“Think Globally, Act Locally”: Civic Engagement and Participatory Culture Through Social Media by Emerging Adults

• In Event: Democratic Citizenship in Education 1

Abstract

Civic engagement, defined as voting, service learning, and knowledge of civics and current events (Sherrod & Lauckhardt, 2009), is changing for emerging adults (defined by Arnett, 2000, 2004 as ages 18 – 25) because of their lifelong emersion in social media. The results of our Likert and open-ended survey show that the majority of the emerging adults who responded received political information once a month or less through social networking. Additionally, 36.2% said that they would not be as involved in politics as much if it was not for the Internet and 40.4% said they got new perspectives on societal issues because of their online activities.

Authors

• Stephanie Maria Bennett, Mississippi State University

• Matthew Ulyesses Blankenship, University of South Florida

• Janet C. Richards, University of South Florida