An agent of change: Youth meta-participation at the internet governance forum

Abstract

Youth engagement has been declared a priority by European Union and United Nations policy-makers, and the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) faces demands to the same end. At the IGF 2021, youth called for more youth participation, more representation at the IGF Multistakeholder Advisory Group (MAG), and for acknowledgement of youth as a separate stakeholder category. In order to better understand why and how youth participate - and want to participate - in Internet governance, there is a need for a critical reflection on their presence, the spaces and activities they engage in. Therefore this paper looks at the complexity of the youth identity and at youth meta-participation: a process in which young people and facilitators create participatory spaces for youth to reach their political agency and where they do not only seek to engage in existing participation spaces but also to reshape them. The main research question is how youth want to change their participation at the IGF, specifically, which activities and mechanisms are being created to improve the ways in which they can exercise their agency. Actors meta-participate when the existing participation opportunities are not sufficiently reflecting their needs. Thus, a clearer understanding of current and demanded participation mechanisms may lead us to a broader set of questions concerning the effectiveness of the current multistakeholder model. This paper, based on interviews with stakeholders and desk research, argues that youth do not always accept the status quo if it does not represent their needs or does not allow for them to explore their ideas, and they will sometimes utilise processes to build the space they need or create activities in a bottom-up manner, that allow them to change the mode of their participation.