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JOURNAL OF YOUTH RESEARCHES
The Internet and Political Participation: An Evaluation on Turkish Youth
Shortly, resources approach predicts that inequalities concerning resources give way to
inequalities in civil and political participation. In this research study mobility and reinfor-
cement hypotheses are discussed in the context of Turkish youngsters.
Our previous research studies have revealed that the most common political participa-
tion method in our country is voting and a significant increase in political participation
of young people is not observed during the last 16 years. Despite the high frequency of
elections in 2014 and 2015, the rate of “attending a political campaign” is only 3 percent,
which points the problem of political participation on the conventional level. Actually, con-
sidering the non-conventional type of political participation activities such as boycotts or
political protests, which can be described as elite-challenging political activities, the si-
tuation is not any more pleasant. The rate of “membership to a civil society organization”
is 5 percent which shows that participation rate to a civil society organization is very low
and does not increase in the course of time. Another low participation rate can be obser-
ved with regard to “signing a petition” with 8.6 percent. It is also significant that only 5.4
percent young people indicated that they participated in an Internet protest which reveals
the fact that youngsters in Turkey do not even participate in online demonstrations. Given
the fact that households’ access to the Internet has increased up to 81 percent and 9
out of every 10 young people has access to the Internet, it is noteworthy that political
participation through online activities has not shown an increase.
Based on Power2Youth questionnaire, within the scope of this research study, it is aimed
to measure the behaviors, which refer to what they did in the past, and attitudes, which
refer to possible actions in the future, of youngsters in Turkey concerning the use of the
Internet for political participation. When we look at behaviors, we see that 8 percent of
the youngsters are using social media to convey their opinions frequently. If we add the
answer “sometimes”, this rate rises to 32 percent. Likewise, the rate for doing political
activities on the Internet is 5 percent but if we add the ones who “has not done any po-
litical activities on the Internet but might do if necessary”, the rate rises to 30 percent. It
can be stated that, in terms of behaviors, about 5-10 percent engage in political activities
on the Internet.
When we approach in terms of perceptions/attitudes, 41 percent of the youngsters think
social media as an instrument for communication with others to discuss political issues
while 25 percent of them agree that the Internet is a useful channel for engaging in with
politics. So, the ones who consider the Internet as a device for political communication
constitutes 25-41 percent of young people participated in the research study; this rate
seems quite low by virtue of the fact that the Internet use in our country is quite high, that
is about 90 percent.
As a result of factor analysis to examine the youngsters’ level of political participation
through the Internet, 2 factors are attained which are explaining 44 percent of total vari-
ance. The first factor, which can be called “Behavioral Dimension” as it is related to beha-
