- What is digital citizenship?
- Values of digital citizenship
- Risks of digital citizenship
- Benefits of digital citizenship
- Concepts associated with digital citizenship
We explain what digital citizenship is, the areas in which it is applied, its risks and benefits. Also, other digital concepts.
What is digital citizenship?
The term digital citizenship, also known as e-citizenship or cyber-citizenship, refers to the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), and the principles that guide them, for the understanding of the political, cultural and social issues of a nation.
In other words, it is about citizen participation through digital or electronic environments and interfaces, through the Internet and the Social networks.
Digital citizenship is part of the system of government electronic or digital democracy, which precisely consists of the management of State resources through new ICTs and all their potential, to make life easier for citizens.
In this way, a digital citizen has the right to access the information online in a secure, transparent and private way, in addition to the social and political participation that the media 2.0 allow you.
Values of digital citizenship
Digital citizenship can be applied to two different areas of life:
- Digital education. Through the use of the Internet and ICT for digital literacy and the development of digital skills, to reduce the gap between the different citizens of a nation.
- Digital participation. What is the facilitation of bureaucratic, political, social or legal procedures of the Condition, using the capacity of ICT for this, trying to make a responsible use of them.
Thus, digital citizenship assumes as its own the values of the democracy, applied to the field of ICT: security, transparency, ethics, legality and inclusion.
Risks of digital citizenship
The main risk of digital citizenship is due to inequalities in Internet access for the different communities of the same country. It is known that not all citizens have physical access to telephony and the Internet, despite the fact that today these are considered services basic human. Thus, the advantages of digital citizenship are not available to everyone.
Paradoxically, its democratizing effect would produce the opposite effect in environments where lessons The upper classes have access to ICT and the lower classes do not, or where digital education is reserved for the more economically powerful classes. In this sense, digital citizenship must be accompanied by intense democratizing efforts, to alleviate the digital divide.
Benefits of digital citizenship
The possibilities of digital citizenship are enormous. The speed of bureaucratic procedures, carried out without leaving home; the possibility of participation, making complaints, contact with authorities or even access to digital education through the ICT themselves are some examples.
In other words, digital citizenship increases the comfort and improvement of the quality of life of people. On the other hand, it allows education on a large scale and the training of critical citizens, aware of the use of ICTs and their risks, benefits and possibilities.
Concepts associated with digital citizenship
Some of the concepts that digital citizenship involves are:
- E-learning. A term that applies to learning carried out by electronic mechanisms, which makes it possible to take enormous advantage of the possibilities of hypertext, image, animation, audiovisual and other available resources.
- E-government. The call government Electronic, as we mentioned at the beginning, is a form of administration of state resources that takes advantage of the immediacy of ICT to serve the public, streamline its own processes and maximize the scope of its information measures.
- E-commerce. This is the term for the Commerce electronic, that is, the possibility of acquiring or selling goods or services through ICT, or even business association through them.