Digital citizen

Abstract: The current article examines social media applications as a tool for positive social change. The number of users on applications from Facebook to Twitter and Instagram continues to increase in all demographics. These tools are being integrated into our daily activities and challenging boundaries, roles, and even possibilities globally. Currently, there exists a gap in developing competent leaders capable of leading change using social media. Education leaders and leadership education programs can adapt the values of the Social Change Model to reflect and apply digital competencies to their practice. Digital leadership requires reflection on online self-awareness and congruence, grappling with the controversy that comes with cyber civility and how to be a digital citizen prepared to inspire positive social change.

Abstract: Cyber-libertarian discourse has recently made a “come-back” in popular technology and academic discussions about the democratic potential of “Web 2.0.” here, becoming a digital citizen means becoming an autonomous and creative “do-it-yourself citizen-consumer.” This paper identifies some of the limits of this “cyber-libertarian 2.0” discourse. It does so first by drawing upon post-Marxist discourse theory to outline the central elements of the discourse, and second by contrasting the cyber-libertarian understanding of “the situation” with a critical political economy reading that draws upon Debord’s theory of “the spectacle.” The comparative analysis is structured by way of the normative categories “liberty,” “equality,” and “the demos,” which both discourses embrace in different ways when speaking of digitally enabled democracy. The critical political economy reading identifies a range of factors limiting the extension of democracy through Web 2.0, factors that are not taken into account by the cyber-libertarian discourse. Identifying such factors provides a starting point for a critical exploration of how democracy can be extended through the Internet. In conclusion, lines for such exploration are suggested, specifically in relation to a radical conception of democracy.