australian young people's participatory practices and internet use

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Australian young people'sparticipatory practices andinternet useAriadne Vromen aa Government and International Relations , Universityof Sydney , NSW 2006, Australia E-mail:Published online: 23 Feb 2007.

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Ariadne Vromen

AUSTRALIAN YOUNG PEOPLE’S

PARTICIPATORY PRACTICES AND

INTERNET USE

This paper examines the relationship between Internet use and political partici-pation among Australian young people. Based on original survey data it demon-strates that there clearly exists a ‘digital divide’ amongst 18–34-year-oldAustralians, which is delineated on demographic characteristics of geography,education level, income level and occupational classification. While the Internethas far from replaced the traditional information sources of television and news-papers, it does, however, facilitate participation undertaken by already politi-cally engaged young people. The Internet has fundamental importance infacilitating information sharing and organizing for young people involved inactivist and community groups. The paper also provides case studies of twonon-government, youth-oriented organizations with participatory Internet sites(Vibewire Youth Services and Inspire Foundation) to further explore the potentialof Internet enhancement of young people’s autonomous political spaces. One siteprovides Internet-only, youth-specific mental health services and has developed aportal for active community-based participation. It has won commendations forencouraging youth ownership of service provision and providing space for youthparticipation. The other site provides discussion and journalism for and by youngpeople on a range of cultural, social and political issues. This site also engages inmainstream political issues through ‘electiontracker’, which provided four youngpeople with the opportunity to join the mainstream media in following andreporting on the 2004 Australian federal election campaign. The focus in thispaper on heterogenous acts of participation is able to expand our understandingof the democratizing potential of young people’s Internet-based politicalpractices.

Keywords Young people; participation; Internet use; Australia;community-based organizations

Information, Communication & Society Vol. 10, No. 1, February 2007, pp. 48–68

ISSN 1369-118X print/ISSN 1468-4462 online # 2007 Taylor & Francis

http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals DOI: 10.1080/13691180701193044

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Introduction

The Internet is often portrayed as a democratizing agent able to facilitateparticipatory practices. Alternatively the advent of the Internet is also seenas a contributor to a new class divide; a digital divide between those whoaccess and utilize technology and information, and those who do not, orcannot. It is often assumed that young people are the big winners in the Inter-net revolution. This paper will discuss these ideas in the Australian contextthrough a focus on three areas: demographic differences and Internet use;the relationship between political participation, broadly defined, and Internetuse; and case studies of organizations that facilitate young people’s Internet-based participation.

This paper examines the relationship between Internet use and politicalparticipation among Australian young people. Based on original survey datait demonstrates that there clearly exists a ‘digital divide’ delineated on demo-graphic characteristics of geography, education level, income level and occu-pational classification. While the Internet has far from replaced the traditionalinformation sources of television and newspapers, it does, however, facilitateparticipation undertaken by already politically engaged young people. TheInternet has fundamental importance in facilitating information sharing andorganizing for young people involved in activist and community groups.The brief case studies of non-government, youth-oriented organizationswith participatory Internet sites show the potential for Internet enhancementof young people’s autonomous political spaces.

Literature review

Evaluating debates on whether the Internet facilitates political engagement,Pippa Norris (2001, pp. 96–98) differentiates between ‘cyber-optimists’and ‘cyber-sceptics’. Cyber-optimists believe that the unlimited informationavailable through the Internet will foster an increase in political knowledge,that people will express their views freely on email, lists and in chat rooms,and will subsequently become more active in community politics. This viewencapsulates the mobilization thesis, which sees that the Internet has thecapacity to engage those currently on the periphery of the existing politicalsystems – such as young people, those living in non-urban communities, orthose disillusioned with the mainstream political system (Norris 2001).Cyber-sceptics, in contrast, see that the Internet will be used politically forreinforcement by those citizens already active and knowledgeable about politicaland community affairs. Therefore those with this view suggest that the Internetwill not change existing levels of participation, and could even widen the gapbetween the engaged and those who are politically indifferent (Norris 2001).

A U S T R A L I A N Y O U N G P E O P L E ’ S I N T E R N E T U S E 4 9

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Others have argued that the Internet provides new ways of participating inpolitical processes, and thus merits distinctive analysis. For example, therapid uptake of mobile phones, digital television and the Internet have alloccurred in the last decade and Stanyer argues that this has created opportu-nities for an increase in individualized political expression and participation(2005). These individualized forms of participation include traditionalmodes such as voting, writing letters to MPs, donating money and non-tra-ditional modes that are facilitated by new technology, including petitionsigning, boycotts, blogging, chat rooms, email chain letters and SMS (e.g.to media and politicians). Non-traditional modes of individualized partici-pation are often quicker, require little time commitment and are often con-venient for expressing a political viewpoint (Stanyer 2005; Vromen & Gelber2005). However, this research has not yet been utilized to explain how theInternet facilitates or underpins collective action, and/or political delibera-tion in general.

The ABS Report Australians On-Line (Lloyd & Bill 2004) presents an over-view of the home-based computer and Internet use of Australians utilizing2001 census data. Overall it finds that there is a range of socioeconomicand demographic factors that account for differences in the rates of technologyuse. The main characteristics of those who use the Internet regularly are:

. high weekly family incomes;

. high level of education, or still in school and study;

. families with dependent children;

. employed, and in white-collar jobs, especially professional occupations;

. younger, especially those under 25;

. living in cities rather than regional or rural Australia;

. being exposed to computer and Internet use in the workplace.

The research found that young Australians under the age of 25 are by far thegreatest users of the Internet. However, correlations between the socioeco-nomic factors showed that technology (especially Internet) use and incomewere more strongly associated than technology use and age (Lloyd & Bill2004). This starts to suggest that Australian young people, especially whenthey are no longer studying, cannot all be categorized as active Internetusers. Understanding and predicting general Internet usage is more likelyto rely on the complex interaction between the demographic characteristicslisted above, especially those that indicate high socioeconomic status.

This paper focuses especially on the relationships between Internet useand political participation broadly defined. In the recent literature I foundfour main ways of analysing the relationship between Internet use andyoung people’s political participation and engagement. First, research oftenfocuses on the Internet as an alternative and readily engaging service provider,principally for disadvantaged or at-risk young people (e.g. Lock et al. 2002).

5 0 I N F O R M A T I O N , C O M M U N I C A T I O N & S O C I E T Y

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Thus, targeted Internet services that provide anonymity, speed of responseand privacy are represented as appealing to young people who are comfortablewith utilizing the technology. This focus on alternative modes of providingservices is clearly generationally specific although there is minimal analysisof how Internet usage in general is concentrated among the affluent andhighly educated who may have less immediate need for targeted services.

There is a second, broader discussion of the potential for activism facili-tated by the Internet. The anti-globalization movement has been noted for theway it utilizes Internet-based media and information delivery, through emailused for protest organization; and Indymedia, which often uses live actionfootage relayed through websites. Activist organizations more broadly, suchas Greenpeace or Oxfam Community Aid Abroad, have been adept at usingthe Internet to provide information and foster the participation and involve-ment of individuals (see Iveson & Scalmer 2000; Barr 2002; Scalmer 2002).Graham Meikle (2002) believes that the Internet has provided a new toolfor those who intend to create social and political change but that this toolworks together with existing media forms. For example, political activistsuse and create Internet-based alternatives for news and political commentarysources, such as Indymedia, but they also need to promote their issues byreceiving coverage in more widely accessed media such as television andmetropolitan newspapers.

Others have commented on how the alternative media space provided bythe Internet facilitates alternative political agendas (Evans 2004). However,Evans hastens to add that virtual communities are not necessarily more demo-cratic or inclusive than physical communities, and that most people still findinclusion through traditional community forms in physical spaces (Evans 2004).

The third area of discussion takes up this idea of the Internet’s provisionof alternative political outlets and focuses on how the Internet makes it poss-ible for young people to create new and distinctive political spaces. Bessant(2000, p. 115) cites as examples Internet-based discussion of racism and sub-sequent actions organized to protest against Pauline Hanson (who started thefar-right One Nation political party) in 1998. She argues that this example‘illustrates how the net can help empower young people and how such tech-nology can shape and influence the content of political practice for someyoung people’. Similarly, Anita Harris (2001) describes alternative spacesand forums for political expression created by young women ranging fromunderground magazines to alternative music to ‘gURL’ Web pages (see alsoCross 1996 on geekgirl). It is the Internet that facilitates unregulated com-munication between young women, and gives them the opportunity to havepolitical exchanges that are not appropriated, misunderstood or even seenby those not invited in.

In this view the Internet offers the potential for a more personal andprivate politics. That is, young people are able to participate in discussion


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and information sharing without being evaluated by either their peers orothers in civil society. It is this construction of the Internet as providing anautonomous and alternative forum for politics that is both difficult tomeasure and/or ignored in studies of participation. It is important thatstudies of young people’s utilization of the Internet now incorporate this quali-tative focus on the new spaces that are created and used by young people. It isonly then that we will be able to understand whether the use of the Internetcan progress from fostering individualized participation into more collectivelyoriented participation with the capacity to foster deliberation.

The fourth area of research and analysis is a focus on the individual-levelrelationship between Internet use and social capital. To some extent this dis-cussion lays the groundwork for an examination of whether there is a relation-ship between Internet use and group-based participation. Social capital isgenerally depicted as a conceptual approach to measuring both connectionswithin communities and individual levels of civic engagement (see Winter2000). As social capital looks at how people engage and connect within geo-graphic and identity-based communities it is a useful contributor to the broadbased definition of political participation. In the Australian policy-makingcontext a recent Productivity Commission (2003) report suggested that gov-ernments could facilitate social capital in communities by funding Internetand telecommunications services, thus bridging disadvantage and the‘digital divide’. Research undertaken in North America (Quan-Haase &Wellman 2002) has suggested that there are three different approaches to con-ceptualizing the effects the Internet has on social capital accumulation:

1. The Internet transforms social capital, in that the Internet provides thecapacity for communication with distant communities of shared interest;and thus the Internet creates new communities.

2. The Internet diminishes social capital, in that the Internet chiefly enter-tains and draws people away from family and friends, and thus the Internetleads to less community.

3. The Internet supplements social capital. The Internet is a part of people’severyday lives and another means of communication, facilitating existingrelationships and patterns of civic engagement.

The existing research tends to confirm the third approach to the Internet socialcapital accumulation relationship. That is, the Internet has not radically trans-formed or mobilized civic engagement despite the fact that active communitygroups use the Internet extensively (Shah et al 2001; Quan-Haase 2002).

The quantitative study by Shah et al. (2001) of the relationship betweenindividual Internet use, civic engagement and generations found that therewas a significant but weak relationship between Internet use and civic engage-ment. This relationship was strongest amongst ‘generation X’, operationa-lized in their study as adults aged under 34 years. This study was important


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because it examined Internet use in terms of both overall usage and what itwas used for. However, the study’s limitations are in the operationalizationof civic engagement, which relied on only three indicators: ‘did volunteerwork’, ‘worked on a community project’ and ‘went to a club meeting’(2001, p. 146). Arguably these three indicators do not extend to broaderinstances of political participation, nor do they provide the opportunity toexamine political and community involvements that may be specific toyoung people (for a more extensive critique of narrow indicators of partici-pation and civic engagement see Vromen 2003; Ester & Vinken 2003; andthe discussion in the method section below).

This paper extends on these different types of political uses of the Internetthat were identified in the existing literature. This included individualisticuses for formal and less formal political engagement, and collectively orienteduses for social capital oriented civic engagement as well as activist politics.The paper evaluates these different uses in the Australian context by, first,focusing on broad quantitative patterns of how young people use the Internetand the relationship with their participatory practices. This analysis evaluateswhether the Internet is used to reinforce existing participation or to mobilizenew groups of young people to participation. The paper then shifts to case-study-oriented research of two non-government organizations that utilizethe Internet to foster young people’s engagement and participation: aservice-oriented youth site and a discussion-based culturally oriented youthsite. These case studies suggest the importance of focusing on the constructionof particular political spaces rather than universalizing patterns of individualbehaviour alone.

Method

This paper draws on a survey of a broadly representative sample of 287 18–34-year-old Australians conducted via telephone by Newspoll MarketResearch in 2001. Respondents were selected by the application of a stratifiedrandom sample process that included: a quota set for each Australian capitalcity and non-capital city areas, and within each of these areas a quota was setfor each telephone area code; random selection of household telephonenumbers, which were drawn from current telephone listings for each areacode; and random selection of an individual in each household by screeningquestions requesting the resident individual who last had a birthday. Idesigned the survey in consultation with the polling company.

This dataset has both strengths and limitations. It is a new dataset thatfocuses on political participation, and in a more extensive way than existingexplorations of young people’s political practices. However, I acknowledgethat the generalizability of the results is limited by the small sample size,


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and there may be some reservations about the broad age range of young peoplesurveyed. I nonetheless consider that it is important to look at a broader agegroup of young people to understand the complex relationship between gen-erational change, participation and technology. Other studies have broadenedthe usual policy-making and institutionalized notions of youth as age 15 to 25(see Wyn & White 1997, p. 1), to extend to the late twenties (see Dwyeret al. 1998; Hillman & Marks 2002). I extended the age group beingstudied to 34 to be able to measure social and economic change experiencedby a generation of Australian young people and in acknowledgement that age-based trajectories, or markers, in both the public and private sphere are not aspredictable as they once were (e.g. Shah et al. 2001; White & Wyn 2004). InAustralia several life-course markers no longer occur within the usual demar-cations of the ‘youth’ into ‘adult’ age group: these include life course eventssuch as leaving the parental home, becoming financially independent, enteringa partnership, having children or buying a house (see Hillman & Marks 2002).

I developed the questionnaire topics so as to account for a broad rangeof participatory activities. This included 19 activities such as the boycottingof products, and a range of community and activist group involvements (seeTable 1), as well as issues that young people discuss, and the perceivedconstraints on time they had available for participation, but these are notanalysed here. The questionnaire did not ask individuals to estimate theamount of time they spent participating in any of the participatory activitiesor groups. This was judged as too complicated and temporally dependentfor a single highly structured interview. This kind of information canonly be reliably collected through time-use diaries, preferably in a longi-tudinal panel study. I was also more interested in elaborating on therange of, and relationships between, participatory activities undertaken byindividuals, rather than trying to calculate the time spent on differentparticipatory acts.

I have argued elsewhere that traditional indicators of participation thatrely on labelling some types of participation as conventional and othertypes of participation as unconventional tend to both belittle and diminishour capacity to understand young people’s participation. That is, conventionalpolitical behaviour research establishes a hierarchy of participation that moreoften than not measures young people’s lack of interest in formal politics as anindicator of their political apathy. By including a broad range of individua-lized, community and activist involvements in my measurements of youngpeople’s participation it has been possible to gauge young people’s extensivelevel of engagement with broad based political issues and processes moreaccurately (Vromen 2003).

In constructing my questionnaire I did make a choice in favour of quan-titative, generalizable breadth, over qualitative depth of analysis, so as tobe able to locate patterns apparent in the population (see May 2001;


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Sanders 2002). However, a complex and well-rounded understanding ofparticipation cannot be obtained without also looking at the qualitative andcontextual dimensions to participatory practice (see Bryman 1998). This iswhy I have adopted Dunleavy’s (1996) call for methodological pluralism byalso focusing on particular Internet usage through the case studies of theyouth-led Internet sites of two organizations: Vibewire Youth Services andInspire Foundation. I have also addressed Dunleavy’s suggestion that disaggre-gation is needed in behavioural research, by looking for divergent patternswithin the age group being studied rather than stressing homogenous patternsof participation. In an earlier paper I explored the 19 acts of participation indetail (Vromen 2003), and undertook factor analysis that led to identificationof four types of participation: communitarian, activist, individualistic andparty-oriented. In this paper I focus on the relationship between use of theInternet and acts of political participation.

Sourcing information and Internet use

This section details the findings on young people’s use of the Internet ingeneral and how it is related to their participatory practices in particular.The results here reinforce common assumptions about media usage in thatnearly all young people generally use television to find out about the world

TABLE 1 Forms of political participation.

activist (7 items)

human rights organization environmental organization

women’s organization heritage/conservation organization

attended rally or march boycotted products

other activist organization

communitarian (6 items)

church group youth club

volunteered time school/university group

contacted MP ethnicity group

party (5 items)

campaign work party member

union member contacted MP

sporting/recreation group

individualistic (4 items)

volunteered time made donations

boycotted products sporting/recreation group


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(94 per cent), and it is the most commonly used main source of information(47 per cent). However, other mass media forms, that is newspapers (84 percent, most common: 25 per cent) and radio (74 per cent, most common: 14per cent), continue to also be important sources of information about newsand current affairs. Young Australians are clearly differentiated into thosewho are actively ‘online’ and those who are not as only 45 per cent of thesample use the Internet generally as a source of information, and only 6 percent say the Internet is their main source of information.

In examining young people’s general Internet use 34 per cent use theInternet every day, and 66 per cent use at least email regularly, that is atleast once a week. They mainly use the Internet for work and study, or forcommunicating with friends and family. A smaller proportion use it forfinding out about entertainment, sport, news and current affairs and commu-nity events (see Tables 2 and 3). A very small group (8 per cent) agree thatthey use the Internet for sharing information about community or politicalissues; 19 per cent of the sample, never use the Internet. The primary differ-entiating demographic characteristics of the non-Internet users are that theytend to be less educated, have a main income earner working in blue-collarwork and to be in a household that earns less money than the sample’s average.

Email and Internet usage were examined to see if they differed along ninedemographic variables. There was no difference amongst the three age groups(18–24, 25–29, 30–34), which means that while work and study are import-ant reasons for using the Internet it is not necessarily the youngest group, 18-to 24-year-olds, who are the most Internet active. Frequency of usage for bothemail and Internet did differ significantly along the predictable class-orienteddemographics of location, education level, income level and occupationalclassification. City dwellers were more likely than their regional ruralcounterparts to use both email and the Internet every day. A minority ofthose who had not completed secondary school (23 per cent) comparedwith the majority of those with secondary school (51 per cent) or post-sec-ondary school qualifications (56 per cent) used email everyday; the patternwas similar for frequency of Internet usage. Those in the highest incomebracket were much more likely to use email everyday (63 per cent) andonly 22 per cent of those in the lowest income bracket used the Internetevery day. The sample also divides around white- and blue-collar work,

TABLE 2 Internet usage.

email (%) internet (excluding email) (%)

every day 46 34

1–3 times a week 20 29

less often, or never 34 37


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with 52 per cent of blue-collar workers using email and the Internet less oftenthan once a week. The existence of these relationships demonstrates thatthere clearly is a ‘digital divide’ among younger Australian, in terms of thefrequency of their usage of both email and the Internet. While there wasno difference between men and women for the frequency of their emailuse, a difference does appear when it comes to Internet usage in that men(41 per cent) are more likely than women (26 per cent) to use the Internetevery day. Reasons for Internet use are explored below but gender differencesdo not reappear along any of the indicators. One of the more interestingfindings is that people from a non-English-speaking background (NESB) usethe Internet more frequently than people from an English-speaking back-ground, with only 13 per cent of NESB individuals saying that they use theInternet less than once a week. This suggests that the Internet has broadenedopportunities for NESB individuals in terms of the resources that they canaccess in their language of origin.

The reasons that people used the Internet were examined by the demo-graphic variables. The higher the level of education gained the more likelyit is that individuals will use the Internet for work and study: 85 per centof those with a post-secondary school qualification use the Internet forwork or study, compared with 62 per cent of those who have not finishedschool. This probably relates to the nature of work and study for thosewith more education, in that their work may be professionalized, moredependent on information technology and thus reinforces the notion of the‘digital divide’. No other demographic indicators differentiate the groupwho use the Internet for work and study.

People from a non-English-speaking background differ from those of anEnglish-speaking background when it comes to two particular uses of the

TABLE 3 Reasons for Internet use.

use percentage

for work or study reasons 78

keep in touch with family and friends 77

to find out about:

entertainment/sporting events 47

news and current affairs 40

community events 17

share information regarding community or political issues 8

other 22

Note: the ‘other’ category included mentions of items such as: Internet banking

and shopping, holiday information and bookings, downloading and playing games

and music, and general entertainment.


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Internet. NESB Australians are much more likely to use the Internet to findout about news and current affairs than their ESB counterparts. (67 percent compared with 36 per cent); they are also somewhat more likely touse the Internet to find out about community events (17 per cent versus 7per cent). This suggests that people from a non-English-speaking backgroundare turning to the Internet to fulfil an information need that is not being fullymet by the mainstream media. It could be assumed that this is information onnews and community events that is written in the other language spoken athome. Dividing the sample into different demographic groups does nothelp us to understand inclination toward any other uses of the Internet.That is, men and women, different income groups, different work status,parent and non-parents, city and rural residents, and different age groupsall use the Internet for more or less the same reasons. Overall these resultsimply that there is a digital divide among Australian young people in termsof frequency of email and Internet use, but there are very few demographicdifferences in terms of what the Internet is actually being used for. In thefollowing section I ascertain whether there is a relationship between acts ofparticipation and Internet usage.

Participation and Internet use

In this research I used 19 different participatory acts that ranged fromindividualized activities aimed at institutionalized actors, such as government,to protest-based activities, to collective group involvements. The 19 acts ofparticipation were analysed to determine whether certain acts statisticallyfactored together, that is whether individuals were predisposed to engagein a certain range of participatory acts. Four factors were identified and Ilabelled them as: activist; communitarian; party; and individualistic (listedin Table 1). Most people have engaged in the individualistic activities, suchas volunteering time or making a donation. The collective, group-basedactivities included in both the communitarian and activist factors appeal todistinctive but separate groups within this generation of young people. Theparty-based factor that includes party membership had limited, and diminish-ing, appeal to young people (Vromen 2003; also see McAllister 1997).

Analysis was undertaken to see if there were relationships between boththe amount of time people used the Internet and what they used it for, and theacts of political participation. Overall, there was little significant relationshipbetween everyday use of the Internet (and email) and individual acts of par-ticipation. Thus a prior involvement in a single participatory activity doesnot lead to, nor is it influenced by, frequent email and Internet use.

A significant relationship was found between the number of participatoryacts that a person engages in and the frequency of his/her email and Internet


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use. Therefore individuals who use both email and the Internet everyday weresignificantly more involved in a range of acts of participation. This suggeststhat as people are more open to a range of participatory acts they may useemail and the Internet both to communicate more and to access further infor-mation. These individuals are subsequently predisposed to participation andinformation. However, this can also potentially be attributed to the strongrelationship of both education level and occupational status with both Internetuse and participation.

I also examined the relationship between the four participatory factors(activist, communitarian, party and individualist) and email and Internetuse. There are no significant relationships between frequency of email useand the participatory factors. Furthermore, Internet usage did not relateto either the party or individualist participatory factors. However, wherethe results became interesting is in the statistical relationships betweenInternet usage and the two collective group-based factors: the activist andcommunitarian types. Individuals who use the Internet every day andweekly have a significantly higher average on both group-based participatoryfactors than do those who use the Internet rarely. This suggests a level ofinterdependence between use of the Internet as an information source andas a tool for political engagement. It may also suggest that those predisposedto activist and community-based participation utilize the Internet as a sourceof information alternative to the mainstream media that do not regularlycover issues of interest or relevance to those involved in community-based or activist pursuits.

Reasons for using both the Internet and email were also examined for anyrelationship with the participatory factors (see Tables 4 and 5). All four typesof participation were found to have a significant relationship with individuals’use of the Internet for both finding out about community/political eventsand sharing information about these events. While individuals who use theInternet for these two reasons have a higher average on each of the fourparticipatory factors, it is difficult to understand which actions come first.That is, do people who participate more use the Internet more as a normalcourse to sustain their participation or are people who use the Internet fora broader range of reasons more likely to become politically active in non-Internet-based participation? This is the trade-off described by PippaNorris (2001) between the reinforcement and mobilization effects that theInternet has on participation.

I suspect that young people use the Internet to facilitate existing forms ofparticipation because there is also a significantly higher average on all fourparticipatory factors for those who use the Internet for work and study.Thus Internet use in people’s everyday lives is also related to higher levelsof participation in general. For example, individuals who use the Interneteither to keep in touch with family and friends or for work and study


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reasons have a higher average on the activist factor than those who do not usethe Internet for those reasons, suggesting that activists are increasingly Inter-net savvy or even Internet dependent, and their participation moulds to thosepredispositions.

TABLE 4 Participatory factors’ relationship with reasons for Internet use.

average for

those who

use the

internet for

this reason

average for

those who do

not use the

internet for

this reason

level of

significance

activist work/study 1.7 1.1 ��

keep in touch 1.7 1.1 ��

finding out community

information

2.1 1.4 �

sharing community

information

2.9 1.4 �

communitarian work/study 2.1 1.6 �


information

2.7 1.8 ��

sharing community

information

2.9 1.8 ��

party work/study 1.5 1.2 �

finding out

entertainment

1.6 1.3 �

sharing community

information

2.1 1.4 �

individualist work/study 3 2.7 �


information

3.3 2.8 �

sharing community

information

3.7 2.8 ��

total acts work/study 6.1 4.7 ��

keep in touch 5.9 4.9 �

finding out entertainment 6.1 5.2 �


information

7 5.3 ��

sharing community

information

8.6 5.3 ��

Note: �p . 0.05; ��p . 0.001.


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About one third of the 19 individual participatory acts have a significantrelationship with the two Internet uses of either finding or sharing infor-mation on community and political affairs. The associations here are relativelyweak, but it is clear that activist acts such as attending a rally and boycottingare facilitated by political exchanges through the Internet. Furthermore, aseries of group-based formations, both community and activist oriented,are associated with use of the Internet for these community/politicallyoriented reasons. However, these findings can also be traced back to edu-cation levels, as the highly educated are more likely to be participatory,more likely to use the Internet and much more likely to have been involvedwith a group at either school or university.

Interestingly, using the Internet to access information on news andcurrent affairs is not significantly related to high levels of participation,either overall or on the four participatory factors. All those who look fornews on the Internet are equally participatory. That is, while seeking outnews and current affairs is an important reason for using the Internet itdoes not delineate people along the participatory factors. This result, addedto the result that there is no relationship between Internet use and discussionof topical community and political issues, reinforces that participation andInternet use are related when the Internet reinforces existing ‘real world’participation. Overall, the Internet is not used by the general population ofyoung people as an alternative forum for community and political discussion.

This does not mean, conversely, that the Internet is not providing import-ant political space for active young people. While I have demonstrated herethat the Internet is not providing a radical change for young people ingeneral by facilitating new participation I still suspect that it has made funda-mental changes to the ways of participating for particular activist and commu-nity-oriented young people. That is, the Internet has now becomeindispensable for a variety of reasons such as information distribution,sharing news and information, event organization, keeping in contact, andfor facilitating debate within both offline and Internet-based communities.As I suggested at the beginning of the paper little research has exploredhow young people create Internet spaces that are autonomous and aid in delib-eration. In the next section I will make preliminary observations about twoInternet sites to provoke further analysis of how Australian young peopleare already using the Internet in both political and deliberative ways.

Youth-led Internet spaces

In policy discussion of e-democracy or e-governance there has been limiteddiscussion of the implementation of Internet-based processes that activelyinclude young people. Moreover, in this discussion a limited notion of


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Internet-based participation is followed, one that tends to focus on govern-ment-directed information delivery and consultation with individuals ratherthan active processes of citizen ownership and collective forms of partici-pation (see, for example, the report of the recent Victorian Government’sinquiry into Electronic Democracy, available at http://www.parliament.vic.gov.au/sarc/E-Democracy/Final_Report). There are some Australian-based examples of government-led Internet initiatives that are targetedat young people (e.g. see the Queensland government’s Generate, availableat http://www.generate.qld.gov.au/ and the federal government’s TheSource, available at http://www.thesource.gov.au/) but these tend to besimilarly limited in their participatory potential. Existing survey researchon the Australian third sector’s general use of Internet sites to facilitate par-ticipation shows that very few organizations (less than 20 per cent) provideopportunities for collective-oriented deliberation through discussion forumsor actions. Most do, however, facilitate individualized participation such asdonations, information access and merchandising purchases (Barraket 2005).

TABLE 5 Individual acts of participation with Internet use: finding out and sharing

information on community/political events.

use of the Internet

participatory act (% of

sample)

% of participants

who have used

Internet for

community/

political reasons

strength of

association and

significance

level

finding out

information on

community events

school/university group

(37)

22 0.175�

rally (19) 26 0.167�

boycott (57) 18 0.128�

contact MP (24) 21 0.123�

church group (27) 21 0.12�

youth club (25) 21 0.115�

sharing information

on community events

rally (19) 17 0.195��

boycott (57) 10 0.176�

school/university group

(37)

12 0.176�

women’s group (9) 19 0.173�

sporting group (70) 9 0.144�

environment group (22) 13 0.127�

volunteered (67) 9 0.126�

Note: �p . 0.05; ��p . 0.001.


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The United Kingdom is more advanced than Australia in the policy dis-cussion and policy implementation of Internet-based facilitation of youngpeople’s political engagement. However, one major criticism of existing gov-ernment and community-sector-led strategies in the UK is the lack of owner-ship and control young people have in producing and designing Internetcontent aimed at facilitating youth participation (Howland 2002).

Following my earlier definitions of a broad-based approach to measuringand evaluating political participation I selected two youth-oriented websitesthat facilitate young people’s active engagement with society more broadlybut are not necessarily always focused on formal politics. Through lookingat these types of sites it is possible to better evaluate the extent of youngpeople’s agency in deliberating on issues that are directly important in theireveryday lives. These brief case studies of two Australian non-government,non-profit organizations that provide youth-targeted websites – Inspire Foun-dation and Vibewire Youth Services – show that both organizations activelyfacilitate the involvement of young people in website content and thegeneral direction of the organizations sponsoring the websites.

Inspire Foundation was formed in 1996 in response to Australia’s un-acceptably high rates of youth suicide and attempted suicide, and the intentionof Inspire Foundation is to create opportunities for young people to helpthemselves and help others. The organization has pioneered the use of theInternet and its associated technologies in creating and delivering newforms of social services for young people. Inspire argues that its servicesare effective because the Internet is the medium of young people, and canbe used anonymously 24 hours a day. Inspire provides Reach Out!, aservice-oriented site that provides information and advice on general issuesof young people’s mental health. It is an award-winning site and has a highlevel of interactivity. Inspire is currently establishing ActNow, a new sitethat will facilitate young people’s political and community engagement.

Vibewire Youth Services was established in 2001 to provide a primarilyInternet-based youth media space. Its main plank Vibewire.net went live inApril 2002 as a portal for youth culture and political expression. It providesa range of different sections where articles are posted and forums are con-ducted. Topics covered include: politics, policy and public issues; and culturalcommentary on the areas of art, music, poetry, literature, film and theatre. In2004 and 2005 Vibewire ran Sanctuary in partnership with Auburn MigrantResource centre; this programme focused on the idea of multiculturalismand was aimed at giving young people from non-English-speaking backgroundsthe chance to publish creative work challenging the views of society onmigrants and refugees. In 2004 Vibewire was also funded by the Foundationfor Young Australians to run electionTracker whereby four young peoplewrote articles on the 2004 federal election campaign. These online journalistswrote daily entries on the website from the campaign trails of either Prime


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Minister John Howard or Leader of the Opposition Mark Latham. Opinionpieces by the four electionTrackers were also reprinted in mainstreamprint media and there were several radio and television stories on the project.

Both organizations have undertaken survey-based work to gain an over-view of the users of their websites. Inspire commissioned Whetstone atThe Leading Edge to undertake a short survey on its site in late 2002/early2003. This self-selecting survey of nearly 1,000 users found that 80 percent were female and the average age was 18. Most users were metropolitanbased, and many of those were in Sydney. Site users were most likely to accessthe site because ‘they were going through a hard time’ and online links andpromotions on youth radio station JJJ were the main ways of hearing aboutthe Reach Out! site (Inspire Foundation 2003).

In 2004 Vibewire distributed a survey on young people’s media use pri-marily through its website but also through several offline youth and media-oriented forums. Similar to Inspire’s findings, most of the 700 respondentswere female (70 per cent) and metropolitan based (81 per cent); most respon-dents were between 20 and 25 years of age, and nearly 70 per cent were eitherfull-time or part-time students. Evidenced by findings on participatory beha-viour this sample was clearly a highly educated and politicized sample ofyoung people who are not representative of young Australians in general.In terms of Internet-based participation two thirds of the respondents had par-ticipated in an online forum, 40 per cent had written an article for a websiteand one third had run their own website (Vibewire 2005).

Beyond both appealing disproportionately to women the two sites seem tohave different audiences, thus representing their different missions. Vibewireseems to be providing an outlet for young people who are highly educated andengaged with media, and social and political debates in general. These youngpeople are demographically similar to both the activist and communitarianparticipatory types I found in my survey-based research. It remains to beseen whether Vibewire is mobilizing young people who were not previouslypolitically engaged, but it is definitely providing a targeted outlet for politicalexpression, through pulse, electionTracker and (federal) budgetTracker, of akind that was not previously available. Inspire relies on active offline partici-pation of young people to maintain an appropriate service for young people onbroad issues of their mental health. It is currently developing ActNow, whichis deliberately focused on facilitating young people’s civic and politicalengagement. The organization sees that the Internet is the appropriatemedium to foster both online and offline communities; with this newservice it is also trying to demonstrate how active participation underpinsthe successful delivery of all its services for young people.

In terms of participation Vibewire is more clearly run by and for youngpeople – it has limited paid staff opportunities but all the volunteer youngpeople administering the organization, running the site and writing content


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must be under 30. Inspire is a much larger organization in terms of fundingand paid staff, and while not all the staff are young people most are: nine ofits 19 staff are under 30, with another seven aged between 31 and 35. Thissuggests that working every day in youth services and in Internet-based ser-vices is attractive to young people. Inspire endeavours to maintain its legiti-macy with young people more broadly through its two volunteerprogrammes: Reach Out! Youth Advisory Board and the subsequent YouthAmbassadors programme. Reach Out! Youth Advisory Board members areprimarily advisers to the website service – they are consulted on content,marketing and campaign ideas. There are three boards of approximately 15young people each year, to make sure input to the service stays fresh andrelevant, while the approximately 130 youth ambassadors (most are ‘gradu-ates’ of the advisory board) are active partners in the organization’s workand are more akin to volunteer staff members. They have a mandate towork with Reach Out! Staff, which includes writing content or conductinginterviews for the site, sitting on staff interview committees, and appearingin advertising campaigns. They also develop campaigns on mental healthand Reach Out! within their broader offline communities and this is assistedby an annual skills workshop that Inspire runs in major capital cities.

Conclusions: democratizing potential of Internet-basedpolitical practice

This research confirms the idea that there is an Australian digital dividebetween young people who are well educated, resourced and use the Internet,and those who do not have ready access to Internet technology and are not associoeconomically advantaged. Furthermore, the relationship between par-ticipation and Internet usage seems to be one of reinforcement of existing pol-itical practices and persuasion, rather than one of mobilization of newpolitical actors. The research does provide new quantitative evidence thatthe Internet facilitates information distribution and sharing for those involvedin both activist and communitarian group-based participation. The casestudies of two non-government organizations that use the Internet to facilitateparticipation demonstrate the importance of youth-led political spaces forpolitical engagement.

However, there is still much to learn about the way that young people usethe Internet, and the potential relationships with political and communityengagement. This research primarily looked at one facet of the Internet–political participation relationship through the focus on aggregated, individ-ual-specific data. There is a broader need for more in-depth qualitative orcase-study research on participation and Internet use. This research couldstart from several analytical points. First, a focus on individual attitudes


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towards politics and Internet use, especially in seeking to understand themotivations for those already highly engaged with the Internet in a politicalway. This could include interview research with those who constructReach Out!, Act Now and vibewire.net and also the more private subjectsof Anita Harris’s (2001) research on young feminists’ webzines.

Second, research could be commenced from political acts and organi-zations that are known to be attracting young people, such as environmentaland human rights groups, protest and boycotting, to examine more compre-hensively the relationship between the Internet and real-world participation.That is, asking these young people how they integrate the Internet with theiractive engagement and participation as well as treating it as a media-basedsocialization source. These sorts of analyses could show whether the waythe Internet is used by these politicized young people could assist in redeve-loping governmental use of the Internet to encourage participation by abroader range of young people.

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Ariadne Vromen is a senior lecturer in Government and International Relations

at the University of Sydney, Australia. Her research and teaching interests focus

on political sociology in general, and political participation in particular. Address:

Government and International Relations, University of Sydney, NSW 2006,

Australia. [email: [email protected]]


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australian young people's participatory practices and internet use

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