Tensions Between Empowering/Empowered Digital Citizens and the (Digital) Citizenship Curriculum

Rapid advances in digital technology and their pervasive adoption in all aspects of personal, social and workplace contexts have brought tremendous changes to the lives of citizens in all walks of life, and also to the concept of citizenship. Public attention to digital citizenship as an integral part of the school curriculum started around 2007, with the publication of the first edition of Digital Citizenship in Schools by Bailey and Ribble. As an extension of the pre-Internet age construct of citizenship, conceptualizations of digital citizenship have been co-evolving in tandem with rapid technological advances and the pervasive associated changes in personal, social, economic and professional practices in diverse contexts, be it local, national or global. This type of coupling and interaction has been observed in all cases where technological innovation, such as in transport and energy industries, has brought about sustained social transitions. Digital citizenship as part of the school curriculum has also been changing over time, but the scope of the change has been much narrower and slower compared to changes in the broader academic literature in this area. A review of digital citizenship and its variants in the school curriculum in different countries shows that these changes have been strongly focused on digital competence, even though the use of digital technology in the social participation aspect of citizenship is starting to gain attention. This contrasts with the more complex and nuanced changes in the conceptualizations of digital citizenship in the wider academic literature to take account of the deep changes in the landscape of sociopolitical engagement and participation worldwide brought about by the use of digital technologies. Citizenship mainly refers to the obligational relationship between an individual and the larger community that the individual belongs to. For a long time, citizenship was synonymous with nation-state citizenship. With increasing mobility across countries and regions due to advances in global transportation systems and sociopolitical changes in many parts of the world, nation-state citizenship has been broadened to include post-national, supranational, and global citizenship. The digital world has become another space for global actions and interactions, and it is important to consider digital citizenship as an extension of citizenship engagement in holistic perspectives embracing its full social, political, and cultural richness. Social media platforms have complemented existing forms of face-to-face interactions and on-street protest action in a “choreography of assembly” (Gerbaudo 2012, p. 5) to connect the (cyber)space and place of social action. The traditional focus of citizenship education on promoting dutiful citizenship is inadequate in addressing the tensions and challenges created by the empowerment effects of digital technology, as evidenced by the examples of within campus conflicts and participation of students in internet-mediated political activism. Digital citizenship education needs to take on the responsibility of ensuring that children and youth have the right to protection and participation by empowering students with appropriate competence, attitudes, and values for their digitally mediated participation to contribute to enhancing personal and social wellbeing.