Young People’s Use of Social Media and Internet for Civic Engagement in 21 Countries

The use of digital technologies for citizenship engagement has become more widespread over recent years and has led to the conceptualisation of ‘digital citizenship’ as an emerging feature of citizenship participation in societies at the outset of the 21st century. This paper uses data from the recent ICCS 2016 survey to investigate the scope of using social media and the internet for civic engagement among lower-secondary students in 21 countries. It analyses its relationship with context factors and other forms of engagement, and models the influence of a range of contextual and other related variables on variation in students’ use of social media for civic engagement.