Journal of e-Learning and Knowledge Society

Second Cover

Managing Editor — 2022-12-31

Digital Citizenship

Cosimo Accoto — 2022-12-31

The transformations of “public sphere” category, and the contemporary debate about digital citizenship

Massimiliano Panarari — 2022-12-28

The digital turn has shaken at its foundations the «mass society», the label that entered the lexicon of social sciences in the Twentieth century, accompanying advanced industrial societies for a long time (Gili, 1990), before their transformation into post-industrial ones (Touraine, 1969). The new context in which the increasingly important role assumed by telematic technologies and Information and communication technologies has opened...

Digital constitutionalism to the test of the smart identity

Oreste Pollicino — 2022-12-28

The law has become increasingly interested in issues related to algorithmic biases and decisions, particularly from the perspectives of the collection, use, and processing of personal data. The complex constellation of fundamental rights challenged by the new technologies is opening the door to an inedited concept of identity, citizenship, and city, shortening the distances between the world of the bits and the world of the atoms. Nonetheless, the legal issues at stake are profound and involve enforcing such rights and designing proper procedural mechanisms. In this sense, a crucial role is that of the courts since they have been and are called to find new stages of protection and guarantees. Therefore, with the aim to prove the necessity of a solid and by-design procedural mechanism, this paper is going to analyze those issues through the lenses of the krasis between algorithms and freedom of expression, and algorithms and data protection, while taking as a meaningful example the difficult enforceability of the right to erasure in the context of the algorithmic society.

Digital citizenship and the end of an idea of world

Massimo Di Felice — 2022-12-28

The western idea of society, founded on a contrast between citizens and limited to the cohabitation of human subjects, just as the idea of citizenship is based on the fundamental rights of people, faced with the challenges of the pandemic, of the climate change and those posed by the latest generation of intelligence network, turns out to be inadequate. The digital citizenship of today is the research area in which to search for the overcoming of the Western political project and to begin a new culture of governance within complex networks characterized by interactions within an architecture that is no longer composed either of subjects nor objects. The present article, starting from the analysis of the digital protagonism of the non-human, present the possible meanings of the crisis of the western idea of the world.

Webfare: humanity’s greatest asset

Maurizio Ferraris — 2022-12-28

“Man’s needs have become human needs, and the other person, as a person, has become one of man’s needs” Marx rightly said. However, he mistakenly thought that these values were mystified by the bourgeois society bent on production and acquisition. Indeed, the communist revolution, with the sole exception of China today, does not seem to have taken any significant step towards reintegrating human values. Instead, the great technological and social transformation that has been unfolding for the past few years...

How social media could teach us to be better citizens

Ethan Zuckerman — 2022-12-28

In 1995, social scientist Robert Putnam proposed a broad and wide-ranging critique of American civic life. (Putnam, 1995) Further developed in his influential book Bowling Alone (Putnam, 2000), Putnam argued that America was experiencing a sustained decline in civic life, one that might spread to advanced democracies around the world. His argument was multifaceted: not only were Americans voting less, they were also participating less in voluntary organizations, in churches and religious organizations, in labor unions and work organizations...

Reconnecting Civitas and Urbs: making tourists and remote workers as temporary urban citizens

Daniele Belleri — 2022-12-28

Ancient Romans posited a strict correspondence between the city as a physical concept - what they called urbs - and the society that inhabited it - the civitas. This conceptualization rested on an assumption that went largely unchallenged for centuries: most people live where they belong. What happens, then, when the social and technological conditions of the contemporary world severs these ties? Tourists criss-cross the planet seeking leisure, high-powered workers extend their careers across continents, and migrants flee their homes in search of new opportunities. To rebuild a coherent notion of urban citizenship, one that allows communities to flourish, this perspective article sketches a model of “variable citizenship,” that could account for different categories of people who have been cut off from conventional modes of belonging. With this new, flexible model of citizenship, supported both by digital tools and design projects that reclaim the importance of physical, shared public spaces, we can reconnect the urbs to the fast-moving civitas of our time.

Educating to Digital Citizenship: conceptual development and a framework proposal

Pier Cesare Rivoltella — 2022-12-28

This article discusses the meaning of digital citizenship and aims to outline a framework for an education that wants to develop it. The hypothesis is that two ages can be identified in the historical definition of the concept and that today there is a conceptual gap in this regard. With tools borrowed from media archeology and theories of technical innovation, the article moves on a theoretical level by discussing this hypothesis and coming to outline a first draft of the framework.

Educating in platform societies: from Digital Citizenship to public values in a connected world

Mario Pireddu — 2022-12-28

Digital Citizenship Education has become an increasingly relevant topic in recent years for governments and institutions around the world. DCE is presented in most cases as a new dimension of citizenship education that focuses on teaching students to live critically and safely in digital environments. The topic is closely related to those of media literacy, information literacy and education through digital technologies. Traditional Media Education tools have been updated over time to respond to far-reaching changes in media ecosystems and networked environments. This this did not result in a drastic overcoming of Media Literacy but rather an incorporation of new concepts that arise from the added dimension of networked interactivity. Ultimately, what emerges as prevalent from the analysis of the main discourses on “digital” societies and the need for “digital” citizenship education is that the overuse of the term “digital” leads to various misunderstandings and holds back the development of more adequate and epistemologically founded conceptual frameworks. With regard to citizenship education, the most important aspects to focus on are not about digitization itself but about public values in a connective world: networked life, the non-separability of offline and online, and the platformization of our societies and lives.

A new digital divide threatening resilience: exploring the need for educational, firm-based, and societal investments in ICT human capital

Antonella Carbonaro — 2022-12-30

The knowledge, skills, and abilities that human capital offers create tangible and intangible assets that equip organizations to thrive. In particular, in today’s Industry 4.0 environment, training, recruiting, and retaining highly qualified ICT-ready professionals remains a problem for many organizations including educational, governmental, healthcare, and business organizations. The COVID-19 pandemic revealed the importance of digital assets to our economies, and it is also demonstrating that there is potentially a new digital divide with even worse implications for companies, economies, and society, which is threatening the resilience of business, governance, and society. In this paper, we respond to the question “how can we develop ICT human capital in our global economy in an equitable, inclusive, and purposeful manner such that not organizations thrive, but also to promote social justice and equity in our global economy?”

Social exclusion and the digital divide

Mercedes López-Aguado — 2022-12-31

The recent advances in information and communication technology have given rise to radical changes in how we interact and communicate in our social, educational, and working environments. However, the potential and opportunities offered by these technologies are not fully available across society due to huge differences in their use and uptake, that is, what has traditionally been called the digital divide. Current research indicates that this divide is intimately connected to economic inequalities and social exclusion. The digital divide manifests primarily for those groups where economic resources are scarcest, and among such groups we find the lowest rates of device ownership and personal internet connection. Secondary to this, and the focus of the majority of literature on the subject, the digital divide further aggravates existing socioeconomic differences and even generates new forms of social exclusion. Taking a positive point of view, this situation does also imply that eliminating the digital divide could help alleviate social exclusion. Nevertheless, for social and educational intervention programmes to have any real effect on social exclusion, we need to have a more in-depth understanding of processes and variables that cause it at an individual level. In this way we could design interventions tailored to the personal interests, needs, limitations, and potential of every individual and that would prioritise particularly disadvantaged groups, which, according to this study include older people, the less well educated, those with health problems, and the unemployed.

Digital marginalization, data marginalization, and algorithmic exclusions: a critical southern decolonial approach to datafication, algorithms, and digital citizenship from the Souths

Chaka Chaka — 2022-12-30

This paper explores digital marginalization, data marginalization, and algorithmic exclusions in the Souths. To this effect, it argues that underrepresented users and communities continue to be marginalized and excluded by digital technologies, by big data, and by algorithms employed by organizations, corporations, institutions, and governments in various data jurisdictions. Situating data colonialism within the Souths, the paper contends that data ableism, data disablism, and data colonialism are at play when data collected, collated, captured, configured, and processed from underrepresented users and communities is utilized by mega entities for their own multiple purposes. It also maintains that data coloniality, as opposed to data colonialism, is impervious to legal and legislative interventions within data jurisdictions. Additionally, it discusses digital citizenship (DC) and its related emerging regimes. Moreover, the paper argues that digital exclusion transcends the simplistic haves versus the have nots dualism as it manifests itself in multiple layers and in multiple dimensions. Furthermore, it characterizes how algorithmic exclusions tend to perpetuate historical human biases despite the pervasive view that algorithms are autonomous, neutral, rational, objective, fair, unbiased, and non-human. Finally, the paper advances a critical southern decolonial (CSD) approach to datafication, algorithms, and digital citizenship by means of which data coloniality, algorithmic coloniality, and the coloniality embodied in DC have to be critiqued, challenged, and dismantled.

Using Rasch model analysis for assessing psychometric properties of digital citizenship in Indonesian students

Wibowo Heru Prasetiyo — 2022-12-31

In the networked society era, more research on students’ digital citizenship levels has been conducted and reported. However, rarely is this topic covered from third-world countries, which have seen significant increases in the numbers of Internet users. Seeking to examine digital citizenship levels in Indonesian students, this study employed the non-experimental quantitative research design with an online questionnaire distributed to a total of 581 students. The data collected were analyzed using Rasch Model measurement and Winsteps 5.1.2 software. Descriptive statistical analysis was utilized to evaluate students’ digital literacy readiness in terms of knowledge and understanding in accessing technology and the Internet, while Differential Item Functioning (DIF) was utilized to identify digital citizenship levels based on demographic profile. The findings showed that students had high levels of readiness in relation to Internet skills, Internet attitudes, computer self-efficacy, and three digital citizenship sub-scales. More in-depth analysis indicated the presence of differences in students’ digital citizenship levels by gender, parents’ education level, and Internet use frequency. It is hoped that this research will expand literature concerning digital citizenship as a reference for future research works and for policymakers, particularly in developing countries.

A model for a conscious digital citizenship

Massimiliano Lo Iacono — 2022-12-30

This article, in the form of an essay, proposes a new model of digital citizenship starting from ethical-social assumptions and bases, an alternative point of view through which the development of digital skills and new technologies is supported by anthropological and cultural paradigms. This becomes the only possible context where to develop a sustainable, shared and egalitarian digital citizenship, epitome of the transformation of today’s society, which is increasingly connected to the world of technological innovations. The synergy of different activities, in fields and contexts not always linked to each other, develop a fertile network on which to enhance the attitude to a positive and critical use of digital tools. The proposed model aims to establish six key points, six focuses: governance, prevention, network and social ethics, education and research, all operating within a conscious sharing of real ethical-social rules, recognized as a primary source by society. The represented sectors of intervention move simultaneously, in a circular, dynamic, centripetal convergence; only the joint effort of all areas of intervention will be able to achieve a real digital citizenship permeated by a conscious and active ethical awareness. The discussion also focuses on training and on the disparities relating to accessibility and use in the technological field, detecting the inequalities still deeply rooted in the territory and identifying Universal Design for Learning as a possible inclusive model.

Understanding languages and building literacies for citizens education

Margherita Di Stasio — 2022-12-31

In the school context, the theme of digital citizenship is equally crucial and cumbersome. Since citizen’s education is the A-aim of the educational system, nowadays school must deal with the new and complex dimension that the concept of citizenship took on in the last decades. Nevertheless, school must face topics such as technology or globalization in observance of the national and international policies but also staying loyal to its cultural and educational role. In our contribution, we assume that analytic philosophy is the cultural ground for an “unblackboxing” approach to languages; we also analyse an exploratory research aimed at ensuring the growth of basic literacy for citizenship and digital citizenship developed in this framework.

Critical digital literacy as a key for (post)digital citizenship: an international review of teacher competence frameworks

Daniel Villar-Onrubia — 2022-12-30

The use of information and communication technologies for education is increasingly recognised as essential in a post-pandemic world. In this regard, the ability to effectively engage with technologies for educational purposes is now part of the basic knowledge, skills and attitudes to be expected from anyone in the teaching profession. Accentuated by the proliferation of technology-mediated situations resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic, but linked to a longer-term trend, dealing with the digital is also now an almost unavoidable aspect of active participation in society and civic engagement. Indeed, the notion of ‘postdigital’ is rapidly gaining traction as a way to highlight that the digital and non-digital cannot be really separated anymore and, due to this fact, (post)digital citizenship is emerging as a core competence for citizens. Still, the way digitally competent educators are expected to support learners in their development as digital citizens is not explored enough. To contribute to closing this gap, this paper reviews 24 teacher competence frameworks from different regions of the world and makes the case for considering educators’ critical digital literacy as a key leverage to building digital (post)citizenship and fostering ethical uses of technology. The analysis reveals that critical digital literacy is mostly missing and, hence, the paper closes with a set of recommendations for policymakers and institutional leaders in the education sector on how to incorporate critical aspects of digital literacy in educators’ professional development activities, so teachers and trainers can operate as a much needed vector to develop (post)digital citizenship across society.

Digital citizenship and invention: the ecosystem inhabiting of education for social transformation

Eliane Schlemmer — 2022-12-31

The emergence of a pandemic world has tensioned the reinvention of many sectors. In the field of Arts, especially dance, professionals were affected by physical distancing, making shows impossible. As a result, the dancers were stimulated to a process of invention, exploring other sensations and ways of communicating art in a network. This article presents and discusses the co-creation process of a Social Technological Startup, from the ESTEAM perspective and connectively constituted in reticular movements, as an inventive process, from which two inventions emerged: projection mapped performance and dressing wearable technology, both co- created, assembling digital technologies in network, members of a social dance project, teachers and student from different field of knowledge and educational levels. From the cartographic method of intervention-research and based on contemporary theories, the results show that both the mapped projection and the wearables have significant potential to hybridize art and education, contributing to create learning situations that enable a greater understanding of spatiality and the body, as well as inventing new ways of experiencing dance, expanding the sensorial and the digital. The concept of wearables emerged from an inventive ecosystem, which was constituted in the field of education in connection with other areas of knowledge, intending to promote social transformation, through digital citizenship. The relevance of the research stands out, as long as it provided a digital thinking that co-engendered education, a social project, wearable technologies and dance, in the conception of a startup, in an ecosystem arrangement that problematizes the way universities also operate.

Online working amid COVID-19 pandemic. The role of emotional intelligence as aggression de-escalator: research reported from Islamic Republic of Pakistan

Sohni Siddiqui — 2022-12-31

During the pandemic and constant lockdown, one of the major differences in day-to-day activities was the transformation of the working and learning environment from the physical to the online realm. The prime objective of the study is to highlight that during pandemic how transferring towards online working helped people to stabilize their emotions, anxieties, aggressions, anger and frustration. The study is designed to find out how online working has negatively connected with the development of aggression and how emotional intelligence has mediated this effect. The survey technique used in the data collection process where validated and reliable questionnaire were used for data collection and hypothesis testing. A sample size of 233 participants from the metropolis city of Karachi participated in an online survey. Results have indicated that engaging people in online working improved mental and emotional stability as well as the suppressed level of direct, indirect and displaced aggression. Moreover, emotional intelligence has acted as a negative influencing mediator towards different forms of aggression, where an expansion in online working, positively impacted emotional intelligence and negatively co-related with direct, indirect and displaced aggression. No gender difference is found in terms of emotional intelligence; a distinctive difference in terms of indirect and direct form of aggression is reported. It is concluded that emotional intelligence is acting as a mediator between online working and direct, indirect and displaced aggression. Engaging people in online working helped to stabilize themselves in terms of emotions and helped them to control their anxieties during isolation.

An Exploration of Stem Students' and Educators' Behavioural Intention to Use Mobile Learning

Admire Chibisa — 2022-12-31

This study sought to find factors that Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) students and educators in a developing country consider important when accepting mobile learning. The study developed a new model by extending the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) using the construct perceived resources. Using stratified random sampling, a total of 160 STEM students and 100 educators were selected to participate in this study. The study employed a quantitative design where partial least squares structural equation modeling was used to examine STEM students' and educators' behavioural intention to use mobile learning. The developed model explained 74.1% of the variance in STEM students' and educators' behavioural intention to use mobile learning. Perceived resources, perceived ease of use, and perceived usefulness variables explained 54.8% of the variance in attitudes of STEM students' and educators' behavioural intention to use mobile learning. Attitude was the strongest indicator of STEM students' and educators' behavioural intention to use m-learning. The results indicated that both educators and students have a positive attitude towards mobile learning, given how important online learning is becoming nowadays. Additionally, there is no statistically significant difference between educators’ and students’ attitudes towards mobile learning. The implication is that developers of mobile learning systems should make their platforms easy to use and have more resources available for both teachers and learners to increase the overall acceptance of mobile learning in STEM subjects.

Digital Storytelling as a tool for reflecting on university students’ future professional competencies

Corrado Petrucco — 2022-12-31

The paper presents the findings of a study of the application of a teaching model (Digital Storytelling for Competencies—DSCM) which used Digital Storytelling to encourage students enrolled in a second-cycle degree program in Social Work to reflect on their future professional competencies. Students analyzed and discussed particularly significant stories (critical incidents) drawn from real-life work situations, which they then made into short digital story videos, casting themselves as actors in a role-play process. Students’ perceptions were analyzed to determine the model’s effectiveness, particularly as regards the extent to which the process of creating the digital story was able to stimulate reflection on the most important competencies required in the students’ future working careers. The findings were highly encouraging, and the model will be tested with students and professionals together in the field.