Theorizing Citizenship in Late Modern ICT Societies

Abstract

In this paper I discuss a definition of citizenship for better understanding and analyses of political participations in ICT societies. To achieve this I approach the topic from a comprehensive understanding of developments in society and technology and how they mutually reinforce each other. Discussions of citizenship are concerned with macro-perspectives, combining empirical studies of how society and political participation is changing, connected to normative visions of the good society and how it should be structured; hence citizenship studies are already transdisciplinary. In the article I propose and understanding of citizenship as the participation and action upon shared meanings on issues of the organization of society. Citizenship is enacted in political communities; ensembles of people addressing the organization of society and making sense of this address in a similar way, and at the same time constructing and renegotiating values and norms out of which the authority of the community streams. And it is in relation to this authority that citizens are made. The paper ends with a proposal of how to categorize online participation and citizenship(s) in ICT societies.