Conference Program

In a context marked by declining traditional forms of citizen participation in the public sphere, particularly voting (Canel & Luoma aho, 2018; Kumagai & Iorio, 2020), young people have become a central concern within academic debate (Grasso, 2016; Sloam, 2014). As the cohort that will sustain democracy in Europe, their lower electoral participation compared to previous generations calls into question the stability of representative democratic models.

Some research links youth abstention to a weaker sense of civic consciousness (Wattenberg, 2015). Other studies contend that young people are not disengaged as such but instead orient their participation towards alternative forms grouped under the concept of Citizen Engagement (Ekman & Amnå, 2012; Sloam, 2016; Theocharis & van Deth, 2018). From this perspective, what is observed is not a simple decline in participation, but a transformation of its repertoires.

In higher education, this transformation has been increasingly discussed under the concept of “student engagement”, which refers to the set of academic, social and civic activities through which students participate in university life (Groccia, 2018). Recent research highlights how student engagement is shaped by institutional opportunities, motivational factors and barriers that affect students’ willingness and capacity to participate in the university community (López-Navas, Homont & Alcoceba, 2025).

From a communicative perspective, this issue acquires additional relevance in the case of communication students. According to the theory of social mediation (Martín Serrano, 1977), communicative mediators play a crucial role in transforming social events into narratives that contribute to the reproduction or transformation of social structures. As future professionals responsible for producing public narratives, communication students are not only citizens in formation but also potential mediators capable of legitimising or questioning certain forms of civic participation.

Within this framework, this paper presents the pilot phase of an educational innovation project currently being developed at the Faculty of Information Sciences at the Complutense University of Madrid. The project aims to design and test pedagogical strategies intended to strengthen students’ civic motivation, university participation and awareness of their future mediating role within the communicative system.

The research adopts a mixed sequential design. As a first step, a pilot study is being conducted to validate a questionnaire measuring attitudes towards electoral participation, alternative forms of student engagement, university participation and students’ self-perception as future communicative mediators.

The pilot phase aims to refine the measurement instrument and assess the internal coherence of its dimensions before its implementation in a broader sample of communication students. In a subsequent stage, qualitative interviews will explore students’ civic consciousness and reflexive positioning regarding their future professional role.

In parallel, the project develops participatory pedagogical activities based on active learning methodologies that encourage students to reflect critically on media narratives about youth participation and to explore their own role in the construction of public representations of civic behaviour.

As the project is currently in progress, this paper focuses on the conceptual framework, research design and pilot results, opening a dialogue with international scholars on how communication education can contribute to strengthening democratic participation within universities.