Towards Digital Citizenship: The Danish Perspective

Gothenburg.
The next speaker at AoIR 2010 is Jakob Linaa Jensen, whose interest is in how citizenship is transforming in the online age – with a special focus on personal media, including social networking services, in Denmark. Denmark has a high Internet penetration, with a comparatively well-educated public, and the outcomes of this survey can be compared effectively with similar studies in the US and UK.

Citizenship has changed from civil through political to social citizenship over the past few centuries; we are now also seeing the emergence of cultural citizenship, where patterns of cultural activity, lifestyle, and consumption are also important – and digital citizenship is a potential next step: there are now possibilities for political participation through Web 2.0 platforms, for example.

There are six factors in the experience of citizenship – political consumption, institutional belonging, geographical belonging, internal efficacy (belief in one’s own abilities), external efficacy (belief in society and the political system), and social capital. In Denmark, there are high levels of trust and belonging, political consumption and attitudes, but this does not necessarily convert into action.

In the performance of citizenship, cultural as well as political activities (both on- and offline) turn out to be relevant. There are strong correlations within the field of experience: social capital, efficacy, and sense of belonging are connected; experience and performance are related (those who are more confident tend to engage more, and vice versa); political efficacy and political participation are strongly correlated; as are political and cultural activity online and offline. Overall, the Net seems to reinforce rather than change existing patterns of behaviour.

Comparing new and old media patterns (or the performance of users predominantly of new and old media users) here is also interesting. Media use is correlated to citizenship, and omnivores are the most active citizens; use of old and new media are interrelated (there’s no either/or); predominantly old media users score more highly than new media users, though, except for online activities, obviously; and new media users belong more to (cultural, media, …) institutions, while old media users tend to be connected more to local places.

There are three indices of Internet use and competence, then: ICT competence (the ability to perform certain tasks), Net consumption (various aspects of use), and Net production (of content on Web 2.0 sites, for example). Here, there are strong correlations between ICT competence, production, and consumption, but also between ICT competence and use and political and cultural engagement, both online and offline.

Overall, then, most respondents had a strong sense of belonging and competence; the feeling of citizenship does not necessarily lead to strong civic involvement (there are discrepancies between passive experience and active performance); and media use is strongly related to citizenship. Users can be divided into omnivores (high new and old media use), digital citizens (high new, low old media use), passive users (low new and old media use), and traditional citizens (high old, low new media use).