2500 words essay on How does global capitalism shape a politics of video games and live-streaming due in 70 hrs

8 Conclusion

The research we have reported here began from a seemingly straightforward question:

how can the Internet be used to promote civic participation among young people? In

this concluding chapter we summarize our key findings on this question, looking

across the range of data and the different types of investigation we have presented.

However, we also seek to challenge the terms in which the question has been posed,

and point to the need to move beyond it.

From Alienation to Empowerment?

Our research supports the view that young people are largely alienated from, or at

least feel dissatisfied with, traditional institutional forms of politics. This was apparent

both from the responses to our survey and from our focus groups. Most respondents

across all our national samples said they saw politicians as corrupt, boring, or hard to

understand, mainly working for their own interests, and usually far removed from the

everyday needs of common citizens. A large proportion of them felt that things needed

to change — and in our focus groups they spoke, often at length, about issues such as

inequalities, corruption, lack of housing and job opportunities, high prices, religious,

ethnic, or regional discrimination, police harassment of civil protest, and government

censorship of the media.

In the context of a cross-national study, we inevitably identified issues that were

particularly acute, or that took on different forms, at particular historical moments in

different countries. For example, as we have suggested, the sphere of politics is seen

as especially dirty and corrupt in both Hungary and Slovenia, and therefore civic

organizations often strive to appear detached from politics. This means, ironically

perhaps, that voting is not overtly encouraged by youth civic sites in these countries

and that even party sites attempt to steer clear of connections with politics. The situ-

ation is very different in, for example, the Netherlands, where the existence of a

multiparty system makes political choice an especially complex process and online

voter advice applications are popular. As this implies, the salience of politics or of

154 Chapter 8

particular political issues depends very much on the historical trajectories of particular

political systems.

Likewise, the notion of European citizenship and belonging (Tuzzi, Padovani, and

Nesti 2007) is viewed in hugely different ways by young people in, for instance, Turkey,

Slovenia, and the UK; and civic websites addressing “ European ” youth issues are

accordingly more or less appealing. In the UK, our focus groups suggest that European

identity is not at all valued or highly developed except among a small minority of

politically left-wing or liberal youth, who see it as preferable to conservative notions

of “ Britishness. ” By contrast, in Slovenia we found some degree of positive feeling

toward the idea of European citizenship among a wider range of youth. Yet with

notable exceptions, most of the young people in our research displayed either a lack

of knowledge about European politics or a deep distrust of it. This distrust sometimes

bordered on xenophobia and was reflected in the anti-European rhetoric on ethnic

nationalist websites. While some limited sense of motivation toward and affiliation

with traditional politics was apparent at the national level and in relation to interna-

tional struggles, and was even clearer at a local or regional level, it was barely visible

when participants discussed Europe.

Yet while these young people were generally critical of traditional politics, they

were by no means apathetic. Our survey found high levels of interest in some political

and more broadly civic issues, and a fair amount of active participation. In our focus

groups, we encountered many young people who felt that involvement in social move-

ments (both democratic and antidemocratic), civic groups, volunteering, or protests

had increased their confidence and belief in social activism. The experience of solidar-

ity with others, regardless of age, had contributed to a belief in their responsibility as

citizens and in the need for civic action, regardless of the outcome.

Nevertheless, these young people generally felt that they themselves were unable

to change the things about their societies they found most problematic. This per-

ceived lack of efficacy was especially related to their general feelings about the unre-

sponsiveness, untrustworthiness, and distance of politicians. However, it also derived

from their actual experiences of having participated (for example, on schools coun-

cils, by signing e-petitions, or in demonstrations) and of not having been listened

to or not managing to change anything. In some instances, it also related to fears

about how active participation or political critique might affect them personally

and make them targets of the state, the police, or aggressive citizens with opposing

views.

For many of the civic web producers whom we interviewed, this perceived lack of

efficacy was the central problem. Web producers frequently employed the rhetoric of

“ youth empowerment ” and “ youth voice. ” Such a discourse typically sees young

people as lacking a voice, or at least as lacking the skills to make their voices heard.

When they are given a voice online, it is argued, they will be empowered to express

Conclusion 155

their own concerns in a safe environment, and this sense of empowerment can then

be transferred offline to provide them with greater control of their own lives. While

some website producers saw greater efficacy offline as a more or less spontaneous

consequence of gaining access to online technology, many working in more activist

organizations felt there should be more opportunities and training for young people

to help them develop the skills necessary to make their voices heard in the public

sphere.

Ironically, however, many of the civic website producers were aware that their users

tended to be mostly youth who were already engaged or skilled in civic participation.

The challenge for all concerned was to find ways of reaching hard to reach and dis-

advantaged young people, those most at risk of exclusion from civil society and poli-

tics. The Internet has thus far not been found to be a particularly good means of doing

this, and traditional offline approaches such as outreach on the streets or through

youth workers and local youth groups are still the main avenues for contacting eco-

nomically and socially disadvantaged young people.

These perceptions are reinforced by the findings of our research with young people.

We found that social factors such as class, gender, ethnicity, age, and religion signifi-

cantly affected the ways in which young people approached and used the Internet.

In our survey, the interest in civic websites was stronger among older respondents

(nineteen- to twenty-five-year-olds rather than fifteen- to eighteen-year-olds), those

not living with their parents, those who identified as religious, and girls and young

women. Interest in traditional political websites appeared to be stronger among older

respondents and those from higher socioeconomic groups. This finding contradicts

some commonly held perceptions, such as that girls and young women are less moti-

vated to participate in civic and political activity than boys and young men. However,

the strongest factor in relation to Internet use and civic participation across all the

countries we studied was social class. There was evidence of a digital divide along

socioeconomic lines, both in the quality and extent of access to technology and in

the types of civic engagement and political participation.

The Internet emerged in our study as an important mobilization tool for young

people who are already engaged in civic or political activities offline. Both our focus

groups and our analysis of websites themselves suggest that the Internet is often a

major hub for young people who are active in global or local political, religious, or

identity-based groups. This was evident in the case of groups as diverse as political

parties ’ youth organizations, activist networks, and communities of civic interest. The

Internet also forms an important resource for minorities — political, sexual, ethnic,

regional, or religious — and, in some notable instances, seems to offer young people

from such communities a space to enact diverse identities, to question notions of

tradition, to discuss the meaning of culture and citizenship, or to debate methods of

participation and protest.

156 Chapter 8

However, it is important not to overstate the case. The respondents to our survey

were primarily interested in websites on entertainment and lifestyle issues, and while

a significant minority reported having visited civic or political sites on occasion, only

a small proportion reported doing so on a regular basis. This does not necessarily mean

that more have not participated in civic discussions online; as we have suggested, such

discussions (among people of all ages) may also be found in the forums of entertain-

ment and social networking sites of various kinds. Furthermore, not all young people

who are civically active offline participate in such discussions online, and the ones

who do participate most often may do so sporadically. Yet ultimately, it seems that

the Internet in itself is unlikely to play a major role in promoting civic and political

participation among young people who are not already so engaged.

Using the Internet

The Internet is regarded by almost all civic and political organizations as an inexpen-

sive and effective method of disseminating information and making contact with

young people. However, our research emphasizes that this is by no means always the

case. Several of the producers whom we interviewed pointed out that for a site, blog,

or network to be known and used, considerable thought had to be given to promotion

and publicity. Most civic website producers have neither the time nor the money to

publicize their sites adequately, and hence the core of users remains relatively small,

even where social media have been enlisted as tools of promotion. The majority of

the websites we analyzed functioned with a combination of one or two part-time paid

employees and several volunteers, and staff turnover was often high. In many cases,

lack of funding also prevented the sites from being regularly updated or maintained.

As with “ leaderless ” Facebook groups and causes, the stagnation or attrition rate of

civic sites is also fairly high.

Among the hundreds of sites we surveyed, both in 2007 – 2008 and again in 2011 –

2012, interactive possibilities, especially the opportunity for young people to post their

own content, were rare. Despite the availability of more or less interactive applications

such as blogs, wikis, message boards, forums, video uploading, podcasts, RSS feeds,

and links to Facebook pages and Twitter feeds, most civic sites aimed at young people

still take the form of static pages dominated by written text and a few visual images.

While in some cases we are convinced the static nature of such sites reflects funding

constraints, or perhaps a lack of awareness of the technological potential, the underly-

ing rationale is more complex.

While some of the bodies, including local and national governments, that fund

civic websites appear to think that elaborate and more expensive sites are always and

automatically “ better ” than their simpler counterparts, our interviews with producers

and young people suggested this was not necessarily the case. Offering interactive

Conclusion 157

facilities did not automatically mean that young people participated. We found

several instances of websites that had forums, user content upload facilities, and

message boards on general themes that were underutilized or simply full of spam.

Claims about the Internet being a completely safe and equal space for participation

were also challenged repeatedly by both producers and users of civic websites. Several

producers were aware that dealing with controversial issues (especially those having

to do with discrimination and social justice) could provoke strong negative responses

from some members of the public. Some young people in our focus groups described

being “ attacked ” online, a phenomenon that was particularly apparent on sites con-

cerned with sexuality. Where immigrants or ethnic minority groups have established

civic organizations online to challenge prejudice, many of them are subjected to racist

critique and flaming, often by organized right-wing groups. In this situation, we

found that many organizations had deliberately chosen to prevent such attacks and

disruptions by having closed membership or by moderating and censoring posts

from users.

As these findings imply, forums, networks, user-generated content, and other

interactive applications have to be carefully explained, encouraged, motivated, and

managed. Young people are sometimes just as intimidated by what they view as a

“ requirement ” to contribute original content as they are disappointed by the lack of

possibilities for commenting or interacting online. Specialized jargon should be

avoided or explained. The skills for using applications such as RSS feeds, videocasts,

or podcasts have to be taught rather than taken for granted. This requires planning,

time, and money for personnel that most youth civic organizations surveyed simply

do not have. As a result, several of the producers we interviewed felt it was better to

provide a clear, helpful, but static site with the possibility for emailing the organiza-

tion than to offer potentially off-putting, superficial, or even damaging opportunities

for “ interaction. ”

While most producers still saw the importance of promoting their organization or

activities through traditional media channels (TV, newspapers, radio), a sizable minor-

ity viewed the Internet as a challenge to the gatekeeping of older media, and said their

users came to their sites for an alternative and more open perspective. However, both

our research with young people and our analysis of the sites themselves suggest that

many civic websites still maintain a strong gatekeeping function. Although the reasons

for this may relate to safeguarding users or to quality control, the site producers may

also be motivated by the desire to maintain a consistent ideological position and to

avoid the distractions of dealing with dissent or debate.

Our research therefore suggests that considerable thought must go into how the

producers or funders of civic websites actually spend their money. Large amounts of

funding are sometimes allocated to website design — and especially to flashy interactive

features — without a clear conception of their function. Although such features might

158 Chapter 8

conceivably make the organization look good or cutting edge, a large and complex

site is not necessarily better for users. As some of the young people and some of our

web producers suggested, it is important that sites be “ fit for purpose. ” This means

looking beyond the latest gimmicks and beyond some politically correct sense that an

organization lives or dies by its website or its social media presence.

The advent of commercial Web 2.0 platforms such as YouTube and Facebook does

not fundamentally alter this situation: the cost and the institutional politics of running

civic or political campaigns online, or encouraging people to engage with causes or

parties or particular ideological standpoints, do not disappear. Indeed, the roles of

producers may become more complex. Social networking tools like Facebook and

Twitter are increasingly utilized by civic and political actors to kick-start, maintain, or

broaden their campaigns, but these same strategies are also used by commercial actors

to draw users to particular forms of consumption or behavior. These are ultimately

commercial platforms, and one of the main ways in which they make money is by

gathering and selling data about their users.

Furthermore, even in these situations there is still a requirement for labor: someone

has to do the work, even if much of it is invisible. As such, many of the questions

about ideology and pedagogy, ethos and access, control, authority, skills, and remu-

neration that we have raised here are equally applicable to this “ new ” set of tools. The

opportunity, time, skills, and confidence to post civic content, the positioning of

ideologues and activists in groups or networks, the communication of group ideals

and demands, the connections between online and offline actions, and the need to

engage young people from different sections of society all remain just as significant

in the age of social media as they were in the age of print.

Motivating Civic and Political Participation

During our research, we did find a few cases in which attractive website design or the

latest interactive features seemed to be motivating civic engagement and participation

in themselves. However, these cases were the exception rather than the rule. This

finding counters a familiar and entrenched view that it is only by amusing and enter-

taining young people (on the Internet as well as elsewhere) that one can attract their

attention and encourage them to become engaged in civic initiatives. On the contrary,

our research strongly suggests that the most lasting forms of civic and political engage-

ment focus predominantly on issues of immediate proximity for the participants:

individual and group identities, a sense of discrimination or injustice, and people ’ s

current life situations are key. Civic and political interests are often related to having

family members, relatives, or friends who are interested in the same issues and con-

cerns: there is a strong intergenerational dimension here that is often ignored in grand

claims about the “ digital generation. ” In most of our focus groups, when young people

Conclusion 159

were involved in civic activities that were related to their immediate contexts (both

on- and offline), they also felt more confident in their capacity to bring about change

or to contribute to critical debate.

While many of these issues could be understood as having a bearing on social

equality, justice, and democracy, we are wary of construing them all in this normative

way. Although many of the changes sought were egalitarian and anti-authoritarian,

some were predicated on the creation of a more stratified, even totalitarian form of

governance and on the social marginalization of women and sexual and ethnic

minorities. Alongside its democratic possibilities, the Internet has proved to be a

powerful vehicle for the dissemination of hate speech and just as useful for the extreme

right as for those with democratic civic or political aims.

Despite the affordances of the Internet, most of the civic and political participation,

especially sustained participation, described in our research began and ended offline,

in local communities or communities of interest and identity. Of course, some civic

sites and social network groups are set up as a short-term solution to a problem rather

than being integrated into other activities, for instance to prevent the demolition of

a skate park or to mobilize opposition to funding cuts. Such sites and social network

pages may be intensively used for comparatively short periods of time. By contrast,

sites formed by specialist groups (based on religious, cultural, or subcultural identity

or locality), aimed at a very specific audience among young people and produced by

members of that specific group, tend to support a stronger sense of belonging and

community and are more likely to be used over the longer term.

A sense of efficacy is also critical in building the audiences and participants of youth

civic and political websites and campaigns. In a number of cases, local civic achieve-

ments, the experience of being active together and of group solidarity, or the feeling

of having organized an event or campaign and of having received some positive feed-

back from peers or older adults seemed to generate a sense of efficacy that encouraged

and motivated further participation, whether online or offline. On the other hand,

such experiences of participation could also have negative consequences: several of

the young people in our focus groups had experienced governments ’ failure to respond,

for example when they demonstrated in large numbers against university tuition fee

hikes or for better housing provision, or against the war in Iraq. Yet while such seem-

ingly unsuccessful protests might sap the motivation to participate, for some the

resulting anger and sense of injustice led to further participation — although this

frustration could also result in violence and other forms of antisocial or malicious

behavior.

The notion that online civic action and offline civic action occur in entirely sepa-

rate realms and are pursued by separate participants is clearly untenable. A majority

of the website producers whom we interviewed did not see the Internet as a replace-

ment for offline civic and political actions but as a complement to them. For many,

160 Chapter 8

participation still began and ended offline, with the Internet sustaining and contribut-

ing to offline activism. Many of the producers and almost all the young people we

interviewed were at pains to connect online and offline politics and civic action

explicitly. This might suggest they were never quite certain about the value or effec-

tiveness of actions that took place solely online. However, many also explicitly extolled

the usefulness of civic blogging, online mobilization about social issues, e-petitions,

and the provision of political information online. Nevertheless, without a live issue

or an offline social and political context for young people to engage with, even the

best-designed and well-funded online spaces are likely to remain underutilized.

As we have demonstrated, many of the official governmental sites aimed at young

people, like those of many NGOs, seem to rest on seriously limited assumptions about

what responsible, civically minded young people should be doing. There are implicit —

and sometimes explicit — rules about good behavior, implicit constructions of identity,

and a favoring of certain kinds of “ serious ” debate that are embedded in the design

of sites, in how young people are addressed, in the kinds of (limited) participation

that are invited, and in the ways participation is moderated (Banaji 2011; Miegel and

Olsson 2010b). Such practices operate to produce young people as “ good little citizens ”

who will not make trouble but will continue to play the game in particular, and

sometimes highly paternalistic, adult terms. In the process, certain kinds of activity

may fail to be recognized as civic or as in any way valuable, and certain young people ’ s

modes of expression may be delegitimized, ignored, or marginalized. In these cases,

we suggest, the Internet actually reinforces particular forms of exclusion. It becomes

a forum where young people are invited to participate, but only if they follow the

rules and behave according to limited norms of respectability and good manners.

From young people ’ s perspectives, civic participation is most successful when it is

both peer-to-peer and enables opportunities for reciprocal engagement with those in

power. Most youth civic organizations offer one or the other, and the engagement

with politicians is most often not reciprocal. This can be seen as a disincentive for

young people to engage with formal politics online. As one young woman in our focus

groups put it, “ Why should we speak if no one is listening? ” Young people are repeat-

edly encouraged to have their say, but there is not much evidence that anyone is

listening to them, or, if they are, that they are actually doing anything in response.

Such superficial forms of participation or consultation may quite justifiably result in

an increased level of critical disenchantment, although the young people in our focus

groups showed less cynicism than might be warranted under the circumstances.

Nevertheless, there clearly are innovative and exciting forms of political and civic

participation taking place online. There is evidence that some civic websites and net-

works for young people are tapping into newer forms of civic and political activity.

This is perhaps most apparent in the case of so-called ethical consumption, which

plays on the Internet ’ s qualities as a medium of shopping and marketing par excel-

Conclusion 161

lence. It is also evident in the circulation of Wikileaks clone sites and political messages

through social networking sites, and in the quick mobilization of support for time-

limited causes through social media. Questions remain, however, about whether and

how such activities are linked to traditional institutional or more activist forms of

political participation.

Likewise, we found that the Internet — and YouTube in particular — was being used

by groups of young people as a crucial supplement to mainstream media and a means

of accessing perspectives and information not widely available in the traditional press

or broadcasting. Again, there is a question of how easier access to information relates

to increased civic participation, although the importance of having a freer flow of

information and a less rigid hierarchy in terms of who can express and broadcast

political ideas online should not be downplayed. In countries where the authorities

have begun to censor and regulate the online sphere, such as Turkey and recently the

UK, the loss of this freedom highlights its importance still further.

We also found good evidence that the Internet enables some young people to take

on and refine their role as “ monitorial citizens, ” for instance by tracking elections;

keeping abreast of privacy issues; discussing, photographing, and publicizing police

behavior; uploading videos about controversial events; debating civil liberties; and

getting behind the scenes in conflict situations. In special cases such as file sharing

and the free downloading of music or the cloning of protest sites targeted by the state,

the Internet itself becomes the focus of and reason for civic action, and it is of particu-

lar interest that the young people who take part in such civic actions are not always

drawn from those already active in civic or political campaigns offline.

Signing online petitions or forwarding letters to big corporations — termed “ one-

click activism ” by one producer and “ feel-good activism ” by another — are thus by no

means the be-all and end-all of the actions young people are motivated to do online.

The information gathering necessary to make up one ’ s mind about a particular cause

or the meeting up, discussion, and protest offline can be supported and enhanced

rather than replaced by the online actions offered through polls or in forums. In this

sense, online civic engagement, however outwardly limited, should not be regarded

as a substitute for offline engagement but as a potentially useful complement to it.

Deconstructing the Question

We would like to conclude by taking a step back from the findings of our research

and asking some more critical and reflective questions about how the research ques-

tion was crafted in the first place. Our approach adopted a “ social constructionist ”

perspective, which has been widely used in the analysis of social problems (e.g., Best

2008). We wanted to interrogate the ways in which this particular problem of appar-

ently spiraling youth disengagement from civic and political life has been defined,

162 Chapter 8

not least because the definition of a problem also tends to determine the kinds of

solutions that can be offered. There are several basic questions that might be raised

in connection with our topic:

1. Why does this debate seem to focus on young people specifically? As we have

noted, there are some reasons for this attention, but an apparent decline in civic

participation is also seen among adults. The focus on young people may well rest on

implicit assumptions about young people — for instance, about their relationships with

technology — that are in need of critical exploration. There may also be a risk of repro-

ducing some of the time-honored ways in which older generations talk about younger

ones, such as the tendency to complain or, alternatively, to fantasize about the

younger generation, or to encourage young people to do more worthy and construc-

tive things with their time.

2. What is this civic or political sphere in which young people are seen to be failing

to participate? Our initial review of the research in this area suggested that these terms

are often poorly defined, or used in inconsistent ways. As we have noted, the term

“ civic ” often seems to imply a kind of normativity. In discussions of civic engagement

or participation, commentators often have recourse to some notion of the common

good (e.g., Montgomery, Gottlieb-Robles, and Larson 2004), but it is far from clear

who defines the common good. Right-wing extremists, for example, frequently claim

that their arguments are in support of the common good — and even for the good of

the immigrants whom they sometimes seek to “ repatriate. ”

3. Why should young people participate, and what counts as participation? It appears

to be assumed on all sides of the debate that participation is a good thing, yet this

begs the question of whether there might ever be undesirable forms of participation,

or whether participation might be merely a superficial substitute for — or indeed a

distraction from — other forms of civic or political action. It also ignores that possibility

that in some cases, nonparticipation might be entirely logical, and perhaps even the

most beneficial response. Again, there is a recurring assumption that participation will

somehow necessarily operate in the interests of democracy, although in our view, this

assumption is far from warranted.

4. Finally, why are we looking to the Internet for the solution? Again, there is a risk

here of making problematic assumptions about technology, and particularly about the

relationships between technology and social change — and as we have implied, the

specter of technological determinism is never far away. To focus on the Internet might

appear to presume that the problem has fundamentally to do with the medium or

style of communication: the problem is not the political system but the ways in which

politics is communicated. While this tack might be advantageous for scholars of com-

munication, it could be seen to assume that everything is basically fine with democ-

racy and that the problem can be solved through some kind of communication fix.

Conclusion 163

This stance might in turn distract attention from the ways in which some democrati-

cally elected governments in recent years have actively sought to undermine oppor-

tunities for civic and political participation, for example through curbing trade unions

or restricting citizens ’ right to protest in public places. Ultimately, it may well be in

the interest of governments to have a disengaged, nonparticipating citizenry.

We could pursue this line of questioning further by questioning the kinds of dis-

course or rhetoric that are in play here. Debates in this field often invoke some rather

ill-defined or contested terms. Aside from “ participation, ” “ civic, ” and “ political, ”

several terms recur without ever being adequately defined, among them “ democracy, ”

“ empowerment, ” “ engagement, ” and “ community. ” Such discourses often entail bina-

ries. For example, recurring distinctions are raised between old and new — old and new

media, old and new politics, old and new styles of communication, older and younger

generations — that may be less than helpful. Such distinctions are also frequently

entailed in historical narratives, stories of change (and most frequently of decline), in

which the grounds for comparison between past and present may be quite elusive.

We might ask similarly challenging questions about the ideals or norms that are

implicitly being offered in the texts, which use terminology such as “ engagement, ”

“ democracy, ” and “ voice. ” For example, what image is being constructed of what

young people are now, and should be in the future? What image are we given of

democracy, of the political system, or of citizenship, now and in some possible future

when everything will (once more) be all right? Several of the key ideas in these

debates — for example, notions of social capital or the public sphere — explicitly embody

norms or ideals that are seen to have somehow disappeared or been lost, and are now

in need of recovery. Indeed, it could be argued that the term “ civic ” is itself implicitly

normative in this way.

We do not suggest that norms or ideals are unnecessary. Rather, we wish to point

out the risk of constructing ideals that have never and will never correspond to the

realities of most people ’ s lives. “ Democracy ” is a prime example in this respect: it is

often invoked in idealized terms in academic and policy debates rather than in rela-

tion to actually existing manifestations. Vague ideals may command assent, but such

assent is often merely dutiful and superficial and may be disingenuous. Indeed, the

worthy and normative — and ultimately very bland — assumptions about civic virtue

that characterize so many attempts to engage young people may also make it easier

for far-right and fundamentalist groups to pose as challengers to the status quo, and

as exciting political alternatives.

Civic participation comes in many forms and happens in many ways. Some of the

forms of participation that young people engage in are simply not recognized by

adults, while others are positively denigrated or else seen as threatening. Smashing up

police vehicles as a response to being harassed or “ kettled ” on a demonstration, spray

164 Chapter 8

painting government buildings with political graffiti, or hacking into secret service

websites and posting incriminating content online are all routinely described by some

commentators as merely destructive vandalism, while others would regard them as

highly “ civic ” in intent (Hands 2011). And so our study has cast up another question:

can civic participation be “ antisocial ” in some circumstances, and if so, which? Or

must it necessarily respect the rights of law, privacy, and property ownership even

when such rights are being ignored by those in power?

Our final deconstructive move here is to contextualize this debate, historically and

geographically. Why are we having this debate now ? It is not too far-fetched to point

out that the debate has arisen at a particular point in the political evolution of

modern societies where mainstream political parties have to a large extent converged,

where many politicians have ceded much of their power to the “ invisible hand ” of

the market, and where the nation-state is subsidiary to the operations of globalized

capitalism. Second, why are we having this debate here ? On the face of it, this would

appear to be very much a European or Western debate. In fact, much of the research

literature derives from the US, and some of it at least reflects the very particular

characteristics of that context, yet even when we look across Europe (let alone beyond

it), it is clearly difficult to translate key concepts or questions. The assumed problem

of young people ’ s disconnection from the civic sphere, the ways in which it is framed,

and the rubrics used to characterize it reflect quite specific historical or cultural cir-

cumstances. This social construction of the problem might well serve particular inter-

ests and cause potential or actual damage to those who are involved, or who are

spoken about.

Reconstructing the Question

Our project was originally based on a notion of the Web as a collection of more or

less discrete sites that were put up largely by organizations, often with a considerable

amount of money behind them. In most instances, such organizations use their sites

as a means of transmitting a body of content and simultaneously promoting or adver-

tising offline activities, largely according to an established mass media model. In 2012,

this model is still the dominant mode for producer-led youth civic participation

online. Yet as our work proceeded, it became apparent that different types and degrees

of civic participation are also occurring on social networking and file-sharing sites, as

well as through a range of other kinds of social software and entertainment forums

such as online games and sport fandoms. Toward the latter half of our project we

ventured into the endlessly proliferating world of new social media mentioned by

young participants in our study — YouTube (Banaji 2013) and Facebook groups or

memes in particular — only to be confronted by the same set of questions we set out

with.

Conclusion 165

Indeed, attempting to trace civic participation in these new social media poses these

questions in an even more acute form. Where and how might we look for civic activ-

ity on Facebook or YouTube, for example? How would we recognize it as such? And

how might we assess the specific contribution of these media to promoting civic

engagement or participation? These questions might seem to point to an ongoing

fragmentation or dispersal of the civic sphere, and perhaps especially of the online

civic sphere. However, we do not believe that such a conclusion is yet warranted. The

large majority of the Web 1.0 sites that we studied in our research either continue to

exist or have been replaced by others that are essentially similar. Likewise, many of

the forms of participation we considered can be accommodated within relatively

conventional notions of civic participation — which, despite their limitations, also

continue to be relevant. The differences between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 have, in our

view, been massively overstated in this respect.

Nevertheless, studying these new phenomena has led us to restate our more far-

reaching questions about why we seem to want young people to participate in civic

life in the first place, and how we want them to do so. Civic participation is not an

either/or phenomenon. Rather than youth being inherently civic or uncivic as a

cohort, we have suggested that most young people engage intermittently and contex-

tually in acts of citizenship. From this perspective, we were able to challenge the theo-

retical assumption that civic participation is a largely individual practice that depends

on the possession of individual skills and motivations. On the contrary, our research

suggests it is principally about collaboration, solidarity, dialogue, and shared endeavor.

In light of this conclusion, the fundamental question that informed our research —

and the wider debate in this area — needs to be rethought. It is not a matter of whether

the Internet can reengage young people or enable them to participate when they were

not participating before. Rather, it is a question of how the Internet might engage

with other movements and modes of participation within society, and how those other

movements might use technology in their wider efforts to bring about social change.

This becomes a question not primarily about technology or even about young people

but about much broader social and cultural processes.