Youth Scholars Offer New Research on Political Views of Young Americans

Newswise — According to Dan Cassino, a political scientist at Fairleigh Dickinson University, young Americans see little difference between political campaign messages and marketing strategies designed to pitch them a new iPod or pair of shoes. As a result, he says his new research shows that young voters today are different from young people of any other generation when it comes to interest and involvement in politics.

During the 2008 Presidential race and the election of President Obama, Cassino became interested in understanding how young people view politics differently than previous generations. Cassino, an FDU scholar of American youth politics, used a multitude of studies to see exactly how politics has changed in the minds and lives of young Americans in the 21st Century, from the disappearance of the angry youth in the early parts of the decade, to the surge in support for Obama. The result is a new book, Consuming Politics: Jon Stewart, Branding, and the Youth Vote in America, published December 1st by Fairleigh Dickinson University Press.

Cassino co-authored the book with his wife, sociologist Yasemin Besen-Cassino. “We did in-depth interviews with more than 100 18-to-24-year-olds, and contacted hundreds more as part of telephone surveys,” he says, “and we saw how different today's young people are than the young people of decades past.” The young people of today see politics in the same way that they see consumer goods and brands, he says. “And that tells us a lot about how they viewed Bush, why Obama is so popular among young people, and what the political system will look like in the years to come.”

The authors use a combination of methods to understand how young Americans see today’s political world, and why so many of them are choosing not to be engaged in it. Using all the techniques of modern social science, Cassino and Besen-Cassino show that forty years of political consultants and media branding of candidates, issues and parties have taken their toll—and that young people today see politics as being no different than the other products and services that are marketed to them on an hourly basis. “Choosing to ignore or engage in politics, then, is no more consequential than deciding whether or not to visit a certain shop, or wear a certain brand of clothing,” says Dan Cassino, who also serves as director of experimental research for Fairleigh Dickinson University’s survey research group, PublicMind: http://publicmind.fdu.edu/

Rather than treating young people as a monolithic group, the authors look at three groups of youth in turn: Republicans, Democrats, and independents. “While all of them see politics largely in terms of consumption, they also differ in terms of what aspects of the political world excite them, and what changes would be necessary to bring them into politics,” says Cassino.

Special attention is also dedicated to “The Daily Show” with Jon Stewart, the one political media outlet that all of the groups can agree on, according to the authors. For some, it’s the only political brand “cool enough” to be associated with, and young people are increasingly turning to it as a primary source of news. Using an experimental design, the authors show how, and why, “The Daily Show” is better at educating young people about politics than traditional media sources; they further argue that it serves as a model for getting young people interested and involved.

“The way politicians are portrayed in, and use the media, plays an enormous role in how young people see politics today,” says Cassino. “The terms of the debate have changed in the past few decades, and satire, especially Jon Stewart, has been able to tap into the youth market in a way that others have not.”

In the final chapter, Cassino and Besen-Cassino use a national survey-based experiment to try and determine the long-term impact of the war in Iraq on the young people of today, and are able to project years in the future to see what the post-Iraq political landscape will look like. “Minimizing academic jargon, and translating all of the statistical results into English, Consuming Politics is accessible to anyone who wants to know what happened to the angry youth, and what can be done about it,” says Cassino.

More information on the book: http://www.fdupress.org/book_descriptions/41453.html