Manoeuvring in a digital dilemmatic space: making sense of a digitised society

Abstract

Although an increasingly digitised society offers a variety of options, it also implies challenges, risks and dilemmas for citizens, organisations and corporations. The purpose of this article is to critically analyse digital society from the perspective of dilemmatic space. The theoretical frame offers new ways of making sense of the digital society, and may provide new perspectives on how to manoeuvre (or not) in it. By taking dilemmas as the starting point, aspects such as uncertainty, plurality, options, challenges and decision making are in focus, as are processes of power, negotiation, identity formation, positioning and manoeuvring.The theoretical framework is applied and exemplified in relation to three digitised society themes: (a) the blogosphere and social networking communities (SNC), (b) file sharing, network control and surveillance, and (c) education. These themes have been chosen in order to illustrate the different aspects of a digital society and to show how the theoretical framework operates when different aspects of these themes are placed in the foreground or background, i.e. emphasised or downplayed. This implies that the unknown and unexpected must be taken into account, and that this involves having to manoeuvre in new, changing and ever present dilemmatic spaces.

Digitalise and capitalise? Teachers’ self-understanding in 21st-century teaching contexts

“…The vulnerability of teaching can be understood not only from a personal psychological perspective when the pressure becomes emotionally too much, but also in terms of structural conditions of the teaching profession (Kelchtermans, 1993(Kelchtermans, , 2009)-being exposed and held accountable. Digitalisation has added further layers of complexity to teaching and learning (Mishra & Koehler, 2006;Orlando, 2013;Selwyn, Nemorin, Bulfin, & Johnson, 2017) in that it changes the circumstances and processes of teaching and learning as well as the roles, expectations, power, and values in educational contexts (Fransson, 2016). Although digital technologies can contribute added pedagogical value (George & Sanders, 2017;Haelermans, 2017), teachers may lack systematic strategies supporting students (Blikstad-Balas & Davies, 2017; and technologies may also result in teachers feeling pressurised to use them, even though this may be at odds with their own knowledge, practical skills, emotions, doubts about their potential, or their preferred ways of teaching (Convery, 2009;Howard, 2013).…”

Teachers' dilemmatic spaces connected to students' net-based out-of-school activities

“…Being and feeling questioned is one aspect the teachers discuss since they are not the only knowledge resource. Schools act as cultural organizations (Fransson, 2016) and as such, they might be questioned by the ones participating. The teachers give examples of this in their discussions.…”

Beliefs, emotions, and usage of information and communication technologies in distance learning during the COVID-19 pandemic: Health sciences students’ perspectives

“…Since emotions can also be connected to ICT beliefs and usage, understanding how to manage beliefs, doubts, feelings, and knowledge regarding ICT usage in the online learning process would seem to be vital. 24 Research has found that users might feel under pressure to use ICT to prevent being viewed as antagonistic, even though this negatively contradicts their emotions, beliefs, and knowledge about its full potential. 25 Another study has found that there is a clear relationship between emotions and ICT usage.…”