Digital Citizenship: An Actual Contribution to Theory of Participatory Democracy

Abstract

It is possible, no doubt, to observe that the digital era that was actualized in the information society of the 21st century differs genetically in many areas ranging from economy to politics and from science to philosophy. Today, governance, citizenship and democracy carry out a new transformation towards becoming electrolyzed or digitalized in their concepts and practice. It can be stated that information and mass communication tools transformed democracy into e-democracy, citizenship into e-citizenship, and governance into e-governance when leaving issues that require multifaceted solutions such as speed, security, digital division, technology literacy and threats from large data. Digital participation and digital governance of the digital society forces to abandon the concept of modern democracy in which the power is entrusted to the rulers by elections and the rulers are called to account in elections. This enforcement is a similar pressure experienced during the transition from constitutional democracies that restrict powers of the government in favor of people to parliamentary government, from there to pluralist democracy. Digital citizenship means radical differentiation in general in individual-state relationship and in the inner functioning of citizenship concept in private. The old implicit sediments of the absolutist, authoritative and one-sided dominance concepts that continue their existence in modern democracies through individual-state relationship began to melt with the digital activism of the digital citizens. Through the concept of digital citizenship which is product of virtual reality culture derived from reel, mechanical and cybernetic ontologies, but originally differentiated from them, the issues, such as tendencies of rulers being not accounted for, idea of strong center, inactive principle of transparency, tools of restricted freedom of speech, and traditional media’s establishment of deeper relationships with the centralized government, evolve into a different solution through digital participation, digital supervision, e-government, social media, internet blogs, virtual tax offices, corporate e-mail, e-commerce, and e-marketing tools.