Digital Civics: the study of the rights and

responsibilities of citizens who inhabit the

infosphere and access the world digitally.
A Brief Introduction to Digital Civics
FOUNDATIONAL PILLARS

Digital Civics is supported by a foundation of four chief underlying pillars: Philosophy, History,
Ethics, and Civics.

Philosophy: acknowledges the philosophy of information

History: appreciates the historical traditions from which we draw

Ethics: explores virtue ethics appreciating the Platonic philosophical influences on the modern
world

Civics: Aligns itself with human rights policy & draws from a conjoined individual and relational
selfhood, known as ‘hybrid selves’

KEY CONCEPTS

Digital Civics is grounded in a number of key concepts:

– It acknowledges the transformations in human life and our world brought about by new
scientific breakthroughs and technological developments, and the impact these changes have on
how we behave.
– It recognises the importance of responding to these changes in ethical and intellectually
rigorous ways.
– And it appreciates that we have a long historical tradition from which to draw when addressing
these challenges.
– Fundamental to Digital Civics is an appreciation of the informational nature of reality.

Digital civics acknowledges the global, intercultural phenomenon brought about by digital
technologies and encourages the formulation of civic mechanisms to respond through the use of
participatory practices and civic virtues. In this way, digital civics acknowledges the digital’s
ubiquitous interrelationship with humanity, prompting the inclusion of the digital in citizenship
education, and grounds itself in a longstanding tradition of civics and civic education that
continues to develop in emerging areas of digital ethics.

Digital civics is defined as the study of the rights and responsibilities of citizens who
inhabit the infosphere and access the world digitally.
This definition incorporates:

 (i) an understanding of the environment within which civic actions take place,

 (ii) the information philosophy that underpins this environment, and

 (iii) the policy discourse that addresses the basic rights and ethical responsibilities of citizens.

(i) 

The environment articulated in this definition, the infosphere, is underpinned by Luciano

Floridi’s Philosophy of Information (a field that considers the use of computers and the
philosophical issues that arise from them). The infosphere encompasses both online and offline
experiences, and their interrelationship, representing the complete environment in which citizens
live.

(ii) 

The Philosophy of Information also considers the implications of information technologies on our
daily lives: how these technologies change the way we understand ourselves as humans, and, as a
result, how our own human behaviour changes, including our ethical behaviours.

(iii)

Digital civics also incorporates an understanding of human rights within a digital age
environment, and a level of self-awareness in regards to the ethical behaviours enacted in this
environment, including an appreciation of duties, obligations, and rights as a citizen. It aligns
itself with the International Bill of Human Rights, and also the European Convention on Human
Rights. In specifying ‘responsibilities’ this definition makes particular reference to the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights, resolution 217 A (III), Article 29, which recognizes “duties to the
community” and “respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just
requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society” (UN
217A (III) 29, 1948).
What Does Digital Civic Engagement Mean
in the Era of COVID-19?
Author
Alexander Cho
Categories: Civic Engagement, Research

Is creating a TikTok video really an example of civic engagement? How about changing your
Facebook profile image in service of a cause? Are young people really as disconnected from
their civic spaces as the steady decline in traditional measures of civic engagement might
suggest? How do we even begin to wrap our heads around the idea of what “civic
engagement” may look like in today’s digital environment?

In our current COVID-19-dominated world, in which traditional in-person acts of civic

engagement — from group gatherings to the simple act of voting – are suddenly prohibited or
accomplished only at dire risk of one’s health, these questions resonate more strongly than
ever. When I and my coauthors at UNICEF’s Office of Global Insight and Policy started to
dig into the published literature around this topic last year in order to create our new policy
brief, Rapid Analysis: Digital Civic Engagement by Young People, we had no idea that we as
a society would soon have to contend with these questions on a scale never before
encountered.
 Thankfully, there is a large corpus of existing research that can help us think through this
current moment with regard to the relationship between the civic, the digital, and (not
exclusively) youth. My coauthors and I scoured this research, synthesizing key trends with an
aim to present them in a useful and accessible way for policy makers, administrators, and
anyone else interested in this topic.

Two of the highlights from this Rapid Analysis that resonated with me the most:

1. Let’s work beyond critiques of “clicktivism” and instead apply useful, research-
backed frameworks for analysis and scope.

I’d venture to say that most everyone who works in this space has confronted the pessimistic
“clicktivist” critique before: “Yeah, but how does any of this matter in the real world?”
Rather than romanticize the good old days of on-the-ground civic engagement – which, at
least in the current moment, are actually gone – and dismiss digital acts writ large, we found
several research-backed analytical frameworks that could be used to both qualitatively and
quantitatively evaluate digital civic acts across varying contexts.

Ethan Zuckerman has proposed that we understand digital civic engagement across two

overlapping axes: Thick <—> Thin on one axis and Voice <—> Instrumental on the other.
Instead of dismissing one’s change of a Facebook profile image as meaningless, it may be
more useful to understand it as a “thin” act of “voice.” We know that, especially for youth,
acts of voice are profoundly important in and of themselves as identity builders and may also
be stepping stones for “thicker,” instrumentalist action down the road.

Likewise, Literat et al. have proposed several axes to evaluate digital civic engagement:

Aims, Actors, Contexts, and Intensities. Each of these axes have specific spectra; for
example, “Aims” can range from “individual” to “collectivist”; “voice” to “instrumentalist”;
“process-focused” to “product-focused.” So, when the queer nightlife industry folks I follow
on Instagram, suddenly out of work and physical community due to COVID-19, post daily
rundowns of virtual community offerings from yoga classes to drag shows, we might say
these are “collectivist” acts of “instrumental” aim to both generate community in a “process-
focused” sense as well as generate revenue via donation in a “product-focused” sense. How
refreshing to have this vocabulary!

2. It’s incredibly important to heed equity issues and local context.

What we want to avoid in thinking through this topic are assumptions that everyone has
access; that even if you do have access, it is equal; and to disregard, because of the digital,
the specificity of local context and embodied user identity. Research has found something
interesting: in social contexts where digital access is commonplace across demographics
(usually in wealthy democracies that have an open public sphere where dissent is not
penalized), digital civic engagement is more equitable across race and class lines than
traditional civic engagement such as voting.

In other contexts, particularly where gender is a dividing line to youth access, digital civic
engagement is far from equitable, and in fact may be an extension of inequality. In a stark
2018 report from the Vodafone Foundation and GirlEffect, boys around the world are 1.5
times more likely to own a mobile phone than girls (when bracketing out the US).
Furthermore, intense social pressure on girls consolidates onto the mobile phone and mobile
internet access, often resulting in outright familial use bans due to concerns about purity and
moral panics. At the same time, one study in Indonesia found that young Muslim women in
fact turn to online spaces for civic engagement because they may be precluded from
participating in the “street politics” of young men. Clearly, local and embodied specificity are
paramount when we talk about youth digital civic engagement and must be heeded in any
research.

There is a lot more in our Rapid Analysis, including great stories of agentic youth making
change in the world as well as a discussion of the need to heed the risks of privacy,
surveillance, and disinformation. I hope you find it useful.