TABLE 5: REASONS FOR NOT VOTING (CODES) USER EXPERIENCE STUDY Q32C

Category Code

No Code Occurrences Category

Tally

1 Result doesn’t affect me 1

2 Not interested enough / low motivation 2 A. Apathy

3 Parents don’t vote / not politically aware 1

4

4 Not adequately informed / was not sure

what each party is offering 5

B. Lack of Information /

Alternatives 5 Not sure who to vote for / did not like any

of the alternatives 6

11

6 Don’t understand the registering

procedure 1

Still, the results are somewhat perplexing as most participants attributed their non-voting to either a lack of information / alternatives or to processional / circumstantial reasons (Table 5). What is interesting about our participants’ complaint that they lack adequate information about political parties and alternatives is that it comes amidst an environment of intense, professional, segmented and increasingly interactive political campaigning (Negrine and Lilleker 2002). Whereas the model of cognitive mobilisation attributes political disaffection to the abundance of available political information which, coupled with the public’s increased political interest, leads to informed public criticism of

politicians (Clarke, Sanders, Stewart and Whiteley 2004, Phelps 2006), our participants complained for the lack of information on alternative policies and parties.

Yet, the visible abundance of political messages in the public sphere effectively precludes the non-availability of policy-related materials as the culprit for this lack of awareness. Subsequently, one of two things could be happening:

- political messages are not reaching these young people because of ineffective communication strategies or because young people are not listening, or

- political messages are reaching young people but they do not assimilate them, again, either because the messages are not appealing/relevant to them or because they are not interested.

We will return to this interesting paradox later in the thesis, as it is important to explore if this is a problem of finding the right channels of communication (in which case the internet might have a role in facilitating a resolution) or whether it is the result of broader socio-cultural shifts in the perception of the role of the citizen towards a model of civic consumerism. The specific relationship between the production of political messages and their reception by young people will also be revisited in Chapter 7 in light of our

participants’ responses to existing online materials.

The other main reason that participants cited for not voting – circumstantial factors – includes not completing the registration process (due to lack of understanding,

preparation, time) or being away during the election. More than half of those who did not vote attributed that, at least partly, to such reasons, with the commonest response being

“lack of preparation / forgot to register”. The extent of that phenomenon in our sample, in conjunction with the consistently low levels of voter turnout amongst younger citizens across the UK and internationally, indicates that if these responses are widespread, it may be reasonably assumed that some of those participants were not motivated enough in order to complete the registration and voting process in time. That is to say, it is not reasonable to expect that such circumstantial factors could be so widespread in continuous elections so as to create a crisis of youth turnout merely because of

registration problems or absence from the voting place. If this assumption were valid, the question then would be whether our participants have not reflected on that lack of

interest (which would account for the fact that they attribute their non-participation to circumstantial factors) or whether they are simply reluctant to acknowledge such lack of interest.

That is not to demean the issue of electoral registration, which is important and

consistently occurs in studies of youth participation. According to Russell et al. (2002: 20)

“non-registration remains one of the key features behind low levels of turnout among young voters” considering especially the increased geographical mobility of people in their late teens and early twenties in the UK. Non-registration can have serious implications for the estimations of turnout, while the fact that it tends to be clustered within specific geographical areas can have adverse effects for the local area and democracy at large. Fitzgerald (2003) found that simple mechanisms such as the ability to register on Election Day substantially increased the likelihood of young people turning out to vote.

The issue of non-registration did appear in our survey data as one-third of the survey’s eligible voters were not registered at the time of the survey (Q6, Appendix K, Table K1).

Interestingly, though, three quarters of eligible voters (or two thirds of all respondents) stated their intention to vote in the 2005 election. Apart from the fact that more

respondents answered that they would vote than those who were actually registered, in the actual event youth turnout nationally was 37%. Still, coupled with responses to other participation questions (Table K2), these results could indicate that young people are not trying to distance themselves from the political process. In other words, our respondents’

tendency to overstate their intention to vote, while potentially worrying from a

methodological perspective, could reassure us that, at the very least and in an abstract

way, they are willing to engage or know they “should” within a context of civic conventions.

Pattie, Seyd and Whiteley (2004) consider three possible explanations to this often occurring mismatch between words and actions:

- costs involved in acting on beliefs deter citizens from doing so (resources) - opportunity structures do not support participation (opportunities)

- respondents are simply lying about their intention to vote / participate. According to the authors, it has been empirically proven that this last explanation is the weakest one.

Therefore, once again, resources and opportunities emerge as key to participation.

Crucially, new media such as the internet have the potential to lower participation costs and entrance barriers, as well as provide citizens with more opportunities to participate within the context of their lifeworld. However, as it will be shown in later chapters, there is considerable distance between that theoretical potential and its fulfilment in real life.

4.2 Attitudes towards Established and Alternative Participation Methods An increasingly popular view in the scholarship of youth engagement (e.g. Henn,

Weinstein and Wring 2002, Bell 2005) posits that young people are not apathetic towards politics, but that they are merely participating through everyday forms such as

volunteering, engaging with the community and in politically conscious consumer behaviour. Subsequently, scholars such as Gauthier (2003) have argued that the problem rests not with youth engagement but with our measurements of it, as the often used analytical tools fail to capture young people’s new modes of political activism.

Our evidence partly concurs and partly contradicts that view. In accordance with received wisdom, there is very little to suggest that these young people engage in political affairs through the methods that have been traditionally studied. The responses to Q10-19 of the survey, which probed the participants’ levels of engagement, show that, on the one hand, very few of the people taking part in the study were registered as members of a political party, social movement or activist organisation (Figure 2) and only a small

minority had sent an email to an elected representative or to an institution of government.

On the other hand, 41.9% were a member of a society, club, network, charity or other local group, and almost half of our sample had volunteered for such a group.

While such societies, clubs and groups are not necessarily of a political nature, the social capital literature (e.g. Smith 1999) has shown that community membership can spill over to political engagement and is very important on its own especially in childhood and adolescence, while McKendrick, Scott and Sinclair (2007) also found a positive association between participation in non-school organised leisure activities and civic attributes. Furthermore, a quarter of the sample had run for, or had served as, a student representative, which is a useful indicator of a young person’s belief in political

participation and leadership. Finally, half of the survey’s respondents had written to or for

a newspaper or magazine (including student press), although that number may be inflated due to the survey taking place in the media school of a vocational university.

FIGURE 2: PARTICIPATION IN CIVIC ACTIVITIES (%) SURVEY Q10-19

44.7 29.8

24.8

41.9 4.1

49.4 4.7

15.3 17.9 0.6

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

Written to Newspaper Attended Civic Event Student Rep Member of Student Org Member of Civic Org Volunteered (Community) Volunteered (Campaign) Emailed Rep Written Rep Party Member

However, some of our data cast doubts about the extent to which young people consciously reject traditional forms of political participation and actively engage in emerging ones. In Q20-27 respondents were presented with a list of civic activities and were asked to rate how effective they thought those actions were in expressing their voice on issues that matter (Figure 3). It is perhaps surprising, vis-à-vis the previous results, that volunteering had by far the lowest mean score (2.88/5), while “gaining access to those in power” (3.59), “standing for an elected post” (3.33) and “direct action”

(3.26) had the highest mean scores. “Voting” (3.21), “joining a group/movement” (3.18),

“discussing about issues with others” (3.14) and “writing a letter/article on an issue”

ranked in the middle.

In order to explore this issue further, participants in the follow-up study were presented with a list of twelve activities and were asked about the extent to which they consider those as political. The broader point of this exercise was to explore young people’s own perception of the political, i.e. the extent to which they perceive of alternative forms of engagement as conscious political acts.

Hence, the list of the twelve activities included three types of activities: four of these could be characterised as traditionally political, or falling within a narrow definition of the political, (voting, standing as a representative, discussing public issues, volunteering to a community or cause); another group of four activities could be labelled as de facto but

not directly political, i.e. falling into a more flexible definition of the political (writing about public issues, donating money to charities or causes, following the news, learning about public issues); finally a third group of four variables could be characterised as indirectly political, i.e. only if one adopts a broad definition of the political (working in the news media, shopping, enjoying art, creating art). The rationale for that last group of activities is the widespread view that shopping can have direct political consequences, such as perpetuating social inequalities, supporting firms with a Corporate Social Responsibility or Fairtrade policy or ecological orientation, and so on. Similarly, art can be considered as a thoroughly political medium, expressing voice and dissent and creating collective identities.

FIGURE 3: PERCEIVED EFFECTIVENESS OF CIVIC ACTIONS IN