Abstract
The aim of this chapter is to analyse young voter engagement in modern Western democracies. Why young voters? Young voters are disengaged from the political process. In order to complete the analysis, the author adapts an engagement model from social media marketing. The adapted model consists of three parts: consumption, contribution, and (co) creation of brand related materials. The author hypothesises that each aspect of the model is related to the other and that all three aspects of the model are positively related to loyalty to the political party brand. The aim of this conceptual adaptation is to investigate a new way to re-engage young voters with the political party brand, thereby strengthening one pillar of modern democracy.
TopIntroduction
Edward Snowden in an interview by Brian Williams on NBC (2019):
WILLIAMS: What do you make of Donald Trump?
SNOWDEN: I think he`s actually quite simple to understand. Donald Trump strikes me like nothing so much as a man who has never really known a love that he hasn`t had to pay for. And so everything that he does is informed by a kind of transactionalism, I think, and what he`s actually looking for is simply for people to like him. Unfortunately, that produces a lot of negative effects.
A frenzy of rapid growth and many recent papers has marked recent research on the concept of engagement (Becker, Van Doorn, & Verhoef, 2018; Harmeling, Moffett, Arnold, & Carlson, 2017; Pansari & Kumar, 2017; Calder, Isaac, & Malthouse, 2016; Schivinski, Christodoulides, & Dabrowski, 2016; Mishra, 2019). The concept has become prevalent in many disciplines including sociology (Mondak, Hibbing, Canache, Seligson, & Anderson, 2010), psychology (Huo, Binning, & Molina, 2009), organisation behaviour (Crawford, LePine, & Rich, 2010) and marketing (Hollebeek, Srivastava, & Chen, 2019). However, one perspective, the political perspective, has received comparatively less attention.
Key Terms in this Chapter
BRAND: A good name for an organisation (i.e., its psychological representation).
Young Voters: Voters between the ages of 18 and 35.
Contribution: Voter to voter and voter to content interactions about brand (e.g., liking, commenting, and contribution to forums).
Co(creation): Actively producing and publishing brand related content that others consume and contribute to.
Engagement: Connection, attachment, emotional involvement, and/or participation.
Consumption: The passive consumption of brand related media content.
Voter Engagement: Behaviours beyond voting.