The Real ‘Twitter Revolution’

Now that citizens all around the world have access to efficient and cheap communications technology, we have entered an age where anyone can get their message out, however small, however ambitious, and get the attention of those that they may previously have been ignored by. We have new tools which flatten the media landscape, and …

Cyberspace: the Safe Harbour

Cyberspace has become a safe harbour; a welcoming place for most, where the possibility of  anonymity facilitates the expression of desires, needs or actions which are too hard to express or simply prohibited by society or law in real life. This 'safety' can cause problems for lawmakers and gatekeepers, whose traditional view of networks and …

Why Networks Matter

We are all caught up in multiple networks, even if we don't know that's where we are. Social networks connect us through who we know, and what we do with those people, a pattern of connection lain over life linking us through friends and family. Online, we are freed by constraints such as distance, and …

Changing Forms of Participation: Part 7/Final

Collective participation has risen from the public being cast as a group of ‘consumers’, giving the public, and indeed, the developing middle class Generation Y, the power to express their political and moral concerns through political consumerism. Political consumerism has become central to modern forms of protest following the rise of the consumer during the …

Changing Forms of Participation: Part 6

New forms of participation are being effectively employed by the youth because they enable collective participation, and minimize the need for individualization, which creates a seemingly ‘safe’ forum for political discourse and therefore prompts younger adults to participate and engage in civil processes. Those who see their relatively small political contributions based in new forms …

Changing Forms of Participation: Part 5

Informative and organizational function is facilitated by both Twitter and Facebook, combining to generate a forum for young people to express their political beliefs. For example, a group of young individuals have used Facebook to stimulate debate about current major party policies towards immigration and change the attitudes of the general public towards migrants and …

Changing Forms of Participation: Part 4

The transformation of communication and entertainment technologies into predominantly social forms of engagement and socially conscious political expression throughout the 1990s to the 2010s has provided young people with new and innovative ways to engage in what Gotlieb and Wells call ‘lifestyle politics’ (2012). Generation Y are incorporating their political and cultural beliefs into their …

Changing Forms of Participation: Part 2

Media commentators and legislators in Australia consistently rely on traditional concepts of citizenship which stem from Australia beginning as a democracy, that is, ‘government by the people; a form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system,’ …

Changing Forms of Participation: An Essay

As the populations of democratic countries across the world become disillusioned with their political leaders, within governments that rely on short-term policies and dishonest, uninspiring representation, it is no surprise that the youth are similarly disillusioned and finding that their thoughts and feelings are either misrepresented or ignored. Young generations have started voicing their dissatisfaction …