Citizenship education becomes globally recognized as a vital part of education. It is closely connected with social activism and volunteering, as forms of youth’ agency, crucial to improve society in times of crisis (Guimarães, Finardi, 2021). Education system, including citizenship education with its formal and informal, offline and online practices and related institutions, organizations and communities may have important role in supporting social activism and volunteering, thus, enhancing both individual and community wellbeing.

Analyzing and measuring agentic behavior is a challenge (Cavazzoni et al., 2021), however, a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods might be helpful, including the data obtained from open digital environments, for instance, manifestations that activists provide on their profiles in social media and platforms, specifically designed to support volunteering.  

The theoretical foundation of this study is the "structure/agency" debates, implying the possibility of individual (potentially transformative) action upon the social structure, which has been a key theoretical concern in sociology for a long time but is also known to education researchers in Europe [Marginson, 2023]. We refer to the concepts of “morphogenetic society” [Archer, 2024], self-formation [Marginson, 2023] and "neo-structuration” [Mironenko, Sorokin, 2022]. The central idea is that individuals can produce the transformative (and not only reproductive) impact upon them-selves and surrounding structures – which is not a common believe in sociology of education.

International (including European) literature considers volunteering in education, to a large extent, as a tool for obtaining the necessary skills for further employment and career success [Matos M., Fernandes T., 2021; Chawłowska E. et al., 2021]. Also, some studies consider volunteering as means for socialization and adaptation, for instance, for vulnerable or discriminated segments of society, including youth [Rampasso I. S. et al., 2021; Chan D. V., et al., 2023; Hopkins B., Dowell D., 2022].

At the same time, the mechanisms, by which grassroots youth agentic action contributes to solving social problems – thus, contributing to the collective and not only individual well-being, – are understudied, as well as the role education might play, including citizenship education. The potential of digital environment to support the agency of youth has been in a focus of several papers, however, with an emphasis on social capital formation [Pickard, 2022] and information distribution [Scherman et al., 2022]. The problem of youth agency’ manifestation in digital environment requires detailed analysis [Pfefferkorn et al., 2023] – as well as the role of education institutions in the task of agency formation [Marginson, 2023].

The present paper aims at:

 1) identifying the most productive young activists (students of schools, vocational schools and universities as well as graduates) based on their digital traces in social media and volunteering related platforms

2) revealing and analyzing the mechanisms by which the education system supported their agency, with a special emphasis on the issues of engagement, motivation and (educational) effects.

The empirical base are, on the one hand, manifestations of youth agency in open social media and volunteering related platforms in Russia (140 volunteers, activists and social entrepreneurs, identified as most active and “productive” based on their digital traces by a mix of automatic and manual tools out of more than 20 000 people), and, on the other hand, in-depth interviews with 40 out of these 140 aged 18-35.

RESEARCH QUESTIONS:

1)    How do the most productive (in terms of social activism) young people manifest their agentic behavior in digital environment? What is the role of education platforms?

2)    How do they engage in social activism? What is the role of education institutions?

3)    What motivates young people to perform agentic behavior?

4)    Does participation in social activism have educational effects? What are they?

The special methodology was developed based on preliminary screening of more than 1000 open digital profiles of activists (students and graduates) and their communities in the leading social media platform in Russia Vkontakte and leading platform for support of volunteering Dobro.RF. As a result of this preliminary stage, several types of activists were outlined including, first, organizers/leaders, initiating their own new projects, second, volunteers who most actively engage and support projects, initiated by other people. More than 30 parameters were analyzed, including the number and types of projects, the number and types of friends/followers, the content of posts and the number of reactions (likes, comments, etc.), and many others. 140 personal profiles were selected using the mentioned above methodology, based on digital footprints, of which: 1.Volonteers identified on the Dodro.RF - 81 respondents, of whom: a. 44 respondents are organizers of events and projects implemented on the basis of the Dobro.RF digital environment; b. 37 respondents are volunteers who mainly engage in projects offers by other people, but who have a very high activity indicators (for example, 3000+ hours of volunteering, confirmed by organizers of the events they participated in); 2. Volunteers identified on the VKontakte social network with increased activity indicators — 59 personal pages; Different selection criteria were used for each of the mentioed above group and sub-group of respondents, reflecting, on the one hand, the differences in architecture of Vkontakte and Dobro.RF and, on the other hand, the differences between the outlined types of respondents (for instance, the number of initiated projects – for volunteers-organizers, and the number of volunteering hours – for volunteers-active participants). One of the key common criteria for all groups of respondents was the experience in social activism/volunteering: a minimum of 1 year. A total of 40 interviews with activists from all around Russia were conducted: 1) 10 volunteers representing their activities on the Dobro.RF platform.; 2) 10 volunteer organizers representing their activities on the Dobro.RF platform; 3) 20 volunteers representing their activities on the social network Vkontakte. All the respondents directly demonstrated their education background in their manifestations of agency (social activism/volunteering projects)

Various national and regional digital platforms are highly interrelated – but with different functions. In many cases social media platform operates as a space for practical realization of the projects, while Dobro.RF – as a tool for selecting prospective candidates to invite to participation. At the same time, specific education related platforms where not named as important spaces for supporting social activism, but the education online courses on Dobro.RF are perceived as highly valuable – however, not as an environment to demonstrate actual achievements in volunteering. Education system has a crucial role in engaging young people in volunteering and social activism. The major channel for engaging in volunteering and social activism implies informal contact and not administrative stimuli. Social activists and volunteers who began their socially oriented activities at university underlined their own initiative in joining the volunteering projects. Such factors as friends and families or NGOs were named less frequently than education system. For university and vocational education students the major factors for engaging in volunteering are: 1) free time (perceived increased after school years); 2) the desire to try new types of activities (especially if student moved to a new bigger city in pursuit of higher education); 3) the satisfaction with the process of volunteering. In some cases, the formal education process appears insufficient or “boring” to students, and they start seeking new ways to fulfill their potential. Participation in volunteering and social activism has many positive effects, including educational ones. But no less important is the formation of new communities, practices of activity beyond the educational organizations. Perhaps, these types of effects are most important in terms of transformative agency manifestation upon the social structure.

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