely to be those of modern welfare capitalism but, rather, global information networked capitalism; and their social relations are increasingly enacted through a social media networked environment.

This is of course an ideal type construction and is not intended to represent all young citizens in every respect. Its value is as a framework against which we may assess the normative political dispositions of young people. So the networked young citizen is not necessarily typical of all young people in every society. Our objective is not to provide yet another generalization about all young people being characterised as a type. Rather, we believe that it is a useful analytical device by which to assess the evidence for cultural change. Some further clarifications need to be made to our assemblage. First, this does not represent an all-encompassing discontinuity with previous dutiful models. Networked young citizens may live conterminously with other dutiful citizens and, indeed, share some of each other’s attributes on occasions. Second, networked citizenship can be seen as fluid and always under construction within regulatory norms and structuring processes. A model of citizenship that is fluid and constituent of lived experience does not suggest apathy but, rather, an identity whose realisation has to be performed and enacted. Part of that performance may surely include disrupting dominant discourses and repeated citations resonant of dutiful models of citizenship (Loader, 2012). Third, networking young citizens are shaped by different individual lived experiences that will not be the same for everyone. Consequently issues of inequality and power come into play. Networks and networking do not imply a power vacuum where all are equal. Instead, the benefits accrued by access to social and cultural capital through particular networks foreground the need to differentiate between social networks. Networks exhibit new regulatory norms of exclusion as well as inclusion. They also require us to consider what kinds of capacities are required by young people for effective networked citizenship.

Are All Young Citizens Networked Equally?

The competitive advantages to be accrued through membership of the most resource-rich networks have become particularly pronounced as a consequence of the world financial crisis since 2007. Whilst young people as a whole have been disproportionately hit harder by these events as compared with other age groups, the burdens have not been evenly distributed across all young people. Educational and employment opportunities for young people have been significantly influenced by social and cultural factors such as class, ethnicity, gender, sexuality and location. Consequently, the economic recession has both compounded the alienation of many young citizens and threatens to produce further personal insecurity for millions of individuals as they join the ranks of the emerging precariat (Standing, 2011).

A danger therefore exists of a growing mass of disenchanted young people subject to unemployment, insecure job prospects and without voice or representation in the public domain. In August 2013 approximately one quarter of young European citizens were unemployed (Eurostat). A more accurate indicator is that providing figures for those ‘not in employment, education or training’ (NEETs), which is still alarmingly high, with 14 million aged 15–29 recorded in 2011. This situation is not uniform across European Union member states, with NEET figures being significantly higher in the east (e.g. Romania, Bulgaria) and south (e.g. Portugal, Spain, Greece), as compared with those in the north (e.g. Germany, Netherlands, UK, Nordic countries). In the USA the figure for those out of work or education was almost 16 per cent of 18–29 year olds in October 2013. The transition from youth to adulthood in the twenty-first century is therefore beset by growing social inequality, structural unemployment and a disaffection with politics which, when combined, are shaping the opportunities for social inclusion and security of many young citizens.

How, then, does the networked young citizen relate to this picture of global social and economic inequality? Recent developments suggest a strong relationship between social media use and political engagement that raises questions about the potential for social media to help to stem or even reverse patterns of political inequality that have troubled scholars for years. Michael Xenos, Ariadne Vromen and Brian D. Loader explore this contention in Chapter 2 of this volume, where they articulate a model of social media and political engagement among young people and test it using data from representative samples of young citizens in Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom. Their results suggest a strong, positive relationship between social media use and political engagement among young people across all three countries, and provide additional insights regarding the role played by social media use in the processes by which young people become politically engaged. Notably, the results also provide reasons to be cautiously optimistic concerning the overall influence of this popular new form of social networking on long-standing patterns of political inequality.

For some time a number of academics have believed that the interactive, collaborative and user-generated content capacities of social media technologies themselves offer the prospect of facilitating new modes of political communication which are more commensurate with those contemporary youth cultures associated with the networked young citizen. They point to an electoral affinity between what are perceived as the inherent democratic features of social media and its potential for enhancing the participative and deliberative skills of young citizens (Jenkins, 2006; Benkler, 2006; Leadbeater, 2008). This notion of participatory culture has quickly managed to gain a strong foothold in contemporary debates about social media and user engagement. The concept’s primary advocate, Henry Jenkins, uses it to describe a cultural situation in which established relations between media producers and users have been disrupted ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Biography
• Preface
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction: The Networked Young Citizen: Social Media, Political Participation and Civic Engagement
• Part I Political Culture, Socialization and Social Media Adoption
• Part II Civics and Citizenship Education
• Part III Agency, Mobilization and the Voice of the Young Citizen
• Index