In his book Convergence Culture, Henry Jenkins defends that the Internet, and especially YouTube, have been used by normal individuals to engage in debates around political issues.
This has most often been done in the form of parody, mostly of politicians, but also of civic/political issues. Jenkins thinks that humour plays an important role in engaging 'normal' citizens in civic/political debates.
Most people feel distant and alienated from formal politics with politicans adopting formal postures and rhetoric discourses that are far from most of our daily lives and conversations - maybe links to social diffeentiation tactics described by Bourdieu?
The Internet has allowed consumers and audiences to become producers, mixers and distributors. We use it mostly for fun / entertainment but are using some skills to touch issues in the political arena - and the way we're doing it is especially through humour, what Jenkins terms 'serious fun'. See this 'parody video' posted on YouTube, the Snowman video, about climate change -
Politicans and mass-media broadcasters have often dismissed videos like this as 'not serious enough' for politics. But some videos have been watched by millions of people, have raised debate, have triggered chain reactions and further thought and debate about the serious issues they cover.
The Internet is just a medium, but one that opens production and distribution to people with access to it. In ways closer to 'popular culture' than formal politics, it seems that the way political debates / pressure are happening are tending more towards taking popular views into consideration, but only when there are enough numbers of people watching a video to desevre mass media attention, or thousands Twittering about CNN's low coverage of the Iranian elections.
So, 'is the Internet the answer?' Not on its own, but with a dose of fun and humour, maybe more young people who are not engaged in other ways may find it worth having a go at touching civic / political issues - and at least have a laugh while they're doing it.

If any of you can bear to read through several hundred posts in a thread on a forum in an anti-fascist group on facebook, I have here an example of something very interesting occurring in terms of civic and political engagement.

If you read post by post about five pages in, you get to a point where there are about ten people, (several women particularly) included in an extended discussion of politics and voting with a young man in Manchester who voted for the fascist British National Party candidate in recent Euro-elections but is exploring his choice openly and getting some annoyed and some patient critique from others.

His references to young people needing to do national service and to his age as a factor in his lack of knowledge about political party manifestoes are in themselves provocative of other responses that is what makes the whole complex thread so very fascinating.



Here's the link.

www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=864474147...opic=13345#topic_top

Just to play the devil's advocat: Are we sure online talk is such a good thing? What if it actually means the little time/energy (young) people have for civic causes is spent on talk instead of action? What if by joining a cause or a group on facebook, they consider their job done? It is especially relavant in Hungary as the only form of civic participation people frequently engage in here is talk. Research shows that Hungarians talk a lot about politics and the state of affairs, but their involvement stops there. (The exception is the extreme right which is very active indeed.) So is discussion a good thing in itself? Or only if it leads to a "higher level" of participation?

I would say the question is not wheter it lead to "higher levels" of participation, but whether "higher levels" of participation have been realised without discussion? From a normative perspective discussion should be a pre-requisite to participation, a means of achieving common understanding and thought on what would be the right thing to do. The problem may be that it passifies in the sense that people do not go and act in other ways. But the extreme right is the perfect example where the action is quicker than discussion.

Another instance of discussion - rational, vituperative, emotional and political - taking place on a broadly civic forum. Not youth this time, but the topic is 'Sink boats carrying asylum seekers'/ ( or Fascist talk)


www.mumsnet.com/Talk/in_the_news/787814-...immigrants-should-be