WEEK 11: Civic Participation

After reading the assigned articles the only thing that kept running through my mind was the Obama vs. McCain election. I believe that the youth in today’s generation participate in many civic realms, be they either volunteer work, or actually participating with certain political parties/campaigns. However, more so, they are taking their civic participation online in blogs, or debates online. As the youth become aware of the importance of their political parties, they are becoming increasingly interested in what will benefit them now and later down the road. A perfect example of this is how the Obama vs. McCain election went down. Obama reached out to the youth of this generation as well as others and made a life changing impact. The number of youths that went out to vote was phenomenal. Moreover, what was interesting to see was how many videos and advertisements were created, by youths, for the youths to get out and vote. Youtube was a perfect example of this. Youth started to realize that their vote was important and would make a difference. Be it that they were told to vote by their parents, or teachers, or that they genuinely found interest in the campaign and made a turnaround. I myself found in this years U.S. elections to be outstanding in the amount of publicity they made, and the amount of noise that the youth created for it. On voting, I wished I could have been an American just to be able to vote.

What’s interesting to note it that for the Canadian election there was not a lot of publicity, more accurately, little to none was targeted to the Canadian youth. One would think, if they were running, wouldn’t the internet be the quickest and one of the cheapest ways to advertise and get youth involved? I received one facebook message in my account from one of the Canadian parties asking for their vote, only one, out of how many parties. I’m curious to see if there will be difference from the first election to the second one that we have approaching very soon. And in all honesty, I have not seen one for of youth grabbing information out there. One would think that the Canadian parties would learn from the amazing American turnout, but I think that ship has sailed and it’s too close to the dead line to start reaching out now.  

Youth is the largest cohort of people that our nation has. We are emerging and are growing every day. Many adult radio-talk shows host on air open discussions, and countless of times I heard these callers says how the youth of this generation doesn’t care about anything, especially when it comes to politics. I say they are wrong. I think the reason why there are so few youths who seem interested are because the majority of them do not understand what it going on, or they are not properly informed. Yet again this is another reason why the political parties should make an effort and reach out to the youths.

Adults know that in this digital generation, almost every youth has a mobile phone, I pod or another type of digital device. This would be another quick and easy way to send out messages and advertisement to youth about an upcoming political campaign. If the Americans did it, then why can’t we? It seems so obvious. Everyone carries their cell phones on them, its not as if they will only pick it up once a month. I just don’t think that Canadian’s take the elections as seriously as other countries do.