Introduction: Young People, Participation and Digital Media

When Annie, 19, responded to my Skype call it was a windy day in Canberra where she attends university. She was on her way to the shops, but was able to fit my interview on her experiences of participation in between other commitments, and I was grateful for her time. Annie was on the board of directors of an Australian non-government organisation — appointed ‘by accident’, she said laughing, when nominated by her collaborators in a youth-led organisation. I asked if her experience paralleled, in some dark way, that of the previous Australian Prime Minister, Julia Gillard. But Annie said that the organisation and other board members had been very accepting and supportive of her. By contrast, her experience discussing policy matters with politicians had been more confronting. ‘Governments just want to fix things, to find policy responses that keep the public happy and minimise criticism’, she tells me. She was even more sceptical about the ways in which government engages with young people to find solutions to policy problems. Her direct experience with the Australian Government’s flagship youth involvement mechanism, the Australian Youth Forum, was that it was highly managed: This is the government policy: go away and tell us what young people think about this policy. There was never a sense of control or [informing] any department or informing any decision. It was, ‘Do this so we can say we’ve engaged with young people’ and that’s that.