The Internet And Democratic Citizenship

Download or read book The Internet and Democratic Citizenship written by Stephen Coleman and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2009-04-06 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines how the Internet can improve public communications and enrich democracy.

Download or read book Digital Citizenship written by Karen Mossberger and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2007-10-12 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This analysis of how the ability to participate in society online affects political and economic opportunity finds that technology use matters in wages and income and civic participation and voting. Just as education has promoted democracy and economic growth, the Internet has the potential to benefit society as a whole. Digital citizenship, or the ability to participate in society online, promotes social inclusion. But statistics show that significant segments of the population are still excluded from digital citizenship. The authors of this book define digital citizens as those who are online daily. By focusing on frequent use, they reconceptualize debates about the digital divide to include both the means and the skills to participate online. They offer new evidence (drawn from recent national opinion surveys and Current Population Surveys) that technology use matters for wages and income, and for civic engagement and voting. Digital Citizenship examines three aspects of participation in society online: economic opportunity, democratic participation, and inclusion in prevailing forms of communication. The authors find that Internet use at work increases wages, with less-educated and minority workers receiving the greatest benefit, and that Internet use is significantly related to political participation, especially among the young. The authors examine in detail the gaps in technological access among minorities and the poor and predict that this digital inequality is not likely to disappear in the near future. Public policy, they argue, must address educational and technological disparities if we are to achieve full participation and citizenship in the twenty-first century.

Download or read book The Myth of Digital Democracy written by Matthew Hindman and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Matthew Hindman reveals here that, contrary to popular belief, the Internet has done little to broaden political discourse in the United States, but rather that it empowers a small set of elites - some new, but most familiar.

Download or read book Connecting Democracy written by Stephen Coleman and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 435 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The global explosion of online activity is steadily transforming the relationship between government and the public. The first wave of change, e-government, enlisted the Internet to improve management and the delivery of services. More recently, e-democracy has aimed to enhance democracy itself using digital information and communication technology. One notable example of e-democratic practice is the government-sponsored (or government-authorized) online forum for public input on policymaking. This book investigates these online consultations and their effect on democratic practice in the United States and Europe, examining the potential of Internet-enabled policy forums to enrich democratic citizenship. The book first situates the online consultation phenomenon in a conceptual framework that takes into account the contemporary media environment and the flow of political communication; then offers a multifaceted look at the experience of online consultation participants in the United States, the United Kingdom, and France; and finally explores the legal architecture of U.S. and E. U. online consultation. As the contributors make clear, online consultations are not simply dialogues between citizens and government but constitute networked communications involving citizens, government, technicians, civil society organizations, and the media. The topics examined are especially relevant today, in light of the Obama administration's innovations in online citizen involvement.

Download or read book Citizenship under Fire written by Sigal R. Ben-Porath and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2009-03-02 with total page 173 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Citizenship under Fire examines the relationship among civic education, the culture of war, and the quest for peace. Drawing on examples from Israel and the United States, Sigal Ben-Porath seeks to understand how ideas about citizenship change when a country is at war, and what educators can do to prevent some of the most harmful of these changes. Perhaps the most worrisome one, Ben-Porath contends, is a growing emphasis in schools and elsewhere on social conformity, on tendentious teaching of history, and on drawing stark distinctions between them and us. As she writes, "The varying characteristics of citizenship in times of war and peace add up to a distinction between belligerent citizenship, which is typical of democracies in wartime, and the liberal democratic citizenship that is characteristic of more peaceful democracies." Ben-Porath examines how various theories of education--principally peace education, feminist education, and multicultural education--speak to the distinctive challenges of wartime. She argues that none of these theories are satisfactory on their own theoretical terms or would translate easily into practice. In the final chapter, she lays out her own alternative theory--"expansive education"--which she believes holds out more promise of widening the circles of participation in schools, extending the scope of permissible debate, and diversifying the questions asked about the opinions voiced.

Download or read book Digital Technology and Democratic Theory written by Lucy Bernholz and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2021-02-17 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the most far-reaching transformations in our era is the wave of digital technologies rolling over—and upending—nearly every aspect of life. Work and leisure, family and friendship, community and citizenship have all been modified by now-ubiquitous digital tools and platforms. Digital Technology and Democratic Theory looks closely at one significant facet of our rapidly evolving digital lives: how technology is radically changing our lives as citizens and participants in democratic governments. To understand these transformations, this book brings together contributions by scholars from multiple disciplines to wrestle with the question of how digital technologies shape, reshape, and affect fundamental questions about democracy and democratic theory. As expectations have whiplashed—from Twitter optimism in the wake of the Arab Spring to Facebook pessimism in the wake of the 2016 US election—the time is ripe for a more sober and long-term assessment. How should we take stock of digital technologies and their promise and peril for reshaping democratic societies and institutions? To answer, this volume broaches the most pressing technological changes and issues facing democracy as a philosophy and an institution.

Download or read book Digital citizenship education written by Divina Frau-Meigs and published by Council of Europe. This book was released on 2017-10-17 with total page 82 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Supporting children and young people to participate safely, effectively, critically and responsibly in a world filled with social media and digital technologies is a priority for educators the world over. Most young people in Europe today were born and have grown up in the digital era. Education authorities have the duty to ensure that these digital citizens are fully aware of the norms of appropriate behaviour when using constantly evolving technology and participating in digital life. Despite worldwide efforts to address such issues, there is a clear need for education authorities to take the lead on digital citizenship education and integrate it into school curricula. In 2016, the Education Department of the Council of Europe began work to develop new policy orientations and strategies to help educators face these new challenges and to empower young people by helping them to acquire the competences they need to participate actively and responsibly in digital society. This volume, the first in a Digital Citizenship Education series, reviews the existing academic and policy literature on digital citizenship education, highlighting definitions, actors and stakeholders, competence frameworks, practices, emerging trends and challenges. The inclusion of a wide selection of sources is intended to ensure sufficient coverage of what is an emergent topic that has yet to gain a strong foothold in either education or academic literature, but has received wider policy attention.