Lina Rahm

This thesis makes use of a genealogical approach to map out and explain how and why computers and citizenship have become so closely connected. It examines the historical continuities and disruptions, and the role thatpopular education has played in this interrelation. Drawing on previous research in the overlap between Swedish popular education history and historical computer politics, this thesis adds knowledge about how imaginaries of popular education, operating as silver bullet solutions to problems with computerization, have had important functions as governing tools for at least 70 years. That is, Swedish popular education has since the 1950s been imagined as a central solution to problems with computerization, but also to realize the societal potentials associated with computers.

Specifically, this thesis makes two contributions: 1) Empirically, the thesis unearths archived, and in many ways forgotten, discourses around the historical enactment of the digital citizen, and the role of popular education, questioning assumptions that are taken for granted in current times; 2)Theoretically, the thesis proposes a conceptual model of educational imaginaries, and specifically introduces the notion (and method) of‘problematizations’ into these imaginaries.