Greek Youth Civic and Political Participation in the Digital Age

Political and civic participation has gain a lot of attention since 1940s. Nowadays, discussions concerning civic apathy as well as political disengagement of young people are prevalent in the democratic societies. Many reasons lie behind young people’s disengagement from civic activities, their low rates when it comes to voting, their mistrust in government and politicians and their declining party identification. A crisis of participation is more than obvious. This study aims to fill a gap but in the same time shed a light on Greek young adults’ political and civic behavior. Keeping in mind the consequences of Internet in democratic societies and its popularity among young people as well as its possibilities in engaging youth this study expands work done in other countries by giving an insight into the Greek environment. Firstly, the study aims to explore young people participation concerning political and civic activities on and off the Internet. Moreover, it examines whether there is an association between online and offline forms of participation. Also, it tests whether Internet use and knowledge correlate positively with civic and political participation. Furthermore, this project examines the relations between networks sizes on and off line and ties discussion frequency with political participation. The role of gender, education, party identification and efficacy in relation to political participation is also tested in this study. Using original survey data from a sample of 348 Greek young adults the results indicate that: 1) in Greece young people are more active in traditional forms of political behavior such as voting or protesting than in civic activities and they are also more active offline than online, 2) there is a statistical significant relation between Internet use and civic and political participation, 3) the network size whether online or offline relates to political participation, 4)weak tie discussion frequency affects political participation more than strong tie discussion frequency, 5) Greek young citizens show low levels of efficacy, 6) knowledge was found to make no statistical contribution to most cases, 7) gender was found to be significantly related to participation, 8) education level makes no statistical contribution to political participation whether online or offline, 9) strong party identification relates to greater numbers of political participation.