Young Citizens and Political Participation in a Digital Society

Young Citizens and Political Participation in a Digital Society
Author: P. Collin
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2015-01-13
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9781137348821

Drawing on diverse theoretical perspectives, this book examines questions of youth citizenship and participation by exploring their meanings in policy, practice and youth experience. It examines young people's participation in non-government and youth-led organisations, and asks what can be done to bridge the democratic disconnect.

Young Citizens

Young Citizens
Author: Eldin Fahmy
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
Total Pages: 220
Release: 2006
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780754642596

Based upon a wide range of UK and European survey sources, together with qualitative and policy-focused analyses, this volume explores the attitudes of young people to politics and government in Britain and assesses the prospects for re-engaging young people with the formal political process.

What Can a Citizen Do?

What Can a Citizen Do?
Author: Dave Eggers
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Total Pages: 53
Release: 2018-09-11
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 1452176337

"Obligatory reading for future informed citizens." —The New York Times "[This] charming book provides examples and sends the message that citizens aren't born but are made by actions taken to help others and the world they live in." –The Washington Post Empowering and timeless, What Can a Citizen Do? is the latest collaboration from the acclaimed duo behind the bestselling Her Right Foot: Dave Eggers and Shawn Harris. This is a book for today's youngest readers about what it means to be a citizen. This is a book about what citizenship—good citizenship—means to you, and to us all.

Teenage Citizens

Teenage Citizens
Author: Constance A. Flanagan
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2013-02-14
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0674067231

Too young to vote or pay taxes, teenagers are off the radar of political scientists. Yet civic identities form during adolescence and are rooted in experiences as members of families, schools, and community organizations. Flanagan helps us understand how young people come to envisage civic engagement, and how their political identities take form.

The Networked Young Citizen

The Networked Young Citizen
Author: Brian D. Loader
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 202
Release: 2014-06-05
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 131769693X

The future engagement of young citizens from a wide range of socio-economic, ethnic and cultural backgrounds in democratic politics remains a crucial concern for academics, policy-makers, civics teachers and youth workers around the world. At a time when the negative relationship between socio-economic inequality and levels of political participation is compounded by high youth unemployment or precarious employment in many countries, it is not surprising that new social media communications may be seen as a means to re-engage young citizens. This edited collection explores the influence of social media, such as YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, upon the participatory culture of young citizens. This collection, comprising contributions from a number of leading international scholars in this field, examines such themes as the possible effects of social media use upon patterns of political socialization; the potential of social media to ameliorate young people’s political inequality; the role of social media communications for enhancing the civic education curriculum; and evidence for social media manifesting new forms of political engagement and participation by young citizens. These issues are considered from a number of theoretical and methodological approaches but all attempt to move beyond simplistic notions of young people as an undifferentiated category of ‘the internet generation’.

Conditional Citizens

Conditional Citizens
Author: Catherine Hartung
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 166
Release: 2017-11-01
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 9811039380

This book challenges readers to recognise the conditions that underpin popular approaches to children and young people’s participation, as well as the key processes and institutions that have enabled its rise as a global force of social change in new times. The book draws on the vast international literature, as well as interviews with key practitioners, policy-makers, activists, delegates and academics from Japan, South Africa, Brazil, Nicaragua, Australia, the United Kingdom, Finland, the United States and Italy to examine the emergence of the young citizen as a key global priority in the work of the UN, NGOs, government and academia. In so doing, the book engages contemporary and interdisciplinary debates around citizenship, rights, childhood and youth to examine the complex conditions through which children and young people are governed and invited to govern themselves. The book argues that much of what is considered ‘children and young people’s participation’ today is part of a wider neoliberal project that emphasises an ideal young citizen who is responsible and rational while simultaneously downplaying the role of systemic inequality and potentially reinforcing rather than overcoming children and young people’s subjugation. Yet the book also moves beyond mere critique and offers suggestive ways to broaden our understanding of children and young people’s participation by drawing on 15 international examples of empirical research from around the world, including the Philippines, Bangladesh, the United Kingdom, North America, Finland, South Africa, Australia and Latin America. These examples provoke practitioners, policy-makers and academics to think differently about children and young people and the possibilities for their participatory citizenship beyond that which serves the political agendas of dominant interest groups.

Young People's Quality of Life and Construction of Citizenship

Young People's Quality of Life and Construction of Citizenship
Author: Graciela Tonon
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 63
Release: 2012-01-05
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9400729960

The study of quality of life refers to the material environment (social welfare) and psychosocial environment (wellbeing). It has been defined as a concept that implies the objective and subjective dimension that Cummins (1997) first studied in seven domains. The use of domains in the quality of life study allows a more precise measurement than the one that could have been reached through simple questions, since psychometric scales are used and if the addition of domains is equivalent to the totality of life satisfaction, then the group of domains is a valid measure of quality of life. In the case of young people, it has been observed that even if they live in negative physical, social and contextual conditions, they can nevertheless experience a relatively positive experience in relation to their quality of life, depending on the strategies and capabilities that they generate in relation to the context. Similarly, young people that live in favorable socioeconomic conditions and with a trouble free psychological situation may experience a relatively poor evaluation of their position in life (Patrick et al). oung people do not form a homogenous group and, in this sense, it is not possible to generalize about youth; they interact with the environment in which they live and they are a product of the history they happen to live, in this way they transit different vital scenarios in daily life that affect their quality of life. The social representations about youth that each population has, in each historical moment, are embedded in the social context in which young people live and develop, conditioning every-day life and /or creating related stereotypes. The concept of youth is a social construction built conjointly by all members of society in the historical moment in which they live. Young people interact with the environment in which they live and they are a product of the history they happen to live. Authors like Urresti (1999) define youth from a point of view that takes into account the living together of different generations in different societies, thus being impossible to compare young people of today with those of two or three decades ago; in addition, he states that it is necessary to situate the understanding of youth within the historical and social moment in which they live. Nowadays the predominant adult model is based in individualism, and even if an intergenerational dialogue is necessary, it is difficult for young people to achieve this kind of communication with adults that, in some cases, are living “stages of youth” or that need to be “forever young”. Young people live in uncertainty, with a limited perspective for future action, assigning their own meaning to events and facts, according to their fundamental concerns that are significantly different from those of their parents’ generation. In the other side the process of globalization and the protagonist social role of the new informational and communicational technologies, produce that the possibilities to expand individual freedoms increase, but not all young people can manage with it (Lechner, 2002). What young people need in order to construct their citizenship and feel satisfied, varies according to the different societies, especially considering that most of them live a fragile situation. As Cortina (2003:7-9) states, the idea of citizenship always transcends individualism, because the citizen is somebody that exists together with others, and those others are equal to him before the city, is somebody that deliberates with others, that acts with others conjointly, that assumes the protagonist role of his own life, in this way citizen is not only that who the law protects, but that who participates in the public issues. Speaking about young people we propose to recognize them from their equal dignity because “recognition is not only a courtesy that we owe others: it is an essential human need” (Taylor, 1993:46). This recognition is based in human dignity and tends to protect the basic rights of people as individuals and to recognize the particular needs of people as members of specific cultural groups (Gutman, 1993:20). This brief book is dedicated to analyze the relations between quality of life and construction of citizenship of young people in Argentina, considering two specific social scenarios: the community and the university. In the case of community it is important to note that it not imply uniformity, as community means the inclusion of diversity and the achievement of sharing within it, and in the case of university it will be necessary to recognize that as an educational institution the university has expanded his traditional role of production of knowledge, to be an institution of social reference and social support for students. To do this the author will show some of the results of a decade of research in quality of life and young people, using quantitative and qualitative methods.

Young Citizens in the Digital Age

Young Citizens in the Digital Age
Author: Brian D. Loader
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 228
Release: 2007-08-07
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 1134131577

This book explores alternative approaches for engaging and understanding young people’s political activity and looks at the adoption of information and ICTs as a means to facilitate the active engagement of young people in democratic societies.