Kids These Days: Supply and Demand for Youth Online Political Engagement

Posted by University of Pennsylvania on October 12, 2015

2015-16 Theme Year
Digital Media and the Future(s) of Democracy

Kids These Days: Supply and Demand for Youth Online Political Engagement

All attendees are encouraged to read Prof. Earl’s paper, available here.

https://www.sas.upenn.edu/dcc/sites/www.sas.upenn.edu.dcc/files/Kids%20These%20Days%2C%20draft%2007%20with%20cover%20page.pdf#overlay-context=event/jennifer-earl

Jennifer Earl
Professor of Sociology, University of Arizona

Discussant: Michael X. Delli Carpini
Dean, Annenberg School for Communication

Thursday, October 15 / 4:30 pm
Silverstein Forum, Stiteler Hall
University of Pennsylvania Campus

Co-sponsored by The Annenberg School for Communication.

https://www.sas.upenn.edu/dcc/events-workshops

WHAT IS THE REAL POTENTIAL FOR ONLINE YOUTH ACTIVISM in the US? Professor Earl approaches the question from two directions. How interested are youth in engaging in online political activity (what is the “demand” for this activity)? And what kinds of opportunities are youth afforded to engage online (what is the “supply” of opportunities to engage in such activity)? In order to understand demand, she uses survey data from a random sample of teenagers and young adults to understand what kinds of activities are particularly attractive to different youth sub-groups (e.g., compares participation across race and ethnicity). Then, she uses data on random samples of websites on 20 different social movement issue areas to understand how and how often youth are specifically targeted for non-institutional engagement by social movements.

Excerpt: “Instead of assuming that social movements and other forms of extra-institutional engagement have received youth interest with open arms, our examination of the supply side of participation has shown that youth are engaging despite a lack of significant targeting and tailoring. It is a reasonable hypothesis, which future research should investigate, to suspect that if movements are already enjoying substantial youth engagement without those efforts, movements might be able to generate far more youth support and engagement if they do try to explicitly reach out to youth. It would seem that social movements that could benefit from greater youth engagement need to start with the simplest of steps: trying to actually engage youth and cast youth not just as subjects affected by activism but as an actual audience the movement needs to target and as active agents who can contribute to movements through their participation.”