Getting the message: a transcendental phenomenology of youth experiences of persuasive (partisan) and informative (non-partisan) campaigns during the 2019 Canadian and United Kingdom general elections

Low youth voter turnout has potentially negative implications for healthy democracies and is therefore a widely researched topic in political communications. The concern is that if young people experience alienation and disenfranchisement from political processes, and in particular, electoral participation, this may result in a future uninformed electorate, where voting is not incorporated as a habitual practice among adults (Plutzer, 2002; Henn and Foard, 2012; Muthoo, 2016). Paradoxically, despite feeling a strong sense of civic duty to vote, youth may lack trust in electoral campaigns within a "fake news" environment. Therefore, this study explored the central research question: "what experiences do youth have of partisan and non-partisan campaigns in electoral situations?" The rationale for researching this question is found within the field of campaign effects research, where myriad factors are explored, in order to understand how these integral facets of electoral politics may be better understood. To that extent, this study utilized a qualitative transcendental phenomenological theoretical framework and methodology more often utilized in health sciences research in order to elicit participant data in regards to how young people experience partisan and non-partisan campaigns, and the associated trustworthiness of each campaign type. This primarily descriptive methodology was applied within a cross-national context, eliciting responses from five Canadian and five British participants, aged 18-24 years during the general elections in each respective country between 2015 and 2019. The resulting data produced a cross-national "essence of the experience" for participants within both countries, where key themes of partisan campaigns feeling "pushy" and manipulative, as well as untrustworthy; were contrasted against non-partisan campaigns being experienced as trustworthy; and the importance of alignment with internal beliefs. Additional emergent themes indicated that despite uncertainty towards partisan campaign trustworthiness, participants experienced a sense of civic duty towards voting, felt that the information often contained in non-partisan campaigns was reassuring and empowering, and expressed a preference for policy-based campaigns. These significant cross-national participant narratives highlight the increasing importance of neutral, unbiased information that is relevant to the youth electorate and maintains professionalism through the avoidance of political opponent shaming and "Americanized" negative campaign tactics. Perhaps most importantly, participants felt a sense of maturity and social belonging, instilled through the empowering experience of informed decision-making at the ballot polls. Therefore, participants expressed a need for more access to trustworthy campaigns and unbiased, policy-based information, in order to facilitate this sense of empowerment. This research therefore makes an original contribution to the political communications scholarly literature through the creation of a novel partisan/non-partisan campaign trustworthiness perception framework, which serves to situate valuable participant narratives of partisan and nonpartisan campaigns as experienced simultaneously, within a single electoral event in relation to the persuasive and informative content perceived therein. Further to this, the study makes a methodological contribution to the qualitative transcendental phenomenological analysis framework, through the explication of participant outputs, in addition to streamlining data analysis, through minor adjustments to the procedural stages.

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