Social Media as Political Participation Tool Among Millennials

The current article is an applied study that conducted on 480 Egyptian Millennials who randomly volunteered as participants. The main objective of the research is to test the effect of social media usage on the level of political expression and consequently on online and offline participation. A self-administered questionnaire has been used to collect responses to be analyzed and the results show that there is no significance of relation between social media and political expression and participation for the sample units of the study. Also, findings confirmed the significant correlation between expression and participation in its two forms; online and offline.

Age Differences in Online News Consumption and Online Political Expression in the United States, United Kingdom, and France

Younger and older generations are differently motivated in relation to news consumption and online political expression. In this paper, we suggest that different modes of citizenship characterize younger and older generations. To test the differential role of political interest in news consumption and online political expression, we use a survey of 3,210 people from the United States, 3,043 from the United Kingdom, and 3,031 from France. Our findings suggest that young citizens are more frequent users of online news overall and that the rank order of different news activities replicates cross-nationally. The frequency of online political expression is negatively related to age, with older people less likely to post online. Age moderates the relationship between political interest and news consumption as well as news consumption and online political expression. The correlations of these sets of variables are stronger for younger respondents compared to older respondents. These findings hold across the three countries under study. We explain these patterns in terms of changing citizenship norms and discuss the implications for democracy.

Conclusion

This chapter revisits the points of departure for the book and approaches Russia, Turkey, and Scandinavia as contested, multiple, ambivalent, and fluid categories. Recognizing the multiple convergences and shifts that have characterized feminist and LGBTI+ resistances throughout this book, the chapter locates these enactments within a broader context of more spectacular, attention-seeking forms of political expression as well as less visible and small-scale, everyday forms of resistance. Within such broader contexts, this chapter argues, it is possible to catch sight of the fluidity between various scales of resistance—individual/collective, micro/meso/macro, local-transnational—which can incite and inspire new practices of resistance. By so doing, it is concluded, these struggles can also be seen to carry hope for more open-ended futures.

Artistic expression: freedom or curse?

The purpose of this contribution is to evaluate the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in freedom of artistic expression cases dealing with visual and performance arts. The reasons for this particular evaluation are salient to the fact that the ECtHR has consistently provided a lesser level of protection to artistic expression than to political expression. The aim of this article is to challenge the approach of the Court to the freedom of artistic expression in relation to visual and performance arts. The critical evaluation is based on two different but complementary grounds: contemporary theory of art critique of the ECtHR’s understanding of art and critique based on the ECtHR’s own political freedom of expression cases. The argument of the authors is that the ECtHR approach to visual and performance arts as an exercise in ethics and aesthetics is contradicted by contemporary art theory and practice which invariably assumes the societal role of art, its potential subversive and transformative function within a society at large, and, ultimately, its lato sensu political value. In addition, visual and performance arts are powerful yet fragile instruments for delivering the debate to society at large. Viewed from this perspective, artistic expression has the same beneficial effect on a democratic society as political expression stricto sensu. Therefore, the rationales underpinning protection of political expression are essentially the same as those of artistic expression, therefore the ECtHR should extend the same level of legal protection to arts and artists to keep valuable social dialogue alive.

Neotoponymy, Appropriation of Space and Youth Political Expression in Tokombéré, Northern Cameroon (1970–2011)

Using the example of neotoponyms proliferation in Tokombéré (Northern Cameroon) between 1970 and 2011, this paper questions the banal tactics of naming places as a site of public patriarchy contestation. In fact, young people play a crucial role in reinventing local political power forms of interpellation, which enables them to symbolically reappropriate the space. This helps to establish their presence in the public sphere from which they have been side-lined by social elders. Even though it reflects a political expression, the fact remains that the attribution of toponyms does not really help to reverse their domination into social field.

Democracy Through Darkness

Chapter 8 reviews the focus of this book—how and why people keep their politics a secret—based on observations of CWG and the survey data. This chapter argues that the existence of political secrecy says that the democracy in the United States is dark. That the fear laid bare in the women’s experiences and the sizeable number of people who engage in secret political expression are evidence that liberal democratic norms are being threatened. But it also considers how political secrecy might tell us that democracy is alive. That people continue in the face of opposition and that secrecy can be a tool to help people engage in politics when they feel it is risky. Finally, this chapter addresses the implications for practitioners, asking them to consider the ways in which they privilege public expression, and encouraging them to consider this an inaccurate picture of the public itself.

What Will They Think If I Post This? Risks and Returns for Political Expression Across Platforms

Social networking sites (SNSs) allow individuals to establish and maintain a variety of relationships as well as share different aspects of their identity by expressing their views on numerous topics, including politics. SNS also come with perceived interpersonal risks and benefits tied to sharing with a collapsed networked audience. Using a nationally representative sample of US social media users ( N = 2,873) from 2016, this study investigated how perceived network characteristics influence people’s decision to engage in online political expression on three platforms: Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Findings indicate that perceived ideological homophily with the audience on an SNS and past use of privacy management settings both predict how much individuals post about politics on Facebook and Twitter, but not on Instagram. On Instagram, Black Americans were significantly more likely to engage in online political expression. On Facebook and Twitter, older Americans engaged in more political expression, and across all platforms, perceptions that political discussion online is uncivil were negatively associated with political expression.

BRINGING THE PANDEMIC HOME: MEMES AS LOCAL POLITICS AT TIMES OF GLOBAL CRISIS

It was late February 2020 when part of Northern Italy entered the first Covid-19 lockdown of the West. While stories of people fleeing quarantined areas soon made national headlines, the international news was suddenly reporting of coronavirus patients connected to Italy all around the world. Against this background, Italian social media started thriving with Covid-19 humour. On 9 March the lockdown turned nationwide and became one of the strictest in Europe. By focusing on Covid-19 memes of quarantined Italy, this article explores the local - and mundane - appropriation of memetic practices, in both its cultural and political dimensions. We combined digital methods and netnographic techniques to generate and analyse a dataset of Covid-19 Twitter memes produced by Italian publics during the first national lockdown. This allowed us to follow the circulation - and evolution - of memetic practices, explore how cultural fabric contributed to different dimensions of meme production and categorise the emergence of political expression. Our findings show that Italian pandemic memes had a primarily affective function fed by past and present pop culture, local or sub-local stereotypes and popular public debates. Where political expression did emerge, it was never particularly innovative or new because it was there to mark previously established communal belonging driven by populist narratives more than to initiate contentious practices. Ultimately, this work suggests that memetic practices can highly intertwine with the geographically or linguistically local and point to the need for contextual approaches able to enhance our understanding of digital practices as shaped by local publics.