Internet, Political Socialization, and Youth’s Political Culture in the South of Brazil

Abstract

From a conventional theoretical perspective on political science, technological media is considered a powerful inductor of young citizen’s attitudes and behavior. The Internet is generating an environment where new forms of social interaction between politics and society take place. These tools were widely used by Brazilian youth in protests against the government in July 2013. Could this be the beginning of a new process of political socialization? I believe that this new media technology is structuring new collective identities and some forms of political sophistication among the youth. I hypothesize that this type of political involvement, taking into account the type of youth’s political culture, does not contribute for the construction of a new sense of citizenship among the young citizens. The main objective of this paper is to evaluate the effect of the use of Internet in the political socialization process of the youth (13 to 24 years old) in the South of Brazil. The data utilized is the result of a survey research conducted from March 2015 to April 2016 with 1964 adolescents in public and private high schools selected through multi- stage probabilistic sampling. The questionnaire consisted of 70% of structured questions and 30% of open questions. The results showed among the young citizens a conformism which results from a feeling of impotence, of not being capable of doing something to change things, and hostility with the political institutions that do not provide equal opportunities for participation for the youth. Furthermore, it is argued that the use of Internet has not had a significant impact in the construction of another type of youth’s political culture.