Introduction: Youth, civic engagement and learning via new media

In the discussions and debates about the diffi culties facing the established Western democracies today, many issues come to the fore, but certainly one of the key themes is the trend towards declining civic engagement. While there are of course exceptions-and certainly the current uncommonly polarized climate around the policies of the Bush administration in the US is a case in point-extensive international evidence suggests that the citizens of today’s liberal democracies show less involvement in political issues, are less inclined to vote, have less party loyalty, and demonstrate lower levels of participation in civil society than in the past. Turning to younger people, the picture on the surface, at least, generally looks even bleaker: they manifest the same patterns, only more strongly. When it became clear in the mid-1990s that the Internet was on its way to becoming a mass phenomenon, it did not take long for many commentators to make a hopeful connection: if democracy is in trouble, then perhaps the Internet can be of help, given not least that young people in particular were quickly being drawn towards it. It was becoming apparent that many in the younger generation were growing up with the newer information and communication technologies (ICTs) (e.g., Livingstone, 2002), of which the net was the foremost. Moreover, they were quickly mastering the tools offered in this new digital environment, and using them to learn about, relate to, and engage with the social world. Thus, it was hoped that they would also be using these tools to learn civic engagement.