Abstract
Research on young people’s protest participation has focused on how the family, peers, and institutions support activism and micromobilization. But digital and social media usage has arguably altered how we interact and how individuals participate in politics and activism, especially among youth. This sets up an important question: Do the institutional supports (e.g., schools) and network ties (e.g., friends and family) that have historically driven micromobilization still matter in a world of pervasive digital and social media usage, particularly for youth? In this article, we analyze this question using interviews with 40 high school and university students. Rather than acting as a disruptive force, we find that digital media has become an integral part of youth micromobilization, facilitating traditional paths to activism and offering pathways to activism for those with no other options. As has been true historically, participation may also be dampened when supportive network ties are absent. We conclude with a discussion of the broader implications for micromobilization and political participation.
Widespread changes in digital and social media 1 use have altered how we learn new information, interact, and connect with institutions like government and corporations. Evidence suggests that digital and social media use has had a considerable impact on the role of social movement organizations (SMOs) for mobilization (Earl 2014; Soon and Cho 2014) as well as how movements disseminate information (Crossley 2015; Gaby and Caren 2012). Despite this, scholars continue to debate the impact of digital and social media use on key social movement processes. Studies alternately contend that social media alters existing processes in predictable ways (W. L. Bennett and Segerberg 2012; Earl and Kimport 2011), that its effects are more dramatic as it allows participants to “route around” traditional paths to activism (Earl, Copeland, and Bimber 2017), or that it creates few real impacts on social movement processes (Diani 2000; Tarrow 1998; Tilly and Wood 2015).
While a significant portion of this research has examined changes in organizational recruitment and efforts to establish strong ties (Bimber, Flanagin, and Stohl 2005; Earl and Elliott 2019; Earl and Schussman 2003; Karpf 2012), researchers have also examined how digital and social media may disrupt, alter, or fail to influence individual’s decisions to participate—known as micromobilization (Fisher and Boekkoi 2010; Odabaş and Reynolds-Stenson 2018; Tufekci and Wilson 2012). This work has tended to look at only partial aspects of the micromobilization process (Fisher and Boekkoi 2010) and/or mobilization to particular major events (Odabaş and Reynolds-Stenson 2018; Tufekci and Wilson 2012), with far less research systematically examining whether digital and social media use fundamentally reshapes how individuals get involved in activism. Changes in how individuals get involved in activism—whether it be expanding opportunities for access, reducing the importance of network ties, or completely replacing them—would have wide ramifications for our ability to explain protest participation.
In this article, we examine potential participants who theoretically should be at greatest risk for changing micromobilization processes: youth. We draw on interview data from 40 structured interviews with high school and university students collected in a southwestern city. Students varied widely in their level of social movement participation, or political participation more broadly, allowing us to assess how digital and social media usage influenced micromobilization processes. Our principal finding is that current debates set up a false dichotomy. Digital and social media are not fundamentally reshaping existing processes for most students so much as becoming embedded within them. Indeed, digital and social media innervate the traditional pathways that youth are already structurally embedded in, becoming such a part of how potential participants connect with family, peers, and institutions that it would be hard to understand how young people get involved in activism today without reference to both online media and traditional supports for activism such as friends, families, and schools. However, for a subset of youth who are not embedded in environments supportive of activism yet still politically interested or motivated by moral shocks (Jasper and Poulsen 1995), digital and social media do offer an opportunity to “route around” previously debilitating barriers to engagement. These findings suggest that even when digital media usage does not fundamentally change how processes work, it may become so inextricably embedded in known processes that it is critical to understand nonetheless.
Micromobilization, Digital Media, and Youth Activism
Research on micromobilization, which is largely derived from work that predates the rise of digital technologies, suggests that micromobilization tends to be facilitated by a fairly clear set of supports, or pathways to participation (for reviews, see Beyerlein and Hipp 2006; Klandermans 2004; Klandermans and Oegema 1987; Ward 2016). First, many find their way into activism through direct invitations to participate from network ties (Schussman and Soule 2005). Being asked to participate by friends or family members taps into individual’s shared interests, identities, and concerns with the inviter (Lim 2008) and invitations directly expose recipients to information and opportunities that they may have been otherwise unaware of (Nekmat et al. 2015; Walgrave and Wouters 2014). Thus, individuals who are more structurally embedded in politically engaged organizational and informal networks are more likely to be engaged in activism (Lim 2008; McAdam and Paulsen 1993; Schussman and Soule 2005). Several scholars have found that while many held ideologically sympathetic beliefs prior to joining, activists developed strong political opinions after joining movements (Blee 1996; Munson 2010b), and direct invitations from friends were an important impetus for getting involved (Munson 2010a; Schussman and Soule 2005).
Second, political activism may also emerge from indirect exposure to activist ideas and opportunities to participate. Potential participants may be encouraged to engage by more informal ties to family, friends, schools, churches, and/or civic groups (Corrigall-Brown 2011; Klandermans 2004). Family, peer networks, and institutions have continually been important points of entry into political activism (Klandermans and Oegema 1987; Munson 2010b; Sherkat and Blocker 1994). Several studies suggest that political socialization is partially a product of repeatedly seeing, hearing, and participating in conversations and debates over political topics with friends and family and at school (Andolina et al. 2003; Lee, Shah, and McLeod 2013). Thomas V. Maher and Jennifer Earl (2017) also offer evidence that conversations and suggestions from family and friends indirectly influenced young people’s willingness to participate in activism. Such findings reiterate that “political socialization is not something that adults do to adolescents, it is something that youth do for themselves” (Youniss et al. 2002:133), and they do so based on their own conversations and information-consumption practices. Indeed, activist networks help shape attitudes, build solidarity, and, crucially, integrate new participants, but often through indirect exposure (Kitts 2000; Passy and Giugni 2001; Ward 2016).
Third, political interest and beliefs are also important, whether this is general political interest (Verba, Schlozman, and Brady 1995) or a specific moral shock (Jasper 1997; Jasper and Poulsen 1995). 2 Social ties are an important—but not necessary (Jasper and Young 2007; Ward 2016)—condition for activism, and individuals can seek out opportunities for activism independently for intrinsically motivated reasons. Research suggests that for individuals who do not enjoy the benefits of direct invitations, political interest is very consequential for decisions to participate (Schussman and Soule 2005).
Digital Media and Micromobilization
Online technologies’ effects on mobilization have been widely debated. Some scholars have argued for broad and transformative effects, arguing, for instance, that innovative uses of these technologies to leverage the cost and co-presence of the web may radically alter existing explanations for mobilization by disrupting well-known social movement processes (Earl and Kimport 2011). Others have also claimed transformative effects, but through altering the role of SMOs (D. Bennett and Fielding 1999; Castells 2011; Earl 2014). But, much of this work focuses on how protest is organized not how or why people come to participate (save notable exceptions such as Earl, Copeland, and Bimber 2017).
Alternatively, other researchers suggest something like an augmentation hypothesis in which social media may not be transformative, but it does expand existing mobilization processes. For instance, work by Bruce Bimber, Andrew Flanagin, and Cynthia Stohl (2012) shows that organizations may adapt to participants’ new communication preferences (see also Crossley 2015). Other work also finds changing participant preferences regarding organizational versus entrepreneurial involvement in activism (Earl, Copeland, and Bimber 2017).
A third older but no less influential line of work has argued that digital life is unlikely to affect social movements due to its inability to foster the strong ties necessary for sustained mobilization (Diani 2000; Tarrow 1998; Van Laer and Van Aelst 2010). These critiques see the Internet as an excellent source of weak ties, but a poor producer of the trust and identity perceived as necessary for higher risk forms of activism (Kavanaugh et al. 2005; Putnam 2000; Van Laer and Van Aelst 2010). In particular, these researchers argue that face-to-face interaction is necessary to foster activism, especially high-risk action (Diani 2000, see also McAdam 1986). For instance, Tarrow (1998) lamented that digital media does not “promise the same degree of crystallization, of mutual trust and collective identity, as do the interpersonal ties in social networks” (p. 240–1). 3
But, few of these studies—whether taking a transformative, augmentation, or no-effect approach—have specifically focused on whether digital technologies affect the exact pathways for micromobilization that the existing literature identifies as important. Put another way, despite the burgeoning interest in digital media and social movement participation, there has been little work exploring how the Internet and social media have impacted how specific pathways, such as family, friends, and school, influence activism.
Communication scholars have focused extensively on digital technologies, but they have focused on the medium, and often studied more traditional political behavior (i.e., discourse and voting, Lee et al. 2013; Nekmat et al. 2015). Communication research that does focus on protest largely overlooks social movements literature (Brunsting and Postmes 2002; Soon and Cho 2014), particularly micromobilization (Maher and Earl 2017).
Simultaneously, micromobilization research, particularly in sociology (with some exceptions, Crossley 2015; Gaby and Caren 2012; Rohlinger and Bunnage 2015, 2018), has focused more predominately on offline interactions. When this research does attend to online interactions, online and personal networks are often treated as separate when, in fact, users interact with friends and family online and offline. Such an approach traces back to some of the original critiques of the Internet and social media (Diani 2000; Van Laer and Van Aelst 2010). For example, Dana R. Fisher and Marije Boekkoi (2010) find that 37 percent of the protest participants they surveyed at a climate change march stated that the Internet (i.e., email, listservs, or websites) was the most important channel for learning about the protest, and 28 percent said their personal network was the most important. However, they never asked the origins of their online connections nor how personal networks contacted them, leaving the role of Internet communications unclear. Eva Anduiza, Camilo Cristancho, and José M. Sabucedo (2014) also treat mobilization by online social network and mobilization by friends or acquaintances as separate categories without asking how individuals were invited to attend the protest.
This analytic separation of offline and online relationships, however, is increasingly difficult to maintain. Research on digital media usage tends to find that digital technologies augment existing reality rather than operating as a separate space (Jurgenson 2012), which should imply that “it is increasingly difficult to study offline movements without considering their online dimensions” (Crossley 2015:255). But the importance of digital media on micromobilization remains less explored by social movement scholars.
At the broadest level, this article seeks to connect offline research on micromobilization to research on digital and social media by understanding how the specific pathways for micromobilization might be transformed, augmented, or unaffected by digital and social media usage. If a transformation hypothesis is correct, we should see people being recruited into participation in radically new ways that do not rely on direct invitations, social network ties, political interest, and/or indirect exposure. If a no-effect hypothesis is correct, we should see micromobilization happening primarily offline and out of reach of digital and social media, reflecting the bifurcation of online and offline relationships typical in social movement (but not digital media) scholarship.
We regard a variant of the augmentation hypothesis as much more likely. Specifically, we argue that digital and social media have become embedded in how traditional pathways like family and peers lead to mobilization. That is, we claim that digital and social media use innervates traditional paths to participation, especially connections to organizations (including schools for young people, as discussed below) and informal network ties (including families and friends). Much as nerves bring life to the muscles they innervate, digital media is now so embedded in people’s lives that it is difficult to understand micromobilization without understanding how people use digital technologies.
We argue that digital media is a tool and a medium for communication that may stimulate multiple elements of the micromobilization process. Being asked to participate is particularly effective for encouraging mobilization, and social media is particularly well suited for facilitating invitations from strong and weak ties alike. Research also shows that digital media may help build and maintain digital communities and social capital (Earl and Kimport 2009; Gaby and Caren 2012). Digital media also expands the window of opportunities for individuals to see or receive invitations by making messages, posts, and comments accessible for longer periods and to wider groups. Furthermore, as prior research has shown, social media sites like Facebook also enable participants to hold conversations, reach out to others, and do the work to strengthen existing network ties (Crossley 2015; van Haperen, Nicholls, and Uitermark 2018).
Digital media also provides resources and exposure to how others are engaging politically. Such “raw material” (i.e., knowledge, models, and ideas) might otherwise be unavailable for engagement (Lee et al. 2013). Prior research has repeatedly shown that expanded exposure to new opinions, issues, and practices—particularly when it comes from supportive friends and family—may collectively contribute to a willingness to engage (Elliott and Earl 2018; Passy and Giugni 2001). In a meta-analysis of social media use and participation, Shelley Boulianne (2015) finds that expanded exposure helps people learn about political issues and ideas without having to seek them out. Digital and social media can facilitate this process by surfacing the issues, movements, and participation opportunities their family and peers are engaged in. In this context, family and friends essentially act as a social filter online by “flagging” potentially relevant issues, opportunities, or petitions for people to research by liking, sharing, or posting them into their feeds (Messing and Westwood 2014), potentially influencing later engagement in the process. Research shows that these referral effects are so strong that they overcome well-known media selection and consumption processes (Earl and Garrett 2016).
While we do not expect it to be a dominant pathway, we do think that research on transformative effects may capture one dimension that augmentation does not: Digital and social media may provide a distinct path to activism for those who lack other supports. 4 Several scholars have argued that digital media is a distinctive source for engagement because it offers a new, different logic of action that is less hierarchical, more connective, and more personalized (W. L. Bennett and Segerberg 2012). It is these aspects of digital media that may produce the most radical theoretical shifts as they disrupt the centrality of, or operation of, core micromobilization predictors such as biographical availability, political interest, and network ties. For some individuals—and this is particularly true for youth (as we discuss below)—knowledge of and access to active individuals is not as available, and digital media may offer a previously unavailable pathway to activism. Furthermore, just as activists “route around” organizations with individually directed activism (Earl, Copeland, and Bimber 2017; Karpf 2012), some may “route around” the debilitating networks they are structurally embedded in to find communities and opportunities that are not available—or have not presented themselves—offline and/or using the semi-anonymity of some kinds of online engagement to engage while minimizing perceived social costs (Earl 2012).
Youth and Micromobilization
We focus on the effects of digital media usage on political activism using a group that we argue allows us special purchase on any potential theoretical shifts: youth. Put simply, if changes are having an impact on micromobilization processes, we would expect these to be most concentrated among youth. Youth spend considerable time on the Internet (boyd 2014). A recent Pew survey finds that 90 percent of youth (i.e., 18–29 years of age, compared to 65 percent of 30+ adults) are on at least one social networking site (Perrin 2015). A separate study finds that nearly half (46 percent) of youth get their news and information from social media (Cohen and Kahne 2011).
Youth are also an important subject because, in the last two decades, there has been considerable hand wringing over the state of youth political participation (Delli Carpini 2000; Putnam 2000). There is a widespread perception (often referred to as the “deficit model”) that youth are not only inactive, but also politically disengaged and must be “taught” political interest (Osler and Starkey 2003). However, a number of scholars point out that youth have been as active, if not more, as adults when we include noninstitutional political action like volunteering, petitions, boycotts, and protests (Dalton 2013; Zukin et al. 2006). Indeed, youth are more likely to gravitate toward noninstitutional activities than political parties and voting (Cohen and Kahne 2011; Dalton 2013; although see: Caren, Ghoshal, and Ribas 2011; Kim and McCarthy 2018). 5
Moreover, it may be that when youth are inactive, applying research on digital and social media to work on traditional paths to activism may shed light on why some avoid activism. While family and peers are important supports of activism, their tacit or explicit disapproval can be equally powerful, and the visibility of some forms of online activism may make it easier for parents, whose support for engagement is conditioned on age and gender (Cicognani et al. 2012; Gordon 2008), to stamp out a young activist’s engagement. Social sanctions from uncivil discourse and combative individuals can deter activism among young people (James and Lee 2017, see also Kitts 2000). The effects of sanctions may be more deeply felt—especially for youth who are wary of engagement—when network support is weaker, or family and peers themselves are discouraging engagement (akin to soft repression or social control, see Ferree 2004). Furthermore, youth are looking to identify with people they hold in high regard (Brunsting and Postmes 2002), and exposure to online conversations featuring overly simplified arguments, repetitive information, or inaccurate arguments may spoil interest in engagement. Finally, youth may also be deterred by high-profile critiques (e.g., Gladwell 2010) arguing that digital activism is “low quality” (Conroy, Feezell, and Guerrero 2012).
Understanding youth engagement is also crucial for understanding social movement vitality more broadly. Youth have been a central part of several social movement campaigns including Civil Rights, Women’s Rights, and the Sanctuary Movement, among others (Buechler 1990; Caren et al. 2011; Earl, Maher, and Elliott 2017; McAdam 1986; Wiltfang and McAdam 1991). As a group, they have had the least time to be exposed to or socialized into protest scripts and schemes, and likely therefore, the least committed to “the way things have always been done.” Thus, studying youth represents a privileged vantage from which to observe potential shifts in micromobilization: If shifts are not occurring where they would be most likely to be observed, this is evidence against changes in core processes. But, if dramatic shifts are seen, this is not only theoretically consequential but also practically important because young people are not only proverbially the future, but are actually the people who will or will not be the lifeblood of movements in decades to come.
Data and Method
Our arguments about the role of digital and social media are process-based: We are arguing that scholars cannot understand pathways to youth activism today without understanding how digital and social media usage figures into those pathways and/or their continuing relevance to micromobilization. But the majority of sociological research on youth political engagement has drawn on quantitative analysis of surveys or websites without taking into account how youth actually engage with and feel about social media and online activism (Boulianne 2015; Brunsting and Postmes 2002), with only a few exceptions (Crossley 2015; Gordon 2008). By interviewing high school and university students about why and how they choose to engage (or not engage), we were able to offer a more complex understanding of how youth become active and the role of digital and social media in those pathways. More specifically, we were able to see how youth use digital media to participate, the role that social media use plays in contact between youth and their friends and family, and, finally, how the intersection of support and perceptions of digital engagement influences participation.
Specifically, we drew on structured interviews (Weiss 1995) with 40 high school and university students in order to understand how their experiences with social media have influenced their political engagement. Both schools, located in the same southwestern city, were selected because they are public schools with ethnically and economically diverse populations. Our cross-sectional data do not allow us to assess how social media use or its influence have changed over time, but it does offer a picture of how it influences the paths that youth currently follow into activism.
The high school selected had more than 1,800 students, a teacher/student ratio of approximately 23, and, as just mentioned, is economically and racially diverse. 6 Thirty-five percent of the student body was eligible for free or reduced-price lunches. Whites accounted for 54 percent of the student population, 35 percent of the student population was Latinx, and the remaining 10 percent was divided between American Indians, Asian, Black, and bi-racial students. Our sample of 20 high school students is largely reflective of the school’s demographics. The average high school student in our sample is 16 years old (the oldest was 17 and the youngest was 14); young men and young women are equally represented; and 45 percent of respondents were white, 35 percent were Latinx, and 20 percent were Bi-racial or Asian.
The college students in our sample attended a research university that enrolled slightly more women (52 percent) than men (48 percent). The campus was racially diverse with whites accounting for 53 percent of the student population, Latinx students accounting for 25 percent, and the remaining 21 percent divided between Asian, Black, and Bi-racial students. As was true at the high school, our sample of 20 university students was largely reflective of school demographics. Whites were slightly underrepresented (45 percent), bi-racial students were overrepresented (20 percent), Latinx students were slightly overrepresented (30 percent), and Asian students account for the rest (5 percent). More generally—for both the high school and college samples—there are no obvious selection biases that may impact our findings.
We recruited university students during summer of 2014 via advertisements distributed on university listservs and course pages, and we recruited high school students during spring and fall of 2015 via flyers distributed during History and Government classes (which are required courses for juniors and seniors) and lunchtime information sessions. Political discussion can be taboo, particularly among youth (Eliasoph 1998; Gordon and Taft 2011). We deliberately invited all youth (i.e., those who were politically active and politically inactive) who were interested to talk about their political participation, why they chose not to participate, and what they thought about participation more broadly. We also conceptualized political participation to include a range of activities from protests to signing petitions to political discussions or sharing and commenting online. Students who expressed interest were contacted to set up an interview time, and then interviewed by a project manager or, for high school students, an undergraduate interviewer to reduce social distance. 7 Interviews were conducted in an office on campus or a coffee shop nearby, and lasted an average of 43 minutes. Interviews focused on respondents’ friends and families’ political engagement, their own online and offline political activity, and their opinions about politics and activism more broadly. Each participant received a $20 Amazon gift card.
Although there are likely qualitative differences between college and high school students, we focused on the similarities across these groups to assess how digital and social media influence their available paths to political activism. Treating the two groups separately would be problematic because interviewees were able to discuss engagement from any point in their life, meaning that many college students discussed high school and college life. Also, our sample size means that cross-group comparisons would be weak and tentative. Finally, prior quantitative and qualitative research on youth activism often treats the two groups as one (Andolina et al. 2003; Elliott and Earl 2018; Kahne and Bowyer 2017).
Once interviews were completed, a research assistant and undergraduate coder topically coded transcribed interviews using Atlas.ti. One co-author and a research assistant then qualitatively coded each of the interviews for the degree of influence that varying pathways to participation—that is, family, friends, school, and social media—had on each respondent. Each wrote memos covering how and how much each participant participated in activism, how important each of the pathways was for their engagement, and how social media influenced them, as well as ranking each pathway as “high,” “medium,” or “low” based on the respondents’ description (i.e., “they were an important influence”) and/or how often they talked about them in the interview. Coders also categorized each respondent’s level of activism as “high,” “moderate,” or “low,” based on the frequency, variety, and centrality (i.e., did they devote considerable time to participating or see it as a part of their identity) of activism for respondents. Coders drew on the memos and discussions to resolve difficult cases. After coding, one author qualitatively re-immersed themselves in the interviews to understand the relationship between social media use and paths to participation, and how this relationship influenced respondents’ willingness to participate in online and offline political activism more deeply. As we discuss below, many of our respondents participated in some form of activism, but we also had a minority of non-active respondents in our sample. All of our respondents reported using some digital media and so the patterns we see are not a product of us selecting on our outcome or social media use.
We focus on online and offline activism because we are interested in how youth become involved in activism writ large. While there may be differences between the two, prior studies, as well as our own data, show that online and offline activism are not mutually exclusive (Crossley 2015; Vissers and Stolle 2014). By adopting a more inclusive conceptualization of activism, we recognize the forms of activism available to youth and offer grounded insights into how digital media have become integral parts of how social movements and political participation operate.
Digital Media, Social Ties, and Political Activism
The youth in our study were broadly involved in activism. Twenty-nine of our respondents participated in some form of online or offline activism, and eleven participated in no activist activities (although several were involved in various civic groups). 8 Of those who participated in activism (i.e., non-traditional political action), we identify fifteen as highly engaged, nine as moderately engaged, and five as low engagement (i.e., they participated in one or two actions, but not in any sustained way). Overall, our respondents participated in a wide range of activities, including marches, boycotts, online petitions, and participating in advocacy organizations. In total, thirteen participated in some offline activism, and twenty-eight participated in some online activism. Ten respondents participated in online and offline activism, and five high-engagement respondents only participated in online activism.
We find that digital media was deeply embedded in the pathways that led youth to activism. By way of metaphor, social media innervates youth political participation, helping to supply the flow of ideas, information, and support youth need to engage. Our respondents described how every aspect of their social networks—close family, distant relatives, friends, acquaintances, teachers, and online contacts—used digital media to communicate, share information, and offer encouragement, among many other things. Rather than a medium of weak ties, as hypothesized by some (Diani 2000; Tarrow 1998), digital technologies have become an integral part of how young people interact, and, as a result, a key part of pathways leading to activism. Below, we trace how digital media use and structural embeddedness come together for youth.
Facilitating Traditional Pathways to Activism
For many of the respondents in our analysis, digital and social media were as much, if not more, of a medium that traditional paths to participation worked through. Online media enabled direct invitations and exposed respondents to issues and opportunities through shared links and petitions. Eighteen of our respondents (and eight of our 15 highly engaged respondents) described being directly invited to participate by friends or family, and these invitations often came online. Several respondents discussed learning about petitions after online and offline discussions with friends. One of the key ways that digital media facilitated network ties was by helping people invite others to participate. Getting asked to participate is one of the strongest predictors of participation (Klandermans 2004; Walgrave and Wouters 2014), and respondents described receiving digital invitations, digital follow-ups on prior offline conversations, and in-person responses to online posts and discussion. For example, Tim, a 24-year-old white college student who signed petitions and was active with trans rights issues, was encouraged to sign an online petition supporting LGBTQ issues by one of his friends in an offline conversation. When asked how he heard about the petition, he stated as follows: One of my friends actually who was directly affected, who works with [campus LGBTQ group], and we were talking about it, and it could take five minutes to write a message or click a button. [Interviewer: Did they ask you in person, did they ask you online?] We were talking about it in person [and then] I think they sent me the link via Facebook, and I went on like five minutes later. I clicked it and did it.
While we were conducting interviews, the University started charging students a fee for using their credit cards to pay tuition, a significant issue for several respondents. Nina, a moderately engaged 20-year-old Latinx university student who signed petitions, participated in boycotts, and participated in fan activism, decided to act after her friends told her about a petition circulating on Facebook.
I was talking with some friends in class about it and one of them said that there was a petition. And then she sent it to me on Facebook and then I signed it. Interviewer: Would you have signed it if your friend hadn’t sent it to you? Nina: I don’t know if I would have seen it.
While the majority of respondents described responding to direct invitations to sign petitions and engage in other online activism, social media influenced offline engagement as well. Quinn, a 22-year-old white college woman who signed petitions, attended marches, volunteered with women’s rights organizations, and engaged in participatory politics, described learning about the Kony2012 campaign from social media and then hung fliers at her school after one of her friends invited her to participate. She participated because it just seemed like such a big thing at the time, which was interesting because it was like one and done. But it just seemed like something that so many people immediately cared about and they did a very good job blasting all social media sites, and so it was everywhere, which is I guess why I decided to participate. I don’t know if I would have [participated if I had not been asked]. I mean, I considered it. I considered ordering one of their packet things from online but I didn’t, so probably not.
Already paying attention to the issues, Nina and Quinn participated as a result of online and offline engagement with social network ties. While it is certainly possible that they would have participated without digital media, it made receiving the direct invitations, and, by proxy, political engagement, easier and faster, facilitating existing micromobilization processes (Lim 2008; Schussman and Soule 2005).
Digital media not only did facilitate the ability to receive invitations, it also enabled students to offer them. Several respondents described circulating petitions or inviting their friends to go to political events. For example, in addition to donating money of her own, Yolanda, a 15-year-old Latinx high school student who was active online and circulated petitions at her school, used Facebook to encourage others to support and donate to the Trevor Project, an online group working against LGBTQ discrimination.
Every time I see [a post from] the Trevor Project, I share it, because ever since I learned about [them], I feel like more people should donate, and I can’t donate every time; I don’t have money yet; I’m not working. But I know eventually, as I get older and as I do get a paycheck and a job, I’d want to donate to programs like that. So, yeah, I recommended it to people. I would send it to people and be like, oh, sign this petition or something like that.
Yolanda used digital and social media to pursue her interest in LGBTQ issues. Through digital media, Yolanda found groups and causes that she felt comfortable supporting and encouraged others to offer their support too. Indeed, many of our respondents were asked, encouraged, or inspired to get involved by friends and family, and social media was an obvious tool for them to use as they tried to influence and support issues they cared about.
In addition to facilitating youth’s ability to learn about issues and filter large amounts of information, we also found that social media was a point of indirect exposure to ideas and opportunities. Nearly every highly or moderately engaged respondent indicated that they saw opportunities to sign petitions and get involved cross their social media feeds, and several respondents described using social media to stay engaged by using recommendations from friends and family to filter through the barrage of information available online, supporting previous work (Messing and Westwood 2014). This approach was often adopted by more moderately engaged youth, often constrained by time, enthusiasm, or availability, and it fits with prior research on how politically aware individuals use social media to stay connected (Rohlinger and Bunnage 2015). For example, Josie, a moderately engaged bi-racial university student, found an opportunity to express her discontent with a proposed anti-LGBT bill on her friends’ Facebook page. Explaining how she found the petition, she states as follows: I wasn’t part of the group [responsible for the SB1062 petition] but I just signed it. I heard about it and I was really upset about it and then it—everyone on Facebook was signing it so it popped up in my newsfeed and so I was, like, thank God someone is doing something about this. And so I just I was the least I can do is sign it, and then I shared it and that was about it. [Interviewer: Who asked you to participate in it?] No one asked me. I just saw it pop up. And I guess they asked their entire friend list to sign it kind of thing but I was going to sign it regardless. [I]f I came across it on my own, I would have signed it anyway.
The petition Josie signed eventually garnered more than 63,000 signatures and played a part in the effort that convinced Governor Brewer to veto the measure (Santos 2014). Several respondents in our sample, like Josie, described petitions, motivating articles, and information about events “just popping up” in their feeds. For these students, social media doubled as a filter that surfaced opportunities for them to take action on issues that they cared about, and for them to see that their friends and family cared about these issues too.
Barriers to Activism
While some parents and friends support activism, others do not, and digital and social media usage mattered here as well. Respondents whose friends and family were less supportive of engagement, and who were less politically engaged or warier of digital engagement themselves were more likely to describe avoiding political participation—even with issues they cared about—than their better-supported counterparts. Nine of our respondents, all low or moderately engaged, indicated that their irregular engagement was due more to a lack of a clear outlet for engagement than their lack of interest in civic or political issues. For example, Eileen, a white, 15-year-old high school student, felt that she had no obvious avenues available to act on her interests in social and racial inequality. Her parents talked about politics, but not with her, and her friends were not interested in talking about politics. Eileen followed developments around Black Lives Matter on Twitter, but she was hesitant to do anything more than retweet something “because I feel like people would judge, like it’s my opinion but so many people are so judgmental and stuff . . . I don’t know. I feel like my word wouldn’t count, like it wouldn’t make it more notable that it’s happening, because I’m just 15.”
The absence of supportive informal and formal network ties left Eileen with little to no support when she voiced her opinions on the sites that are available to her and few outlets where she felt comfortable doing so.
For a small set of our respondents, irregular or limited participation was due to more overt barriers to engagement from family and friends than the absence of support. Anne, a 17-year-old white high school student, explained that she was reluctant to share her opinion because growing up with her dad “he always just told me just keep [my] opinions to [myself] and stuff . . . don’t share this stuff unless someone really asks,” and this was particularly true online because “people can maybe twist your words online and stuff, people can take that the wrong way.” Indeed, several respondents indicated that parents and family members directly or subtly discouraged them from discussing politics or acting politically online. Such responses indicate that perceptions of online activism may be the result of a broader trend in political avoidance rather than a new phenomenon (Earl 2012; Eliasoph 1998). It would be difficult to assume that digital technologies can always help youth overcome such barriers.
Of course, not every young person is interested in political participation. But if lack of interest did not mean that they were unaware of opportunities to get involved if they ever decided to do so. Of our 11 low-engagement respondents, six indicated that they received some direct or indirect invitation to participate, and this often came in through their social media feeds. But, in contrast to more engaged respondents, politically disengaged respondents largely viewed all prompts as spam. Interestingly, some even lamented the fact that the “volume” likely covered up issues they might care about. Ethan, a 20-year-old white college student, explains, there’s a lot of important issues, or issues that I might find important that I haven’t really heard or read more about, that I’m kind of overlooking just because there’s other issues that are on there that I just really couldn’t care less about.
Unsurprisingly, politically disinterested youth are suspicious or dismissive of opportunities to get politically involved, but these complaints also highlight the fact that—despite their disinterest—they are still cognizant of such opportunities if they ever change their minds.
“Routing Around” Structural Embeddedness
Not all of the students whose family and friends were disinterested in, or actively discouraged, engagement, however, remained inactive; some were able to find new paths to activism through online networks and opportunities. These paths connected youth with activism opportunities and effectively allowed them to “route around” unsupportive networks. This is a marked change from the past where participants were more reliant on families, social networks, broader institutions, or a chance encounter with a flyer or newspaper article to learn about opportunities for participation. Interested youth also faced significant hurdles if their friends or family were not interested or they did not have access to transportation. Previous research on micromobilization highlights how important formal and informal network connections are for bringing new participants into political activism (Klandermans 2004), and these findings suggest a small but important change in youth political participation.
Five participants in our sample sought out engagement opportunities online when their friends and family were not as interested or engaged. Newly interested in social issues (particularly sexism), June, a 15-year-old white high school student, felt like she could not talk to her parents (her Dad held different beliefs) or her friends (who were not interested). June developed an interest in gender inequality after she saw an Instagram post, did some research, and connected it to her own experiences.
Well, like I saw a post about it; and then I’d read about it, and Google it, and just do some more research about it and see what it’s really about. Interviewer: Why did you decide to do something on that issue like that particular time? June: I think it interested me and I didn’t really realize anything about it until I heard it and heard everything about it and so I decided that I wanted to know what it was about, and I would have to deal with it so I wanted to – [I had seen things like that before and not done anything.] Especially on Facebook. I see people will like posts about it and I just kind of ignored it until I finally saw enough and I wanted to see what it really was. Interviewer: [W]hat made you decide to do something that time? June: It was probably because—I think it was about dress codes, and like I go to school, and I never thought about how they’re sexist or whatever. And I was kind of upset because I’ve been dress coded before and so it happened to me personally so I wanted to know more about it.
June’s exposure to issues and ideas on social media led her to rethink aspects of her own experiences, to sign petitions, and start to engage more visibly. As a result, she has started to “feel like [she is] a part of something bigger that [is] going to happen,” and that she was learning new things. Yet, without social media, it is not clear how she would learn about opportunities for engagement. June has never participated in any offline activity because I don’t really have access to go and do those things. And I usually don’t hear about them—like I don’t see it on social media very often and I don’t hear about these kinds of things. I would like to, but I don’t have the opportunity to.
For June, the Internet and social media clearly provided a new avenue for learning about broader issues that connected to her own life and about ways to become active.
In addition to finding new opportunities for becoming active, we also find that, for some respondents, digital media provides social networks and communities with strong ties that may not be available offline. For example, Gwen, a highly engaged 20-year-old white university student who self-identified as “LGBTQIA,” felt her family members were more conservative and discouraged her beliefs and activities, and so she gravitated toward an online community. She learned about issues and petitions through online friends and contacts, signed petitions, and helped friends share activism opportunities more broadly. Prior to the interview, Gwen had signed and helped circulate a petition calling for Ubisoft to expand diversity in gaming characters. Gwen was tightly connected with this community, but her connections were almost entirely online. As she explains, [O]n Tumblr, you just kind of blog about things you enjoy and you find other people who enjoy those things. And you just kind of make friends and message people back and forth, and eventually you do actually get like Skype contacts or email contacts where you will actually get to know them on a more personal level than a superficial level. And then you just start working together and coordinating stuff.
Social media use offered a path to participation and community that respondents like Gwen may not have had otherwise. Such routing around is not limited to online activism. Two of our respondents that fit this path also participated in offline protests and groups, further highlighting the augmented nature of online and offline engagement. While some of these respondents participated offline, the ability to privately learn about issues and online communities is appealing for others (Earl 2012).
Young people who “route around” barriers to engagement may be able to do so, thanks to digital media’s ability to surface issues and otherwise unknown opportunities for engagement. Some respondents reported finding opportunities for activism through built-in recommendation systems or sponsored content on social media sites. Ben, a 25-year-old bi-racial university student, found groups fighting the Michigan legislature’s attempt to allow employers to refuse coverage of contraceptives (Anders 2014) through Facebook’s “People You May Know” suggestions. Similarly, Eric, a white, high school student who also reported invitations from social ties, signed up for change.org because of “sponsored posts” on Facebook after a “cute picture of a manatee . . . caught [his] eye.” Their experiences indicate that, in addition to being a tool that youth can use to find actions and communities, it can also be a medium for unrecognized opportunities. We found that digital media sites like change.org helped to facilitate online activism such as signing petitions and joining groups throughout our interviews. Thus, for some youth without social connections to activism, digital media provided an opportunity to route around unsupportive networks and find opportunities to get involved and, in some cases, the tightly connected online communities that can foster future activism. Furthermore, digital media may provide a similar medium for exposure to “moral shocks” that can encourage young people to become independently active or to seek out opportunities for participation (Jasper 1998; Jasper and Poulsen 1995).
Conclusion
Our interviews with high school and college students show that digital and social media were integral for youth participation in activism because they helped facilitate traditional paths to political activism. Respondents’ online and offline social networks overlapped considerably. Family and friends used digital media to directly invite our respondents to participate, share information, and share ideas to such a degree that their online and offline lives were a part of one interconnected whole. Respondents also used their friends and families’ posts and comments on social media to learn about sociopolitical issues and to filter out the most interesting opportunities and issues. Of course, the intersection between traditional pathways and digital media was not always advantageous for engagement. The absence of social network support (or an active dismissiveness) combined with skepticism of online engagement hampered several respondents’ ability to find outlets for activism. Yet we also found that some youth were able to use digital media to “route around” the family and friends who were not—or were not perceived to be—supportive of political activism and find important sources of community and opportunity online.
Our findings contribute to social movements and micromobilization research by demonstrating that—in contrast to skeptics’ arguments (Diani 2000; Tarrow 1998; Van Laer and Van Aelst 2010)—digital media has clear impacts on movement processes. In contrast to previous arguments, we find that the Internet and digital media augment traditional paths to activism and offer new avenues for participation. Activists and organizations (Crossley 2015; van Haperen et al. 2018) as well as traditional sources of participation like family, social networks, and schools can use digital media to foster youth’s sense of political efficacy and activism. Simultaneously, the opportunities for individually directed activism that digital media offers may be especially important for youth who are structurally embedded in networks that are unsupportive of political action (W. L. Bennett and Segerberg 2012; Earl, Maher, and Elliott 2017). Digital media and the Internet are important sources for “supplying” participants with opportunities for engagement (Klandermans 2004). Social media may also be a source of exposure to moral or political “shocks” that incite engagement or a venue for sharing inciting images and ideas with others (Jasper 1997; Jasper and Poulsen 1995; Luker 1985). Youth learn about political issues, hold political discussions, and find or develop opportunities for engagement online. As a result, digital media innervates traditional paths to activism while equipping youth with the tools necessary to find opportunities for participation on their own, limiting the role and necessity of formal SMOs for participation (Earl 2014) and making the collective action process less hierarchical (W. L. Bennett and Segerberg 2012).
In this sense, as James Youniss et al. (2002) explain, [f]amilies, schools, service activities, and involvement in political events provide raw material—knowledge, models, and reflective matter—and various forms of feedback, but it is ultimately the youth themselves who synthesize this material, individually, and collaboratively, in ways that make sense to them. (P. 133)
Yet, for youth, this synthesis takes place while using digital media to communicate with close friends, family, and fellow activists as well as weak ties, strangers, and acquaintances. By recognizing that digital media innervates traditional pathways and offers new avenues for activism, we expand our recognition of how individuals, particularly youth, engage in and learn about the political process. As a result, we see new opportunities for understanding the changing face of who participates in activism, which issues attract public attention, and how people organize over the short- and the long-term online and offline.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
We thank Kevin Sharp and Morgan Johnstonbaugh for research assistance.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research is part of a project funded by the Research Network on Youth and Participatory Politics, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.