(Virtual) Space for Change: Youth Activism on Twitter
Date
2024-05-27
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Abstract
While there are many concerns about the harmful effects of social media use, particularly for young people, engagement in activism and social movements is an area where this form of technology can be particularly beneficial. Social media platforms facilitate new opportunities for political expression and mobilization, and allow young people to operate outside of traditional spaces of political engagement. However, activism that happens online looks quite different from that of previous generations and there is still much to learn about this phenomenon. This research explores the use of social media, specifically Twitter, among a small sample of youth activists, focusing not only on how these activists use Twitter for their work, but also considering the ways in which the platform influences and constructs what is happening online. A modified ethnographic approach was employed using Twitter as the field, which included interviews with youth activists, aged 14 to 24, in the international climate change movement and the American gun control movement. Samples of the participants’ Twitter feeds were also collected. The mixed methodological design allowed for a thematic analysis of the interviews in conjunction with the Twitter data, as well as a social network analysis of the sampled tweets. A social constructivist lens was employed, pulling from a combination of traditional and contemporary theories to further understand youth activism in light of social media. Findings provide insights into what it means to young people to do activism online. This contributes to a definition of activism that includes youth voice, appreciates the connection between online practices and activist identity and, above all else, furthers a counter-argument to critiques of digital activism. The analysis also contributes to our understanding of the relationship between human agency and technological control in virtual spaces by demonstrating the agency youth activists can enact online through their recognition of affordances, their engagement in strategic practices and their navigation of the risks of using social media. Finally, the data helps us reconsider our understanding of collective behaviour in light of social media, with a specific focus on relationships and connections among social movement actors online.
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Keywords
youth activism, social media, youth social movements, digital activism
Citation
Pauls, M. (2024). (Virtual) space for change: youth activism on Twitter (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca.