Casting Youth as Information Leaders

Abstract

Promotion of the DREAM Act during the 2012 campaign presented an opportunity to examine how social media might cast youth as information leaders in the promotion of voting in Latino families. To identify opportunities and barriers to enactment of the information-leading role, we triangulate findings from a post-election survey of young adults and an analysis of campaign strategies focused on access to higher education. We find that young Latinos lagged behind non-Latinos in voting and in discussion about politics with parents and that campaign messaging typically ignored the family as a context for the cultivation of aspiration through information exchange. We conclude with recommendations for how mobilization efforts in future elections can harness new media by recruiting youth as information leaders.