Mobile Democracy: Changing Conditions for Young Danes’ Democratic Information and Participation

Abstract

The article focuses on mobile democracy in connection to the conditional foundations for young Danes’ democratic agency in a digital society. It investigates questions of democratic transformation through a conceptual and empirical triangulation of mobile democracy as a framework for analyzing these conditions. Conceptually, the article draws on research on youth and mobile technologies and on theories of mobility, deliberative democracy, and democratic conversation. Empirically, the article draws on 16 in-depth interviews with 16–24-year-old Danes conducted in 2021. This dataset is supported by findings from a representative survey (2017) and publicly available statistics and surveys. The article analyses three intersecting conditions that frame the concept of mobile democracy through an analysis of young citizens’ democratic participation: 1. Mobile technologies—democratic mobility occurs across the availability of technological mobile platforms and online services. The ‘always on’ status is defining for young citizens’ democratic agency. 2. Mobile information and social media—fragmented publics are increasingly missing societal reference points and ideological coherence, and young people are challenged in their attempt to establish coherent meaningfulness from the fluctuating information stream. 3. Mobile engagement and participation—information mobility affects perceptions of what information, citizenship and democracy are, and how this translates into actualizations of democratic participation.