The digitally mediated reality offers a number of affordances to citizens for communication, self-expression, and exercising political and civic agency. ‘Doing’ citizenship in the digital age now encompasses various configurations of social media platforms, messaging services, data repositories, and other networked technologies, and ranges from e-voting and using digital IDs to online campaigning and neighbourhood chat groups.
But these affordances are not always possibilities for action: often, they can limit the potential for empowering citizens. Governments also seek to use digital tools to reaffirm their control over the public sphere and information space, while big tech platforms work to collect and consolidate user data for profit as part of their business model. This workshop brings together a group of researchers working on different aspects of digital politics, internet governance and datafied society. The goal is to foster an interdisciplinary dialogue about the promises and perils of networked citizenship and to understand the myriad actors and processes involved in defining, contesting and complicating the practice of being citizens today.
Speakers
- Mariëlle Wijermars, CORE Fellow at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies
- Tetyana Lokot, Associate Professor, Dublin City University, CAIS Fellow
- Tetyana Oleksiyuk, Researcher, CAIS, Vice-President at Council of Europe Access Info Group
- Olga Pasitselska, Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Groningen
- Alena Epifanova, Research Fellow, German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP)