engleski

The Net Generation, the Internet, and Political Communication and Participation

The Net Generation, a generation which grew up with digital media, differs from older generations which entered the world of digital media and the Internet afterwards. The Internet itself opened new possibilities of communication and participation in the sphere of politics as well. Research was conducted among students at the Faculty of Teacher Education in Zagreb and Baltazar Zaprešić Polytechnic in order to establish the degree to which students, the so called “digital natives”, use the Internet for the purposes of political information, communication, and participation. Over two thirds of participants, young voters, voted in the parliamentary elections in Croatia in 2015, and in order to obtain information on political matters, they prefer using the Internet, but also use television to almost the same extent. According to the research results, the majority of the participants are ready to express their political opinions over the Internet. Half of the participants in no way show readiness to engage in political life by joining a political party, and a very small percentage of them are ready to take part in protest gatherings. In the segment of political participation, members of the Net Generation do not show a statistically significant difference when compared to older students of a non-teacher education polytechnic

civic education ; digital media ; E-government ; political awareness ; young voters

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