Negotiating Digital Citizenship

Control, Contest and Culture

Anthony McCosker, Sonja Vivienne, Amelia Johns, Anthony McCosker, Sonja Vivienne, Amelia Johns

• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781783488889
• eBook ISBN: 9781783488902
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Civics & Citizenship
• Index: Politics & International Relations

With pervasive use of mobile devices and social media, there is a constant tension between the promise of new forms of social engagement and the threat of misuse and misappropriation, or the risk of harm and harassment.

Negotiating Digital Citizenship explores the diversity of experiences that define digital citizenship. These range from democratic movements that advocate social change via social media platforms to the realities of online abuse, racial or sexual intolerance, harassment and stalking. Young people, educators, social service providers and government authorities have become increasingly enlisted in a new push to define and perform 'good' digital citizenship, yet there is little consensus on what this term really means and sparse analysis of the vested interests that drive its definition.

The chapters probe the idea of digital citizenship, map its use among policy makers, educators, and activists, and identify avenues for putting the concept to use in improving the digital environments and digitally enabled tenets of contemporary social life. The components of digital citizenship are dissected through questions of control over our online environments, the varieties of contest and activism and possibilities of digital culture and creativity.

Chapter 1

Digital Citizenship as Fluid Interface

Between Control, Contest and Culture

Sonja Vivienne, Anthony McCosker and Amelia Johns

Digital citizenship is a highly contested notion primed for critical scrutiny. With near ubiquitous use of mobile devices and social media platforms, there is an inherent tension between the promise of new modes of civic participation, inclusion and creativity, and the threat of misuse and misappropriation, alongside the risk of harm or harassment. Expectations of young people, educators, social service providers and government authorities are framed around the ‘appropriate use of technology’. We are told to strive for safe, productive and civil practices in order to counter online harassment, trolling, bigotry, identity and reputation mismanagement, intrusive personal data collection, surveillance and privacy breaches. Thus, the notion of digital citizenship is invoked negatively to address problems, with less attention to the promises of creative culture and alternative modes of participation.

This book aims to challenge the prevailing normative sense of digital citizenship by exploring digital, mobile and social media affordances that, even in their risks and failings, can point towards innovation, social change and public good. Digital citizenship, we argue, needs reframing through empirical research and critical scholarship so it can better reflect the diverse experiences that constitute a life integrated with digital and networked technologies. Negotiating Digital Citizenship does this work by probing restrictions and opportunities for social action through new forms of control, possibilities for contest and the capacity for creative cultures of practice. Our definition of digital citizenship encompasses these three overlapping elements and is articulated through iterative processes, tested and contested through multiple forms of activism and reconfigured through creative expressions of identity and cultural action. Digital citizenship is not simply a set of rights and responsibilities or appropriate behaviours, but emerges as a fluid interface that connects control mechanisms with people and practices within even the most intimate of cultural contexts. Each of the chapters in this collection corresponds to one or more of these overlapping elements; but each builds and deepens our understanding of what digital citizenship is becoming.

Broadly speaking, understandings of citizenship have revolved around national identity and a list of material and philosophical expectations framed as the rights and responsibilities of a citizen subject. Some scholars lean more to measures of political or economic participation, while others consider distinct rhetorical stances (Young, 1997; 2011) spanning from deliberative (aimed at consensus) to communicative (aimed at mutual understanding). Other scholars such as Dahlgren (2006) argue for cultural citizenship that is inclusive of less formal definitions of civic agency and complexities of ‘meaning, practices, communication and identities’ (Dahlgren, 2006).

Meanwhile, back in 2007, Mossberger, Tolbert and McNeal defined digital citizens as those who use the internet ‘effectively’ and every day (Mossberger et al., 2007). Their approach emphasises participation in society through digital infrastructures and the internet. This entails three aspects of online participation—inclusion in social discourses through digital literacy, facilitation of democratic participation and equal opportunity in the marketplace. Their focus builds on the dominant US conception of citizenship through civic and economic participation, with the ‘digital’ as a form of arbiter or mediating adjunct. Similarly, Couldry et al. (2014) consider ‘digitally supported’ activity but extend the parameters wider to canvas ‘storytelling, narrative, story archiving and commentary’. They also call for ‘recognition’ as a defining trait of digital citizenship, although this is a measure that is complicated by asking, recognised by whom? This question corresponds with broader citizenship debates, in which citizenship is often regarded as a tool for integrating subjects into the nation state (Marshall, 1977; Schudson, 1999). Under policies for managing cultural diversity, this has involved formal minority recognition whilst maintaining the core values of the hegemonic culture. Critics of this approach have argued that this does not meet the needs of various marginalised groups including, for example, disabled people, diverse gender and sexualities, and migrant, ethnic and cultural minority youth, who have a strong desire for increased agency and social participation beyond the bounded forms of recognition on offer (Noble, 2011; Harris, 2013).

Throughout the history of citizenship debates there is a through line to do with being ‘a part of’ something bigger than oneself (society, nation state, republic, city-based community), or alternatively being ‘apart from’ that thing (indigenous subjects, asylum seekers, temporary migrants). In the context of ubiquitous media technology, we argue that the digital is now a part of, rather than apart from, citizenship and an implicit component of new claims to cultural rights, inclusion and participation. Following calls for an end to digital dualisms that somewhat arbitrarily distinguish between ‘virtual’ and ‘real’ lives, we consider the possibility that emergent digital norms—including literacies, surveillance, resistance and creativity—are intrinsically intertwined with the fluid acts of being and meaning making that constitute citizenship. Now, more than ever, these acts traverse spaces, times and durations, creating new local and global ‘scenes’ in which individuals and groups can ‘act and react with others’, assert rights and make claims that produce them as citizens (Isin & Neilsen, 2008, p. 39).

However, if all citizenship has become inherently digitally mediated, what purpose does the qualifier serve? We consider the complete conflation of these two domains in modern life as constitutive components of a new realm of concerns for cultural inclusion and exclusion. As nation states increasingly offer public services such as welfare, medical care and identity registration via ‘digital-by-default’ platforms, opportunities for citizenship that explicitly rebuff the digital are dwindling. For example, elderly pensioners and welfare recipients in an increasing number of countries must engage with digital platforms to receive benefits. Similarly, a person with a passport but no digital trace of that identity will likely not be granted access to crossing borders. Children who are educated ‘without screens’ (as per the broad interpretation of Steiner and Mormon philosophies) must nevertheless encounter technology as they simultaneously encounter adulthood and formal citizenship. Even the rare abdication from Facebook or other forms of ‘digital disconnection’ from media must arrive at their decision with knowledge of what they are leaving behind. They are therefore, somewhat ironically, imbricated in the digital even after departure.

Rethinking the ‘digital’ in citizenship is imperative if we are to understand the complex implications for policy, governance and social and cultural participation. It is worth noting that the concept of digital citizenship, in addressing the appropriate use of technology, can produce caricatures of participation and damaging norms. We see this in current digital citizenship policies that are framed by often inchoate opportunities for civic participation and social inclusion, in parallel with increased monitoring and surveillance of young people’s internet usage. This in turn has given rise to alternative modes of resistance as citizen users engage networked publics to renegotiate their identities and civic commitments, in the process subverting and transforming existing political and legal orders and structures. In these ways, digital citizenship creates a new interface for advocating diversity, equity of access, inclusion and the development of new literacies.

Thus, the field worthy of consideration is vast, expansive beyond already problematic boundaries. We therefore delimit our analysis in this book by categorising thematically similar case studies or approaches in three sections—control, contest and culture. Control considers modes of regulating or exploiting digital citizenship and the drawing of lines between inclusion and exclusion, and appropriate or inappropriate technology use. Contest considers cases that challenge the role of governing bodies (nation states, platform operators) and regulatory codes, often by marginalised groups. Culture considers performances of digital citizenship where neat boundaries are made messy and in which participants themselves may regard their contributions as having nothing to do with nationhood or rights. They nevertheless contribute to the slow erosion of social norms, which, in turn, can shift expectations of relationships between the individual and the state.

Control

As a starting point, the first section of this book explores attempts to govern digital environments or govern people through them. Digital citizenship has been co-opted by organisations, interest groups, individuals and state regulators, often in response to perceived or identified risks and perhaps in recognition of the importance of the digital for social participation more broadly. Understanding these incarcerating aspects of digital citizenship might help to prise open a space for productive critique. The aim is to uncover the term’s parameters and limitations, in order to underpin critical research beyond the tenets of political and civic participation (Lutz, Hoffmann & Meckel, 2014).

We can start by pointing to the hazy idea of the digital citizen subject. Isin and Ruppert caution that ‘we cannot simply assume that being a digital 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’ (2015, p. 19). However, that is what we are so often charged to do once the notion of digital citizenship is invoked. More precisely, the digital citizen can be understood critically as a subject of power and constraints wielded by states and institutions, or even platform registration that first offers and then demands online participation while establishing the means to closely monitor that participation. The digital citizen can also be considered from a technological perspective as subject to the subtle or explicit forms of control built into our digital media platforms and devices. But importantly, with Isin and Ruppert (2015), we maintain that the digital citizen does not already exist but comes into being through digital acts and rights claims and through the varied and often resistant responses to the restrictions and allowances of participation. However, this potential remains difficult to realise under the often-competing pressures of platforms, states, corporations, organisations and interest groups that have very specific perspectives on what ‘good’ digital citizenship should look like.

To make headway in reframing digital citizenship, we need to break out of several conceptual and practical traps. The first involves a critical tradition that takes aim at the governance of society through internet technologies. The diffusion of computer code and internet protocol has long raised concerns about the new modes by which human affairs are governed (e.g. Lessig, 1999; Galloway, 2004; Chun, 2006; 2011). A strong tradition of critical internet and social media studies has followed (e.g. Andrejevic, 2007; Pasquale, 2015). A key point of this literature has been that the functional codes, algorithms or protocols shaping the internet, software, apps and devices are less obvious than parliamentary legislation but have an increasing role in shaping social interactions and digital environments (e.g. Bucher, 2012; Gerlitz & Helmond, 2013; Gillespie, 2014).

One of the unintended effects of some critical accounts of control is their tendency to abstract internet activity and social media use in order to trace its various exploits. The focus is often on surveillance or the commodification of personal data. Those perspectives do not always accommodate the tactics of the multitudes who continue to live, work and socialise digitally, and who benefit from relinquishing their data and offering up a digital trace. For instance, while we repeatedly see vocal rejection of government data collection programmes and a persistent fear of uses of personal data by governments, health marketers or social researchers, there is also willingness to self-track and give up swathes of intimate personal data through new apps and commercial social media, or through search or health-tracking platforms (Isin & Ruppert, 2015, p. 90). Likewise, open data projects do not usually seek to restrict the collection of intrusive personal data but rather put it to use for the public good, even if people remain uneasy about transparency and longevity of such projects (e.g. US Project Open Data, project-open-data.cio.gov). In response to these governmental aspects of digital citizenship, critical debate often hinges on an unhelpful dichotomy between freedom and control. While our aim is to move beyond this dichotomy, the first section of the book probes some tenets of its reach and impact, and the stranglehold it places on the notion of digital citizenship.

Elements of control also reveal themselves in the normative or commercial interests of governments, corporations, groups and individuals striving to shape social activities and behaviours within digital environments. The norms of digital society are far from settled; and the mechanisms for governance are in their infancy. The continuous manoeuvres of social media services adjusting privacy settings and terms of service agreements can leave users unaware and vulnerable when their rights and responsibilities change. This is nowhere more evident than in the plight of young people acting online, or for those with disabilities managing technical systems mostly designed for able or normal bodies, and in the intersection of bodies, health, personal data and digital participation. Chapters in the first part of the book address the currents of control that have come to circumscribe digital citizenry and the environments within which people might act together online.

In chapter 2, Anthony McCosker focuses on the regulatory, technical and educational controls created to combat ‘cyberbullying’ and other forms of online harassment in the name of cybersafety, where digital citizenship is problematically positioned as the appropriate use of technology. McCosker argues that this dominant sense of digital citizenship as appropriate use has brought into being three interconnected layers of control operating through state laws and offices, platform controls such as algorithms, protocols and flagging tools, and through educational organisations and cybersafety or security programmes. These modes of regulation frame digital citizenship as an interfac...

Table of contents

• Cover-Page
• Halftitle
• 1 Digital Citizenship as Fluid Interface: Between Control, Contest and Culture
• Part I: Control
• Part II: Contest
• Part III: Culture
• Index
• About the Contributors