Digital citizenship

• As Mossberger et al. (2008) defined it, digital citizenship "is the ability to participate in society online" (p.1).
  • Digital citizens are defined as "those who use the Internet regularly and effectively" (p.1).
• Instead of viewing definitive category, DeLuca sees think it is more productive to view the concept on a spectrum.
  • Regular use, if more sporadic than daily use, can still potentially furnish individuals with skills and literacies to make them conversant digital citizens.
• An individual's level of digital citizenship and digital civic engagement can vary by degree.
  • On social media sites users might exhibit varying levels of engagement as citizens, posting and sharing content or commenting upon, re-sharing, and/or liking others' posted content at different rates as suits their investment in the social media space at any given time.
• The concept of digital citizenship create the possibility for wider understanding of what political civic engagement can be.
• Traditional notions of citizenship have focused on government-sponsored modes of civic engagement and interaction, the idea of the digital citizen—who participates in communities and conversations that matter to him/her—does have democratizing potential for what counts as civic and political engagement.
• Through Pinterest:
  • Posters and commenters engage in debate
    • users enacted their digital citizenship and undertook civic engagements to rhetorically negotiate their communal identity by setting parameters for the space that houses that community.
• Researchers and teachers in rhetoric, composition, and digital media studies can embrace these new forms of civic engagement and citizenship as an avenue for rhetorical action and discovery.