Politics in the fine meshes: young citizens, power and media

Abstract

Surveys exposing an uninformed public, journalism emphasizing interpretations, and news focused on showmanship have combined to change public life. As young adults abandon news, what do they substitute to become informed citizens? Life history narratives offer some answers. Young citizens form their political identities within personal networks, responding first to fiction television in the family and with peers. Their stories take place in small jurisdictions — home, school, church — where through media they confront the state as a force empowered to risk life. Politics principally involves forming opinions. In that process, young adults refer to news among many other sources: pop songs, TV commercials, documentaries, personal discussions. Because they cannot escape the media surround, their sense of power corresponds not to democratic theory but to the ideas of Foucault and Nietzsche, where citizens use the media to design their own bodies as political outposts.

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