Young citizens and political participation in a digital society : addressing the democratic disconnect

197 Pages·2015·0.86 MB·English

by  Collin

Studies in Childhood and Youth
Series Editors: Allison James, University of Sheffield, UK, and
Adrian James, University of Sheffield, UK.
Titles include:
Kate Bacon
TWINS IN SOCIETY
Parents, Bodies, Space and Talk
Emma Bond
CHILDHOOD, MOBILE TECHNOLOGIES AND EVERYDAY EXPERIENCES
Changing Technologies = Changing Childhoods?
David Buckingham, Sara Bragg and Mary Jane Kehily
YOUTH CULTURES IN THE AGE OF GLOBAL MEDIA
David Buckingham and Vebjørg Tingstad (e ditors )
CHILDHOOD AND CONSUMER CULTURE
Tom Cockburn
RETHINKING CHILDREN’S CITIZENSHIP
Sam Frankel
CHILDREN, MORALITY AND SOCIETY
Allison James
SOCIALISING CHILDREN
Allison James, Anne Trine Kjørholt and Vebjørg Tingstad ( editors )
CHILDREN, FOOD AND IDENTITY IN EVERYDAY LIFE
Nicholas Lee
CHILDHOOD AND BIOPOLITICS
Climate Change, Life Processes and Human Futures
Manfred Liebel, Karl Hanson, Iven Saadi and Wouter Vandenhole (e ditors )
CHILDREN’S RIGHTS FROM BELOW
Cross-Cultural Perspectives
Orna Naftali
CHILDREN, RIGHTS AND MODERNITY IN CHINA
Raising Self-Governing Citizens
Helen Stapleton
SURVIVING TEENAGE MOTHERHOOD
Myths and Realities
E. Kay M. Tisdall, Andressa M. Gadda and Udi M. Butler
CHILDREN AND YOUNG PEOPLE’S PARTICIPATION AND ITS
TRANSFORMATIVE POTENTIAL
Learning from across Countries
Afua Twum-Danso Imoh and Robert Ame (e ditors )
CHILDHOODS AT THE INTERSECTION OF THE LOCAL AND THE GLOBAL
Hanne Warming ( editor )
PARTICIPATION, CITIZENSHIP AND TRUST IN CHILDREN’S LIVES
Karen Wells, Erica Burman, Heather Montgomery and Alison Watson ( editors )
CHILDHOOD, YOUTH AND VIOLENCE IN GLOBAL CONTEXTS
Research and Practice in Dialogue
Rebekah Willett, Chris Richards, Jackie Marsh, Andrew Burn and
Julia C Bishop ( editors )
CHILDREN, MEDIA AND PLAYGROUND CULTURES
Ethnographic Studies of School Playtimes
Karen M. Smith
THE GOVERNMENT OF CHILDHOOD
Discourse, Power and Subjectivity
Spyros Spyrou and Miranda Christou
CHILDREN AND BORDERS
Leena Alanen, Liz Brooker and Berry Mayall ( editors )
CHILDHOOD WITH BOURDIEU
Philippa Collin
YOUNG PEOPLE AND POLITICAL PARTICIPATION IN A DIGITAL SOCIETY
Addressing the Democratic Disconnect
Studies in Childhood and Youth
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Young Citizens and
Political Participation
in a Digital Society
Addressing the Democratic Disconnect
Philippa Collin
University of Western Sydney, Australia
© Philippa Collin 2015
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2015 978-1-137-34882-1
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this
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in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published 2015 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN
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registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndsmills, Basingstoke,
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the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries
ISBN 978-1-349-46773-0 ISBN 978-1-137-34883-8 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9781137348838
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Contents
List of Illustrations vi
Acknowledgements vii
Introduction: Young People, Participation and Digital Media 1
1 C onceptualising Young Citizens 1 8
2 C ultivating Good Citizens 4 4
3 C ivic Organisations in Context 7 0
4 Y outh Perspectives on Participation 9 7
5 M ediated Participation 1 28
6 A ddressing the Democratic Disconnect 1 55
Notes 170
Bibliography 172
Index 185
v
List of Illustrations
Figure
5.1 Approaches to youth e-citizenship 1 53
Tables
1.1 Forms of e-citizenship 3 7
3.1 Schema of policy contexts and civic organisations 9 3
4.1 Reasons for participation (multiple responses) 1 12
4.2 Issues that young people wanted to address 1 15
4.3 Interviewee perspectives on participation policies 1 21
5.1 Formal and informal online participation at the
Inspire Foundation since 1998 1 36
5.2 Interviewee perspectives on participation policies:
online and offline 1 48
vi
Acknowledgements
This book has emerged from nearly a decade of work in organisations
and academia and through engaging in research, policy making and
service design with young people. Their work, passion and generosity are
the foundations of this project. I acknowledge all of those who partici-
pated in the research and thank them for their openness and insightful
reflections.
I would also like to thank the organisations whose case studies are
presented in this book for their involvement, and particularly, the staff
and executives who gave their time to help me understand their aims
and practices.
I am indebted to many intellectual friends, but most specifically to
Ariadne Vromen, David Marsh, Eric Sidoti, Lucas Walsh, Greg Noble,
Ned Rossiter and Amy Denmeade for their guidance and critique at
various points in this project. I also thank Ien Ang and the Institute for
Culture and Society at the University of Western Sydney for the institu-
tional support to realise this book.
I am also grateful to Vanessa Mendes Moreira De Sa for her research
assistance and to Caroline Cockburn, my wonderful mum, for her
support in all aspects of my life and work – as well as editing and feed-
back on the manuscript. Some of the chapters draw on work previously
published in article form, such as ‘The Internet, Youth Participation
Policies and the Development of Young People’s Political Identities in
Australia’, Journal of Youth Studies 11(5): 527–542, 2008; and ‘Building
and Connecting to Online Communities for Action: Young People, ICT
and Everyday Politics’, International Journal of E-Politics: Special Edition
on E-Democracy – Online Youth Participation and Engagement 1:3, 1–18,
2010.
This book is in memory of Kelly Betts, the kind of Everyday Maker who
could have changed the world, and for Marcelo, Violeta and Amelia –
three who can.

vii
Introduction: Young People,
Participation and Digital Media
When Annie, 19, responded to my Skype call it was a windy day in
Canberra where she attends university. She was on her way to the
shops, but was able to fit my interview on her experiences of participa-
tion in between other commitments, and I was grateful for her time.
Annie was on the board of directors of an Australian non-government
organisation – appointed ‘by accident’, she said laughing, when nomi-
nated by her collaborators in a youth-led organisation. I asked if her
experience paralleled, in some dark way, that of the previous Australian
Prime Minister, Julia Gillard. But Annie said that the organisation and
other board members had been very accepting and supportive of her. By
contrast, her experience discussing policy matters with politicians had
been more confronting. ‘Governments just want to fix things, to find
policy responses that keep the public happy and minimise criticism’, she
tells me. She was even more sceptical about the ways in which govern-
ment engages with young people to find solutions to policy problems.
Her direct experience with the Australian Government’s flagship youth
involvement mechanism, the Australian Youth Forum, was that it was
highly managed:
This is the government policy: go away and tell us what young
people think about this policy. There was never a sense of control or
[informing] any department or informing any decision. It was, ‘Do
this so we can say we’ve engaged with young people’ and that’s that.
Consequently, Annie has decided to focus her energies on youth-led
and youth-serving NGOs working with other young people and adults,
around the country and the world, on issues such as gender equality.
Annie exemplifies both the optimism and fears regarding young
people and civic engagement in contemporary discourse. The rapidly
1
2 Young Citizens and Political Participation in a Digital Society
diversifying social, communicative and cultural landscapes of the local,
national and global are at odds with the institutions, processes and
dominant political cultures of established western democracies. Scholars
and policy makers continue to struggle to comprehend the causes and
implications of a general decline in traditional forms of political partic-
ipation. Young people are frequently blamed for this decline and are
targeted with a range of policy mechanisms to ‘remedy’ the ‘problem’.
In recent times youth participation policies have become an increas-
ingly popular solution to a range of perceived ‘issues’ related to young
people or to address their exclusion from government and community
decision-making.
In the past two decades in Australia, Europe and the US, dwindling
membership in political parties and low voter turnout has raised
concerns that contemporary societies are facing a crisis of democracy.
Research indicates the trend away from formal institutionalised partici-
pation is particularly marked amongst the young and this in turn fuels
concern for the future of liberal democracies. In response, governments
are keen to formulate policies to promote participation, particularly by
young people. Running parallel to this story of democratic civic deficit,
a youth participation agenda has emerged from a range of other fields,
influenced by the child rights movement, developmental approaches,
participant centred approaches and the new sociology of youth.
In the academic literature, definitions of youth participation are
varied. In some cases, youth participation is viewed as the degree of
civic mindedness and political behaviour of young people – for instance,
the ways that young people contribute to and influence civil society
(Martin, 2012; Mellor et al., 2002; Pittman et al., 2003). Studies on youth
political participation typically look to intention to vote or voter enrol-
ment or turnout (Saha et al., 2005) or membership of political parties
(Leighley, 1995). Even studies that attempt to take a more open view of
political engagement privilege institutional measures and conclude that
variations in the normative political behaviour and attitudes of young
people can be interpreted, at best, as young people being ‘uncertain’
about citizenship (Martin, 2012). This view neglects research on young
people’s own conceptions of ‘the political’, participation and citizen-
ship and their subjective experiences of transitions as citizens (Harris
et al., 2007; Lister et al., 2003; Marsh et al., 2007; Smith et al., 2005).
Such research is rooted in critical revisions of what counts as political
participation and in particular, the implications of what Norris has
described as a generational shift away from traditional acts underpinned
by a ‘politics of loyalties’ to the ‘politics of choice’ (Norris, 2003). In her