Young people, new media and citizenship in Asia

Against a backdrop of rising income inequality on a global scale and the political upheavals this has led to around the world ( Piketty 2014 ), the role of new media as an agent of change has been interrogated and explained in various and nuanced ways: in some cases, it has been credited with playing a part in enabling political change ( Rheingold 2002 ; Shirky 2011 ); in others it has been too easily co-opted as a tool of surveillance and control by governments, rendering citizen attempts muted, if not impotent ( Rodan 1998 ; Morozov 2011 ). With the increasing participation of young people in online political activity around the world, as well as the increasingly pervasive use of digital technologies by young people, a conceptual field linking youth, citizenship and new media has emerged that arguably calls for new understandings of citizenship.

Citizenship · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Gender Studies · Hong Kong and Taiwan Politics · Law · Socioeconomic Development in Asia · Youth Education and Societal Dynamics