A Digital Society for All: A complicated endeavour

Abstract

This paper explores digital participation for citizens in rural areas and presents the views from people that in some way are working with digital transformation. It build on data gathered during a workshop, together with an interview with an employee working with digital support to citizens. We apply a critical approach, arguing that if the digital society should embrace all, there are efforts needed. Our informants' witness of many shortcomings and challenges for digital participation for all to come true, but also provide ideas and ways forward.

Rural Living Labs: Inclusive Digital Transformation in the Countryside

“…These changes are visible in different levels and scales, from individual to societal levels, and from more modernized urban areas, like smart cities, to less digitalized rural areas, in which DT occurs in an uncontrolled real-life context, and where people are involved in their everyday use context (Bockshecker et al, 2018;Spagnoli et al, 2019). Since most studies of the societal effects of digitalization and DT have been carried out in urban areas, there is a dearth of research on the effects of digitalization in rural areas (Salemink et al, 2017;Rotz et al, 2019;Runardotter et al, 2020). Following a participatory design approach, we believe that people have the moral and ethical right to be a part of DT processes (Bansler, 1989;Bjerknes & Bratteteig, 1995), also in rural areas, since digitalization of society can bring enormous (positive and negative) impact in peoples' lives.…”