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Elcioglu, Emine Fidan. 2025. “Red Pills, Blue Books: How YouTube and Social Science Courses Compete to Shape Political Consciousness of Youth.” Critical Sociology.  Where do young people get their political ideas? This article builds on my earlier research with second-generation Chinese and South Asian Canadians, where many turned to conservative ideas as a way to claim dignity and belonging. In this new study, I ask why some students see power as structural while others view it as personal or cultural. I show how conservative influencers on YouTube provide emotionally charged common sense, while classrooms in the social sciences offer tools for structural critique. The clash between these two spaces reveals how fragile critical education has become under digital capitalism. A public-facing version appeared in The Conversation, where I also expanded on the decline of progressive institutions beyond the university, from unions to political study circles.
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