Is Online Political Action for Young People? A Uses-Gratifications Approach

“Voting is for old people” proclaimed a T-shirt printed and distributed in 2004 by a popular American clothing company. With this slogan, the company wanted to draw attention to the relative lack of political participation among young adults, an issue that is also acknowledged by many analysts (Amna, 2010). However, some authors point out that this assessment is too negative, since youngsters might not be participating less but rather differently. Dalton (2008), for instance, claims that youngsters prefer individualised forms of online participation to the traditional collective modes of offline participation. The issue remains unresolved, not in the least because claims on either side are based mainly on standardised survey data involving self-reported behaviour. In the present paper, we use unique behavioural data that shed new light on the age distributions of political participants. We rely on two case studies selected according to a most different design: the first concerns problem reporting by email to local authorities (population data based on the linking of 1950 problem reporters with the population register), the second relates to message posting on an online political forum (a random sample of 1329 members of the Belgian online forum politics.be ). On the basis of these two cases, we propose that online political participation should be differentiated according to issue-content and media use. As different participatory tools serve different causes, different age groups have different preferences in respect of online participation. Amnå, E. (2010). New Forms of Citizen Participation. Normative Implications. Baden-Baden: Nomos. Dalton, R.J. (2008). The Good Citizen. How a Younger Generation is Reshaping American Politics. Washington, D.C.: CQPress. Boulianne, S. (2009) Does Internet use Affect engagement? A Meta-Analysis of Research, Political communication, 26: 193-211. Wattenberg, M.P. (2008). Is Voting for young People? New York: Pearson Longman. Zukin, C., Keeter, S., Andolina, M., Jenkins, K. & Delli Carpini, M.X. (2006). A New Engagement? Political Participation, Civic Life, and the Changing American Citizen. New York: Oxford University Press.