Experience survey
How do Danish young people position themselves in their democratic right and can Danish young people's experience of democracy be stimulated with a view to engaging them and making them participate?
A democratic approach is crucial to the success of the process, as it gives citizens the opportunity to shape the development with their opinions and experiences.
Participatory design, like deliberative democracy, is a collaborative process where creative ideas and visions for the future are developed through shared reflection and evaluation. This process can be facilitated through various tools and exercises, including visual elements, brainstorming and mind mapping. You can see more about the process here.
Development progresses through interaction with tools that help explore and understand future scenarios, express attitudes and emotions, and test hypotheses about the future.
The result is presented as recommendations and guidelines, which the young citizens themselves have an influence on. The study defines different types of youth groups and classifies various democratic behavior patterns in relation to the age group. Direct feedback from young citizens is collected to define future development. This feedback is based on concrete experience and behavioral theory and is translated into concrete guidelines for the project's future development.
Participatory
Workshop summary
There were more controversies around digital spaces and democracy such as on social media, debate opportunities, critical skills and political groups. It was a mixed vote between taking the challenge and not taking it personally or moving the debate away from the digital.
There is a challenge with the political developments on the social media, which are framed on the private platforms, there is a new distribution of responsibility, power and rights , which is a challenge with the "new" format, where the limitations and democratic ability are undefined, and where the responsibility should lie.
It is also a challenge in the physical framework of involvement in political parties , as it requires verbal confidence and competence as well as courage and less personal involvement . It also means that the general democratic purpose of a political party cannot be used if it adopts a special culture where debate is not available and there is less openness in communication and debate.
The voluntary format was to be used as a tool to practice democratic skills such as communication and attitude and used as a learning experience.
It also shows that interaction with the non-formal institutions stimulates political awareness, political confidence and attitudes, therefore they will support individual competence and democratic ability (Quintelier & Van Deth, 2014). At the same time, they experiment with joint action, and collectively they create creative democracy that frames their practical experiences (Dixon, 2020).
W2
Through that workshop, three basic problems in democracy and participation are defined;
The will of the people
Informative challenges
Action power & commitment
There are arguments that there is a lack of public interest to motivate citizens, and a lack of transparency in the informative formats.
They recommend using the physical spaces as communities , where obligations will be translated as social routines or social expectations.
Possible solutions are discussed where problems are likely to be solved, especially where they are located. Including where the citizens are in the community, their work, school, where they pursue their interests and where they meet.
The solution must be "fun" and "pleasant" because it is the community that triggers the type of motivation (for participation and democracy) that becomes, to quote: "if i can not dance it's not my revolution".
The community has its high relevance, which describes participation. It is a form of "alternative obligation" , where you can feel each other (in the physical worlds), be part of a social context, because it is there that you can act and Pulling together.
The common goal is also related to the will of the individual, according to the participants' opinions, including active participation, and to play together on a common field. There are also the smaller goals as relevant milestones, it motivates, for example by small victories along the way.
Below the specifications presented that the solution must cover:
Create an individual value-creating stimulus through personal development and experience through inner motivation and hedonistic experiences
Create common goals to create will, physical material or not, divide into smaller milestones or an overall goal as good. This is evident through collective collaborations and experimental involvement at the social and political level.
There is also a preference for the solutions that insert themselves into the physical space, where closeness can be noticed in the body, and where an "alternative obligation" is triggered via social expectations.
The result of the investigation
01 Challenge during activation
In the primary part of the survey, the questionnaire, it became clear that Danish young people are not active when it comes to participating and engaging in democracy via associations, parties or youth parties. The 13 to 17-year-olds are the most active young people when it comes to participation in associations and student councils, the 18 to 24-year-olds are more active in the student council and the 25 to 35-year-olds are the least active in general. The ICCS study shows that the Danish pupils from the 8th grade are not particularly active when it comes to a political youth association or trade union (Bruun et al, 2017). The very young turn out to be more critical of sources and prefer to talk to families about politics and society, whereas people over 18 use social media as a news channel and prefer to communicate politics and society-related news with their friends.
The participants' challenge to communicate and get involved.
02
Through the workshop, the challenges the participants find when participating in democracy are emphasized. They are primarily challenged by their communicative abilities due to a lack of Curiosity, Courage, Disagreement and Verbal Confidence. These can take place in private, institutional, political and public spaces, e.g. on social media, in political parties, in organisations, in the workplace etc. Two different patterns can be seen among young people, one is that the 13 to 17-year-olds turn out to have a different democratic ability than the 18 to 24-year-olds and the 25 to 34-year-olds. People under the age of 18 turn out to be more courageous, disagreeable and uncompromising, where people over the age of 18 turn out to be more curious, empathetic and have an attitude, however they often have less verbal confidence. The youngest prefer to communicate about politics and society with their family, whereas the oldest young people communicate with their friends, but all prefer to avoid moving out of their immediate circle of friends, and therefore avoid political and society-related dialogue with classmates and colleagues. There are also communicative challenges within the social media and the political parties, as was highlighted during the first participatory design workshop, where the participants would rather not participate in the debates that they associate with "mud-slinging". These communicative challenges interrupt the effectiveness that the individual could display in the communities in which they find themselves, as well as interrupting the "good" subjective interpretations that reduce interest and create a negative image of shared experiences. In the second workshop, common challenges with pluralism of voice are pointed out in the orientation and impact of engagement in the democratic systems in which Denmark now finds itself. There is a lack of concrete stimuli from the political and social involvements to create a common will and motivation among the individuals. In addition, a potential lack of clarification and the transparency of political and informative information slows down social inquiry, which has consequences in decision-making, will and commitment to the community and collective work. Therefore, solutions must address these challenges by supporting political and societal dialogues in schools, communities and groups, by facilitating give-and-take communication, and by training and supporting skills in Verbal Confidence, Curiosity, Courage, Disagreement and Compromise in context and by their specific challenges. It is through these communicative exercises that the social and cultural skills become developed. Through dialogue and observation, the young people will be able to develop their social and joint responsibility, learn to resolve conflicts and become more proactive. These interactions with others support their political awareness, political confidence and attitudes. It will therefore do them more likely to participate and create their own attitude, which will help to create a greater self-developed understanding and emotional relationship with the political in society, as well as increase the person's democratic commitment and participation. It has also been proven that participation via behavior and consumption has a greater influence on the individual's attitudes than the other way around.
03 Individual stimuli
Through analyses, it is shown that there is a high degree of motivation, which is stimulated by the individual value creations. There is also a need for individual intellect, which stimulates engagement in the community. Subject finds a high value in being part of a social context, through which they develop their awareness, perspective and from there individual inquiry. Through the social contexts, the subject can contribute by his subjective interest and values to the common groups, which create an individual empowerment with also a practical challenge to themselves, as a learning-rich common experience via learning by doing. These are attractive behaviors and are experienced by the realization of a self-development, realization and self-monitoring. The idealistic values are inserted and in the democratic participation by the processes in the common ideals, responsibility and fulfillment for a fairer world via the communities sense of the importance.
Commitment / opportunities r
to enable participation
The community's sense of importance has also been shown to be important to the participants. The social expectations and contexts are an "alternative obligation" which, according to participants of workshop 2, can stimulate engagement and participation in society. The community in the physical spaces creates an experience of closeness between the individuals, as well as with an obligation around the social expectations, which stimulates participation to repeat itself as a social routine. There is also described as hygge, which is a hedonistic experience of interacting with others, having fun and enjoying the community, which proves to be relevant to achieving the democratic engagements. Under this, it can also unfold common formulas to create subjective will through experimental involvement in the social and political to stimulate the collective work. It can be inserted via various public formats: volunteers, organization and politics with the social experiments create an experience in communities that develop the common Horizon as ideal and grind through the practice challenge. It can be concluded by saying that in order to stimulate the Danish youth's experience of democracy, their collective behavior must be challenged through actions and learning experiences. With a solution as a means of the rich learning experience, the young users must be stimulated or guided in their democratic behavior, in order to create skills and experiences for the situations that can limit their commitment and participation in democracy. A common purpose will ultimately be able to inspire the users, give them the relevant skills and motivate them to engage and participate actively.
04
Process overview
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