Digital Citizenship and Digital Skills of Young People (1)

Digitalization and the global uptake of social media platforms have profoundly reshaped contemporary society. On the one hand, social media encourage participation and engagement in politics, on the other hand also facilitates the spread of fake news and potentially feeds polarization through algorithmically engineered communicative fragmentation. For optimizing opportunities and minimizing risks the (young) generation of digital citizens need skills for participation. ‘Digital citizenship‘ can refer to norms and behaviour in technology use, to the required proficiency of digital media for participating in society, or to being a precursor enabling individuals to fully participate in society. This RC34 session aims to discuss the different aspects of digital citizenship and the development of skills from young people’s perspectives.

We welcome presentations discussing if and how young people develop critical media literacy; how the training of digital competencies can be linked to the education system; or how digital citizenship correlates with civic engagement, economic activities, and democracy. We are also interested in which circumstances young people participate politically online and in the structural and individual conditions that facilitate young people’s online political participation. Thereby, presentations may consider socio-economic, ethnic, cultural, territorial and spatial, gender, and other kinds of social disadvantages and cleavages.

This session encourages scholars from the Global South and the Global North to present their research. We are looking forward to presentations applying quantitative, qualitative, or mixed methods approaches as well as theoretical contributions that shed light on digital citizenship and digital skills among young people.