Should Online Youth Magazines Focus More on Politics?
Nowadays, there is a growing trend in the development of online youth magazines. They are written for an audience of 18 to 30 years and therefore especially focus on topics these people are interested in. According to “bento” and “ze.tt”, two news websites that focus on these young people, topics that attract the biggest interest are the following:
- social justice
- emotional stories that may happen right in front of your door
- feminist topics
- LGBT
- travelling
- self-discovery
- explanatory films
- but also political stories (which can be popular if they are presented in the right way)
While having a look at these websites, one notices that both of them tend to use a lot of pictures, funny headlines and easy language. Keeping things simple, even serious themes are presented in an unexpected, maybe too humorous way, e.g. one of the headlines says “Currently, 3600 dirty panties are hanging around in South Africa as a signal against sexual violence”.
In order to attract young people, serious topics may even be addressed while using a little quiz, or people are encouraged to keep track of the US presidential election while spending an evening in a pub. In my opinion, these are not bad ideas to stay interested in politics. Nevertheless, it totally meets the stereotype, which contains the reproach that young people are not interested in politics any more. Emotional reports get much more attention, political stories are so rare that even journalists refer to them as a kind of special feature.
But how could this happen? Why are young people more interested in funny pictures and humorous stories than in current topics? Is it the media’s fault or is it the whole generation?
Finding a perfect answer might be difficult, but the first explanations that popped into my mind are:
- young people have the feeling of playing an unimportant role in political issues so they do not even feel the need to stay informed as they cannot change the situation anyway
- they focus more on themselves and their own society
- “normal” news have a deterrent effect while predominantly presenting negative stories
At least, these websites still contain political issues even if they constitute a minority and are presented in an unusual way. But it might not be a bad idea to think about what has happened to this generation of young people and how they can be encouraged to consume more political news.
