In this blog post, I will be focusing the discussion on a topic that has been gaining plenty of attention over the past few years in the UK and that is youth political engagement; looking at how we have gone from a situation where the youth felt apathetic towards politics Norris (2002), to one where British youth are mobilised and ready to shake up the current political landscape up.
The snap 2017 general election proved to be a shock for many reasons to both sides of Britain’s political spectrum; Theresa May somehow managed to lose the firm Conservative grip of power in the country and Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour somehow managed to fix the cracks of a party that looked to be in complete disarray. One of the major factors behind the shock results was founded on an unexpected surge in youth turnout (Ipsos MORI, 2017), or as some have labelled it – a ‘youthquake’ (Guardian, 2017).
The data above shows the drastic rise of 18-24 year olds’ turnout which went up from 43% in 2015 to 64% in 2017 – the largest increase for any other age range. Sloam and Ehsan (2017) argued that a major reason behind this rise is down to the disappointment of the Brexit results, where approximately 71% of 18-24 year olds voted to remain (YouGov, 2016), thus, energising and motivating young people to be more proactive. In addition to this, Sloam and Ehsan added that young voters were motivated by their anger with austerity politics which has hit younger people the hardest (E.G. university fee increase and further education grant removal).
They designed a poll as the 2017 general election drew closer which established a rise in interest of young people in electoral politics. The found that:
So now we have a rough idea of why young people have been more politically engaged, it leaves one with the question of how young people were able to mobilise themselves and translate their frustrations into voting action. There are growing indications that suggests young people are actively consuming social media as a means of accessing political information. Raine et al (2012) argued that social media can be used as a tool that could create communities/spaces where young people are freely able to engage politically and encourage them to go out and vote. Xenos, Vromen and Loader (2014) agreed with these arguments adding that social media may be pushing young people closer to being politically active. This was after conducting a study of their own with results that suggested there is ‘a strong, positive relationship between social media use and political engagement among young people’ in the UK.
The graph above highlights the popularity of various news mediums among different age demographics and this makes it clear to see why Labour managed to accumulate so many youth votes. They tailored their campaign to appealing to young voters (Fletcher, 2017), thus, deliberately dominating the social media battle. In contrast, the Tories appeared to focus less on their online campaign, but reliant on traditional forms of media used minimally by younger generations. This shows why they were unable to communicate a narrative that would appeal or even reach younger people.
Source: Lilleker, 2017
From the 2015 to the 2017 elections, the Labour Party, quite simply were best at getting their messages through to young voters due to their tailored approach of directly communicating with its voters. Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party managed to gain celebrity endorsement and grow their online presence through an attractive and interactive campaign (Lilleker, 2017) with Corbyn gaining more than double as many follower increase on Twitter and Facebook than his Tory counterpart, Theresa May (Sloam and Ehsan, 2017). Labour and Corbyn gave us a glimpse as to how social media can be used as a political medium to mobilise younger voters and may hold the keys to winning elections in the future.
Bibliography
Fletcher, R. (2017). ‘Labour’s Social Media Campaign: more posts, more video, and more interaction’. [Online] [Accessed: 18/02/18] Available from: http://www.electionanalysis.uk/uk-election-analysis-2017/section-5-the-digital-campaign/labours-social-media-campaign-more-posts-more-video-and-more-interaction/
Ipsos MORI (2015) How Britain voted in 2015. [Online] [Accessed: 19/02/17] Available from: https://www.ipsos-mori.com/researchpublications/researcharchive/3575/How-Britain-voted-in-2015.aspx?view=print
Ipsos MORI (2015) How Britain voted in 2017. [Online] [Accessed 18/01/18] Available from: https://www.ipsos.com/ipsos-mori/en-uk/how-britain-voted-2017-election
Rainie, L., Smith, A., Schlozman, K. L., Brady, H. and Verba, S. (2012) Social Media and Political Engagement. [Online] [Accessed 18/02/18] Available from: http://www.pewinternet.org/files/old-media/Files/Reports/2012/PIP_SocialMediaAndPoliticalEngagement_PDF.pdf
Sloam, J. Ehsan, RM (2017). Youth Quake: Young people and the 2017 General Election. [Online] [Accessed: 18/02/18] Available from: http://www.if.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Youth-Quake_Final.pdf
YouGov, (2016). How Britain Voted. [Online] [Accessed 18/02/18] Available at: https://yougov.co.uk/news/2016/06/27/how-britain-voted/
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. [Online] [Accessed 18/02/18] Available from: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/citedby/10.1080/1369118X.2013.871318?scroll=top&needAccess=true