A response to Nina Turner: "Well baby, politics is going to do you regardless".

If it is irresponsible to disengage with politics, then why are people doing it? On July 7, 2022, the following was tweeted by progressive politician Nina Turner, member of the American Democratic Party: “’I don’t do politics.’ Well baby, politics is going to do you, regardless.” It is an inky-black, but urgent statement about citizenship: choosing not to engage with the current climate does not exclude you from its eventual repercussions. Participating is not a luxury; it’s a necessity.

Research during the past two decades has surveyed the seeming lack of political engagement and participation, particularly with young people aged 18-24, as evidenced by the low electoral turnout in the US, UK and New Zealand, and a decline in party membership. In the UK general election of 2010, just over half of those aged 18-24 voted, in contrast to 65% for all age groups. In the US, for the 2012 presidential elections, 41.2% of those aged 18-24 voted, compared to the overall turnout of 61.8% (Manning, 2015), and were the only group with a turnout increase, of 1.1%, in the 2016 presidential election, even if by international standards, the overall voting age population turnout was very low, at 55.8% (DeSilver, 2020). At last, in New Zealand’s 2017 election, the voter turnout for people aged 18-24 was 69.27%, compared to the 79.01% turnout overall (NZ Electoral Commission). If there is any engagement, not a large amount of it shows up in the voting turnout, and Manning suggests that not only are citizens dissatisfied or distrustful of the government, but that poignantly, their involvement will likely not change anything. While this can be attributed to a long-term effect of disengagement since the global economic crisis, one might ponder whether, given the decline of party politics, the general relationship with politics has shifted towards non-electoral, non-hierarchical participation, like protests or petitions.

‘[…] a great deal of power still resides within the institutions and offices of electoral politics. […] Keane (2010) describes this situation as ‘monitory democracy’, wherein a whole raft of bodies, both within electoral politics and without, have come to play a role in scrutinising power, seeking transparency and accountability.’ (Manning, 2015) 

 Turner’s tweet is a response to the general apathy certain citizens will share towards politics, and highlights that in a loudly dangerous time for political change, low action will not suffice – the status quo will affect everyone. In merely the last five years, we have witnessed the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade to outlaw abortion care, high-profile cases of police brutality against African-American citizens, and both the US and UK serving tumultuous terms with leaders Donald Trump and Boris Johnson, respectively. The increasing prominence of the Internet, and therefore social media, has also allowed for more accessibility to information, updated in real-time, and more platforms in which consciousness can be inspired. If there was any time to be politically engaged, it is now. So the question lies with why political participation, despite its vitality, has continued to prove an exhaustive subject, and it may be down to the simplest truth we’ve known all along: the polarising nature of political discourse.

Engaging with politics over social media has had great effects on the citizen’s engagement with politics, but the inherent traits of social media – of serving algorithms, rewarding virality, and condensing information into posts of 240 characters at a time – has often lead to a potentially unproductive, exhaustive engagement, in which words are shared but with lacking concern for building consciousness or comradery, and rather for in-fighting and ‘dunking’ on opposing users for boosting self-image, or satisfying engagement numbers, in likes or retweets. A recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS) researched viral political engagement on Twitter and Facebook, analysing 2.7 million posts from congressional accounts and journalists (Rathje et al, 2021). The results found that posts about an ‘out-group’, or opposing party, were shared 67% as often as posts about their ‘in-group’, or own party. It’s been known that moral outrage draws in great attention, as does eliciting anger, spite or distaste, and posts which show animosity towards an out-group will naturally go viral. When negativity and conceited self-presentation are the standard for social media discourse, it’s no wonder that users may eventually become disillusioned with the state of political participation; where engagement is limited merely to tweets and posts, but only occasionally to any practical action in the real world.

According to Frame & Brachotte (2016), self-image is also important to politicians themselves, who engineer narratives about themselves rather than to open a public dialogue. Another study (Silva et al, 2021) on political communication on Twitter in Western Europe suggests alternatively that while this growing medium can be used as an ‘amplifier’ to signal boost their message, engaging on Twitter displays a more liberating expression from these political figures, as opposed to speaking in parliament under the limitations of partisan. With growing awareness of the very deliberate nature of image on social media, questions about authenticity are posed. What statements are and aren’t manufactured? What facts are and aren’t presented with bias? A recent concern over ‘post-truths’ in the Trump era and blatant misinformation has lead political engagement to become much more intimidating, and even more so given the hostility encouraged by humiliating others for viral attention or validation.

Circa 2018, I was engaging in similar political discussion on Twitter; a site whose constant, never-ending stream of real-time takes on relevant matters gave me incentive to check in on my timeline multiple times each day, building political consciousness and realising that politics are reflected in every facet of our future. What brings exhaustion is the baggage of discourse; the polarising nature of disagreement and the sense of ‘fighting uphill’, since the real-world productivity seems so marginal against the negative, algorithm-encouraged content piling of social media engagement.

Yet while I have since disengaged with the site, the vitality of politics has never seemed to wane on me; the inflammatory, negative, clout-seeking behaviour that the site encourages can be left behind, but that initial engagement does not and should not die; politics continue to implicate us all, and it’s our responsibility to find ways in which productive action and discourse can be encouraged, rather than to grow disillusioned and resentful of activism at large.