Social Media and Participation in Different Socio-political Contexts: Cases of Estonia and Finland

Abstract

Today’s young people are engaging in politicized activities and are more attuned to the concerns of their own generation, as opposed to issues more relevant to their parents. Youth political activism takes a less overt and more individualized approach, and young people today are enthusiastic about online participation and engaging in it in different ways. This article adds to the growing discussion that focuses on connections between social media use and non-institutional youth political participation. The article focuses on the meaning that young people attribute to their own social media participation in two countries—Estonia and Finland—taking into account the impact of the wider social context. The empirical part of the study relies on material collected within the framework of the large-scale European project MYPLACE. The in-depth micro-level analysis is primary based on interviews with young people from Estonia and Finland, contextualized by diverse survey data.

Non-formal and Informal Learning as Citizenship Education: the Views of Young People and Youth Policymakers

“…Harris et al 2010;Amnå, 2013;Banaji & Buckingham 2013;Riley et al 2010;Loader et al 2014) shows that these are not the forms of participation young people prefer. While in many countries actualising citizenship is replacing dutiful citizenship (Bennett 2008), in Estonia, it can be said that the dutiful citizen model has never reflected the behavioural trends of young people (Allaste and Saari 2020). Rather, we can discuss emerging new forms of citizenship that might replace the passivity prevalent among young people and increase the social capital believed to 'be behind a low level of involvement in politics' (Letki 2004).…”

Cidadania digital de jovens em três países europeus: perfis de (não) participação cívica online

“…Não obstante, os jovens alemães que se envolvem politicamente parecem fazê-lo de forma mais autónoma, dado que são os que menos se mostram recetivos a conselhos sobre participação, por contraste com os jovens portugueses e estónios, o que se reflete no seu peso reduzido no cluster 2. Importa igualmente notar a relevância da participação em redes sociais entre os jovens, enquanto contextos informais e imprevistos de acesso e partilha de interesses com repercussões políticas e cívicas (Allaste e Saari, 2020;. Não por acaso, os jovens portugueses encontram-se entre os que mais tempo despendem nas redes sociais: 67% visita-as diariamente, para 55% dos estónios e 42% dos alemães (Smahel et al, 2020).…”

To Join or Not to Join? Contextualising the Motives of Organisational Membership in the Czech Republic and East and West Germany

“…The selection of universities could not have achieved a criterion of representativeness because this would have been against the basic postulates of a qualitative approach (Creswell 2013;Rubin -Rubin 2011). Instead, sampling was driven by maximising the degree of variation among socioeconomic and cultural contexts (Allaste -Saari 2020).…”

“…I found methodological justifications for a number of interviews and sampling procedures in the relevant literature (such as Allaste -Saari 2020;Hochschild 2016;Howard 2003;Lichterman 1996;Quintelier 2013). I aimed to secure a relatively heterogeneous sample of participants according to their (1) organisations (type of organisation, their ideological profiling), and (2) political experiences, as well as (3) sociodemographic and socioeconomic characteristics (e.g.…”

“…They focus on a particular lifestyle or societal issue (such as environmental or human rights protection) while the distinctions between the private and public political sphere blur (Inglehart 1990;Tsekoura 2016;Verba et al 1995). Nevertheless, instead of fully replacing conventional forms with new activism, young people combine various modes of participation, for example, protest politics, online activism, consumer boycotts and electoral activities (Allaste -Saari 2020;Corrigall -Brown 2012;Zukin et al 2006).…”