Ungdomars delaktighet i samhället : En studie om förutsättningar för delaktighet och hur digitala kanaler kan främja ungdomars deltagande

Sammanfattning: Young people have low influence on societal issues even though one of the general objectives of politics for youth is to give young people the opportunity to participate and influence. The municipalities of Sweden have an important role to increase the democratic participation of young people. In order to succeed, the municipalities need to get better knowledge about how they reach out to young people, how young people prefer to express their opinions and the requirements for participation. The purpose of the study is to investigate how digitalization can strengthen the democratic participation of young people. To find out what is needed for young people to become more involved and which digital channels that can be used to create better conditions for participation. To answer the problem of the study, triangulation is used between qualitative and quantitative approaches, and the research strategies are literature study, questionnaire and interviews. The results of the survey show that important conditions for participation are that young people have the resources, as platforms and knowledge, to participate in societal issues in an active way. In addition, it is a prerequisite for young people to feel that their opinions can make a difference. If these conditions are fulfilled, participation among young people may be increase. The digital channels that young people prefer to use to provide feedback and to receive information from the municipality are websites, applications and emails. Another digital channel that the municipality can use to reach out to young people with information is Facebook. Finally, it is important that municipalities are responsive and keep up to date with what young people ask for, as trends on digital channels changes continuously.