Social Media (In)Action: Online Campaigns On Non Voting

New forms of connective action (Bennett and Segerberg 2012) based upon networked communication such as the transnational Occupy Movement (Bennett and Segerberg, 2012; Castells, 2012; Mercea et al., 2013) has been arenas of protest. Whilst there have been campaigns to increase voting often using the power of celebrity endorsement (Rock the Vote, I can Vote etc) the opposite case, of abstentionism has received less scrutiny. Loader et al (2014) note how celebrities are now encouraging abstaining from voting. What role is social media playing in the furthering of the case against voting, particularly amongst the young ? We will give examples from platforms such as Facebook and Twitter of how social media based campaigns have impacted to encourage non-voting and how they may have contributed in terms of voting figures for each constituency in the 2015 UK general election and to ascertain any evidence of cross-fertilization of inputs.