Forty years ago, young people were more engaged and interested in politics than their parents: but this hasn't been true in a long time. Using a combination of interviews, surveys and experiments, Dan Cassino and Yasemin Besen-Cassino, look at the political world through the eyes of young people to understand why they've become disengaged from the political world. Rather than seeing politics as an end, they find today's young people see politics as a way to achieve other ends: building an identity, fitting in, rebelling. ...
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Forty years ago, young people were more engaged and interested in politics than their parents: but this hasn't been true in a long time. Using a combination of interviews, surveys and experiments, Dan Cassino and Yasemin Besen-Cassino, look at the political world through the eyes of young people to understand why they've become disengaged from the political world. Rather than seeing politics as an end, they find today's young people see politics as a way to achieve other ends: building an identity, fitting in, rebelling. Politics, for them, is one more thing to be consumed. The authors make extensive use of the young people's own words to illustrate this phenomenon, and use interviews and experimental data to show why "The Daily Show" with Jon Stewart may actually be the best way for them to learn about the political world. Minimizing academic jargon, and translating all of the statistical results into English, Consuming Politics is accessible to anyone who wants to know what happened to the angry youth, and what can be done about it. Dan Cassino is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Fairleigh Dickinson University. Yasemin Besen-Cassino is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Montclair State University.
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