Digital Social Participation of Young People in Serbia: Between Symbolic Support and Civic Engagement

Apstrakt

Contemporary youth participation increasingly occurs in digital environments, yet it remains unclear whether such practices amount to mere symbolic support or constitute an emerging form of civic engagement. This article examines the forms, motives, barriers, and mobilisation potential of digital social participation among young people in Serbia. The study is based on an exploratory triangulation design that combines a survey of 100 young respondents aged 16 to 24, 12 semi-structured interviews, and a coded content analysis of 500 social media posts. The findings show that young people use the internet and social networks intensively and that they follow social and political content regularly or occasionally. However, their engagement most often takes low-threshold forms, including sharing activist content, signing online petitions, commenting, and occasionally expressing personal views publicly. At the same time, the interviews reveal that young people do not uniformly understand digital activism: some perceive it as a contemporary public space and a first step towards broader civic engagement, while others see it as a limited, superficial, or insufficiently effective form of support. The content analysis indicates that education, politics, and human rights are the most visible topics, whereas video posts, calls to action, and emotionally framed content have the strongest potential to generate reactions. The article concludes that digital social participation among young people is neither a substitute for traditional civic engagement nor a mere illusion of action. Rather, it is a transitional and generationally specific form of participation whose effects are strengthened when connected with education, community support, clear objectives, and offline action.

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