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Digital Mentoring of Young People for Responsible Citizenship: a Case Study of an Organisation Using Twitter

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Digital Mentoring of Young People for Responsible Citizenship: a Case Study of an Organisation Using Twitter Digital Mentoring of Young People for Responsible Citizenship: A Case Study of an Organisation Using Twitter Tomoaki Miyazaki UCL This thesis is submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) February 2020 1 Declaration I, Tomoaki Miyazaki, confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated in the thesis. Word count (exclusive of references and appendix): 77,341 Signature Date: 2 Abstract This research aims to assess qualitatively a social media strategy employed by a UK-based civil society organisation to mobilise young people to political actions, in particular, voting. Conceptualising democracy as full participation in a decision-making process by members of a society, the project chose the organisation, Bite the Ballot (BtB), which aims to encourage young people to vote. While this research focuses on BtB’s Twitter strategy, it is also concerned with how followers learn the importance of voting through their interaction with BtB. To achieve this, an analytical framework was employed to analyse interactions on Twitter. To triangulate the tweet analysis, the research collected two additional data sources: interviews with key informants and document analysis of BtB’s output including its website. In addition, network analysis was used to contextualise BtB’s strategy within the wider network of youth-led organisations which legitimises the selection of the case for this study. The research revealed some evidence that BtB has employed an effective approach in developing democratic skills for responsible citizenship among young people on Twitter. As the BtB strategy appears to be based on young people’s preference fora horizontal relationship rather than a hierarchical relationship, BtB has adopted a mentoring approach to encourage them to vote after discussion on Twitter. Furthermore, I also found that BtB has developed an unthreatening online environment on Twitter where young people can freely explore and discuss issues with their peers, while BtB acts as their mentor. The analysis of tweets underlines BtB’s approach by suggesting that it allows young people potentially to practise their democratic skills on the BtB Twitter account by posting relevant comments to a discussion topic. Drawing on the above, I conclude that BtB’s strategy constitutes a promising pedagogic approach in guiding young people to develop their democratic skills through interaction on Twitter. 3 Impact Statement This thesis will make contributions both inside and outside academia with a significant impact to both. While the main academic contribution of this thesis is the illustration of a method of assessment for online interaction and online engagement by a civil society organisation, non-academic fields can benefit from the contribution for their own activities. In academia, researchers will benefit from the contribution which addressed the issue of assessment of online learning in citizenship education provided by a non-school organisation. The studies to date has focused on activities within school settings in relation to citizenship education, which has a solid set of assessment criteria and a curriculum for teachers to follow. This thesis has investigated how a civil society organisation, a non-school organisation, engages in citizenship education through its activities to encourage young people to participate in voting, one of the essential citizenship practices. In particular, this thesis showed the organisation’s good practice in its interaction with young people on social media. Since online behaviour is also a subject of study in academia, this thesis would be useful as a reference point for the practice. The contribution is also applicable to similar organisations which are independent of schools and the national curriculum, in order to assess their activities. Furthermore, other organisations across the world would equally benefit from the outcome of this thesis, as long as they use social media for their activities. These two significant factors – the non-school context and internationality – will guide studies on assessment for non-school activities. The non-academic field will also benefit from the contribution. In particular, political parties will learn how to encourage young people to vote through use of social media. As long as they need to retain their seats in parliament, they need votes from many people, and in particular, votes from young people would signal that parties have the support of the entire country, not just a certain generation. This would further improve the impression they give, since a number of votes from youth will justify their image effectively. In addition, civil society organisations can learn how to assess their own activities using social media. Social media interaction analysis will be particularly useful to evaluate the degree of engagement with young participants. Since social media and 4 online tools are so popular among young people, they use these online tools without any difficulty. As such, an assessment of online interaction is a requirement for civil society organisations to achieve their mandate. As described above, this thesis will contribute both inside and outside academia. Academia will learn how educational practice in a non-school context could be assessed, while non-academic fields can benefit from online interaction assessment of their activities. While the impact may appear only after years in some cases, there is no doubt of the importance of familiarity with social media strategies: these arguably contain the real voice of the people. In short, this thesis illuminates a way to make real voices on the Internet into usable information for academic and non-academic activities. 5 Acknowledgement First and foremost, I would like to express my huge appreciation to my primary supervisor, Professor Hugh Starkey, for his patience, kindness and unwavering belief in me. His input and comments have been so valuable that I could see the progress I was making every time. Through supervision, he always gave me inspiring ideas which steered my studies in the right direction and because of his stable, professional guidance, I could grasp the entire overview of the thesis. Moreover, he introduced me to the academic network of the citizenship education field, where I had opportunities to discuss my research with colleagues. Without this, I could not have adequately developed my research. My thanks also go to my second supervisor, Dr Avril Keating, for her constructive, professional criticism, which made me think in more depth and detail, and took me in the right direction toward the completion of my PhD studies. Her professionalism always helped me to write so as to communicate my ideas academically. I could see how her criticism was embedded in a framework and thus I could always learn a lot from her comments. She always showed different perspectives and highlighted various ways to discuss an issue. I would like to express my appreciation for my colleagues and friends in Japan and UK. It was always good to have a conversation with them when my studies reached peak intensity; they remained positive and continuously supported me even when they were away from the UK. I should mention that going to the pub with them relieved me from stress! In particular, I am grateful to all my music friends who played with me in Fidelio Orchestra. We certainly made a change on the music scene in London while I pursued my PhD studies. I would also like to say a huge ‘thank you’ to my parents and grandfather in Japan who helped me during my studies at UCL. Without their support, my research would not have been completed and would not have been published. I am especially and humbly grateful to my two grandmothers, who passed away before I came to the UK. 6 Table of Contents Declaration ....................................................................................................... 2 Abstract ....................................................................................................... 3 Impact Statement ................................................................................................ 4 Acknowledgement ............................................................................................... 6 Table of Contents ................................................................................................ 7 Table of Illustrations .......................................................................................... 10 Table of Images ................................................................................................ 10 Table of Tables and Maps ................................................................................ 10 Acronyms ..................................................................................................... 10 Chapter 1 Introduction ................................................................................... 11 1.1 Disengagement from Voting among Young People: A Classic Yet New Problem in Elections............................................................................. 11 1.2 The Importance of the Study I: Participation in Political Action as a Reminder of Human Rights .................................................................. 14 1.3 The Importance of the Study II: Researching Digital Citizenship and Democracy ........................................................................................... 15 1.4
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