Youth and Citizenship in the Digital Age: A View from Egypt

Abstract

Youth are coming of age in a digital era and learning and exercising citizenship in fundamentally different ways compared to previous generations. Around the globe, a monumental generational rupture is taking place that is being facilitated—not driven in some inevitable and teleological process—by new media and communication technologies. The bulk of research and theorizing on generations in the digital age has come out of North America and Europe; but to fully understand the rise of an active generation requires a more inclusive global lens, one that reaches to societies where high proportions of educated youth live under conditions of political repression and economic exclusion. The Middle East and North Africa (MENA), characterized by authoritarian regimes, surging youth populations, and escalating rates of both youth connectivity and unemployment, provides an ideal vantage point to understand generations and power in the digital age. Building toward this larger perspective, this article probes how Egyptian youth have been learning citizenship, forming a generational consciousness, and actively engaging in politics in the digital age. Author Linda Herrera asks how members of this generation who have been able to trigger revolt might collectively shape the kind of sustained democratic societies to which they aspire. This inquiry is informed theoretically by the sociology of generations and methodologically by biographical research with Egyptian youth.

Shattered worlds: political trauma amongst young activists in post-revolutionary Egypt

“…For other studies on youth mobilisation in Egypt, see Shahine (2011), Herrera (2012, Sika (2012), Laiq (2013), Sawaf (2013), Abdalla (2016) and El Tohamy (2016).…”

Consumo informativo y competencias digitales de estudiantes de periodismo de Colombia, Perú y Venezuela

“…Como principales provechos de los hábitos de interacción de los jóve-nes en redes sociales se podrían enumerar el "activismo de una generación conectada", más vinculada con temas políticos y sociales (Herrera, 2012), un sistema de producción y consumo (prosumo) independiente y alejado de "mecanismos de manipulación simbólica" (Castells, 2012: 5), un potente instrumento para el aprendizaje y la formación intelectual y profesional (Rial et al, 2014); mientras que, por el contrario, aparecen problemas, más frecuentes en la población joven, como la adicción a estar conectados y los efectos de la "hiperconexión", que pueden generar estrés, aislamiento social, conflictos familiares, descenso en el rendimiento académico, degradación del lenguaje, potenciar conductas individualistas y suplantación de identidades (Shapira et al, 2003;Echeburúa y de Corral, 2010;Caldevilla, 2010;Lee y Stapinski, 2012), siendo las redes sociales y los videojuegos online los que más adictos están generando (Lam et al, 2009).…”

Literacy and Technologies in EFL Settings: Fostering Reading Comprehension on the Internet

“…As a consequence, students may have feelings of frustration and stress due to unsuccessful search of information. This is further evidence of the need for both teachers and students to have both multiple literacy competencies in order to be prepared for their future as 21 st century citizens (Dooly, 2014;Herrera, 2012). For this reason, as educators we need to foster new literacies in the classroom and foster reading comprehension on the Internet among our university students.…”