The Ironies of Digital Citizenship

Abstract

Our everyday use of digital technologies, platforms and infrastructures is often portrayed as an autonomous technical development, guided by clever and independent innovations, rather than broad sociotechnical imaginaries that inspire parliamentary support and governance. This article will consequently shed the light on the oftenoverlooked structural and societal efforts that have historically shaped the digital citizen of today. For the past 70 years or so, non-formal adult education about computers and computing has been a key part of political ambitions to create a desirable future. Over time, digital technologies have also become a precondition for the enactment of citizenship. That is, ‘digital citizenship’ is increasingly positioned as a fundamental requirement for democratic participation. The purpose of this paper is to trace how the digital citizen, and its accompanying problems, has been construed over time, particularly through educational imaginaries. What problems is the digital citizen a solution to? Who has been presented as problematic, and who, subsequently, has become the primary target for educational solutions? What skills have been described as indispensable for the digital citizen during different periods in history? By using Sweden as a vantage point this paper provides both concrete examples as well as perspectives on transnational discourses. In focus for the study are discourses concerning non-formal adult education, in the form of awareness campaigns, social programmes and adult liberal education about computers aimed at the general citizenry, during three periods in time: the 1950s, the 1980s, and today. The contribution is a critical take on how the citizen has increasingly become connected to digital technologies, and how this convergence has at the same time created digital exclusion.

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