Den unga akademikern och politiken

Sammanfattning: This paper aims to examine what motivates political engagement for a young university student. The paper has been guided by Esser & de Vreese’s definition of political engagement. Furthermore, we sought to complement the current knowledge in relation to young voters regarding what motivates them and how the political communication and digitalization matters in the process. Three research areas have been selected to understand the behavior of young voters: turnout, personalization of politics and grassroots organizations. Qualitative interviews with a hermeneutic-phenomenological approach were conducted, with the individual’s view of reality in focus. The analysis indicates that the digitalization has confused and created misbelief regarding politics for some of the respondents. The sheer amount of information has resulted in some individuals make selective choices based upon a vast array of subconscious psychological mechanisms. This has resulted in an unilateral source of information for the respondents, a phenomenon that politicians and media is aware of and may take advantage off. The digitalization has blurred the lines between what politicians publish online as individuals and professionals. The subconscious psychological mechanisms are, in this study, accounted for but not elaborated extensively. Additionally the study shows that lower levels of political engagement can be rather be manifested through higher levels of social engagement instead, where the line that constitutes a social- respectively political engagement is therefore blurred.