It Doesn’t Generate a Story, it Massively Overinflates a Story: Politically Active Young People and Social Media Use

In this qualitative research project we explored how young people from a broad range of existing political and civic groups use social media for recruitment, sharing information, mobilisation, and, increasingly, as a means to redefine political action and political spaces. Twelve in-person focus groups were conducted in Australia, USA and UK with matched affinity groups based on university campuses. The groups were of four types: party political group; issue-basedgroup; identity-based group; and a social gaming group. This analysis is part of a larger comparative project examining whether social media use mitigates existing inequality in political engagement. It investigates whether young people’s experiences of national economic austerity shapes both the political issues that they engage with, and their perception of the efficacy of political action. Our focus group findings suggest that this more nuanced approach to understanding young people’s political engagement reveals important differences in national citizenship norms; as well as awareness of the limitations that personal social media use has for public, collective mobilisation.