Young participation: Social Web for societal involvement

VERDIKT-konferansen 2012

Petter Bae Brandtzæg, SINTEF Twitter: @PetterBB

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How can we support young people in civic engagement by the use of social media?

Content

• Why young people? • What is civic engagement online? • Opportunities and challenges • How many young people are politically active

online and is this number increasing?

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Why youth?

• Young people are understood as crucial agents with regard to peace processes and political stability on a local and global scale (Tufte & Enghel, 2009)

• Nearly all young people (15-30 years) in Norway use Facebook or other kinds of social media. The majority do this daily (digital natives).

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Younger people more active in politics at Facebook

Defining new participation

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Connections

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Free information

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”We use Facebook to schedule the protests,

Twitter to coordinate, and YouTube to tell the world.”

Source: The Cascading Effects of the Arab Spring http://www.miller-mccune.com/politics/the-cascading-effects-of-the-arab-spring-28575/

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But, can we simply……

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Online political activity: ”slactivism”

• Pointless showcasing that does more to make the activist feel good about themselves, than to address urgent political matters

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The Facebook event page showed over 21,000 people attending. Millions of tweets from around the world. About 17 people met downtown to put up posters throughout the downtown core,

Rubbish

• Some argue that political activity online tend to involve a destructive and nihilistic quality, which make it hard to take it seriously

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Possibilities Challenges

Free, cheap and effective way to bring peoples voice out, to participate

“Slactivisme”

More debate/more people can debate Destructive/nihelistic, thus only some people would like debate

Fast mobilization /organizing groups

Low commitment over time

Bring new voices into the public sphere. Motivate new people to participate and get involved in political issues

The active people online are the same that are active offline (digital divide). Will not reach a mass audiences

Online activity Not offline activity ?

Internet activism (political activity online) Replacing traditional political activity (thereby leading to lower level of participation)

Easy to set up of Internet campaigns Does internet campaigns have any effect ?

Increase awareness of political issues Information overload

Diverse sources of information Echo chambers

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• Why are young people using these social

networking sites? – Are social networking sites (SNSs) usage associated with

political participation?

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”What is your most important

reasons for using a social networking site?”

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N = 4,417

How many of 4,417 youth mentioned politics?

Zero

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This was way back in 2007…but are

.... political participation in SNSs increasing over time?

Longitudinal study (N = 2000)

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How often are you using social networking sites to political activity?

2008 14% (10%)

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Social networking sites to political activity?

2009 13% (9 %)

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Social networking sites to political activity?

2010 13% (9 %)

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Why? • SNS-not a space for political action: Social networking sites are still

mostly a socializing activity, friends and family members. They might not want to mix friends with political action. (e.g. Storsul, et al., 2008)

• Too new (short period of time): Social networking sites are quite new, and it’s hard to identify a significant effect over such a short period of time

• Dissatisfied: Norwegian youth are in Europe the most eager users of Internet, but also the those that shows most dissatisfaction with the online services (Livingstone, et al., 2011)

• Broad engagement: Not all are conscious about actions that they to are political actions

However, we might see a change after 22.07?

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References Brandtzæg, P.B., & Heim, J. (2009). Why people use social networking sites.

Proceedings of the HCI International. (pp. 143–152). In A.A. Ozok and P. Zaphiris (Eds.): Online Communities, LNCS. Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg, San Diego, CA, USA, 19-24 July

Brandtzæg, P.B., Lüders, M., & Skjetne, J. H. (2010). Too many Facebook “friends”? Content sharing and sociability versus the need for privacy in social network sites. International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction, 26(11), 1006 – 1030

Christensen, H. (2011). Political activities on the Internet: Slacktivism or political participation by other means? First Monday, Volume 16 Number 2, Tilgjengelig. http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/3336

Livingstone, S., Haddon, L., Görzig, A., and Ólafsson, K. (2011). Risks and safety on the internet: The perspective of European children. Full Findings. LSE, London: EU Kids Online, London

Storsul, T., H. C. Arnseth, et al. (2008). Nye Nettfenomener. Staten og delekulturen, Instiutt for medier og kommunikasjon & Forsknings- og kompetansenettverk for IT i utdanning, UiO. Tilgjengelig: http://www.itu.no/Nye+nettfenomener+-+Staten+og+delekulturen.9UFRjYZd.ips

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