The Digital Citizen 2.0

Abstract

Recently, ‘digital citizenship’ has become a dominant umbrella term for describing a dynamic set of competences and skills children and young adults need to acquire in order to successfully participate in today’s digital world. So far many current definitions of the concept have applied a purely instrumental perspective on the relationship between an individual and his/her digital environment: the ideal digital subject (i.e. the ‘digital citizen’) is prominently seen as an autonomous user with a stable personal identity who acquires certain competences that allow him/her to actively control the digital environment as a merely passive tool for self-enactment. Yet, this instrumental perspective falls short on explaining some of the more versatile interactions taking place in an increasingly complex digital sphere. For that reason, the present paper suggests a critical reconsideration of the digital citizenship concept. More specifically, the paper argues for a more integrative approach to digital citizenship that combines the already existing instrumental aspects with a more interactional perspective. In order to underline the proposed reconceptualisation, the paper will make exemplary didactic suggestions on how future digital citizens can develop an awareness of this new interactional dimension in the English as a foreign language (EFL) classroom with the help of Dave Eggers’ novel The Circle.