Reconfiguring Political Participation: Youth Engagement in the Digital Era

Abstract

Digital age has radically changed the way youth  interacts in politics. Youth - the term usually describes people in their late teens and 20s - have new avenues to express themselves, develop mutual action and influence the society with the help of online technologies. With social media, messaging apps, online petitions, e government portals, it makes the participation more expansive, involving more than the customary rallies and elections. This report is a review of contemporary scholarly works concerning this change, which is discovered to focus on key mechanisms (mobilization, deliberation, identity formation, networked publics, slacktivism, activism) and theoretical approaches (political opportunity structures, resource mobilization, network theory, affordances theory, medialization, digital citizenship, youth political socialization) to explain the digital youth engagement. The Pakistani examples demonstrate these trends: urban young people discuss the governance issues more openly with the help of Twitter and Facebook than those in rural areas, whereas online campaigns (e.g. #JusticeForNaqib) demonstrate that the digital mobilization can cause street action and draw not only attention but also policies. The report ends with research gaps (e.g. long-term effect of online campaigns, platform-specific research, youth involvement in policy development) and policy implications (expanding connectivity and digital literacy, protecting internet freedoms, facilitating e-participation activities)