Session: Can Digital Citizenship Scale into the Emerging and Developing Countries Effectivly? Should It?

Concise Description:
Digital citizenship has emerged as digital youth are using online services for personal and educational reasons at younger and younger ages. Even though a significant digital divide continues to exist, increased mobile penetration and the use of online services, such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other downloadable applications are bringing more young users online every day. Estimates are that young people in some countries spend over 7 hours a day interacting via online and mobile technologies. As access increases, especially via mobile devices, the number of young “digital citizens" is growing rapidly. Our world is a digitized world, with ICT and the Internet embedded in common day-to-day functions, including transportation, communications, education, healthcare and governmental services – known as m-government, or e-government.

Proponents argue that digital citizenship necessarily constitutes online safety in a user-driven, social media environment. Online safety can be aided and enhanced by governments and IT and media companies, but it cannot simply be provided to end users in a media environment in which users themselves are producers as much as end users, and media are social or behavioral. Despite the digital divide, this is the reality in all countries where social media has a strong youth following. For example, Facebook now claims to have members in every country on the planet, and other online services are rapidly spreading from emerging and developing countries.

While being a digital citizen includes elements of being safe online, it goes far beyond online safety, to include being an informed, media literate, and civically engaged user of digital media – someone who understands the implications, risks, benefits, rights, and responsibilities of Internet use and functions as an active citizen rather than a passive consumer and potential victim. Because research shows that in developed countries, social aggression or cyber-bullying is the most common online risk to youth, and online aggressive behavior more than doubles the aggressor's risk of victimization, respectful, mindful, socially literate behavior toward others online increases the safety and well-being of good citizens online and offline. Digital citizenship promotes youth agency and self-actualization, turning mere users into stakeholders in their own well-being as well as that of their communities. This benefits both citizen and country in the "real world" as Internet use becomes embedded in every aspect of our world.

This workshop will examine the views of digital youth on the role and uses of the Internet and mobile technologies and online media, and their role as users and citizens; hear the perspectives of some of those who are working on these concepts; focus on the present status of online safety and approaches; and include a roundtable of participants interacting with participants both on site and remotely to ask and answer these critical questions: Can Digital Citizenship Scale into the Emerging and Developing Countries Effectively? More importantly, how should it? As a concept and a strategy, how might it answer real challenges for both young users and the world they are growing into? What is their role in supporting it? What are the Internet Governance issues or questions that should be addressed going forward?