The term digital citizen is used with different meanings. According to the standard definition provided by Karen Mossberger, one of the authors of Digital Citizenship: The Internet, Society, and Participation[1], digital citizens are "those who use the internet regularly and effectively." In this sense a digital citizen is a person using information technology (IT) in order to engage in society, politics, and government.
More recent elaborations of the concept define digital citizenship as the (self-)enactment of people’s role in society through the use of digital technologies, stressing the empowering and democratizing characteristics of the citizenship idea. These theories aim at taking into account the ever increasing datafication of contemporary societies (which can be symbolically linked to the Snowden leaks), which put radically into question the meaning of “being (digital) citizens in a datafied society”[2] (also called the “algorithmic society”[3]), characterised by the increasing datafication of social life and the pervasive role/presence of surveillance practices (see surveillance and surveillance capitalism), the use of Artificial Intelligence and Big Data.
Datafication presents crucial challenges for the very notion of citizenship, so that data collection can no longer be seen as an issue of privacy alone[2] .
This means that:
“We cannot simply assume that being a citizen online already means something (whether it is the ability to participate or the ability to stay safe) and then look for those whose conduct conforms to this meaning” [4]
Digital citizenship in the "Algorithmic Society"
editInstead, the idea of digital citizenship shall be meaningfully linked to the normalization of surveillance practices, both by public and private actors, in contemporary societies: “in particular the concept shall reflect the idea that we are no longer mere “users” of technologies, since they shape our agency both as individuals and as citizens”.
“The question becomes one of the extent to which subjects are able to challenge, avoid or mediate their data double in this datafied society” [2].
These reflections put the emphasis on the idea of the digital space (or cyberspace) as a political space where the respect of fundamental rights of the individual shall be granted (with reference both to the traditional ones as well as to new specific rights of the internet [see “digital constitutionalism”]) and where the agency and the identity of the individuals as citizens is at stake. This idea of digital citizenship is thought to be not only active but also performative, in the sense that “in societies that are increasingly mediated through digital technologies, digital acts become important means through which citizens create, enact and perform their role in society.”[2]
In particular, for Isin and Ruppert this points towards an active meaning of (digital) citizenship based on the idea that we constitute ourselves as a digital citizen by claiming rights on the internet, either by saying or by doing something[4]
New section: digital citizen as a person using information technology (IT) in order to engage in society, politics, and government
editThey also have a comprehensive understanding of digital citizenship, which is the appropriate and responsible behavior when using technology.[5] Since digital citizenship evaluates the quality of an individual's response to membership in a digital community, it often requires the participation of all community members, both visible and those who are less visible.[6] A large part in being a responsible digital citizen encompasses digital literacy, etiquette, online safety, and an acknowledgement of private versus public information.[7][8][9]
[AND SO ON; MAYBE THE FOLLOWING SECTIONS SHALL BE TRANSFORMED IN SUBSECTIONS OF THIS SECTION].
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References
edit- ^ Mossberger, Karen (2008). Digital citizenship : the internet, society, and participation. Caroline J. Tolbert, Ramona S. McNeal. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-28028-0. OCLC 181030871.
- ^ a b c d Hintz, Arne (2019). Digital citizenship in a datafied society. Lina Dencik, Karin Wahl-Jorgensen. Cambridge, UK. p. 43. ISBN 978-1-5095-2716-8. OCLC 1028901550.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - ^ Balkin, Jack (2017-01-01). "The Three Laws of Robotics in the Age of Big Data". Faculty Scholarship Series.
- ^ a b Isin, Engin F. (2020). Being digital citizens. Evelyn Sharon Ruppert (2nd ed.). London, United Kingdom: Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group. p. 17. ISBN 978-1-78661-447-6. OCLC 1133661431.
- ^ Qi, Ershi; Shen, Jiang; Dou, Runliang (2013-06-03). The 19th International Conference on Industrial Engineering and Engineering. p. 742. ISBN 978-3-642-37270-4. Retrieved 6 June 2015.
- ^ Ohler, Jason B. (2010-08-31). Digital Community, Digital Citizen. SAGE Publications. p. 25. ISBN 978-1412971447. Retrieved 6 June 2015.
those who use the Internet regularly and effectively.
- ^ "Digital Citizenship". Virtual Library. Retrieved 2018-11-05.
- ^ Cite error: The named reference
:44was invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ Ribble, Mike; Gerald, Bailey (2007). Digital Citizenship in Schools. Washington DC: International Society of Technology in Education. p. 157.