Young People and Politics in the UK: How do young people in Britain politically engage?
It is interesting to look at how young people have been politically engaging in Britain over recent years. With statistics that have come out of the 2015 and 2010 General Elections, the voting turnouts for 18 to 24 year olds have been undeniably low (Ipsos MORI 2015; 2010). With 43% of 18-24 year olds voting in the 2015 General Election in comparison to 77% of 55-64 year olds (Fig. 1), older cohorts are exercising their civic right to vote in our liberal model more than younger cohorts are. However, when we look to political activity on social media, youth engagement is high (Munro 2013: 24), which begs the question – how do young people in Britain politically engage if they do not vote as much as older cohorts? In this post, I will be arguing that young people politically engage through the platforms of social media, and this phenomenon of ‘passive’ engagement could actually be bringing young people closer to the active political world.
There has been significant talk following recent unexpected political events, such as the EU Referendum and the US Presidential Election, that have united young individuals in ways that differ from going to voting stations. A key example of this was seen through how the recent Women’s March came about: Teresa Shook, thrown by the US Presidential result, set up a Facebook page to organise a Women’s March ‘en masse’ across Washington on Saturday 21 January 2017 (Stein and Somashekhar 2017: 1). More than she expected signed up to this protest and attended, not only in Washington, but within multiple cities across the world. This could not have come about without the use of social media – the amount of people who attended protests in Washington, New York, London, Berlin, and so many other large cities, could not have been so enormous if it was not for Teresa’s actions on Facebook. Some may call the act of posting online ‘passive political engagement’, or ‘slactivism’ (Munro 2013: 24), but social media may in fact be the key to making young people more political active (Tufekci and Wilson 2012: 363).
FIGURE 1
So, how do young people in Britain politically engage? They politically engage through their devices on Facebook, Twitter and the like, which, in turn, slowly grants them civic knowledge. Social media can be used to ‘encourage people to vote’ (Rainie et al. 2012: 2), to create a community of people who engage in ‘online political participation (e.g. forwarding political messages by email)’ (Jung et al. 2012: 320) and allow people to ‘belong to a political group on a social media site’ (Rainie et al. 2012: 2), with 18 to 29 year olds being ‘the “power users of social networking”’ (Munro 2013: 24). Historically, researchers have equated political participation with ‘electoral activities, such as voting and working for political parties’ (Jung et al. 2012: 320), but online political participation may just be the way in which young people decide to engage themselves with political matters, and where they feel their participation is encouraged.
In fact, some researchers believe that social media may actually be bringing young people closer to the active political world. Michael Xenos and fellow researchers conducted research with results suggesting ‘a strong, positive relationship between social media use and political engagement among young people’ in ‘Australia, the USA, and the UK’ (Xenos et al. 2014: 151). Xenos noted that they have “reasons to be optimistic concerning the overall influence of this popular new form of digital media” – being social media platforms – “on longstanding patterns of political inequality” (Xenos et al. 2014: 151). Essentially, these researchers are claiming that social media may finally begin to bridge the gap which has been seen between all voters and voters aged 18 to 24 since the 1970s (Fig. 2). Therefore, social media may just be what will lead, and continue to lead, young people from being passively political individuals on their phones to actively political citizens who vote.
FIGURE 2
So, this young demographic in question has unprecedented access to information through online platforms, which, in turn, opens doors to political news, and engages young people in a way that may not engage older generations. Their civic knowledge is being influenced by what they read online, and what is ‘retweeted’ or ‘shared’ onto their platforms. Slacktivism may start as passive political socialisation, but it can lead to the younger generation, including those who are not yet able to vote (14+ year olds) to be exposed to the vast scale of information on global political events that can be found online, hence making them more active in their political engagement over time.
The internet is becoming the main venue for these events to be witnessed by youth, rather than through tradition methods such as the radio or the newspaper. Although stepping outside of digital devices and attending protests, campaigning or going to voting stations does make you a more active citizen, this ‘slacktivist’ phenomenon could just be the stepping stone that gets young individuals from their desks to the streets.
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References:
Ipsos MORI (2010) How Britain voted in 2010. Trillium Systems. Accessed 20/02/17 from https://www.ipsos-mori.com/researchpublications/researcharchive/2613/How-Britain-Voted-in-2010.aspx
Ipsos MORI (2015) How Britain voted in 2015. Trillium Systems. Accessed 19/02/17 from https://www.ipsos-mori.com/researchpublications/researcharchive/3575/How-Britain-voted-in-2015.aspx?view=print
Jung, N., Valenzuela, S., Zuniga, H. (2012) Social Media Use for News and Individuals’ Social Capital, Civic Engagement and Political Participation. Journal of Computer Mediated Communication, International Communication Association, Vol. 17. Accessed 20/02/17 from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1083-6101.2012.01574.x/epdf (320)
Munro, E. (2013) Feminism: A fourth wave? SAGE Journals, Political Studies Association, Vol. 4, Issue 2. (22-24)
Rainie, L., Smith, A., Schlozman, K. L., Brady, H. and Verba, S. (2012) Social Media and Political Engagement. Pew Internet, Pew Research Center: Washington D.C. Accessed 20/02/17 from http://www.pewinternet.org/files/old-media/Files/Reports/2012/PIP_SocialMediaAndPoliticalEngagement_PDF.pdf (2)
Stein, P. and Somashekhar, S. (2017) It started with a retiree. Now the Women’s March could be the biggest inauguration demonstration. The Washington Post: US and World. Accessed 17/02/17 from: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/it-started-with-a-grandmother-in-hawaii-now-the-womens-march-on-washington-is-poised-to-be-the-biggest-inauguration-demonstration/2017/01/03/8af61686-c6e2-11e6-bf4b-2c064d32a4bf_story.html?utm_term=.84fe25053aec (1)
Tufecki, Z. and Wilson, C. (2012) Social Media and the Decision to Participate in Political Protest: Observations from Tahrir Square. Journal of Communication, Vol. 62, Issue 2: Portal Komunikacji Naukowej. Accessed 20/02/17 from https://www.infona.pl/resource/bwmeta1.element.wiley-jcom-v-62-i-2-jcom1629 (363)
Xenos, M., Vromen, A. and Loader, B. (2014) The great equalizer? Patterns of social media use and youth political engagement in three advanced democracies. Information, Communication and Society, Vol 17, Issue 2: The Networked Young Citizen. Accessed 20/02/17 from http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/citedby/10.1080/1369118X.2013.871318?scroll=top&needAccess=true (151)