SOCIAL MEDIA – THE KEY TO YOUTH RISE IN POLITICAL ENGAGEMENT
Outside of the youth using social media for the occasional selfie, snap of your meal and tweet of what you’re currently doing; social media has created a space for youth to get their political views and opinions out in a nonconventional way and they are getting heard!
The Trump campaign of 2016, Brexit campaign and the 2018 Italian vote, have all been seen as largely influenced by social media campaigning, particularly negative campaigning based on the triggering of negative emotions such as fear, hostility, and resentment in people.
Sites such as Facebook, Twitter and even Clubhouse have enabled youth to gather their ideas, convey them and receive feedback and comments on what they have presented. Studies have been found to support the idea that individuals who use these forms of new media are active in politics and political discourse (Schulz 2005). When situations in politics start to trend on Twitter and almost everyone on your timeline is tweeting about what is going on, it takes one click for someone to go through a handful of condensed pieces of text information called Tweets to find out what is going on in the world. Just one click!
The Internet has developed the interests toward politics of its users and improved political efficacy of the respondent which create their online and offline political engagements.
However, with this widespread consensus that there is an overpowering dominance of negative campaigning on social media, we have also seen quite the opposite with an overwhelming surge of support for more positive online campaigns of social movements such as the Black Lives Matter Movement and the #MeToo movement which has increased youth engagement in Left leaders who focus on issues concerned by these movements. Arguably, politicians include Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Bernie Saunders and Jeremy Corbyn here in the UK have aided mobilising youth engagement with a focus on issues which concern them.
Corbyn himself stated that social media played a big role in the UK’s 2017 general election! He stated in an interview with NME magazine that while print and more conventional forms of media were “incredibly hostile” to Labour and their front bench team, social media presented a reach unlikely any time before (Daly, 2017).
Two million people registered to vote in the last two weeks before the election!
Now that’s a reach that will definitely pull a muscle!
Figure 1 shows Labour polling among different age groups with an increase among young people turnout between 18-24 years old from the 2015 GE and the 2017 GE. (IPSOS MORI, 2017: Sloam et al., 2018)
Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour 2017 campaign was able you utilise ideas and concepts that groups such as young people and ethnic minorities could identity with such as the #Grime4Corbyn movement where grime music artists expressed support for Labour.
The Conservative party showed much reliance to traditional forms of media during their campaign which was evident more and more content in support of the Labour party was pumped onto social media due to the party’s dominant strides.
They should take a leaf out of Labours book next time!
Figure 2 indicates young people are using online news sources and social media to consume their news information.
This shift in youth political engagement has made it become increasingly easy for individuals to become the creators of web content and not just passive consumers. Blogs, new media outlets and comment forums such as Reddit have all become virtual arenas whereby young people can locate like-minded individuals, share their views and become involved in whatever interests them, whenever they what! (Ekström and Östman, 2015).
Within the political science sphere of discussion, youth being seen as unqualified of rational political discussion and almost as unworthy of partaking has been aline of argument which has historically and systematically excluded us from the political system (Loader et al., 2016.). They have seen when their views are not represented and denied in mainstream media. They’ve therefore turned to outlets they are greatly familiar for example Twitter to express views, opinions, lobby and even mobilising others to social and politically driven demonstrations and protest around the world.
Think about it, information access has been greatly expanded due to the use of the internet and new media. In addition, access to political information has become easier as the cost and resources that were previously not available to the youth is not cast in the shadows anymore (Schlozman et al., 2012: 487).
Figure 3 shows the UK youth electoral participation at the lowest out of the majority of European countries. (Sloam et al. 2017)
Nonetheless, the UK has a long way to go to further engage the youth in civic and political activities as they are the lowest out of the seven other European governments.
Social media has showed be to be a great avenue! Let me know in the comments what you think about the topic.
Bibliography
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Daly, R., 2017. Jeremy Corbyn says social media was a big part in Labour’s election support. [online] NME. Available at: <https://www.nme.com/festivals/glastonbury/jeremy-corbyn-says-social-media-big-part-labours-election-support-2093864> [Accessed 20 April 2021].
Ekström, M, Östman, J (2015) Information, interaction, and creative production: The effects of three forms of internet use on youth democratic engagement. Communication Research 42(6): 796–818.
Glynn, C. J., Huge, M. E., & Hoffman, L. H. (2012). All the news that’s fit to post: A profile of news use on social networking sites. Computers in Human Behavior, (28), pp. 113–119. doi: 10.1016/j.chb.2011.08.017
Ipsos MORI. (2017b). HowBritain voted in the 2017 election. Available at https://www.ipsos.com/ipsos-mori/en-uk/how-britain-voted-2017-election.
Loader, B. D., Vromen, A. and Xenos, M. A. (2016) ‘Performing for the young networked citizen? Celebrity politics, social networking and the political engagement of young people’, Media, Culture & Society, 38(3), pp. 400–419. doi: 10.1177/0163443715608261.
Schlozman, KL, Verba, S, Brady, HE (2012) The Unheavenly Chorus: Unequal Political Voice and the Broken Promise of American Democracy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Schulz, W. (2005). Political efficacy and expected political participation among lower and upper secondary students. A Comparative Analysis with Data from the IEA Civic Education Study. (1) pp. 4-5
Sloam, J., Ehsan, R., & Henn, M. (2018, April). “Youthquake”: How and why young people reshaped the political landscape in 2017. Political insight, pp. 4–8.