The interplay of youth culture, the Web 2.0 and political participation in Europe: new reflections after the Youth Quake in Northern Africa and Middle East

On the two shores of the Mediterranean Sea young people are using the same tool to create or re-think democracy: on the south shore they have to fight to achieve it for the first time, risking their same life, on the north one young people use the Internet to defend it, when their government forget their rules and freedom and equality are in danger. New Internet-based communications offers the tools to facilitate a pervasive diffusion of youth culture and at the same time the arena in which youth find free place to renegotiate and reinvent in progress their individual and collective identity as independent social, cultural and political actors. Through the Internet young people find own lifestyles, combining cultural artifacts (cut-paste-mix) to assert their generational difference from the parental culture (Stevenson, 2001). Attempting to analyze the Arab youth’s rebellion we reflect on new forms of online participation as well as the role of youth culture for political participation. In chapter two we will start our reflection with a discussion on the relation of Internet, politics and participation: We summarize the current scientific debate on the advantages and hopes as well as on the disadvantages and fears that are related to civic online participation. In chapter three we discuss how youth culture may be considered as participative and also present some results from our Up2Youth project. Finally, in chapter four, we attempt to analyze the Arabic revolution. We found strong elements of online participation and youth cultural participation throughout the Arab youth quake; however, can it be labeled a Facebook revolution? We conclude with what we have to consider when we deal with young people’s participation north and south of the Mediterranean Sea, inside and outside of Europe, in the second decade of the new millennium.