Deliberation or Self-presentation? Young People, Politics and Social Media

摘要

This article presents a study of how politically engaged young people use social mediafor political purposes. There has been a growing optimism that social media can stimu-late political participation and deliberation, especially among young people. Based onfocus group interviews with Norwegian teenagers, the article argues that social mediahave become an important platform for young people to participate in political activities.Whether the purpose is internal meetings or external mobilization, social media provideplatforms for planning, reporting and communicating political activities. At the sametime, politically engaged young people are hesitant about using social media for politi-cal deliberation. They are concerned about how they present themselves, and they arereluctant to stand out as highly political. One important explanation for this is that socialmedia integrate different forms of communication and collapse social contexts. Thiscauses teenagers to delimit controversies and try to keep political discussions to groupswith more segregated audiences