Citizenship is being a part of some sort of social community. Membership in that community comes with certain roles, expectations and responsibilities.
Digital refers to anything that has to do with the web (that is my super simplified definition).
So….digital citizenship is having a role in an online community. A digital citizen has certain roles and responsibilities ( don’t be a troll, hey). My role as a mediocre aspiring writing is to inform the world of my writing attempts (I submitted to the Montreal International Poetry Prize, long shot but I gotta keep the submissions rolling), my perspectives on humanity, and how awesome spicy doritos are.
Being a digital citizen also means having a voice in an online community. I talk about giving my perspectives on humanity but that honestly scares me because I will have to defend my position at some point. I am very used to hiding. Sure I’m online everyday, checking Facebook, checking that sheep pincushion that Amazon tells me I must have (I really must have it, look at this thing). But I have mostly limited my presence to Facebook where I rarely activate my own voice, and Snapchat (yeah, I forgot to mention that in my previous post).
But, I’ve already jumped in feet first, and I’m ready.
Interesting thoughts, with which I mostly agree. The weird thing is that citizenship is connected to the *formalized* role(s) and rules of the nation/state where digital citizenship is woven into and from the same unintentional parallel nation/state that is formed from the rules that define it.
Do you think citizenship is necessary to be part of a social community or is it only apt for communities that parallel a government or political structure of some kind? And how does this tie to our “membership” in cultural communities, some of which we are born into and some of which we are not? Or is it that as informal communities scale (or last long enough) then the concepts of rules and citizenship become (more) applicable?
Your penultimate bit about hiding is super interesting because I think there is a range of actualization possible that is more or less visible but isn’t necessarily “hiding.” And this ties to ideas of self and identity…and these are even more tightly woven around creative acts and identity, invoking all the same (critical) arguments and philosophical debates about what it means to be human in the world, a creative in our culture, etc. And then I start wondering, what does the “digital” add or subtract?
And…spicy doritos are awesome.
You’re right, that sheep pin holder is awesome! lol.