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Youth participation in traditional democratic institutions such as voting and political party membership has been in decline. But this disengagement is not necessarily apathy. Rather, it may be an active choice (and political act) of youth to withdraw support from systems they deem to be deeply flawed. Instead, youth have gravitated to newer, more informal, and community-centered forms of youth political engagement. In this article, the author suggests that promoting youth engagement in traditional democratic institutions and strengthening their ties to these institutions requires trust-building strategies. She explains how authenticity as a communications framework can be used to mobilize youth and focuses on social media platforms as a promising site for this concept to be put into practice. Drawing on interviews with 12 MLAs from the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia, the author outlines how politicians have chosen to use social media platforms, ways in which these platforms may be used to communicate authenticity, and some of the barriers both politicians and their audiences encounter in these spaces.
She concludes by noting that communicating authenticity through social media is but one of many strategies that could and should be undertaken to rebuild trust in traditional democratic institutions among young people
