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Week 1 [ 7-13.03.2016] Political Interest and Awareness Lower Among Millennials


Read the article  Political Interest and Awareness Lower Among Millennials at http://www.journalism.org/2015/06/01/political-interest-and-awareness-lower-among-millennials/ and state your opinion on it.


Comments

Unknown said…
Well, there are two statistics presented in the article. I am going to refer to the second one, that about popularity of classic news sources and "modern" ones. It is not very surprising that younger generations tend to use internet as source of news, although it does not gives any insight on younger generation interest in politics. And relating to the statistics that say our generation is less interested in politics, I can only say that there are lot of much more interesting things than the politics. So, it does not really surprises me. I consider myself well-informed, but I do not follow political news on regular basis nor discuss about them.
First of all this article is based on American opinion poll. And here we should finish the conversation, because we all agree that it proves nothing and have nothing to deal with the rest of the world.

I can say from my perspective that people in my age including me are rather interested in political situation. We are aware of what is going on, we even discuss with each other all incidents or when elections comes. In comparison to older people of course we may be less interested but it is simple - we work, study, do thousands of things, when the older are on pension and have plenty of time to do nothing, so they have a lot of time to watch tv, listen to radio and be more engaged in political life.

I can't say anything about people younger then me, because I know only few and it is hard to say exactly what is their's stand, but I think that we as a nation can be defined as people very interested in political affairs no matter what our age is.
I think that the authors of the article draw conclusions from too little data. Not naming politics as one of your three main interests isn't something strange or negative, as the article seems to suggest, and it certainly doesn't imply lack of political awareness; nor does the knowledge of traditional media sources.

If anyone would like to prove (or disprove) that young people have no political awareness, they should do a quiz about current political situation, or at least ask people if they feel informed on the subject; naming it as one of your interest is simply irrelvant.
That's natural that younger generation are using internet as a source of news. We are living in that times that the easiest way to obtain the information is searching it online, the youngers know better about that than the olders.

You can find everything in the internet and I think that the youngers simply find a lot much interesting things than the political news there.
Unknown said…
I'm not really sure what was the point of this article. In my opinion the only thing it proves is that interest in politics grows with age... It would make more sense to compare interest in politics of those generations when they were more or less the same age.
Unknown said…
Too general researches + quite obvious results for me.

Wisdom gained through observing years of living history, which was strongly connected with policy, makes old generation more concerned about the future while, youngers are more concerned about here and now.
Unknown said…
As Aleksandra wrote I think that interest in politics grows with age and as Patrycja mentioned not naming politics as one of your three main interests isn't negative or strange. I'm sure I wouldn't name it in my first three interests as well and I'm not uninterested in politics. Does anyone else follow the presidential race in usa?
Unknown said…
I agree; the results were very predictable. While politics isn't young people's main interst, they're not completely oblivious either. They seem to focus on specific issues, like ecology or gender equality, rather than the situation in general.
I also agree with Patrycja that not being able to name every news source there is doesn't indicate someone's ignorance. Sure, Buzzfeed isn't a reliable source, but it has its moments. Alternatively, the quality of its articles may encourage people to find better sources somewhere else.
Unknown said…
I agree with the previous opinions. This article is too general, and it really doesn't say much. I must admit that I'm also political ignorant. I like watch news only on TV but I rent an apartment and I don't have a TV in it. On the internet I'm not looking for political information If I don't have to do this.
I strongly agree with you. Conclusions drawn by authors are reaching to far. Just because you do not like football does not mean that you don't like other kind of sports. I also think that young people are less likely to considere politics as one of their main interests because its not something that you can "work" on. Young people are aware of their situation, but I would rather say that they "observe" than treat politics as some strange kind of hobby.
Unknown said…
I fully agree with what my predecessors said. This article is just too obvious and general. People tend to get interested in politics the older they are.
I also agree that most people in our group age get their political news off social networks instead of "old media".

With age people have more experience and can relate how things changed and what do they really support in terms of politics, so they are more interested in what may come.
Unknown said…
I think interest in politics increases with age. We can’t say that young people ignore what is happening in their country in politics. internet confirms this at every step. Young people put posts about politics on social sites. They
create memes with politicians. Therefore, it isn't for them indifferent.
As everyone has already said and as one of the surveys suggests, interest in politics increases with age. Also everyone seems to be less interested in politics right now than couple of years ago which can be connected directly to changes in American political scene.

As for using different news sources, traditional media aren't and won't be too influential amongst young people. The Internet gives everyone freedom of choice between countless news sources as subjective or objective as possible. Right now we've got more news sources than ever before and choosing 36 of them isn't really saying much.(I would also argue that anything Sean Hannity does isn't a real news source.)
Unknown said…
I wonder how this survey would look like in Poland so we were able to compare it and make a better conclusions. Maybe young generation is less interested in politics because of a mobility. Young people usually don’t have as many responsibilities as older people have(e.g. children) so they can move easily wherever they want. On the other hand older people tend to settle down, that’s why they want to know who and how makes decision about the place they decided to live in.
Unknown said…
I agree with opinion of Cezary Golarski who wrote that the first aspect which we should consider is fact that the survey is based on American population which is known as discerning. According to me that's normal that generation of our parents which is called Baby Boomer is more interested in political issues because of their life experience, knowledge and social status. They are more sedate. My Millenial generation is focused on career, self-development and taking benefit from life. We are not enough mature to take interest in politics.
Unknown said…
Personally I hate politics, all this arrogance, lies and manipulation. Presented poll is very superficial, few numbers and
big generalisation. Obviously young people tend to focus on other subjects like education or job market. It's not surprising, such an interest growth with life experience. The more often we encounter problems that arose from bad political decision the bigger your awareness and interest become.
Unknown said…
I could pretty much repeat what my predecessors wrote already. Interest in politics increases with age and life experience. Besides that, if someone asked me to pick 3 topics I'm interested in most, none of them would be politics, but I'm not uninterested by this subject. That's just a badly asked question.
It is hard for me to agree or disagree on the research stating that the Millennials are less interested in political topics than prevoius generations because I don't know anyone from this generation. However, I think that political interest is connected to being dissatisfied with a current situation. And younger people tend to not notice anything that doesn't concern them personally, so I am not surprised.
Unknown said…
I think it is difficult to compare these generations because of the differences our realities have. I myself talk about politics more than couple times a week, but it is defenitely not one of my top 3 interests. I think that in my case it is one of many things i have an interest in and i guess there is more people like me. On the other hand i have met many people really not having any idea about political stuff or just basic knowledge coming from public media and mainstream interntet news, so i would call it somekind "headline knowledge".
Michał Pycek said…
From my perspective the issue is that young people generally pay less attention to the future of a country they live in. By this, I mean that they are more adjustable to new circumstances like cultures, languages and people, as well as they are more open-minded and concentrated on themselves than the older generations were.
First of all, one of the reasons could be that they live by the rule 'carpe diem' and are interested in current activities and actions in their lives. Secondly,it could be the mobility and accessability of traveling to other countries, which makes them feel more secure as there would always be an option to leave the country and move out somewhere else. Thirdly, they may not feel so connected to the society, nationality and the country's condition, since they focus on their own lives and activities.

Regarding the sources of information, in my opinion the reason for the Millenials being not aware of a number of information sources in comparison to the older generations, is that Millenials' common habitat is digitalized. This means that they seek for sources of information on blogs, social media channels as well as political and news portals instead of newspapers and even tv.
Marcin Konarski said…
In my opinion young people are interested in politics, but they just follow friends and they don’t care about finding the truth and their own opinion. It looks like my friend is against this political party so I will do the same, but I am not interested in finding out why is that. So they are interested but they are not aware. If they study politics, history, watch tv, read newspapers and take active part in what is going on it would be much better.

However I am not so sure about the truth in this article, since it doesn’t look like authors tried their best to find out how it looks like. They had just small research based on one country and draw conclusions from that. This article looks to predictable and I would not believe what is written there.

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