Telling Multiple Truths of Youth Disengagement

Résumé du livre

In recent times, young Canadians have become both subject and object of electoral promotion strategies. These strategies, effected by both state and extra-state organizations, respond to social concerns about the failure of younger cohorts to engage with the political system through the formal channels provided particularly, voting in elections. These concerns, taken with the increasing popularity of information communications technologies, have propelled some organizations to reach out online, with the goal of increasing voter turnout rates. The main focus in this research is the range of approaches taken by different groups in response to the perceived problems related to young people and their disengagement from electoral processes. Using a multi-method research design, this study examines the relationships between young peoples interests in, and understandings of, Canadian politics, and the online electoral promotion strategies attempting to address them. By triangulating Critical Discourse Analysis with focused group interviews with youth and interviews with communications representatives of several non-partisan organizations, I analyze the extended communicative encounter between state, extra-state organization, and citizen, as framed by the issue of 'youth and electoral disengagement'. My research problem is to explore the communicative cycle of electoral promotional discourses, their production, dissemination and consumption. I ask how these various understandings relate to each other, and what this might mean for the democratic public sphere. By focusing on the way the dominant outreach strategies 'speak to' and engage with youth, I unravel a paradox whereby the framework of communication in some of these materials, meant to help people who are alienated from the political process, in fact functions to reiterate the exclusionary tendencies of democratic politics that necessitate the engagement strategies in the first place.