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Urszula Roman-Kamphaus
Social Sciences School
University of the West of Scotland

1. What is meant by online and offline participation within the context of young people?
Consider the potentialities and limitations of both types of participation?

Internet is widely hailed as the technology to bring direct participatory democracy to the masses, enabling
citizens to become actively engage in the political process

In this essay focus shifts towards the political offline and online participation of youth.
Obviously political or civic activity is just one of the many various activities which can be
maintain online or offline, however political activity is crucial for functioning of modern
democracies and widely discussed in the recent debates, thus this short analysis of the
potentialities and limitations of both types of participation of youth focuses primarily on the
political aspect of their participation.
Levels of participation in the general elections in UK decreased visibly (Heffernan, 2011) in
the last decade and oscillates around 60-65%. However, it does differ between different age
groups. One of the most inactive groups among British electorate are young people between
18-25 (often less than 40% of them vote). Similar or even deeper declines have been noticed
in most of European countries, especially low turnouts have place in southern European
countries and in Central-Eastern Europe, whereas Austria, Germany or Scandinavian
countries still enjoy pretty high turnouts during their general elections. However, again, also
in these states, young people seem to be the most apathetic groups when it comes to
traditional political participation. Significant decline in the offline political participation
among young people in recent years presents serious threat to political systems and their
legitimization, also to stable Western democracies and leave politicians and political
scientists thinking how this trend can be turn around and whether that should be done through
education, changes in electoral systems or through the use of Internet.
On the contrary to decreasing traditional political participation levels among youth, often
referred to as offline political participation, online political participation levels experienced a
rapid rise in recent decades. Internet became one of the most obvious tools used by young
generations for communication, information seeking, entertainment but also social and
political activity. Various research has shown that in developed countries even more than

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85% of youth use Internet frequently and more than 50% of them is online every day, like in
US (Raynes-Goldie, Walker, 2008, p.161).
But can increased online participation of youth be easily treated as civic engagement or even
online political participation and whether it can be successfully translated into the traditional
political participation that is yet another matter. The fact is that the increased availability of
the Internet has led to the emergence of new forms of political participation (Oser, Hooghe
and Marien, 2013, p. 91).
Oser, Hooghe and Marien (2013, p. 91) it in their article comparing online and offline
participation levels give an example of social media use which is highly political: in the
early months of 2011, social networks like Facebook were attributed with playing a key role
in the rapid proliferation of political protest in the Arab world (Lynch 2011, 307). But online
political participation among young can take also other forms such as:
- Online petitions,
- Expressing political opinions,
- Sharing their knowledge and experience in politically related issues, activities,
- Organizing meetings, protests, demonstrations or even boycotts,
- Disseminating knowledge,
- Supporting political initiatives etc.
All of that happen through the social communicators such as Facebook or Twitter and many
others various forums, such as: blogs, vlogs, different information websites etc. Young
people are in instant touch with each other, react immediately on changing reality and are not
afraid of expressing their opinions online. Research shows that the assumption about the
apathetic teenagers who are interested in politics and thus do not bother to vote, does not
represent the actual situation (Heffernan, 2011). Research conducted in UK has shown that
young people often are aware of the political situation and interested in politics but the way
they respond to politics and present their interest is significantly different from the older
generations (Heffernan, 2011). Young people often present selective interest and focus their
attention on the matters particularly important to them as it was the case during the campaign
against the university fees in England. Matters such as environment or animals protection,
gay and lesbian rights or Internet freedom are issues in which young people seem to express
high activity and vey often clear political stands. So they do show interest, often however, not
in a traditional way through the elections but by increased online participation leading to
other forms of offline political participation. Reasons given by young people who do not

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vote do not differ that much from other inactive groups and they usually list such problems
as:
- Level of understanding of traditional politics,
- Unclear rules adopted in the state politics (corruption, bribes, same people),
- Weak influence of their votes,
- High levels of despair in actual political systems.
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So how this situation can be changed and whether it should be changed? Are these two
different forms of participation should complement each other or do they diminish each
others meanings? Is it possible to translate the online political participation into the more
traditional offline political participation?
According to many scholars (Wellman, 2001; Sproull & Kiesler 1999; Schwartz, 1996;
Tarrow, 1999) Internet and online political participation creates new possibilities, previously
not accessible to wider public, which can lead to increased civic and political engagement of
youth. Wellman, Haase, Witte and Hampton (2001) in their article dealing with online
participation and its influence on social capital enumerate some of the potentialities of the
online participation (particularly online political participation), such as:
- Internet as a meeting space for people with common interests and overcoming
limitations of space and time (Baym, 1997; Sproull&Kiesler, 1991);
- Promoting open, democratic discourse with space for multiple perspectives (Kapor,
1993);
- Space for mobilizing common actions;
- Formation of online virtual communities (Rheingold, 1993);
- () most relationships formed in cyberspace continue in physical space, leading to
new forms of community characterized by a mixture of online and offline interactions (e.g.,
Mller, 1999; Rheingold, 2000);
- () online interactions fill communication gaps between face-to-face meetings;
- creation of non-local communities sharing common opinions resulting in global
political actions (i.e. social movements growing out of social media such as: Anonymous
or Wall Street occupiers
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).
What does it mean for young people? Internet offers them a place where not only they can
meet without special constraints but also gather in groups, express their political opinions,

1
Anonymous survey during the Democracy in UK? Seminar conducted by the author on 42 students in
March, 2014 at the University of the West of Scotland.
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authors suggestions

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declare themselves to some values and organize themselves which can be than easily
translated into the reality in such forms as demonstrations, protests, students campaigns etc.
Online participation can help them to develop civic skills, meet interesting people who in real
world would be extremely hard to contact, express their thoughts in a formal way (blogs,
short articles, even tweets etc.), support their contacts with others offline as well.
On the other hand online participation posses also some limitations which disable young
people to really develop themselves politically in a real-world setting or prevent their
activity from crossing from the virtual world into the reality.
Among many limitations which various authors note, it is crucial to point to the most
important ones for youth. First of all, Internet is seen as enabling contacts and rising
participation, however again not all of the participants or the groups will have similar access
and impact in the Internet. Some authors claim that Internet is the weapon of the strong
(Schlozman, Verba, and Brady 2010 in: Oser, Hooghe and Marien, 2013, p. 91) more
commonly used by advantage groups dominating also the traditional political arena and so
young people can be disadvantage in such situation. Moreover, excessive use of Internet by
young people might not only not lead to increase civic/political participation but on a
contrary to a certain alienation and depression that will keep them from interacting in the
real-world. As one needs to remember not all of the online activities are proactive; web
surfing or news checking might become very alienating, not participatory way of using the
Internet might significantly decrease the level of social interaction both online as well as
offline. Authors such as Wellman, Haase, Witte and Hampton (2001) note that online ties
may be less able than offline ties to foster complex friendships, provide intangible resources
such as emotional support, and provide tangible material aid (p. 439). In addition many
scholars point to the asocial element of the Internet: The Internet can draw peoples attention
away from their immediate physical environment because when they are online they pay less
attention to their physical and social surroundings (Nie and Erbring, 2000 in: Wellman,
Haase, Witte and Hampton, 2001, p.439).
Furthermore, there is a risk of simplified assumptions. One needs to remember that not all of
the Internet activity will or could result in higher political participation both online or offline.
Many research has shown that the way Internet is used by teenagers and young people is
related to their age, gender but also socioeconomic status:
Analysis of the sociodemographic stratification of the identified participation types confirms
the mobilization thesis regarding age and gender but finds that traditional socioeconomic

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status inequalities are reinforced in online political participation (Oser, Hooghe and Marien,
2013, p. 91).
There are no simply correlation between Internet use and offline participation, especially
when it comes to political activity. However, potential increase in online political
engagement IS strongly connected with socioeconomic status. How the high levels of online
participation among youth will be employed in activating them politically depends not only
on their socioeconomic status but may be modelled by education. Right now, often young
people who participate actively in offline political initiatives are also the one who are
politically active online. Defiantly these two sorts of political participation reinforce each
other.
Limits of offline political participation for young people such as financial burdens, access,
time or physical distances can be successfully overcome (or to some extent substitute by
online political participation). On the other hand civic engagement in real-world initiatives,
memberships in youth organizations, finally taking part in elections cannot really or should
not be replaced by online participation. The aim of educational establishments and
governmental evidence-based policies should be the situation in which online participation of
youth empowered the real-life relations and their offline participation, enables it but does not
replace it completely.








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References:
Bakker, T. P., & de Vreese, C. H. (2011). Good news for the future? Young people, Internet
use, and political participation. Communication Research, 38(4), 451-470.

Best, S. J., & Krueger, B. S. (2005). Analyzing the representativeness of Internet political
participation. Political Behavior, 27(2), 183-216.

Di Gennaro, C., & Dutton, W. (2006). The Internet and the public: Online and offline
political participation in the United Kingdom. Parliamentary Affairs, 59(2), 299-313.

Heffernan, R., Cowley, P., & Hay, C. (2011). Developments in British Politics 9. Palgrave
Macmillan.

Oser, J., Hooghe, M., & Marien, S. (2013). Is online participation distinct from offline
participation? A latent class analysis of participation types and their stratification. Political
Research Quarterly, 66(1), 91-101.

Raynes-Goldie, K., & Walker, L. (2008). Our space: Online civic engagement tools for
youth. Civic life online: Learning how digital media can engage youth, 161-188.

Wellman, B., Haase, A. Q., Witte, J., & Hampton, K. (2001). Does the Internet increase,
decrease, or supplement social capital? Social networks, participation, and community
commitment. American behavioral scientist, 45(3), 436-455.