Youths in Social Media & Politics
By: Jeanine Meli
Tags: Blm, Social Media, Youths Empowerment, Trump, Politics

These Blogs are for a University of Malta Assignment.

Social Media also served as a means of political activism. Not necessarily for a particular party but also to reach out to the world and become more politically active.

In 2011 a considerable number of youths took to the streets following messages by popular bloggers. The same occurred in several cities in Algeria in March 2013. Effectively social media contributed to the popular uprisings that took place in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya when these countries were responding to the Arab Spring movement. Here social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter were used as a means of communication between the citizens. This also eventually led to journalism from various citizens’ perspectives that reported events that made it difficult for governments to deny. (Harvey K., 2014)

A classical development of the participation of youths in politics via social media occurred last July when numerous teenage Tiktok users booked seats for Trump’s rally in Tulsa Oklahoma with more than a million ticket requests but it was consequently observed that the anticipated turnout did not materialise and attendance was much lower than expected. Effectively, in a very short period thousands of users quickly spread information to each other and made various bookings that they were not intended to show up to.

Essentially, the Trump campaign was constantly feeding on data, however, the provision of the wrong data resulted in incorrect conclusions. Following this Trump wanted to ban Tiktok in the United States. This comes to show how effective the initiatives that were taken over Tiktok really were and how this platform is not only there for people to dance and entertain themselves but to take certain matters into hand and do something about it.

Even more recently other politically implicated events occurred when Tiktok users embraced political messages for the Black Lives Matter movement. This was also featured on Instagram with several hashtags and posts that were and still are trending over social media. For some people, their entire feed transformed into content related to the Black Lives Matter movement. Through social media, youths have been encouraging each other to do something about their concerns. This has been a recurring scene when it comes to any world wide news topics of common concern. In most recent events, the war between Israel and Palestine has featured on most social media platforms and here teens have been doing their utmost to spread awareness and also create links over their social media platforms.

The participation of youths in social media is further facilitated in that there are no barriers to participation and there is strong support to create and share ideas in a situation where all contributions matter. In this way, youths are developing a new digital literacy approach where communication is the social scale that binds them together. This mass media social dimension provides the basis for different individuals to attain a common goal. The as such ideas are not politicized but reflect the way the teen generation perceives and interprets social change and further combines individual expressions to create a larger community involvement. In these circumstances, the different forms of social media provide a forum for discussion amongst a particular generation. (Henry J.,2006)

The Internet is a reality to people of all ages, particularly to youths who more than anybody else are eager to learn new things and voice their opinions. The availability of online data has seen a rise in internet use by youths. The majority of teens have access to a smart phone and about half of them are almost constantly online.

For the teen generation, social media facilitates talking to friends, joining group conversations, learning about current events, meeting new people and not missing out. By involving themselves more on social media other than developing their own personal network they are forming a community of a generation who wants to speak and raise awareness to their concerns. This has led to the creation of a participatory culture where a large number can be considered as contributors to blogs, webpages, artwork, photography, stories, videos and opinions on social activities. (Henry J., 2006)