Digital citizenship: A new proposal for an inclusive future

 

A stakeholder-led initiative is pushing for a rethink of inclusion in the digital transformation, focusing on the idea of digital citizenship.

In a non-paper, the EU Digital Citizenship Working Group set out five pillars of digital citizenship, recommending policy actions in areas including technology, social engagement, human rights and democratic participation. 

The coalition was formed in late 2020 and finished work on its non-paper, ‘Europeans Fit for the Digital Age’, last year. Its membership spans academia, business and civil society, including organisations such as Facebook’s parent company Meta, the Lisbon Council think tank, the NGO European Youth Forum and the Institute for Media Studies. 

“For many people, words like ‘digital citizenship’ and ‘digital inclusion are just buzzwords,” said Mark Boris Andrijanič, Slovenia’s former digital minister, at an event held in Brussels earlier this month which gathered the working group’s steering committee. However, action is needed to address the fact that increasingly digitalised societies are not equally advantageous for all groups, he urged. (...)