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disinterest among young people in editorial news items by pundits in the media, and by
the general attitude of most young people that the past is the doing of flawed generations
whereas the present and future belong to them. It follows that established political
discourses do not resonate with this population, even if particular political ideologies do.
This poses a problem for analysts interested in studying youth politics as the motivations
that drive this population and the socio-political mechanisms which produce sustained,
collective public action are not obvious. The key to understanding what moves students
today, including younger secondary school students, beyond partisan politics and
disillusionment toward broad participation in anti-establishment action and the condoning
of violence against symbols of authority is identifiable at the level of micro-social
practice.
During this period between the late 1990s and into 2000 there was a surge in the
popularity of anti-establishment material such as punk, post-punk, low-bap (a sub-genre
of the Greek hip hop music scene that emerged during the mid-1990s), and underground
music and such anti-establishment practice as attending illegal clubs among other
expressions of discontentment and frustration with the state and authority in general
including graffiti and vandalism, especially in the major cities of Athens and
Thessaloniki. Also during this period the internet became a national youth obsession (see
for example Siomos et al. 2008)1°1 and young individuals began to explore anti-
establishment material online. The most popular sources of this material were websites
such as indymedia.org, anarchy.gr and, eventually, various pages on the social
networking sites myspace.com and facebook.com. Digital music by edgy independent
101 Data from Greece indicate that from 1999 to 2006, the percentage of households using the internet
increased from 9% to 33.7%. In September 2007, 3.8 million Greek people had access to the internet.
Among people ages 12 to 18 years, 70% to 80% are internet users (Greece 2009a).