Environmental activism: new forms of political participation

The article deals with new forms of political participation. Due to a growing importance of the Internet in politics and everyday life and especially due to rise of social media, students more and more pay attention at online forms of political participation. Social media become a way of political participation for citizens, who were not involved in political activities previously. At the same time, it is necessary to note a new phenomenon designated as slacktivism. This word designates a participation with low risk and low costs and substitutes traditional political participation. In the course of the study I analyzed new forms of political participation (creation of online petitions, groups in social networks). The study shows that although new forms becomes a widespread form of political participation, to a large extent, these practices at the moment can be defined as slacktivism.