Public support for Canada's military participation in Afghanistan became a hot-button issue in 2006. While there is some research investigating factors that influence support, and how it may differ among sub-groups of the population~Létourneau and Massie, 2005!, little attention has been given to how and why overall support changed over time~Kirton, 2007a!. In this paper, we look specifically at the interplay among three factors that led to an erosion of public support for Canada's military presence in Afghanistan. The first involves pre-existing public sentiments regarding the appropriate role of the country's military on the world stage. More specifically, we explore how peacekeeping and realist "predispositions" Zaller, 1992:12-28!, or "standing decisions"~Marcus et al., 1995:19-22!, affect support for the war. A second factor concerns the acquisition of political information pertaining to the mission, or what Marcus et al. would classify as the role of "contemporary information" in changing support~1995: 22-25!. Initially, we measure political information in terms of public understanding of the nature of the mission; subsequently we examine public acceptance of information communicated by government as it attempted to bolster support for the mission. In this regard our work is consistent with Western's~2005: 5! view that public support for military interventions is a function of information flows and public predispositions. Our third factor is emotion. We use pride in the mission as a proxy for the ways in which emotion contributes to political judgment regarding military engagement.

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Abstract.The gradual withdrawal of young voters from the active electorate is one of the strongest and most important factors in accounting for declining voter turnout in Canada and other western democracies. Because qualitative approaches may be better able to probe the reasons underlying these changing values and attitudes than traditional mass surveys, we used the popular social media site Facebook during the 2008 federal election campaign to collect data on young people's perceptions of electoral politics in the context of their civic obligations. This medium proved to be a valuable and productive research tool. Based on this project, we argue that non-voting tends to be seen as a more socially acceptable behaviour to young voters than is typically found in the thinking of older cohorts, and that this may be connected to changing concepts of the obligations of citizenship.Résumé.Le désengagement graduel des jeunes électeurs est un des facteurs les plus importants pour expliquer le déclin de la participation électorale au Canada et dans les démocraties occidentales. Afin de mieux comprendre les causes de ce changement de valeurs et d'attitudes, nous avons utilisé le média socialFacebookafin de collecter des données qualitatives sur la perception des jeunes électeurs durant l'élection fédérale de 2008. Cette approche nous apparaît mieux adapter que l'approche traditionnelle caractérisée par l'utilisation de sondages d'opinion. Au terme de l'analyse, la collecte de données viaFacebooks'est avérée être une stratégie de recherche productive. En nous basant sur ces données, nous concluons que l'abstention électorale est un comportement plus socialement acceptable pour les jeunes électeurs que pour les électeurs plus âgés. Cette attitude pourrait être liée un changement conceptuel quant aux obligations associées à la citoyenneté.