With the popularization of social media and the improvement of young generation's(18-30) awareness of political participation, more and more young people express their opinions in various political affairs through social media. It not only provides a platform for the young people to self presentation, but also provides a channel for political expression. There has been lots of researches on the impact of youth groups.According to The Washington Post in December 2017, The Oxford Dictionary's annual word was 'youthquake',which refers to significant reforms in the field of culture, politics and society that result from the performance and influence of young people. Every educational system is a political means of maintaining or of modifying the appropriation of discourse,with the knowledge and the powers it carries with it.(Foucault,1972) It is necessary for us to pay attention to the influence of political discourse participation of youth groups on various fields.
The theme of study is how to create more possibilities for young people to participate in political affairs in the era of social media,and we take the death of an actor in certain China’s reality show as example，aiming to explore the following:
1.How the young people can participate in politics through social media?
2.What influence will 'youthquake' have on the political field in the era of social media?
3.How to improve the awareness of youth groups participating in politics through social media?
We selected the digital ethnography as this paper's methodology, and a month-long period from November 27,2019 when the incident happened, to December 27,2019 was selected to observe the relevant discussions of incident in Weibo. A series of data have been collected,which shows that the incident triggered huge reactions in Weibo,attracting more than 4.2 billion views and 1.41 million comments as of 9:00 pm on the 28th.The amount of discussion grown geometrically,over ten topics about the incident topped in Weibo’s search and the total amount of reading reached nearly 10 billion.The show was boycotted by young fans and they appealed government to govern relevant programs,which has aroused the high attention of relevant departments, so they have taken relevant measures to stabilize young people's mood.
As the result show,we could find that young people presented strong demands for the government to regulate the online market of reality show through social media.And we could draw a conclusion that social media provide a possibility for young people to participate in political affairs and to make social impacts .In addition, we were surprised to find that this event initially motivated only by youngsters’ concern for the death of stars,but unexpectedly,it triggered a real political change,which shows that the young people’s political participation by social media still has certain contingency.