"Om man inte gör det på Facebook" : Ungdomars uppfattning om sociala medier som demokratiagent

Sammanfattning: The purpose of this essay is to explore how social media affect the political orientation and commitment of youths. Three scientific questions highlight the purpose from different angles. The didactic perspective is discussed in the initial and closing discussion, and is analyzed in the corresponding chapter. Two methods are involved in the study; one survey and one interview with a focus group. The survey had a total of 98 respondents from four different classes, all in the first grade of upper secondary school. The interview was conducted with four students from one of the classes. The results show that social media still owns a lower grade of trust compared to traditional media. Moreover, it's shown that youths themselves are aware that they're affected by social media, but believe that others are affected even more. Most of the youths get a sense of participation in society at large by doing relatively simple actions on different social media sites. However, the sense of participation is heavily influenced by socioeconomic status. The youths use the social media sites as democratic venues, although it's rare for these meetings to transfer to the real world. Didactic insights can be gained from the results. The results show that youths, independent of study programme, are critical to content found in social media. Political interest corresponds by large to socioeconomic status, although political interest can vary greatly, even between classes studying the same programme.