The internet as a global playground: young citizens and informal spaces of agency, a Portuguese case study

ABSTRACT

The recent rapid expansion of digital technologies brought with it the promise that these technologies would bring citizens, and especially youth, closer to political decision-making processes. But studies on youth participation and technology suggest that this promise has failed to materialize. The present article looks at nontraditional and informal online forms of civic participation to better understand students’ civic agency when using the Internet. Results from a countrywide survey of 11th- and 12th-grade students in Portugal suggest that their informal online civic participation (e.g., posting and sharing civically relevant items) is positively correlated with their formal civic participation offline (e.g., in community groups and school decision-making), perceived opportunities to participate offline, and formal online civic participation. In addition, students tend to react to and share civic content on online social networks more often than they perform more structured and formalized civic actions. The results suggest that the Internet is a space of youth civic agency and participation – a global playground – contrasting with formal institutional and formal online spaces, where youth lack a voice.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Paul Reeve for proofreading.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. It is common to see the terms engagement and participation used interchangeably (Vissers & Stolle, 2014). This paper will treat the two as equivalent.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia [SFRH/BD/78276/2011].