This document discusses designing social media platforms to encourage civic engagement among youth. It reviews literature on how youth conceptualize and participate in civic issues online. The study defined civic engagement as supportive, deliberative, and collaborative practices in social media in response to societal needs. Interviews with youth found they prefer informal engagement in flexible contexts like Facebook over formal sites. Youth are motivated by peer-oriented causes, visibility, excitement from pictures/videos, and desire for quick feedback. The document provides recommendations for design including context, flexibility, updated content, peer relevance, control, sharing, visibility, and feedback.

1. DESIGNING FOR YOUTH CIVIC ENGAGEMENT IN
SOCIAL MEDIA
IADIS INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON SOCIAL MEDIA AND WEB BASED
COMMUNITIES
LISBON , 20.07.12
Petter Bae Brandtzæg
SINTEF ICT
Oslo, Norway
Asbjørn Følstad
SINTEF ICT
Oslo, Norway
Henry Mainsah
The Oslo School of Architecture and Design
Oslo, Norway

2. The aims of this study
• Define and conceptualize youth civic engagement in social media
(literature review).
• To identify how youth themselves conceptualize civic engagement
and in what way they participate and are motivated in civic issues
online (four group interviews, N = 27)
• Suggest guidelines on designing for youth civic engagement in
social media.
2

3. How are social media linked to civic
engagement ?
3

5. delTA 5

6. ”We use Facebook to
schedule the protests,
Twitter to coordinate, and
YouTube to tell the
world.”
Source: The Cascading Effects of the Arab Spring
http://www.miller-mccune.com/politics/the-cascading-effects-of-the-arab-spring-28575/

7. But, can we simply……
?
delTA 7

8. 8

9. Is it only a "feel good" engagement?
9

10. "What we hope will happen is that by just having this simple tool, we
think that people can really help spread awareness of organ donation"
Zuckerberg to ABC news May 1. 2012
By Tuesday evening,
100,000 people
had declared
themselves organ
donors on their
Facebook profiles,
10

11. The Facebook event page showed over 21,000 people attending.
Millions of tweets from around the world.
About 17 people met downtown to put up posters throughout the downtown core,
delTA 11

12. Possibilities Challenges
Free, cheap and effective way to bring “Slactivisme”
peoples voice out, to participate
More debate/more people can debate Destructive/nihelistic, thus only some
people would like debate
Fast mobilization /organizing groups Low commitment over time
Bring new voices into the public sphere. The active people online are the same
Motivate new people to participate and that are active offline (digital divide). Will
get involved in political issues not reach a mass audiences
Online activity Not offline activity ?
Internet activism (political activity online) Replacing traditional political activity
(thereby leading to lower level of
participation)
Easy to set up of Internet campaigns Does internet campaigns have any effect ?
Increase awareness of political issues Information overload
Diverse sources of information Fragmentation and echo chambers
delTA 12

13. Why youth?
• Young people are crucial agents with regard to peace
processes and political stability on a local and global
scale (Tufte & Enghel, 2009)
• Social media = a new and promising arena for civic
engagement
• Youth is regarded as being at the forefront of new
media uptake (Bennett, 2008; Christensen, 2011;
Jenkins et al., 2006; Mongomery et al., 2004).
delTA 13

14. All young people are on Facebook
“It’s just that everyone else is on
Facebook so you join up yourself"
(boy, 17 years)
Brandtzæg et al., (2010)
14

15. More eager
Recent reports (from US and Norway) indicate that
young people (15-25 years) are more eager
than the rest of the population to engage in
political and civic activities online (Rainie et al.,
2011).
15

16. But the majority of young people are
not active in civic issues online
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/n.php?n=social-media-and-political-revolutions-fact-and-fiction-2011-03-08
delTA 16

17. Define and conceptualize
civic engagement in social media
The elements that constitute civic engagement are
constantly evolving and are still open to debate
(Youniss et al., 2002), and in particularly with the
introduction of the Internet and social media
17

18. Civic engagement
- not only voting or protest actions
• EC Report - Unconventional forms of civic engagement
will need to be included in order to allow youth a greater
margin for such engagement (Forbrig, 2005, p. 67).
18

19. The study of everything? (Deth, 2001)
Voting, members • Voting, members in org.
Voing
of political parties
Contacting
officials
• Conventional participation - contacting officials etc
• Unconventional participation - protest actions
Protest actions social movements etc.
Social movements
Everything that are "social"?
Social
engagement
19

20. Proposed definition
To avoid an overly broad perspective on youth
civic engagement, we suggest three distinct sets of
practices:
"Youth action in response to societal needs,
in the form of supportive, deliberative, and
collaborative practices in social media."
20

21. delTA 21

22. The study
How: Four group interviews (snowball sampling).
Who: Young people (N= 27, 12 boys and 15 girls)
(M = 18 years, min.15 max.21 years)
When: October-November, 2011
Where: In Norway (Oslo and around)
What: How young people understand civic engagement
in social media and which factors motivate such
engagement.
22

23. Results from interviews
Some examples
23

24. Results
• The participants reported not to prioritize reading newspapers
or watching the news on TV, as their usage patterns related to
both communication and information is getting increasingly
Internet oriented.
• The participants reported to distance themselves from
aspects of formal citizenship, such as political parties and
involvement in local governmental political issues, and prefer
informal types of engagement within social media which often
have higher relatedness and, thus, often are associated with
causes initiated by young people.
24

25. Civic engagement online –
a question of context and formality
SNSs
HIGH
News sites
Degree of
engagement
Governmental
sites
LOW
Degree of formality HIGH

26. Informal & flexible
• Informal: project-oriented civic engagement is often reflected in flexible and
individualized participation
• "I want to participate when I have time and when
I am motivated, Facebook is therefore a nice
way to be engaged. Via Facebook you can
manage to follow and engage in different cases
when you have spare time" (Girl, 19 years)
26

27. Peer-oriented
• Youth are mainly interested in causes related to other youth and causes
defined by the youth (e.g., high relatedness). Attachment to a group is one
of the more straightforward reason why people participate online (Porter,
2008)
"Young people are interested in other young
people" (boy, 16 years).
27

28. Visibility & self expression
• Youth are using signs and pictures to communicate a stance. The level of
visibility influences how and to what degree young people are willing to
engage.
- "People changes their profile picture and add
pictures of themselves and their friends all the
time" (girl, 18 years).
28

29. Emotional
"Many engage in (civic) activities that are
motivated by feelings rather than real knowledge"
(boy, 19 years).
29

30. Excitement
• "Good headlines and good pictures are needed
to get our attention"
(girl, 17 years).
"Young people are fast to get bored"
(boy 18 years)
30

31. Immediate and local
"The young people we know are not very
interested in organizations and memberships, but
rather engage in immediate and local needs"
(girl, 17 years).
31

32. "I want fast feedback, so you just don't send an email to
your local authorities " (boy, 18 years)
Interviewer: What do you mean?
"It will probably take ages to get an answer, and if you get
an response it's probably not understandable" (boy, 18 years)
32

33. design recommendation
1. CONTEXT: Young people participate and use Facebook, Twitter and YouTube,
because everyone else are there.
2. FLEXIBLE: Young people like to be in an informal environment that is, flexible and
project-oriented because they have little time.
3. UPDATED, Young people are appealed by updated and fresh content and get bored
by old content.
4. EXCITEMENT: Young people are excited by emotional content, fresh layouts and
pictures of other young people (seek to find like-minded). Key words: Colorful,
contrasts, music, video clips.
5. PEER GROUP: Young people will have more information relevant for their peer
group. They would also like to have the opportunity to create and publish their own
content.
6. CONTROL: Young people wants control over their own information (privacy) and
easy to use software. They also want short and easy to understand information so
they can achieve improved knowledge and competence about civic issues.
7. SHARING: Young people wants to share content because they want to participate by
sharing
8. VISIBILITY: Young people enjoy visibility and different way of self expression. They
want to make use of signs and pictures to communicate a stance.
9. FEEDBACK: Young people expect quick responses to their contributions or
33
comments to motivate continued engagement.

34. Thanks to
• The VERDIKT-programme in the
Norwegian Research Council
• Opinion Perduco
• Plan Norway
• NRK – Norwegian Broadcasting
• EddaMedia/Fredrikstad blad (newspaper)
• Kongsvinger kommune (muncipal)
34