Youth civic and community engagement under Singapore’s COVID-19 lockdown: motivations, online mobilization, action, and future directions

ABSTRACT Disasters like COVID-19 adversely affect young adults but also present opportunities for civic and community engagement. Cognizant of and personally experiencing the pandemic’s disproportionate socio-economic fallout on disadvantaged communities, civically engaged young adults have mobilized and questioned government actors and structures which perpetuated pre-pandemic vulnerabilities. However, research gaps exist about their motivations, community engagement processes, and implications of post-disaster mobilization on long-term socio-political engagement with communities and governments. A thematic analysis of public podcast episodes produced by the author during Singapore’s COVID-19 lockdown revealed five chronologically related themes: “Pandemic and lockdown as triggers,” “Motivations,” “Online mobilization,” “Action,” and “Future directions.” Respondents, triggered by COVID-19, were motivated by new socio-economic needs and existing inequalities and responded quickly. Their seamless online mobilization and action informed future civic and political directions, resulting in two distinct approaches to long-term engagement. Those framing their initiatives as addressing preexisting needs called for more fundamental changes to ensure communities were not vulnerable to start with. Others who believed that the government’s pandemic response was adequate focused solely on their own initiatives, which they saw as filling gaps that the government could not. Youth COVID-19 engagement is thus likely to shape community-building and young adults’ expectations of governments.