BLOG 1 Young People and Political Engagement

This blog will focus on a fundamental topic that has been circulating the UK over the past few years. It is evident that the elections of 2017 instigated an unforeseen disruption within politics. This was due to the youth engagement, therefore this blog will aim to look at the shift from youth’s feeling uninterested towards politics to now feeling prepared and ready to engage with their opinions.

This election caused a major disruption as there was a significant surge in both Conservative and Labour votes (Travis, 2017). This was an outcome due to Britain’s younger generation using their political knowledge to full extent and generating a real effect for the first time (Travis, 2017). Jeremy Corbyn instigated a key concept called the ‘youthquake’. This concept helped explain Corbyn’s 10-point development in Labour’s share of the vote (Travis, 2017). Although there are no official data that measures the scale of the youth votes, an NME-led exit poll suggests that the turnout amid under 35s rose by 12 points in contrast to 2015, to 56% (Travis, 2017).

 

Figure 1: Graph outlining the comparison between the turnout of votes by age and year

In the past, 18-24 year olds have obtained the lowest turnout by age than any other age demographic. As shown in figure one, this trend continued in 2015 with a small outcome of just 43% of 18-24 year old’s participating in the general election (Ipsos MORI 2015). However, in 2015 the turn out for over 65’s was 80%. This shows us that in 2015, there was a significant difference of 37% between the turnout of younger individuals and the elderly. Nevertheless, this trend changed during the 2017 general elections (Ipsos MORI 2015). In 2017, the number of youths aged 18-24 years taking part in the elections increased from 43% to 63% whereas participation from the elder demographic dropped from 80% to 76%. This shows that over the years, the younger generation have become more engaged (Ipsos MORI 2015).

There are a number of indications that young people are gaining their political knowledge through the active consumption of social media. Raine et al (2012) suggested that social media can be used as a way to generate a community in which younger individuals can freely engage their political views. Loader et al (2014) also agreed with this and suggested that social media can be endorsed in a way that will encourage younger people to be more politically active.

Figure 2: news consumption by medium among various age groups

Figure 2 outlines the popularity of news mediums amongst different age demographics. This helps us to understand why Labour managed to achieve as many youth votes as they did. The main focus of Labour’s campaign was the practice of social media as a way to encourage levels of participation within youths (Loader, 2011). The usage of social media was unquestionably an instrument that was exploited by the Labour party. When comparing the numbers of posts made from both the Labour and Conservative party, there is a huge difference. Labour had posted 545 times on Facebook alone regarding their campaign whereas the Conservatives only made 159. Furthermore, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn created 289 posts in comparison to Conservative leader Theresa May who only made 78 posts.

 

Figure 3: Graph indicating the number of posts made on Facebook across different parties (Walsh, 2017)

As seen in figure 3, the Labour party created a lot more online content than their competitors and also used social media as a way to share their campaign in comparison to other parties. In addition, the usage of social media as a news outlet worked in favour as the Labour party’s following increased on Facebook by 76%, similarly, Jeremy Corbyn’s following on his personal page also increase by 35% (Walsh 2017).

Sloam and Ehsan (2017) believe that the main reason as to why the political engagement of youths has increased is due to the Brexit results.

A high percentage of approximately 71% of 18-24 year olds voted to remain within the EU, this led to the motivation within young people to be more practical. Moreover, Sloam and Ehsan argue that youths were motivated by the frustration towards austerity politics such as an increase in university fees. They therefore designed a poll which helped establish the rise in interest young people had towards politics. By doing this, they found that 57% of 18-24 year olds said that they were most likely to vote compared to the 46% that said they would vote during the 2015 elections. They also found that 81% of young people were following the general election consistently compared to an average of 80% for other groups.

Overall, we can see that there has been a drastic change in political engagement within youths. The Labour party were successful in broadcasting their messages through a tailored approach of collaborating directly with their voters. They gained their huge following and obtained an active online presence through the usage of social media.

 

Bibliography:

Ipsos MORI (2015) How Britain voted in 2015. [Online] [Accessed: 19/02/19] Available  from: https://www.ipsos-mori.com/researchpublications/researcharchive/3575/How-Britain-voted-in-2015.aspx?view=print

Loader, B. (2011) Networking Democracy? Social Media Innovations and Participatory Politics in Information, Communication and society, volume 14, n0.6, pp. 757-769

Rainie, L., Smith, A., Schlozman, K. L., Brady, H. and Verba, S. (2012) Social Media and Political Engagement. [Online] [Accessed 18/02/19] 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: 18/02/19] Available from: http://www.if.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Youth-Quake_Final.pdf

Travis, A. (2017). The youth for today: how the 2017 election changed the political landscape. [online] the Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jun/09/corbyn-may-young-voters-labour-surge [Accessed 17 Feb. 2019].

Wlash, M. (2017) Understanding Labour’s ingenious campaign strategy on Facebook (available at http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/explaining-labours-facebook-success/ (accessed 18/02/19)

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 18/02/19] Available from: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/citedby/10.1080/1369118X.2013.871318?scroll=top&needAccess=true