Young Estonians' Everyday Political Uses of Social Media

The next AoIR 2015 speaker is Katrin Tiidenberg, whose focus is on young Estonians' social media use. European electoral turnout has been on a steady decline, especially amongst young people, but some forms of non-institutional political participation are on the rise; young people's lives have changed considerably over past decades, and this may have given greater emphasis to everyday political activities over formal political participation.

This research, then, focusses largely on ordinary young people, and on the political dimensions of their social media practices. Three key social media mechanisms are relevant here: social media provide information, produce social pressure, and enhance engagement amongst peers. But just having an account is not enough here: what needs to be examined are specific practices such as liking, sharing, and signing online petitions.

The project examined 16- to 26-year-olds, from affluent Estonian-dominated and a working-class Russian-dominated neighbourhoods, reflecting Estonian demographics. Following independence, Estonia embraced a neoliberal course and activism is largely seen with negative connotations; there are negative perceptions of politics and a widespread view that politics does not serve young people particularly well.

One form of participating for young people is signing online petitions – 21% of the Estonian group and 8% of the Russian group had participated in this way. This was largely about local issues such as city planning and environmental protection; to some extent participation is driven by impression management and peer pressures (e.g. signing petitions that make users look good, while staying away from controversial topics).

Comments on news articles are sometimes read, but rarely made; this is framed sometimes by the similarity of users' views to existing comments, and sometimes by the opposite: users explain their abstaining apparently rationally by saying they have nothing new to add, or by saying that what they would add is too far from the views visible so far.

Sharing and liking are generally social activities – material is shared because it is seen as being of interest to one's network connections, and humorous material is shared especially often, while an uncertainty about one's followers is often cited as a reason not to share. In this, liking makes a less emphatic statement and is a lower-involvement activity.

Young Estonians thus do engage in everyday political activities, but largely fail to see the political dimensions of their activities – we can see that they are activated around specific issues and topics, but at the same time they use neutralisation strategies that actively downplay their political dimensions; this is civics without politics, from one perspective. Some of this may also stem from their assumptions about social media: they may be concerned about being ostracised by their network for making overtly political statements.