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Today's young people are engaging in politicized activities and are more attuned to the concerns of their own generation, as opposed to issues more relevant to their parents. Youth political activism takes a less overt and more individualized approach, and young people today are enthusiastic about online participation and engaging in it in different ways. This article adds to the growing discussion that focuses on connections between social media use and non-institutional youth political participation. The article focuses on the meaning that young people attribute to their own social media participation in two countries—Estonia and Finland—taking into account the impact of the wider social context. The empirical part of the study relies on material collected within the framework of the large-scale European project MYPLACE. The in-depth micro-level analysis is primary based on interviews with young people from Estonia and Finland, contextualized by diverse survey data.

This special issue of Studies of Transition States and Societies focuses on youth political participation in Estonia. The articles explore diff erent dimensions of participation, providing examples of how politics is practiced by young people in a society that has undergone a relatively recent and substantial social, economic and political transformation: the shift from being an integral part of the Soviet Union to full membership of the European Union. This transition is refl ected in changing patterns of activism among Estonian youth and the nature of the issues with which they engage, with participation influenced by, one the one hand, the legacies of the communist period and, on the other, the challenge of living in contemporary Europe.

This special issue of Studies of Transition States and Societies closes with a concluding discussion that aims to contextualise some of the key findings from the preceding articles. To do so, we use comparative level evidence drawn from other regions included in the MYPLACE consortium, identifyng contrasts and commonalities in how youth politics is practiced across different European regions. The basic approach is one of assessing the extent to which patterns of participation in Estonia diverge from activism elsewhere, thus locating Estonian youth within a broader analytical framework.

This article analyses Estonian youth's perceptions of their own political participation and their practices of participation on social media. We analysed 60 interviews with Estonian informants in a MYPLACE study and relied on a conceptual broadening that acknowledges the political potential of everyday. We relay on theories of standby citizenship and spiral of silence to understand signing petitions, commenting, liking and sharing politically minded content online. Based on this we suggest that young people in Estonia are interested in political issues and public opinion and their social media use represents a diversification of how citizens take part in civic matters. However, youths do not necessarily believe in the efficacy of social media in enacting political change and their reasons for not participating can be seen as indicative of a desire for both impression management and being affected by the spiral of silence.

This special issue of Studies of Transition States and Societies focuses on youth political participation in Estonia. The articles explore diff erent dimensions of participation, providing examples of how politics is practiced by young people in a society that has undergone a relatively recent and substantial social, economic and political transformation: the shift from being an integral part of the Soviet Union to full membership of the European Union. This transition is reflected in changing patterns of activism among Estonian youth and the nature of the issues with which they engage, with participation influenced by, one the one hand, the legacies of the communist period and, on the other, the challenge of living in contemporary Europe.

This article analyses Estonian youth's perceptions of their own political participation and their practices of participation on social media. We analysed 60 interviews with Estonian informants in a MYPLACE study and relied on a conceptual broadening that acknowledges the political potential of everyday. We relay on theories of standby citizenship and spiral of silence to understand signing petitions, commenting, liking and sharing politically minded content online. Based on this we suggest that young people in Estonia are interested in political issues and public opinion and their social media use represents a diversification of how citizens take part in civic matters. However, youths do not necessarily believe in the efficacy of social media in enacting political change and their reasons for not participating can be seen as indicative of a desire for both impression management and being affected by the spiral of silence.

This special issue of Studies of Transition States and Societies closes with a concluding discussion that aims to contextualise some of the key findings from the preceding articles. To do so, we use comparative level evidence drawn from other regions included in the MYPLACE consortium, identifyng contrasts and commonalities in how youth politics is practiced across different European regions. The basic approach is one of assessing the extent to which patterns of participation in Estonia diverge from activism elsewhere, thus locating Estonian youth within a broader analytical framework.

"This article aims to give a sense of the activities of small-scale cultural practitioners in Estonia. Whereas Western societies experienced the powerful emergence of youth (sub)cultures and DIY ideology, as well as self-organised low scale cultural production in the 1960s, in Estonia all of these practices are relatively new and born over the last decades. This article discusses the Eastern European specifics of (sub)cultural production. The main concepts of this study are fields in cultural production and symbolic capital according to Pierre Bourdieu, with consideration of the recent elaborations in the field of (sub) cultural studies. Interpreting the interests, motives and attitudes that are the basis for the activities of the promoters, this paper addresses the subjects of mainstream/underground, independent/commercial and high culture/subculture, thereby contributing to the relevant discussion in subculture studies. The empirical part of the paper relies mainly on in-depth interviews conducted by the first author (2009), while the interviews conducted by the second author (2010) are supported by fieldwork on club cultures 2002-2003. The data have been analysed and systematised by qualitative data analysis methods, with the help of NVivo research software. While subcultures usually create symbolic boundaries using their distinctive style, music and ideological practices, according to this study, promoters tend to create 'independent brands' for the purposes of participation in the small-scale cultural field. These independent brands involve a mix of the promoters' taste in music, which is communicated through the 'brand' to significant others (music critics, lay audience and friends), and constitute an important means for creating symbolic capital." (author's abstract)