Bringing young citizens
back into the political arena
A research on CSOs use of social media to stimulate young citizens’ electoral participation in the Netherlands
June 22, 2017 Sara Spaargaren Student no. 10444351 Master: Political Science Track: International Relations
Research Project: Transnational Advocacy Graduate School of Social Sciences
University of Amsterdam
Supervisor: Dr. C.M. Roggeband Second Reader: Dr. C.H.B.M. Spierings Words: 16.205
3 Table of contents Table of contents ... 3 List of figures ... 5 List of abbreviations ... 5 1. Introduction ... 6 2. Theoretical framework ... 8
2.1 The young citizen-state disconnect ... 8
2.2 Civil society; possibilities and roles ... 9
2.3 Social media and electoral participation ... 11
2.4 Advocacy and social media ... 13
2.5 Conclusion ... 15
3. Methodology ... 15
3.1 Research design ... 15
3.2 Operationalization ... 16
3.3 Population and sampling method ... 17
3.3.1 Semi-structured interviews ... 17 3.3.2 Survey ... 18 3.4 Method ... 18 3.4.1 Expert interviews ... 18 3.4.2 Semi-structured interviews ... 19 3.4.3 Survey ... 19 1.5 Case justification ... 21
3.5 Method data-processing and data-analysis ... 21
4.2.2 Semi-structured interviews ... 21
4.2.3 Survey ... 22
3.6 Limitations ... 22
4. Results ... 23
Chapter 1: Civil society organizations ... 24
4.1.1 Organizational pattern ... 24
4.2.2 Social media strategies ... 27
4.2.3 Civil society ... 32
Chapter 2: Young citizens ... 36
4.2.4 Descriptive statistics ... 36
4.2.5 Assumptions ... 40
4.2.6 Analysis ... 41
5. Conclusion ... Fout! Bladwijzer niet gedefinieerd. 6. References ... 46
7. Appendices ... 49
1. Introsheet provided for interviewees (in Dutch) ... 49
4
3. List of interviews ... 50
4. Survey (in Dutch) ... 52
5. Operationalization ... 57
5 List of figures
Table 1: Stakeholders Figure 1: Education Figure 2: Gender
Figure 3: Electoral participation Figure 4: Platforms
Figure 5: CSOs
Table 2: Descriptive statistics
6 1. Introduction
After the parliamentary elections in the Netherlands on March 15 2017, the Dutch Broadcast Foundation posted a video called Als alleen jonge mensen mochten stemmen1, meaning ‘if only young people could vote’, on the video sharing platform YouTube. Referencing data from the market research and consulting firm Ipsos, the voting results of citizens between 18 and 24 years old were visualized. This showed significant differences from the overall election results. After translating these results into seats, progressive parties such as GreenLeft and Democrats 66 gained a significant amount and almost tied with the biggest party, the liberal right wing People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy. The narrator of the video concludes the video by explaining that the influence of this age group could have been a lot bigger, considering the fact that one third did not vote.
Young people in liberal democratic countries, such as the Netherlands, seem to identify less with political parties, broad reform movements and ideologies (Bennett &
Segerberg 2012: 760-761). Also, young people seem to identify more on a global rather than a national level (Tarrow 2008). It is socially and politically relevant to bring young citizens into the political arena. Feenstra (2015) suggests that developments in citizen participation are related to a lack of permeability of the political system. This is a non-compliance with the normative demands of civil society. A strong civil society should perform a democratizing role and, as a result, help strengthen democracy. Civil society organizations (CSOs) can help young citizens learn about democracy in informal settings (Cammaerts et al 2013). However, prior to engaging young citizens politically, organizations must first find a way to connect with them. Recent literature has shown that young people have a strong connection with social media. In fact, social media use is uniquely a predictor of political engagement for young voters (Boulianne 2015). The role of social media in changing political behaviour needs to be further researched (Sandoval-Almazan and Gil-Garcia 2014). Social media provide new and more creative tools for stimulating young citizens’ democratic participation and there is a gap in the literature addressing this.
The objective of this thesis is tripartite. First of all, I aim to further explore the problem of low electoral participation of young citizens in advanced democracies. As the theoretical framework reflects, this problem is not caused by a lack of interest. Young citizens experience a lack of permeability of the political system. From this the second objective of this thesis is derived. I aim to research how civil society organizations help build that sense of
7 political efficacy and stimulate electoral participation. Finally, I aim to elaborate on how they use social media as tools and facilitators in advocating young citizens’ electoral participation. In summary of this, I have formulated the following research question:
‘How do civil society organizations utilize social media to stimulate young citizens’ electoral participation?’.
In the theoretical framework of this thesis, I elaborate on the scientific debate that surrounds the problem of the young citizen-state disconnect and its implications for the electoral process across advanced democracies in the West. I will then highlight the role of civil society organizations by providing a theoretical background and placing it in the
aforementioned debate. What follows is an overview of the debate on social media in relation to young citizens’ electoral participation and social media in relation to advocacy efforts. In the methodological section of this research I will explain why I have chosen to conduct my research in with a mixed methods design. I use the qualitative method, semi-structured interviews to answer the research question. Additionally I have conducted a survey among young citizens as a quantitative research method. I chose to do so in order to include young citizens perceptions and to deepen our understanding of the phenomena described in the qualitative analysis. Based on the qualitative analysis I have formulated four tentative assumptions that help us understand young citizens’ perception of CSOs stimulating their electoral participation. I compare their ratings of two examples, one example uses social media as a tool for mobilization, the other utilizes social media as a tool for informing. Because of these two analyses, the results section is divided into two parts. In the first part of the results section, I answer the research question by comparing two organizational patterns of CSOs: traditional or digitally enabled. This pattern has implications for the
organizations’ professionalism and priorities with regards to social media. Second, I analyse if or how they utilize social media. Only two organizations that truly utilize social media for advocacy efforts aimed at stimulating young citizens’ electoral participation remain. They utilize social media differently, but with the same goal. Lastly, I explore the organizations’ status as civil society actors. Most organizations share the norm that low electoral
participation comes from a disconnect between young citizens and the state. I also reflect on the concept of neutrality, which seems to constrict some organizations.
In the quantitative analysis, I test the tentative assumptions I formulated in the methodology section. I assume that the mobilizing and the informing examples of CSOs are rated differently by young citizens with regards to their appeal, motivation, capacity to help them understand politics and whether they are a desirable presence on social media. The main
8 addition to the qualitative analysis, is that these representative organizations are indeed valued by young citizens.
2. Theoretical framework
In this theoretical framework I will address the main problem of this thesis, the so-called young citizen-state disconnect as defined by Henn and Oldfield (2015). I particularly focus on one phenomenon that has resulted from this disconnect; low electoral participation by young citizens. This is a problem across many Western democracies (Tormey 2015a). I explore two relevant debates. First, I outline the normative debate about civil society. Civil society organizations (CSOs) play an important role in stimulating young citizens’ political
engagement (Cammaerts, Bruter, Banaji, Harrison & Anstead 2013: 662). he second debate revolves around social media platforms, not only as advocacy tools, but also as organizing agents and unique tools to stimulate young citizens political engagement (Boulianne 2015). 2.1 The young citizen-state disconnect
Wattenberg (2008: 141-150, 158) noted that a person’s place in the life cycle determines his or her political priorities and values. He explains that young adults in America feel less tied to the ideological choices political parties offer. Young people are more likely to consider
themselves left wing than their preceding generations. This is not just the case in America, but in many established democracies. When they do vote, young voters are more supportive of new parties and in tune with post-material concerns such as the environment. These
ideological differences between generations have resulted in a problem of low youth turnout. Additionally, young people are more likely to feel attachment to their continent, for example Europe, or on a global level rather than the national level (Tarrow 2008: 209). Henn and Oldfield (2016: 1275-1277) have named this phenomenon of young citizens disengagement from formal politics the ‘young citizen-state disconnect’. Young citizens in Britain are anxious that there are few opportunities for them to meaningfully participate in formal politics. The authors conclude that the disconnect can be ascribed to two things; their interest in new styles and forms of politics and their political alienation.
Research across other countries has confirmed this young citizen-state disconnect. In 2013, a large research was conducted amongst young citizens in six European countries. It focused on the attitudes of young people toward democratic life and demonstrated that young people are actually willing to engage politically. Nonetheless, they believe that the current political discourse and practice excludes them and ignores their needs and interest. The
9 authors criticized much of the existing social science literature, which assumes that young citizens are simply not interested in their country’s political issues. What resulted from this mixed methods research was a completely different yet coherent conclusion. Young citizens are not bored by politics. However they neither feel represented nor cared about by those who “do” politics. The authors emphasize the fact that stimulating young citizens’ electoral
participation is not a lost cause. Really it is about taking this demographic seriously and addressing them accordingly. (Cammaerts, Bruter, Banaji, Harrison & Anstead 2013: 645, 650, 661).
In his book The End of Representative Politics Tormey (2015a: 64-65) discusses the decline in voting and political engagement across representative democracies as a general trend. The representative democracy works with active consent of its citizens and reproduces itself through elections. As a result, political scientists have frequently researched initiatives that aim to spark the interest of citizens such as citizenship education and e-democracy. Success stories of these initiatives are the Australian GetUp! movement and the global movement Avaaz. Both of these movements seek to encourage young people to get involved by identifying causes of interest to the young. Rather than being interested in the electoral process, young people are passionate about particular issues. Examples of these are climate change or sweatshop labour (Tormey 2015b: 115).
In conclusion, the problem of low electoral participation among young citizens does not result from unwillingness. Young citizens differ from previous generations, not just in their ideological orientation but in their interest in new styles and forms of democracy. Organizations that identify with young people seem to be successful at stimulating them to vote. Bennett and Segerberg (2012: 753, 760-761) have also noticed that, most notably, young people are moving away from parties, broad reform movements and ideologies. Because of this, organizations find that they must engage people differently. The authors emphasize the emergence of flexible organizations using web spheres and their offline extensions not just as communication systems; it works to offer more forms of engagement. In the next paragraph, I would like to put this notion into a normative context, by stressing that these organizations help create a stronger civil society.
2.2 Civil society; possibilities and roles
Putnam (1995: 66-67) elaborated on the link between democracy and civil society by describing America’s declining social capital. He reviewed the influence of norms and networks of civic engagement on the quality of social life and the performance of social
10 institutions. He referred to the fact that researchers across many fields, such as education, urban poverty and unemployment, have found that civically engaged communities are more likely to account for successful outcomes. Within these civic communities collaboration is key. More relevant to this research, Putnam stressed how the norms and networks of civic engagement affect the performance of the representative government. Previous research by the author on regional governments in Italy showed that the quality of governance was determined by longstanding traditions of civic engagement. Putnam measured the quality of government by voter turnout, newspaper readership and membership varying from choral societies to football clubs. With regards to voter turnout, the author stated that patterns of political participation are changing. He pointed out a steep decline in voter turnout in America from the 1960s up until the 1990s.
Even though two decades have passed since this article, I consider two points made by Putnam (1995: 73, 76) particularly relevant to this research. First, he set the agenda,
explaining that civic engagement and social connectedness, also referred to as social capital, had diminished over the second half of the last century. He called upon scholars to research whether a comparable erosion of social capital was underway in other advanced democracies. This would help us understand the relation between civil society and the preconditions of democracy. Secondly, he pointed out the role of “macro-sociological crosscurrents” that might intersect with this trend. An example of these crosscurrents is the impact of electronic networks and electronic forums on social capital. Putnam requests empirical evidence on this phenomenon. I will now elaborate on these points and incorporate present day research. A plurality of possibilities and roles to can be assigned to civil society. As Feenstra (2015: 246, 251, 254) notes, many more great authors of the last century have pointed out the importance of the interrelation between civil society and the political system. Only if this interrelation actually exists, can civil society fulfil its democratizing role. This role implies that the political system remains permeable to outside claims. This is associated with a civic network employing a large number of non-violent actions to impact the political scenario. The author links this notion to recent citizen-based electoral parties that have emerged in Spain. The author suggests that these developments in citizen participation are related to a lack of permeability of the political system. There is a non-compliance with the normative demands of civil society.
I find this analysis to be well applicable to the political participation of young people. As mentioned in the previous section, Henn and Oldfield (2016: 1275-1277) conceptualized the fact that young citizens in Britain are anxious about the limited opportunities they have in
11 order to meaningfully participate in formal politics with the ‘young citizen-state disconnect’. Young citizens too experience a lack of permeability of the political system. In fact, a
previously mentioned large-scale research among young citizens underlined the importance of the role that youth organizations could play in ameliorating the young citizen-state
disconnect. However, many of these organizations are not oriented toward the needs, interests and motivations of young people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds (Cammaerts, et al 2013: 662). What I find an even more relevant point Cammaerts, et al (2013: 662) stress is: “that young citizens also learn about democracy in informal settings, by getting involved in youth clubs or centres, community media initiatives, nongovernmental organizations, social movements, or sports clubs”.
The second point made by Putnam (1995: 75-76) that I want to highlight here is his questioning of the role of technology in the process of the erosion of social capital. He considered technological trends such as television to be privatizing or individualizing the use of citizens’ leisure time. Thus, less time is spent on civic engagement. He questioned whether this would drive a wedge between the individual and the collective interest of citizens. On the other hand, his work does describe the emergence of electronic networks as a
macro-sociological crosscurrent that might intersect with the erosion of social capital he describes. As we fast forward to merely a decade later, technological development has generated many opportunities for civil society organizations advocating the rights of especially young citizens. I will elaborate on this in the following two sections.
2.3 Social media and electoral participation
A significant body of recent research focuses on the relationship between social media use and participation in political life. Holt, Shehata, Strömbäck and Ljungberg (2013: 20, 32-31) have researched whether the use of social media for political purposes may function as a leveller of political interest when comparing older and young citizens. Based on research in Sweden, they conclude that the use of social media for political purposes can increase political interest and offline political participation over time. The authors emphasize that political participation not solely means voting or joining an activist movement. Managing a Facebook profile, uploading videos on YouTube or discussing popular TV shows in social networks can facilitate political expression. These are often overlooked in traditional research about political participation.
After conducting a meta-analysis, Boulianne (2015: 534) concluded that it is difficult to establish whether the effects are causal and transformative. Up until 2015, studies have not
12 shown that the social media aspects of political campaigns were successful in changing
participants’ level of participation. Greater use of social media was not related to people’s likelihood to vote or participate in the campaign. The metadata do suggest where
transformative effects can be found, namely in random samples of youth. Quoting a research by Xenos et al. from 2014, the author points out that an efficient single indicator of political engagement among young people in the countries studied would be social media use.
In his research linking the social media use of young people to electoral participation, McAllister (2016: 1220) points out that there were many factors expected to increase the political knowledge of young people. Examples of these are greater attention given to young people by political parties, social movements and interest groups. Evidence shows that this does not lead to enhanced knowledge. Because of this the author investigates whether the Internet can remedy low levels of political knowledge and whether this leads to an increase in youth electoral participation. As I discuss in the next section, the main purpose of social media and the main utility of it to advocacy organizations is inclusion to the political arena and access to information (Sandoval-Almazan and Gil-Garcia 2014: 375-376).
Thus, the main logic that McAllister (2016: 1222-1223, 1228) utilizes is the fact that political participation is underpinned by political knowledge. The most important channel where citizens’ get political information is mass media. The interactivity that is currently inherent to social media, as explained earlier, is viewed as a key characteristic that can enhance political knowledge and thus political engagement. The author has conducted
research in Australia and concluded that using the Internet to increase political knowledge by the youth (aged 18-24) can result in higher levels of electoral participation. As a result, he suggests that efforts to ameliorate the youth’s electoral participation should start with the Internet. As is visualized in Figure 1, this mechanism is fairly simple, however I find it useful for two reasons. Firstly, it emphasizes the fact that efforts to ameliorate young citizens’ electoral participation should start with the Internet. Secondly, it is unique in the sense that it highlights social media as a tool to specifically influence young citizens’ electoral
participation. Numerous researches address the use of social media with regards to young citizens’ political participation (Kushin & Yamamoto 2010; Theocharis 2012; Yamamoto,
Social media use (Shaping)
Political knowledge Electoral participation
13 Kushin & Dalisay 2015), this concept includes various activities that are intended or have the consequence of affecting government action, both directly and indirectly (Verba, Schlozman, Brady & Nie 1995: 9). However, the actual electoral participation of young citizens is often neglected.
In this mechanism, the role of civil society organizations is not specified. The link that can be made between this mechanism and civil society is that the organization can focus on two parts of the mechanism. First, they can focus on building, shaping and promoting political knowledge and by that enhance the chance of electoral participation; informing. Second, they can focus on purely mobilizing young citizens and activating them, by promoting the act of voting.
2.4 Advocacy and social media
The role that the Internet plays in advocacy has been discussed quite a lot in recent literature. Scholars pose that digital media continue to reshape political activism (Chadwick & Dennis 2016) and the Internet has transformed political action (Theocharis et al. 2015). Many scholars make a distinction between the Web 1.0 and the Web 2.0 (Bekkers et al. 2011, Sandoval-Almazan & Gil-Garcia 2014, Chalmers & Shotton 2016). This distinction is essential because it helps us understand the transformative nature of social media. The Web 1.0 is characterized by electronic versions of ‘traditional’ tools. Social media include a broad range of so-called Web 2.0 technologies, for example Facebook and Twitter. These
technologies are defined primarily in terms of user interactivity—the ability of users to create and share content (Chalmers & Shotton 2016: 380).
In 2010, Edward and Hoefer (2010: 223-225, 237) asked whether advocacy groups were using Web 2.0 effectively. Rather than being a tool for information dissemination like its predecessor, Web 2.0 promotes a broad range of advocacy tools such as blogging, podcasting, sharing videos and social networking (on Facebook, Twitter, etc.). These technologies
facilitate inclusion in political discourse and access to information. The authors found that, at least in the case of social work advocacy groups, these technologies have not been adopted due to misinformation and limited staff time. Guo and Saxton (2012: 1-5, 19) investigated the social media use of 188 “Civil Rights and Advocacy” organizations, labelled as such by the Charity Navigator. In contrast to previous studies that focused more on whether organizations used social media rather than why and how, Guo and Saxton do not focus on the adoption or basic uses of social media but on the actual information content of the organizations’ social media presence. They show that advocacy organizations are taking advantage of the highly
14 interactive framework that social media provide. The authors also suggest that social media have created a tendency toward decentralized and extra organizational advocacy work. They perceive online movements that spring up and function without any necessary central
organizations.
This suggestion leads me to further investigate the transformative nature of social media. It is not just a matter of advocacy organizations utilizing social media technologies. These technologies and advocacy efforts have become integrated. Bennett and Segerberg (2012: 740, 742) introduce the concept of digitally enabled action networks; which is a useful concept to clarify this point. They argue that ‘more personalized, digitally mediated collective action formations have frequently been larger; have scaled up more quickly; and have been flexible in tracking moving political targets and bridging different issues’ (Bennet & Segerberg 2012: 742). An example of such a digitally enabled action network is the Put
People First (PPF) campaign; a loose coalition of NGOs launched in reaction to the global
economic crisis in 2008. The goal of this campaign was to mobilize the public against ‘business as usual’ solutions to the financial crisis. The authors explain that advocacy
organizations took a step back, in order to cast a broader public engagement net using digital media. Their aspiration was to help citizens spread the word over their personal networks. The authors even introduce a scenario where platforms and applications take the role of
established political organizations. They note a surprising success for movements such as Occupy and the Arab Spring in communicating simple political messages directly to outside publics using common digital media like Facebook and Twitter.
Dolata and Schrape (2015: 1-4, 6) explain that the Internet allows for new forms of collective behaviour and action anywhere on the spectrum between individuals and
organizations. Online technologies seem to function as ‘organizing agents’. The authors wonder what the reach of the structuring and coordination functions of web are. They ponder the possibility for non-organized collectives to move beyond the mere aggregation of
individual action and become collectively capable of action through the behaviour-structuring features of communication technology platforms only. As described earlier, social networking sites have indeed changed the world of political action. It has been established that the
political use of social network sites does stimulate political participation in the form of online political participation and discussion (Kushin & Yamamoto 2010: 614).
15 2.5 Conclusion
I have explored the relevant debates related to the young citizen-state disconnect and low electoral participation by young citizens. I linked these debates to the role that civil society organizations (CSOs) may play in stimulating young citizens’ political engagement. CSOs can play an important role in stimulating the electoral participation of young citizens. These organizations can allow young citizens to learn about politics in informal settings
(Cammaerts, et al 2013: 662). Social media can play a key role in this; these platforms
provide a highly interactive framework (Guo & Saxton 2012: 1-5, 19). They can serve both as advocacy tools and as organizing agents. Additionally, their use is a predictor of young citizens’ political engagement (Boulianne 2015). I will now explore if and how civil society initiatives use social media to stimulate electoral participation amongst young citizens.
3. Methodology
In the previous section I have attempted to display a theoretical debate and a research problem. The main research problem I address is the young citizen-state disconnect, as described by Henn and Oldfield (2016). I have tried to creatively approach this problem by including the role that civil society plays or could play in apprehending it and by studying their use of the highly interactive advocacy tools that social media have become. I have applied the following methodology in order to answer the research question:
‘How do civil society organizations utilize social media to stimulate young citizens’ electoral participation?’.
In this section I will justify and explain the methodological choices made throughout the research process. Because of the mixed methods research design, I elaborate on two methods in this section: qualitative semi-structured interviews and a quantitative survey. These two methods are not equally important to the research question. The semi-structured interviews are the leading method of data-collection and on its findings I will base my conclusion. Below I will motivate my choice to pair this with a quantitative research method.
3.1 Research design
The concepts in the research question are not novel, however, this specific combination of the concepts is. I have not found existing research on the use of social media by civil society organizations with the intention to stimulate young citizens’ electoral participation. Because this is quite an unknown area of research, I empirically explore how civil society
16 chosen to pair this qualitative research method with a quantitative research method for two related reasons. First, I wanted to include young citizens in the research, in order to address the abovementioned disconnect. Second, I wanted to deepen our understanding of how young citizens perceive CSOs’ social media efforts and see whether there is a demand for them. Many researchers believe that the strengths of the data-collection and data-analysis techniques associated with qualitative and quantitative research can be fused. One research method from a research strategy can be of service to another (Bryman 2012: 631). In conclusion, I primarily answer the research question by analysing the CSOs’ perceptions. Additionally, with the quantitative method, I can test hypotheses based on the qualitative analysis that deepen our understanding of the applied strategies and test whether these are in demand. According to Bryman (2012: 647), this can be seen as a ‘confirm and discover’-type mixed methods research. This means that inferences derived from a qualitative study are tested with quantitative research.
3.2 Operationalization
These main concepts that are linked to each other in this research are civil society
organizations, social media use and young citizens’ electoral participation. Two dimensions have been defined for the civil society organizations, namely traditional and digitally enabled. A traditional organization is indicated by a hierarchical, multi-layered structure. A digitally enabled organization is indicated by being more personalized, by scaling up quickly, by being flexible in tracking moving political targets and bridging different issues (Bennet & Segerberg 2012). A visual representation of the concepts, their dimensions and indicators can be found in the appendices under Appendix 5.
The dependent variable in this question is young citizens’ electoral participation. The phenomenon of low electoral participation among young citizens is part of a larger problem; namely the young citizen-state disconnect as described by Tormey (2015). The independent variable is the civil society organizations’ use of social media. This decision is based on two theoretical notions. First, theory by Cammaerts et al.(2013), which explains that young people also learn about democracy in informal settings and this could be facilitated by civil society organizations. Secondly, social media is highlighted as an advocacy tool because of the high interactivity it can facilitate with the target group (Edward & Hoefer 2010) and the fact that social media use is an efficient single indicator of political engagement among young people (Boulianne 2015).
17 3.3 Population and sampling method
3.3.1 Semi-structured interviews
The population of the main research are civil society organisations. To define the population concisely, there are some criteria that these organisations have to adhere to. In this case they have to be engaged in advocacy efforts that stimulate young citizens’ political participation in the Netherlands. Additionally, these efforts must, at least, include the use of social media. Additionally, I distinguish between traditional organizations and organizations that are
digitally enabled. The concept of digitally enabled organizations was introduced by Bennett & Segerberg (2015), as I described in the theoretical framework. In table 1 there is an overview of the stakeholders I identified and interviewed.
Function Value Stakeholders
Including Legitimizing
democracy
Pro Demos
Stimulating Young citizens’ societal participation
Nationale Jeugdraad (NYC)
Understanding Young citizens’ communication
Jong & Je Wil Wat
Encouraging Young citizens’ electoral participation
Stembus, Kiesmannen, VOOT
Table 1: Stakeholders
Pro Demos is also known as the ‘House for Democracy and the Rule of Law’. Its main task is to demonstrate what Dutch citizens can do to exert political influence2. They provide guided tours through the Dutch parliament and organize a lot of educational activities for
schoolchildren and (lower education) students in their headquarters in The Hague. The National Youth Council is a youth organization that aims to motivate young citizens to participate actively in Dutch society3. These organizations can be classified as traditional organizations. I will elaborate on why this is the case in the first part of the analysis. The digitally enabled organizations I feature are Jong & Je Wil Wat, Stembus,
2 About Pro Demos https://www.prodemos.nl/english/about-prodemos/ 3 About The National Youth Council http://www.njr.nl/beleid/
18 Kiesmannen en VOOT. In the qualitative analysis I have dedicated a section to the
organizational pattern of these organizations, in this section I also explain what makes these organizations digitally enabled. As the table shows, Jong & Je Wil Wat is a consultancy agency, which takes on projects that are aimed specifically at young people. They use co-creation with young people and highly value incorporating young people’s opinions and perceptions. Kiesmannen is an organization that was created for the Dutch parliamentary elections in 2017. The goal of this organization, founded by three students of the University of Amsterdam, was to inform as many young citizens as possible about the possibility to vote and the myriad of political parties one could vote for. They organized ‘elections shows’ in theatres, which people could attend. The last two organizations were also initiated for the Dutch parliamentary elections and established an online presence in order to stimulate young citizens’ electoral participation by informing and mobilizing them. I used the purposive sampling method where I selected both the traditional and digitally enabled organizations based on their stakeholder status and that ensured a nice range of stakeholders for the population’s sample (Bryman 2012).
3.3.2 Survey
The population of the survey is Dutch citizens between 18 and 25. On January 1st, 2016
1688703 Dutch citizens were aged 18 to 254. I posted the survey online on platforms that have
visitors who fit my population. Besides this, I have used my personal Facebook network to accumulate participants. This sampling method is called convenience sampling (Bryman 2012). In addition to that I have distributed the survey at a lower education school. This was due to the fact that I intend the sample to be as representative of the population as possible. As I will explain in the limitations section, this has been quite a challenge.
3.4 Method
3.4.1 Expert interviews
I have prefaced the data-collection by conducting two expert interviews, because the topic of research is quite specific within the framework of transnational advocacy. The first
preparatory interview I conducted was with Niels Spierings, who is an assistant professor at the Radboud University in Nijmegen. Dr. Spierings has recently published on the topic of social media in (Dutch) politics and was part of the research project VIRAL in 2012 which addressed the following question: “To what extent do the internet and social media (“Web
19 2.0”) change the relationships between citizens, politicians, parties and governments?”. This interview was a great deal of help with regards to the problem definition and preparing the instrument of data-collection. The second preparatory interview I conducted was with Rutger Wessels, Digital Media Manager at the Dutch green progressive party GreenLeft. After the parliamentary elections in March this year, GreenLeft accounted for 11 percent of the votes from citizens between 18 and 24 years old5. This put the party in a shared second place for this demographic. The interview with Mr. Wessels provided insights with regards to the relevance of social media as an advocacy tool for this demographic.
3.4.2 Semi-structured interviews
I conducted 6 semi-structured qualitative interviews with civil society organizations. In the appendices under Appendix 2, the interview guide is provided. The interviews consisted of three themes I deductively based on sections of the theoretical framework. The first theme served as an introduction and to find out more about the organization’s organizational pattern and general perception of social media. The second theme revolved around the organization’s actual use of social media to stimulate young citizens’ electoral participation. This theme consisted of five subthemes, namely the degree of use, channels, target group, strategy and effectiveness. The third and last theme focused on the organization’s role as a civil society actor. It consisted of four subthemes, namely the relevance of young citizens’ electoral participation to the organization, the perception of their role, the perceived (shared) norms on the topic and the collaboration with other actors. A table of all interviews conducted, their dates, names of the participants, their job titles and the organization can be found in the appendices under Appendix 3.
3.4.3 Survey
I have conducted the survey to explore how young citizens perceive social media efforts stimulating their participation and to see whether this type of representation is in demand. Two examples of organizations that were also interviewed, Stembus and VOOT were featured in the survey. The survey showed videos from Stembus’ and VOOT’s Facebook pages. Respondents were asked to state how much they agreed with statements about the videos. For this I used a Likert scale, ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). The survey also allowed for a short, qualitative answer to shed more light on the perception of young citizens. Additionally, I asked about participants’ general use of social media and whether
5 Who voted for what party?
20 they had already seen perceived this type of CSO on social media during the elections.
Finally, I gathered demographic information like age, gender, and education. The last
question of the survey addressed whether the respondent had voted, this was placed at the end of the questionnaire to minimalize the chance that participants would answer dishonestly. A copy of the survey can be found in the appendices under Appendix 4. The survey has yielded 130 responses.
I chose the featured videos based on the distinction I made between Stembus and VOOT in the qualitative analysis. Stembus seems to apply a social media strategy that is a mix of mobilizing and informing. VOOT focuses on utilizing social media to inform young citizens. To emphasize the contrast between mobilizing and informing, I chose two strongly contrasting videos. This was done in order to see what appeals to young citizens more, what motivates them to vote more, what helps them understand politics more and which example they would prefer seeing on social media. Questions about the videos were based on these four criteria and I transformed them into four variables. In order to compare the organizations and their strategies I formulated four tentative assumptions paired with hypotheses that I will test by conducting quantitative analysis:
1. Stembus and VOOT differ with regards to their appeal to young citizens - H0 = The true mean difference for appeal is equal to zero
- H1 = The true mean difference for appeal is not equal to zero
2. Stembus and VOOT differ with regards to their motivation of young citizens - H0 = The true mean difference for motivation is equal to zero
- H1 = The true mean difference for motivation is not equal to zero 3. Stembus and VOOT differ with regards to their capacity to help young citizens
understand politics
- H0 = The true mean difference for understanding is equal to zero - H1 = The true mean difference for understanding is not equal to zero
4. Stembus and VOOT differ with regards to being a desirable presence on social media to young citizens
- H0 = The true mean difference for desirability is equal to zero - H1 = The true mean difference for desirability is not equal to zero
I have conducted a paired samples t-test to establish which hypotheses I can accept and which hypotheses I can reject. This test compares two means, when those means have come from the
21 same entities. This test is often used with repeated-measures designs; the same participants are used across conditions (Field 2012: 388).
1.5 Case justification
In the context of social media use for political purposes, the Netherlands is an excellent country research, this due to the fact that it is representative for most European democracies. It has a flexible ballot structure just like many other European democracies and it has a fairly typical internet penetration rate (Spierings & Jacobs 2014). Various researches have focused on the National Elections of 2010. In Pathway to Political Participation: The influence of
Online and Offline News Media on Internal Efficacy and Turnout of First-Time Voters
Moeller, de Vreese, Esser and Kunz (2013: 2-3) conducted a research analysing the impact of online and offline news media use on the growth in internal efficacy among adolescents in the Netherlands. In 2013, the young citizens’ turnout rate had dropped by over 20 percent in the past three elections. They found that internal political efficacy, meaning the confidence in one’s own competence to understand and effectively participate in politics, is a significant predictor of first time voters. Another fairly recent research (Effing, Hillegersberg & Huibers 2011: 32) focused on the use of social media by political party members. Their
recommendation for further research included how political parties and similar non-profit organizations could benefit from social media to strengthen the community.
3.5 Method data-processing and data-analysis 4.2.2 Semi-structured interviews
I transcribed six interviews using the website Otranscribe.com and coded the data using the program Atlas.Ti. In order to structure the data I utilized 33 different codes representing 230 quotes. I used a deductive coding method, by focusing on the three main themes of the interview guide; organizational characteristics, social media use and civil society. These themes were based on the sections of the theoretical framework. The codes ‘informing’ and ‘mobilizing’ and ‘social media strategy’ are based on the McAllister (2016) mechanism. Together these codes accounted for 93 quotes. I dedicated a code to the young citizen-state disconnect (Henn & Oldfield 2016) and this generated 17 unique quotes, additionally I used the code ‘young citizens’ perception’ to highlight quotes that addressed this. I also related a fair amount of codes to civil society. Examples are ‘activism’, ‘civil society norm’,
‘collaboration’ and ‘neutrality’.
22 in line with these groups; organization, social media and civil society. The coding process helped me create a narrative; I found that I wanted to start off with the concepts that divided the organizations amongst themselves. Then I wanted to go further into their perceptions on the use of social media. Finally, I wanted to highlight civil society; how organizations perceived their role, the shared norm, ideas on collaboration and neutrality. I did not reduce the amount of codes after the first round of coding because the narrative of the qualitative analysis had already become clear to me.
4.2.3 Survey
The survey was distributed and conducted with Google Forms. After data collection ended I downloaded the results as an Excel document and prepared the data for analysis. I have conducted the statistical analysis using the program SPSS Statistics. As I compare four pairs of dependent variables, appeal, motivation, understanding and desirability, I have chosen to conduct a paired samples t-test. This test is characterized by the fact that it compares means between pairs of dependent variables and that it is often used for a repeated methods design (Field 2013: 378, 388). In this case, I am repeating measures because the abovementioned variables were measured for two conditions: Stembus and VOOT. The quantitative analysis consists of descriptive statistics, testing the assumptions and, lastly, the outcomes of the paired sample t-test. With these, I determine what hypotheses to reject and what hypotheses to accept. After that I can interpret the results, which I pair with qualitative answers given by participants about the two examples. I have used Atlas.Ti to structure and code the qualitative data from the survey. Most codes were the same as codes from the qualitative research, for example ‘target group’, ‘informing’ and ‘mobilizing’. I also tried to code answers that expressed how the participants felt about being targeted that way and, inductively, created codes such as ‘fun’, ‘humor’, ‘stereotypical’ and ‘too simple’.
3.6 Limitations
The most important limitation for this research methodology is related to the fact that that a mixed methods research is time-consuming. First of all, the semi-structured interviews take a lot of time to set up and conduct. Transcribing and coding are quite time-consuming processes as well. Seeing that I have chosen to structure the survey based on findings from the semi-structured interviews, I cannot conduct them at the same time. The process of data-collection with the survey has to take place simultaneously with the process of analysing data from the semi-structured interviews. This limits the amount of time I have for ‘trial and error’. For the semi-structured interviews I have been able to interview 6 organizations. Of
23 course in-depth qualitative research like this is very limited in terms of the sample’s
representativeness of the population and the generalizability, reliability and validity of the outcomes. Another limitation is the representativeness of the sample that I acquired by conducting the survey. The entire population of citizens between 18 and 25 years old is 16887036. I have calculated the amount of participants are needed to establish a representative sample, and that is 384 when using a 95% confidence level and a confidence interval or margin of error of 5. Ultimately, the sample size was 130 which has resulted in a higher confidence interval, namely 8.59. This results in a lower chance that my sample’s answers reflect the population (Bryman 2012). Another limitation to the sample’s representativeness is the average level of education. As the descriptive statistics in the quantitative analysis will reflect, more than half of my sample is comprised of participants who attend or have attended university. The other half is mostly comprised of a combination of lower-educated and college-educated participants. Therefore, the representativeness of the sample in terms of education is another limitation. Additionally, as mentioned in the population section of this methodology, I have not been able to reach many young citizens who live in peripheral parts of the Netherlands. Lastly, the representativeness of the survey sample is also influenced by the ratio of voters to non-voters. Out of 130 participants, only 16 people did not vote. As was mentioned earlier, about one third of the entire population did not turn up to vote. This is also a skewed representation of the population. All in all, complete representativeness of the population is not established for this sample. This of course, has implications for the generalizability, reliability and validity of the outcomes of the quantitative analysis
Lastly, a limitation of this research is that its explorative nature. I can provide some preliminary conclusions based on the research. These conclusions concern six specific organizations and their perceptions on the utility of social media. This limits the
generalizability of the conclusions. The same limitation applies to the quantitative research I have conducted amongst young citizens. I am exploring the possibilities for a correlation between civil society organizations utilizing social media and young citizens electoral participation.
4. Results
As described in the previous chapter, I have used semi-structured interviews with CSOs and an online survey as methods of data collection. The first part of this Results chapter serves as
24 a direct answer to my research question, how CSOs utilize social media to stimulate young citizens’ electoral participation. All claims in this part of the analysis are derived from the organizations’ perceptions. Firstly, I have found that a CSOs organizational pattern influences the way in which the utilization of social media is prioritized, structured and tasked.
Secondly, I elaborate on the perceptions of social media as a tool, which also influence the ways social media are used across CSOs. Some organizations perceive social media solely as a tool to reach their target group and promote offline activities. Two organizations, Stembus and VOTE, have applied campaign strategies that are mainly characterized by the use of social media. By utilizing these highly interactive platforms, they have attempted to build political knowledge and inform young citizens. Additionally, Stembus applied a guerrilla-like, mobilizing strategy. Third and lastly, I will zoom in on the civil society dimension. I explore the organizations’ shared normative demand, their perceived roles, ideas on collaboration and neutrality. I will conclude this analysis with some reflections on the future and improvements, as identified by the organizations.
Chapter 1: Civil society organizations 4.1.1 Organizational pattern
The traditional organizations, Pro Demos and the National Youth Council (NYC) both consist of various departments. Both organizations are hierarchically structured, with managing boards. In the case of Pro Demos, the organization consisted of six departments and employs 80 people. The communication department not only manages the social media channels of the organization and produces on- and offline newsletters, it is also responsible for editing texts that are produced by the other departments. As a result the communication department is responsible for a wide variety of tasks (Interview 2). For the NYC, this is also the case as it functions as an umbrella organization for member-organizations, which are situated across the Netherlands. Currently, the NYC is undergoing changes that have been described as an
upgrade. These changes include a new design and layout for the organization and a more simplified organizational structure consistent of two departments, namely the board and their member-organizations. Internally the communication department is testing a communication channel that strongly resembles a social messaging app in order to facilitate chatting, sharing documents and groups. This was implemented because of the fact that the organization deals with a multitude of projects on a daily basis (Interview 5).
As described in the theoretical framework, online advocacy efforts have become less dependent on organizational structure. Indeed, it seems that flexibility and ability to
25 communicate simple political messages reap the most rewards for advocacy organizations (Bennett & Segerberg 2012; Dolata & Schrape 2015). The communication departments of both organizations are expected to perform a large variety of tasks and projects. I would argue that this limits the amount of time the communication staff gets to spend on exploring the many possibilities of social media. This means they are less flexible when it comes to implementing new strategies. As Chalmers and Shotton (2016) explain, social media present many opportunities for online interaction. I see that these traditional organizations are less eager to explore these innovations.
The remaining organizations I have classified as digitally enabled organizations. Except for the youth consultancy agency Jong & Je Wil Wat (Interview 3) all organizations did not have a physical office. As the organization Kiesmannen stated (Interview 1):
“Basically the only thing that is Kiesmannen, what stays, are those social media platforms. Especially our Facebook page. We don’t even have our own website”. For Stembus, the word ‘platform’ is interchangeably used to point out specific social media, but also to explain the structure of the organization itself. For this organization, Facebook was described as the bearer of the organization (Interview 6). As is described by Dolata and Schrape (2015, 1-4, 6) these social media platforms function as ‘organizing agents’. Youth consultancy Jong & Je Wil Wat is the least digitally enabled organization and places emphasis on offline co-creation sessions with young citizens to formulate their campaigns is the youth consultancy agency. However, they make use of Facebook to facilitate the ‘Jong & Je Wil Wat Jongeren Netwerk’, which is a network of young people associated with the organization. This network is made up out of 200 young people, whereas the organization itself employs two.
For the traditional organizations, social media were not the main priority with regards to their campaigns stimulating young citizens’ electoral. Both organizations helped launch websites that contained a voting compass (PartijWijzer by Pro Demos/Jongeren Kieswijzer by NYC) specifically directed at young citizens. Their social media use was subsequently based on the objective to get as many young citizens as possible to fill in the voting compass. “It’s becoming increasingly important. We have tried to use different channels with the
PartijWijzer, but I think we are still searching in a good way, so to say, we do not have a clear view yet on how we want to do it and what is the best way to do it” (Interview 2). The NYC expressed the fact that paid Facebook advertisements worked well for them to promote job openings for NYC youth ambassadors. However, after informing whether these
advertisements were used as a tool to inform young citizens about their voting compass, it became clear that this was not the case (Interview 5).
26 Another concept, which shows a distinction between the traditional and the digitally enabled organizations, was the professionalism with which social media were approached. Considering the fact that these media harbour the attention and the ability to reach young citizens in ways that traditional media do not, they should be approached with professional intent. Surprisingly many interviews revealed, not always about their own organization, that communication interns are often tasked with managing social media channels (Interview 2, 4, 5 & 6). In the case of the traditional organizations, both representatives mentioned that the managing of social media is left up to interns (Interview 2, 5). About social media, Pro Demos said: “No particular person is specialized, there are a number of people who enjoy working on it” (Interview 2). The contrast is quite big when comparing this to the youth consultancy organization. About their campaign promoting electoral participation for the provincial elections in the Dutch province of Noord-Brabant, Jong & Je Wil Wat explains that the entire thing took place online. This was back in 2015. The organization emphasizes that their social media strategies have always been formulated in collaboration with a freelance social media expert (Interview 3).
With regards of the power that social media harbour, some interesting points were made by the digitally enabled organizations. Stembus (Interview 6) went from a Twitter conversation to a full-blown organization in the course of 3,5 weeks:
“Yes, we were founded on a Sunday night and then on Monday we were overwhelmed by reactions. For the first week, I took on the role of PR boy and already on Monday
afternoon I said: ‘Guys, I’ve been awake since six o’clock this morning, I am being flooded with calls. We have to meet up, I need a story to sell’”.
In the interview with Kiesmannen a similar process was described (Interview 1):
“We experienced huge snowball effect really, it was more like a sort of ‘big bang theory’. It started off with a huge bang from the Facebook event and that was solid right away. Especially what happened consequently was really bizarre; lots of people shared the event on their own Facebook. We hadn’t even started inviting people but seriously thirty people shared the event. And then all of a sudden it was sort of finished. And after that we experienced like a cosmos inflation after the bang, where it expanded further, but sort of because of luck, even though that’s not entirely true”.
In conclusion, organizational patterns have implications for the priority and time that are allocated to social media, the flexibility with which these highly interactive tools are
27 implemented and, lastly, the level of professionalism with which social media are approached. As this section also demonstrates, social media are indeed powerful tools for CSOs. They can facilitate a ‘big bang’ effect and result in a lot of exposure that is virtually costless. In the next section, I will elaborate on the mechanisms behind the social media use of these
organizations.
4.2.2 Social media strategies
As I have mentioned earlier, the traditional organizations mainly focus on the promotion of their voting compasses (Interview 2, 5). These are tools to inform young citizens about the political themes and relate them to the myriad of political parties one can vote for. However, these compasses were located on websites and are not characterized by Web 2.0 capacities as described by Edward and Hoefer (2010). These authors explain that social media facilitate the most direct and aggregated interaction with the target group. In this part of the analysis, I will therefore mostly focus on how digitally enabled organizations utilized social media. However, by the digitally enabled organization Kiesmannen social media were not utilized as tools to stimulate electoral participation directly. They were seen as tools to expand their reach and promote a theatre event about informed voting (Interview 1). By comparing the organizations, I can conclude that the organizations Jong & Je Wil Wat, Stembus and VOOT really
campaigned by utilizing social media (Interview 3,4,6). First, I will provide some quotes that symbolize the unique relationship between young citizens and social media. I will then address the different ways of informing and mobilizing through social media by referencing the McAllister (2016) mechanism.
Social media platforms are where most young people get their daily updates on their friends, the latest news and politics. VOOT has prioritized social media in their campaign and this demonstrates a higher understanding of the relationship between young people and social media (Interview 4):
“Social media are the most important medium for young people right now, you know. I’m more of an exception but that’s because I did and internship at the NOS [Dutch Broadcast Foundation] and work at NU.nl [news site] right now. I’ve got a connection with that, you know. But of all my friends, I’m in a group of thirteen girl friends, those other twelve are never going to visit the NU.nl app. They are all scrolling through Facebook. And they will follow the AD and other newspapers and news media. But they do it through Facebook. And they even follow news media on Instagram for example and they have a few on
28 Snapchat. But it’s not like they go to them directly. They don’t watch the 8 o’clock news, they don’t need to because they see everything throughout the day”.
What I have observed here is that a campaign on this topic does not require any attention from traditional media, such as television or radio. On the use of traditional media versus the use of social media to get young citizens’ attention, Stembus explains:
“We basically only did social media. Yeah, of course when it got picked up, they
[traditional media] all went for it like vultures and that’s when we said to each other ‘we don’t need them’. Yes, we did need a lot of things like infrastructure and people who could explain use how to create an organization quickly. So that’s when we thought ‘we’re going to go to old-fashioned television’, because people who watch that know more about that. (…) But to reach young people… No, we could do very much without. Completely. Yeah, maybe the radio station 3FM. Some, but not a lot, of young people listen to that. But furthermore, no. Why should we?”.
In conclusion, social media adequately facilitate the connection with young people. An interesting side note is that traditional media do harbor opportunities for obtaining resources that can professionalize the campaign. On this topic I will elaborate in the last section of this analysis. However, just reaching the target group with social media tools is not enough. In the theoretical framework I highlighted a mechanism by McAllister (2016), which explains how social media can be used to build political knowledge and activate young citizens. To
incorporate the possible roles of civil society organizations, I have made a distinction between informing and mobilizing with social media tools. Mobilizing in this case is the direct
stimulation of young citizens’ electoral participation; it is simply promoting the act of voting itself. Kiesmannen (Interview 1) shared their perception on the possibilities for informing and mobilizing by using social media:
“That’s why more social media are fine for a Tim Hofman [Stembus], because they can call for voting and mobilize voters. I think that it works very well to mobilize, but that was not enough for us. We really wanted to activate and excite the discussion and think
critically; inform. (…) In the end it’s about the shows, so that’s where we’re going to inform and activate, spark conversations, especially in the offline area. Online, that’s just a tool to reach a big group”.
29 This viewpoint is understandable from an organization that mostly focuses on offline
activities and utilizes social media to promote these activities amongst the target group. However, across interviews with CSOs the idea recurred that online efforts or, more specifically, social media efforts need to be paired with offline activities in order to really stimulate young citizens (Interview 1,2,6). I have named this notion the ‘online/offline nexus’. The traditional organizations are in a way restricted by this nexus. Their main activities are all centered around informing and educating young people with offline events and campaigns. This limits the creativity and effort that goes into actually campaigning with social media tools, as is demonstrated by Pro Demos (Interview 2):
“There have been scientific studies researching the effect our day programme here has on young people and how much they know about politics and the extent to which they feel connected to it, you name it. But we haven’t conducted such a research witch social media, it would be very interesting but I think that is something that will become increasingly important over the next couple years. We want to increasingly bet on videos and online content, so to say. But, like I said at in the beginning, we are still searching with regards to that. The organization has to value it. People who have the skills to make those animation videos need to be hired, for example”.
However, digitally enabled organizations struggle with this nexus as well. Stembus argued that in order to get young citizens to translate the online interaction into actually going to the offline polling place, the organization had to act as a role model (Interview 6):
“We thought: ‘through social media we’re actually reaching a nice cross-section of all Dutch young people but we want to emphasize the places, the target group for whom voting is not self-evident’. I thought, I come from a prosperous background, voting was a part of my upbringing and that’s often the case if you’re in college or University. That’s why we thought, we’re specifically going to go to lower education schools because we really need to make the translation there and show ‘look, we’re coming to you so you need to go to the polling place’ ”.
Despite this online/offline nexus, Stembus and VOOT have mainly campaigned by sharing content on social media platforms, mostly Facebook (Interview 4,7). Though Kiesmannen doubted the ability to inform with social media tools and mainly saw these tools as a mean of mobilization, the other digitally enabled organizations did not follow this rhetoric. To explore the possibilities form mobilizing and informing further, I will analytically explore the
30 McAllister (2016) mechanism. The interviews indicate that the step of building knowledge and informing can take two forms. VOOT has chosen to inform, based on the idea that young citizens need to be made more aware about the mechanisms and functions behind democracy in order to stimulate their electoral participation:
“The second [video] was about which parties there are and where they are from. How exactly do parties function, for example, is it really about the parties or also about the individual party members who can separate themselves and start voting for completely different things you initially voted them into the parliament for. So that’s something we explained, like ‘you are not specifically voting for that party, you are voting for a person who represents you, but should this person leave the party, he or she still has your vote; you can’t be taken out of parliament, because you’re representing the public’. So that’s something we’ve tried to explain, like it’s not just about thinking ‘ok, I’m going to vote GreenLeft’, but also ‘who am I going to vote for, who is important’, because a lot of people apparently did not know this. After that [video] we featured forming coalitions and also the negative sides to a coalition. You can vote GreenLeft because you really agree that those factory farms need to go away. But maybe that’s the point they’re going to give up in the negotiations because they, for example, value healthcare more. So that’s how a
coalition system works, why does it work, why doesn’t it work”.
A relevant point here, is that VOOT has chosen this way of informing as a tactic to keep young citizens from getting disappointed in politics (Interview 4). This appears to be a great strategy for preventing young citizens from feeling like their vote did not count and for helping them understand how political efficacy functions. This is a clear way to tackle the young citizen-state disconnect. Youth consultancy Jong & Je Wil Wat also explained why this is a valuable approach (Interview 3):
“If you’re just mobilizing and saying ‘you have to vote’ but not explaining why.. No, that does not work. It’s about the way you’re communicating. If your communicating ‘this is why you have to vote’, but you don’t reference the election date or how voting works.. I read that Ben & Jerry’s developed a step-by-step plan that said how [voting] works from the moment you receive your voting-paper up until the polling office. What do you have to take with you, what is important, how everything functions with the pencil you receive. Precisely, clearly from A to Z what that process is like. I think that that’s very important as well, very interesting. For young people it’s quit unnerving the first time”.
31 Not only can this way of informing help prevent disillusionment, it can also lower the
threshold. Contrarily, Stembus argues that informing a young citizen on the political themes and party’s mainly important when stimulating electoral participation. The organization has based this assumption on the fact that the overall trust in the Dutch institutional system is quite constant (Interview 6):
“We’ve based our tactic on a research by Ipsos, the polling bureau, and Ipsos has been measuring the trust Dutch citizens put in the various institutions. The funny thing is, Dutch citizens and especially young people put very little trust in the parliament but a lot of trust in the Rule of Law. So we thought, people do know, young people know what they’re voting for, why it’s important and how the system works. Otherwise you wouldn’t put trust in the Rule of Law, so we thought ‘ok we’ll just skip that step because everyone who was born in the Netherlands and went to school in the Netherlands knows how the democracy works, you were taught in school; in daily life they put great trust in the Rule of Law and the courts, and our democracy functions very well according to young people, so we thought ‘we don’t need to explain that because people already understand that or the utility has already been proven’, so to say”.
I have already established that the social media strategy Stembus has chosen is strongly related to the online/offline nexus; their social media strategy is paired with offline activities. On Facebook, young people could tune in to live-streams of Stembus interviewing party leaders and talking about political themes7. The organization itself stresses that utilizing social
media for mobilizing does not suffice (Interview 6):
“Just saying ‘go vote’ oftentimes isn’t enough. Especially people who do not vote often have a reason that’s more than ‘go vote’, there’s a story behind it. (…) They usually have a reason for not voting and that reason you have to contextualize in a broader way than just that [mobilizing] message”.
What I have found to be contradictory to this statement is the fact that Stembus
simultaneously applied a guerilla-like strategy. They choose to emit short and powerful
statements, for example, they campaigned for young people to take a day off school to go vote and issued videos with Dutch celebrities who woke up at house parties after they ‘lost their vote’ (vote is also a synonym for voice in Dutch) (Interview 6). This guerilla strategy seems to be of a mobilizing nature:
