Online Communities of Interest for Youth Participation

Lewis D¹*

1. Queensland University of Technology, Kelvin Grove, Queensland, Australia

Young people’s attitudes, beliefs, issues and needs are as important to creating a healthy society as they are complex, yet many studies report that young people as community members are among the most distrustful, cynical and disengaged from traditional politics, policies and politicians. The broader challenges of online community engagement are further complicated for the 15–25 cohort by a range of issues relating to legal status, social status, contemporary cultural context and issues specific to life-stage development.

This paper discusses a research project that investigates an innovative approach to youth participation in community governance (at various levels) based on the integration of online communities of interest managed by young people with structured online engagement processes facilitated by government. This user-centric engagement model responds to the idea that approaches involving a centralised online youth engagement portal mostly attract only young people who are already inherently interested in engagement. The theoretical background to this project will be described and the issues and opportunities afforded by this model are analysed in detail and illustrated with the project’s preliminary findings.

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