Mediated Participation

Abstract

Young people use the internet in diverse ways for political and civic engagement. This includes searching for and sharing information, peer-to-peer communication and content creation as well as online petitioning, blogging and contacting decision makers via SMS (Stanyer, 2005; Vromen, 2007). While there are many possible ways for the internet and other information communication technologies to transform citizenship by revolutionising conventional processes and institutions of democracy (for example, Chen et al., 2007; Coleman and Spiller, 2004; Gibson et al, 2004; Ward et al., 2009) the evidence is that traditional political institutions and actors are struggling to connect with young people — particularly those whose faith and trust they have lost. Coleman has argued this is because policies for using digital media to enhance political and civic engagement are constrained by a number of binary perspectives: young people as apprentices or catalysts; the internet as anarchy or enclave; democracy as existing or aspirational (Coleman, 2008). Government-led approaches typically use closed systems, requiring young people to go to a specific online environment, often at a designated time, and respond to the set agendas of adult moderators and the government of the day. No small wonder then that so many top-down initiatives to promote online participation struggle to engage young people ‘on their own terms’, much as they struggle to justify the costs of promoting and running heavily managed online spaces.

So let’s say 300,000 conversations go on — face to face conversations but they might also be a post on Facebook that sparked a conversation where people started going back and forth with a friend, it’s like oh all the money goes to corrupt dictators when you donate to these sorts of charities, and then the person has the conversation about where the money goes and why it’s important to provide education as the way to break the poverty cycle in developing countries and whatever the conversation may be. It’s not something that we are, like, here’s digital media and here’s real world because for young people it’s just one and the same. It’s just, like, it’s the way that we have conversations.

— Olivia, 23, Oaktree, Australia