DESIGNING FOR YOUTH CIVIC ENGAGEMENT IN SOCIAL MEDIA

IADIS INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON SOCIAL MEDIA AND WEB BASED COMMUNITIESLISBON , 20.07.12

Petter Bae Brandtzæg

SINTEF ICT

Oslo, Norway

 

Asbjørn Følstad

SINTEF ICT

Oslo, Norway

 

Henry Mainsah

The Oslo School of Architecture and Design

Oslo, Norway

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The aims of this study

• Define and conceptualize youth civic engagement in social media (literature review).

• To identify how youth themselves conceptualize civic engagement and in what way they participate and are motivated in civic issues online (four group interviews, N = 27)

• Suggest guidelines on designing for youth civic engagement in social media.

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How are social media linked to civic engagement ?

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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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Is it only a "feel good" engagement?

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"What we hope will happen is that by just having this simple tool, we think that people can really help spread awareness of organ donation"

Zuckerberg to ABC news May 1. 2012

By Tuesday evening, 100,000 people had declared themselves organ donors on their Facebook profiles,

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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,

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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 Fragmentation and echo chambers

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Why youth?

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

• Social media = a new and promising arena for civic engagement

• Youth is regarded as being at the forefront of new media uptake (Bennett, 2008; Christensen, 2011; Jenkins et al., 2006; Mongomery et al., 2004).

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All young people are on Facebook

“It’s just that everyone else is on Facebook so you join up yourself" (boy, 17 years)

Brandtzæg et al., (2010)

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More eager

Recent reports (from US and Norway) indicate that young people (15-25 years) are more eager than the rest of the population to engage in political and civic activities online (Rainie et al., 2011).

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But the majority of young people are not active in civic issues online

http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/n.php?n=social-media-and-political-revolutions-fact-and-fiction-2011-03-08

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Define and conceptualize civic engagement in social media

The elements that constitute civic engagement are constantly evolving and are still open to debate

(Youniss et al., 2002), and in particularly with the introduction of the Internet and social media

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Civic engagement - not only voting or protest actions

• EC Report - Unconventional forms of civic engagement will need to be included in order to allow youth a greater margin for such engagement (Forbrig, 2005, p. 67).

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The study of everything? (Deth, 2001)

Voing

Voting, membe

rs of politica

l parties

• Voting, members in org.

Contacting

officials

• Conventional participation - contacting officials etc

Protest actions Social

movements

• Unconventional participation - protest actions social movements etc.

Social engagement

Everything that are "social"?

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Proposed definition

To avoid an overly broad perspective on youth civic engagement, we suggest three distinct sets of

practices:

"Youth action in response to societal needs, in the form of supportive, deliberative, and collaborative practices in social media."

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The study

How: Four group interviews (snowball sampling).

Who: Young people (N= 27, 12 boys and 15 girls)

(M = 18 years, min.15 max.21 years)

When: October-November, 2011

Where: In Norway (Oslo and around)

What: How young people understand civic engagement in social media and which factors motivate such engagement.

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Results from interviews Some examples

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Results

• The participants reported not to prioritize reading newspapers or watching the news on TV, as their usage patterns related to both communication and information is getting increasingly Internet oriented.

• The participants reported to distance themselves from aspects of formal citizenship, such as political parties and involvement in local governmental political issues, and prefer informal types of engagement within social media which often have higher relatedness and, thus, often are associated with causes initiated by young people.

Civic engagement online – a question of context and formality

Degree of

engagement

Degree of formality

News sites

Governmental sites

SNSs HIGH

LOW HIGH

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Informal & flexible

• Informal: project-oriented civic engagement is often reflected in flexible and individualized participation

• "I want to participate when I have time and when I am motivated, Facebook is therefore a nice way to be engaged. Via Facebook you can

manage to follow and engage in different cases when you have spare time" (Girl, 19 years)

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Peer-oriented

• Youth are mainly interested in causes related to other youth and causes defined by the youth (e.g., high relatedness). Attachment to a group is one of the more straightforward reason why people participate online (Porter, 2008)

"Young people are interested in other young

people" (boy, 16 years).

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Visibility & self expression

• Youth are using signs and pictures to communicate a stance. The level of visibility influences how and to what degree young people are willing to engage.

- "People changes their profile picture and add pictures of themselves and their friends all the

time" (girl, 18 years).

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Emotional

"Many engage in (civic) activities that are motivated by feelings rather than real knowledge"

(boy, 19 years).

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Excitement

• "Good headlines and good pictures are needed to get our attention"

(girl, 17 years).

"Young people are fast to get bored" (boy 18 years)

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Immediate and local

"The young people we know are not very interested in organizations and memberships, but

rather engage in immediate and local needs" (girl, 17 years).

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"I want fast feedback, so you just don't send an email to your local authorities " (boy, 18 years)

Interviewer: What do you mean?

"It will probably take ages to get an answer, and if you get an response it's probably not understandable" (boy, 18 years)

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design recommendation 1. CONTEXT: Young people participate and use Facebook, Twitter and YouTube,

because everyone else are there.

2. FLEXIBLE: Young people like to be in an informal environment that is, flexible and project-oriented because they have little time.

3. UPDATED, Young people are appealed by updated and fresh content and get bored by old content.

4. EXCITEMENT: Young people are excited by emotional content, fresh layouts and pictures of other young people (seek to find like-minded). Key words: Colorful, contrasts, music, video clips.

5. PEER GROUP: Young people will have more information relevant for their peer group. They would also like to have the opportunity to create and publish their own content.

6. CONTROL: Young people wants control over their own information (privacy) and easy to use software. They also want short and easy to understand information so they can achieve improved knowledge and competence about civic issues.

7. SHARING: Young people wants to share content because they want to participate by sharing

8. VISIBILITY: Young people enjoy visibility and different way of self expression. They want to make use of signs and pictures to communicate a stance.

9. FEEDBACK: Young people expect quick responses to their contributions or comments to motivate continued engagement.

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Thanks to

• The VERDIKT-programme in the Norwegian Research Council

• Opinion Perduco• Plan Norway• NRK – Norwegian Broadcasting• EddaMedia/Fredrikstad blad (newspaper)• Kongsvinger kommune (muncipal)