From the rise of
cyberbullying and hactivism to the issues surrounding digital privacy rights
and freedom of speech, the Internet is changing the ways in which we govern and
are governed as citizens.
These are some of the issues that the book, Being Digital Citizens (Rowman & Littlefield International, 2015), by Big Data & Society Editor Evelyn Ruppert and Co-chief Editor of Citizenship Studies Engin Isin investigate. They examine how
citizens encounter and perform new sorts of rights, duties, opportunities and
challenges through the Internet. By
disrupting prevailing understandings of citizenship and cyberspace, Isin and Ruppert highlight the dynamic relationship between these two concepts. Rather than
assuming that these are static or established ‘facts’ of politics and society,
they show how the challenges and opportunities presented by the Internet
inevitably impact the action and
understanding of political agency. Through the articulation of digital acts they set out a new theoretical understanding of what it means to be a citizen today for students and scholars across the social sciences. More information and a sample chapter are available here.
