Keating, A;
Melis, G;
(2017)
Social media and youth political engagement: Preaching to the converted or providing a new voice for youth?
British Journal of Politics and International Relations
, 19
(4)
pp. 877-894.
10.1177/1369148117718461.
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Abstract
Amidst concern about declining youth political engagement, it is often suggested that social media can provide a solution to this challenge. In this article, however, we argue that these online tools have not thus far mobilised a new audience to become engaged in either institution-oriented activities or political expression. Instead, we found that some young people are far more engaged in using social media for political purposes than others, and that a substantial proportion of young adults never use social media for this purpose. Using latent class analysis (LCA) of a unique web survey of young Britons aged 22–29, we show that the principal driver of online political engagement is political interest (even after controlling for socio-demographic characteristics). On this basis, we conclude that social media may be providing a new outlet for some young adults; it is not re-engaging the young adults who have already lost interest in politics.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Social media and youth political engagement: Preaching to the converted or providing a new voice for youth? |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1177/1369148117718461 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1177/1369148117718461 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage). |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education > IOE - Education, Practice and Society |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1563514 |
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