5th ISA Forum of Sociology (6-11 July 2025)

Today, new media political trend is widely used to boost young people’s empowerment, serving as a new forum for political socialization within cyber space in the global south. Youths seek to assert their voices through hybrid and grass roots media platforms, which enables them to address their concerns while also wielding influence as agents of change, Hence, social media gains an important role in giving individual youths multiple platforms to voice up about new matters in public, and also a chance to hold politicians accountable for their campaign promises concerning issues involving larger power structures and public concern, engaging, thus, in the emergence of subcultures that disengage new shifts in religious, political, social, cultural and legal precincts. An area, where young women continue to challenge limited political representation, but empowering them to increasingly demand greater involvement in decision-making processes. This proposal is an attempt to investigate how youth political activism on social media confirms and challenges youth political participation, hinting at the existing spaces of formal and informal youth political engagement. The new media tools can be politically powerful models for youth to express their political concerns as an assumption of the unprecedented shift towards new technologies among youth. As an attempt to discuss the interplay of new media, culture, politics, and youth, the present proposal is theoretically guided by global and local research to critically review the existing literature to show how the constant challenges and pressure of technological innovation and globalism are putting on many countries’ democratic conditions.