1 Introduction: Understanding Citizenship Education
Digitization poses new challenges for citizenship education and is shaping the educational and participation processes of people of all ages. Nevertheless, this field has so far been treated rather marginally in citizenship education research. The focus of this paper is therefore, first of all, on the fundamental question of the significance of citizenship education in relation to changes in the public sphere and citizenship in the digital age. We then examine changes in the public and private spheres, and describe three categories of digital acts of citizens with reference to Engin Isin and Evelyn Ruppert (2015). On the basis of these theoretical assumptions, we examine the exclusionary phenomenon of hate speech and filter bubbles in social networks. We then propose guidelines that could help to underpin the concept of inclusive digital citizenship education and, in conclusion, identify citizenship competencies that need to be strengthened in this regard.
“The point of reference for citizenship education is not only the existing democratic system, but the citizens’ ability to see through the given order, standards and norms, to reflect, to change, to criticize, and to shape it in ways that they consider adequate. Therefore, citizenship education cannot be affirmative – it inevitably has to be critical.” (Kenner 2020, p. 120)
Citizenship education (Lange und Heldt 2016; Kenner 2020; Georgi 2008; Arthur et al. 2008) describes an integrative process of education to maturity which emanates from the subject and is based on democratic values such as freedom, equality, justice and solidarity. In our understanding, the concept of citizenship education is not derived from the didactics of political institutions, which are primarily a way of imparting political knowledge. Citizenship education is a lifelong process that promotes the ability to make reasoned judgements, but also the ability to act responsibly.
If this discipline is undergoing a process of change, what do the changing conditions in a digitized world mean for citizenship education? In the following, we will pursue this question without claiming to be exhaustive, as research in this field is a desideratum.
2 Changes in the Public and Private Sphere
In 1991, Donna Haraway’s essay Cyborg Manifesto started a discussion on the creature of social reality and fiction in the context of visionary digitization as follows: “The dichotomies between mind and body, animal and human, organism and machine, public and private, nature and culture, men and women, primitive and civilized are all in question ideologically” (Haraway 1991, p. 163)1. Four months later, Tim Berners-Lee published the first post on the World Wide Web, which was freely accessible worldwide. This was the starting point of a radical transformation of the public sphere on a global level. As we can see from the example of how developments in the fields of medicine or microbiology affect the way we perceive ourselves as human beings, the genesis of the Internet has changed the way people communicate and has shaped the structure in which public discourse takes place. The being that is expected to evolve under these circumstances is described by Haraway (1991, p. 149) as a cyborg, “a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction”. Although Haraway’s predictions about the growing importance of the World Wide Web as a network for connecting people and forming collective identities became reality, divisive categories like “class, race and gender” (Haraway 1991, p. 161) that could have been overcome in the age of cyborgs are still potent enough to be used for discrimination in the online and offline worlds.
The term ‘public’ needs to be redefined in the digital age. The media scientist Caja Thimm points out that the digital public presents itself as “an interdependent system of public, partial and counter-public” (Thimm 2016, p. 8, translated by the authors). Against the backdrop of the digitization of society, the definitions of existing terms have changed. In the digital society, the order of generations is no longer determined by age, as it used to be, but by activities in digital space. As a result, the definition of society requires a new focus using the concept of generations. The digitization of society, leading to a categorical change in the public and private spheres, is primarily caused by network communication (Thimm 2016, p. 13). The traditional public sphere, which consisted of journalistic research and selection processes, is being replaced by a network public sphere in which people are not only recipients of information but also its transmitters or even producers (Kenner and Lange 2020a, p. 235). The goods received cannot only be consumed, but also valued and processed—and this too takes place publicly (Thimm 2016, p. 8). The analogue and digital contexts have been inter-related for a long time. For instance, social media form an intermediate level between individual communication and social discourse (Schrape 2015, p. 204 f.). Social and digital media are changing communication behaviour and the relationship between author, medium and content. The sociologist Jan-Felix Schrape argues that communication in social media does not take place exclusively on a micro level between individual subjects or on the macro level on which traditional mass media operate. Although social networks sometimes tend to convey the impression of a protected space for communication among friends, communication here—even taking privacy settings into account—is often in a grey area of private, partially public and public. At the same time, social networks as an intermediate level of communication between individual communication and mass media, as Schrape states, also provide an opportunity for parallel circulating offers of meaning and views of reality. The subject can thus act as a receiver, sender and producer of content within this circuit, which can quickly generate an enormous reach. As this represents a particular challenge for citizenship education, it is important to raise people’s awareness about this intermediate level so that they are able to classify information they receive.
Another central challenge for citizenship education is closing the digital gaps. However, it should be noted that education can be more effective in closing the second and less well-known digital gap. The first digital gap is characterised by unequal access to digital media in the information society. Society is divided into those who use digital media in their everyday life and those who do not. A distinction must also be made as to whether it is a question of self-determined non-use or an externally determined exclusion. The second digital gap describes the divide between those who, for example, understand the structures of digital media, know the mechanisms behind algorithms and are aware of the influence of anonymity on communication behaviour, and those who lack these skills. The second digital gap can therefore create new structures of rule and contribute to the formation of a small discourse-determining information elite (Kenner and Lange 2020a, p. 236–239).
In addition to these digital gaps, two other phenomena pose challenges for citizenship education: ‘Fake News’ and ‘Hate Speech’. These phenomena and their effects on exclusive practices in the digital age are the focus of this chapter. We start by examining the question of how (political) action can be systematically described in the digital sphere.
3 Callings, Closings and Openings in the Digital Sphere
The emancipatory approach to a critical understanding of citizenship is of particular relevance for the digital world. In order to strengthen an understanding of how to deal with hate speech and fake news, the ability to question power and structures of rule is also required. This is not only a relevant skill for the analogue world; it also enables us to recognise different formats of participation and to understand their conditions in digital space. Isin und Ruppert (2015) refer to these digital participation opportunities as digital acts, and divide them into the following three categories: callings, closings and openings.
Isin and Ruppert refer to callings as requests to share opinions, values and data with a growing number of users. This process includes not only acting (participating), but also networking (connecting) and sharing (Isin und Ruppert 2015, p. 79). These interactions mean that people leave digital footprints. Footprints symbolically represent both the leaving of traceable traces (i.e. surveillance and a lack of privacy protection) and the historically effective footprint, the reach and influence that an individual’s work can generate in digital space. This is currently reflected in, for example, the by now large number of accounts of several hundred Fridays for Future groups, and, above all, in the reports of their speakers (Kenner and Lange 2020b, p. 184). Individual political awareness is influenced by how people react to callings and what role the individual digital footprint plays in (social) networks.
People reacting to callings and acting digitally, networking and exchanging online, are confronted with two phenomena which Isin und Ruppert (2015, p. 107) describe as closings and openings. Closings refer to regulations, systemic conditions, such as filters, or algorithms that restrict one’s own actions and the information available. Many users subordinate themselves to these mechanisms mostly unconsciously, mainly because they do not recognise such phenomena. The results of an online study conducted by the Vodafone Foundation underline this correlation. One in three respondents stated that they were not sure whether they could identify fake news (Vodafone Stiftung 2018, p. 25). The lack of competence to expose fake news or to recognise one’s own role in filter bubbles and echo chambers can have a lasting influence on the development of public awareness. The problem here is not primarily the fact of being part of a self-chosen bubble, but instead the lack of actual awareness of being part of this bubble. The danger deriving from this lack of understanding is that the confrontation with other positions will no longer be perceived as fruitful, but rather as disturbing.
In contrast to closings, Isin and Ruppert describe openings as opportunities to think, speak and act differently by defying conventions and developing new ideas (2015, p. 64). They understand openings as opportunities that enable users to articulate their own position publicly, but also to question power and domination circumstances (Isin und Ruppert 2015, p. 87). Thus, openings are described as “moments and spaces when and where thinking, speaking, and acting differently become possible by resisting and resignifying conventions” (Isin und Ruppert 2015, p. 65). Citizens can make use of the possibilities of the digital sphere by actively introducing their own concerns and positions into the public discourse. As special forms of opening, Isin and Ruppert mention hacking, witnessing and commoning (Isin und Ruppert 2015, p. 131 ff.). By witnessing, the authors mean the influence of the subject on existing knowledge. Isin and Ruppert therefore speak of “participatory journalism” (Isin und Ruppert 2015, p. 133). The best-known example of this might be whistle-blowing. The term commoning refers, among other things, to the many forms of free software that are accessible to everyone and can also be developed further by everyone (Isin und Ruppert 2015, p. 148 ff.).
4 Excluding Effects of Hate Speech in the Digital Sphere
The hope that it will be possible to overcome existing communicative and informational hierarchies with the cross-border connections of the digital, globalised world and thus to expand the realm of freedom of speech must, however, be relativized in view of the transfer of existing patterns of discrimination into digital space.
“Words can be like tiny doses of arsenic: they are swallowed unnoticed, appear to have no effect, and then after a little time the toxic reaction sets in after all.” (Klemperer 2006, p. 14)
Studies of victims of intersectional discrimination show that in addition to psychological effects, “hate speech harmed them because it often catalysed violent acts” (Hill Collins 2017, p. 1461).
Counter-measures, ranging from social networks’ attempts to detect and delete hate speech to national governments that try to pursue creators of hate speech, even in the darkest corners of the Internet, are becoming increasingly difficult as the Internet develops into a complex structure with multiple channels, secure spaces and corners in the dark web that are almost impossible to track down. Under these circumstances, there is a growing consensus that citizenship education must find strategies to address the issues of hate speech and online discrimination.
Recent approaches to citizenship education support the idea of active citizenship in the context of social diversity (Gutmann 1995, Lister 2008, Kenner and Lange 2020b), in contrast to conventional concepts that connect citizenship mainly to rights and responsibilities in nation states or communities (Marshall 1950, p. 10). In this sense, educational strategies place the emphasis on universal human rights and the acquisition of oppositional perspectives to support victims of discrimination and stimulate active democratic participation, leading towards a public sphere free of hatred. Multicultural societies require citizenship education that takes into account inclusive and exclusive mechanisms on a structural level and establishes the connection to the actions of individuals within this context. Promoting democracy and human rights is an ambitious goal if border-crossing problems need to be addressed, and the formal status of national citizens is becoming less important by comparison with a concept of supra-national citizenship. Inclusive citizenship education responds to this challenge by expanding the focus: taking into consideration the importance of underprivileged groups in society, promoting democratic processes that are open to claims for civil rights and paying respect to identity-creating processes of self-attribution. To consider the dynamic character of these concepts of citizenship, as described by Isin (2009) in “Citizenship in flux”, is a huge challenge for educational strategies but also provides a framework in which outdated status attributions can be eliminated.
Counter-measures against hate speech and discrimination are, in this sense, not only strategies to be acquired and exercised by individuals. Citizenship education must not only teach specific competencies to deal with these problems in online settings, but should also aim at stimulating critical discussions about new or persisting exclusionary mechanisms of the digital structure in which hate speech and discrimination take place.
Taking a look at the World Wide Web’s promise to move towards public discourses free of conventional forms of discrimination, we should remember that people are digital citizens and citizens of the analogue world at the same time (Isin und Ruppert 2015, p. 9). Taking this into account, along with the associated shift of social discourse and civic action into digital space, digital citizenship education is faced with the challenge of focusing on the inclusion and exclusion mechanisms that shape these processes and are mostly rooted in social cleavages that have existed for generations. These social and political lines of conflict are translated into the digital sphere through the perceptions of individual digital citizens and of corporations or political actors seeking to gain influence or attract attention.
The framework conditions of digital space, together with the individual possibilities of transnational communication and the personification of newly created or multiple personalities, reveal seemingly unlimited possibilities for public discourse. On the other hand, we can observe how digital space, under the influence of political and economic interests or on the basis of new technologies such as algorithms, creates new forms of discrimination, multiple discrimination or intersectional discrimination which exclude people from citizenship processes on the basis of existing or recently created characteristics and categories (McCall 2005; European Commission 2007; Zuiderveen Borgesius 2018).
In addition to physical violence as a result of online discrimination, another problematic effect is the silencing of those who are willing to defend themselves or others against hate speech. Research indicates that users tend to abstain from controversial discussions if they encounter hate speech, either because they perceive it as impossible to argue against it or because they do not want to become victims themselves (Geschke et al. 2019, p. 28).
5 The Power of Algorithms: Fake News and Filter Bubbles
In addition to the problem of hate speech polluting public discourses online, “[t]he lies, half-truths and bluster of fake news that makes its difficult to recognise truth from propaganda seemingly weaken free speech as an antidote to hate speech” (Hill Collins 2017, p. 1463).
In contrast to political propaganda or false reports, which have existed throughout the history of mankind, the term fake news refers primarily to information or news reports with false statements, which are linked to a political or economic goal and are usually published via digital channels (Schulze 2019, p. 2). These reports are usually designed to have a high news value, since the statements usually contradict common opinions on the topic and thus encourage further dissemination. While the creation and publication of fake news is usually deliberate, the further distribution of fake news can also occur unknowingly, provided that the content is actually believed (Prenzel 2019, p. 18).
Given the fact that dissemination of the term fake news was based on accusations made by the US President Donald Trump against professional journalists who reported critically on him, scholars argue against the use of this term. In particular, associations from the field of professional journalism, such as Reporters Without Borders and First Draft News, call for the use of alternative terms such as “disinformation” or, even more generally, suggest speaking of “information disorder” (Wardle und Derakshan 2017, p. 5). In order to arrive at an analytical view of this phenomenon in educational contexts, and to include the perspective of students, as is the aim of this work, it seems appropriate to utilise and discuss the term ‘fake news’ critically.
What makes a critical examination of the term seem particularly necessary is that this phenomenon has hitherto been insufficiently defined and contained. On a spectrum with scientifically or professionally journalistically verified information at one end, a grey area consisting of individual opinions of political and public actors in the middle and cases of deliberately manipulated information in the form of fake news and disinformation at the other end, most news and information units can be roughly classified, but there is no clear dividing line. This can be attributed to attempts to manipulate opinion subliminally to prevent deliberate misinformation being recognised immediately; often, no obviously false statements are made, but misinformation rather relies, for example, on the distortion of statistics or the placing of statements in other contexts.
Major challenges for individuals confronted with information disorder are the framework and conditions of digital space, which are partly detached from democratically constituted institutions; this has allowed large technology companies to create a digital infrastructure that is being used by billions of people without democratic control. This aspect is highly problematic for citizenship education, since the global digital industry influences the formation of the political opinions of users (and thus of citizens) through algorithms (Schweiger 2017). In the digitally inter-connected world, information, posts and opinions are tailored to individual user behaviour by technical means known as algorithms. This usually leads to a confirmation of one’s own reality and a dissociation from other points of view, so that one’s own positions and ideas, and thus prejudices, are strengthened. The algorithm diminishes all those positions that question or criticize (Kenner und Lange 2018, p. 16). Due to the mathematical filtering of information, people on the Internet move within their individual political ‘comfort zone’ in which they only read the comments and blogs that confirm their own view of the world.
Nowadays, personal data is no longer collected only by public authorities and states. Private companies in the digital technology sector are able to collect masses of personal and politically relevant information about their customers, archive the information and make it economically usable. This is how filter bubbles, which suggest a very narrow view, ultimately develop. In contrast, network theory assumes that personal online networks are larger and thus automatically more heterogeneous, so that a person is more often confronted with heterogeneous content through direct and indirect contacts (Schweiger 2017). In some forums, these bubbles and networks fill up with fake news or deliberate false information. They are intended to misinform Internet users and delegitimize political opponents. The term ‘political opponents’ does not refer exclusively to politicians and parties. Sharing fake news has now become established in broad social discourses. In right-wing populist movements, fake news seem to be particularly popular. As Internet companies aim to achieve as many shares and comments as possible and because larger numbers of views lead to increased profit, they rarely take action against this phenomenon.
If positions are no longer confronted with opposing positions, and if the confirmed opinion is more important than reflected criticism, a situation is created which has lasting negative effects on democratic culture (Kenner und Lange 2018). Against the Internet’s tendency to simplify, digital citizenship education needs to defend the individual’s ability to judge and reflect. This is why digital citizenship education always entails a critical reflection of digitization. In addition to the filter bubbles created by corporate algorithms, individuals create their own bubbles. In the latter case, they are called echo chambers (Hegelich und Shahrezaye 2017). Echo chambers have also existed in the world of analogue communication.
What characterises digital citizenship education and how can it build on the findings of research on citizenship education?
6 The Importance of Inclusive Digital Citizenship Education
Mature citizens should learn to perceive the digital world as a political space. This requires an awareness of the political and economic interests that underlie the structures and algorithms of the World Wide Web. To move within the constructs of filter bubbles, echo chambers and fake news, and to identify and unmask them, is something that needs to be learned (Kenner und Lange 2018, p. 16). Only those who are able and enabled to question their own role within the digital world will be able to shape it. An awareness of the need for political self-determination and resistance to new claims to power within these digital realities is an essential aspect and indicator of a successful citizenship education (Kenner und Lange 2018, p. 16). The goal of an inclusive digital citizenship education must, therefore, be to transfer the principles of citizenship education to the challenges of the present. Citizens must be enabled and empowered to develop and carry out self-determined and critical judgements and actions in the political digital world. In citizen awareness (in German, Bürgerbewusstsein, Lange 2008), people gain an understanding of the political dimension and the social structure of digital space. The formation of meaning in citizens’ awareness enables people to consciously understand the world, to give meaning to what they have experienced and to take a stand (Weber 1985 [1922], p. 180 f.).
The technological and social developments described above are characterised by new opportunities for social interaction and political participation, but excluding and discriminating structures persist. Algorithms that shape the digital infrastructure should not be misunderstood as neutral technological standards, since they generate their power from existing information that they are fed. They serve a purpose for the companies that work with them and have an effect on the people who are confronted with them. Algorithms can lead immature users of digital media and digital networks into filter bubbles, and thus pose a threat to the critical judgement skills required to deal with social media. In this way, they form an important aspect of the digitized world that citizens should be aware of when using digital media.
The potential of an inclusive digital citizenship education includes the examination of power structures and relations and an awareness of how these are shifting due to digital transformation. Nowadays, people need to be able to recognise how power relations are represented in the digital world—whether through the shift of economic structures or political activities (Kenner and Lange 2020a). Inclusive digital citizenship education should aim to place the issue of power in the context of knowledge hierarchies, excluding mechanisms and access to information.
Gaining an understanding about these complex and dynamic structures requires competence in the field of citizenship education and digital skills. With regard to the discussion about competence models (GPJE 2004, Behrmann et al. 2004, Detjen 2012) in the field of German citizenship education, central elements can be identified that remain relevant in this context, such as orientation and judgement skills. To achieve maturity as an inherent goal of competence-based education, the digitized structure of information processes and communication channels also requires a set of digital skills that will help people to avoid the above-mentioned obstacles of digital gaps. Models like the Digital Competence Framework for Citizens (European Commission 2017) present overviews of crucial aspects of digital competence that need to be combined with political competency to bring inclusive digital citizenship education into effect.
One example: in classical media–didactic concepts, it is, above all, essential to ask about the author of a text and his or her motives and interests. This approach is no longer sufficient for media criticism in the digital age. We need to apply this critical view to a text on the Internet and ask why it was proposed to us. It is not only the intentions of the author that need to be questioned, but also the motives of those who are responsible for the algorithms in use (Kenner und Lange 2019, p. 52 f.). To exercise these analytical steps, it is necessary to possess both a critical perspective on information retrieved by online sources and the technical skills to find relevant information as a basis for a critical evaluation.
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Technical skills as a prerequisite for the reflective use of digital media.
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Extend and explore subjective imaginary worlds (citizen awareness), via and beyond the digital space.
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Digital orientation competencies that enable people to move in the new political spheres.
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The ability to adopt opposing perspectives, to anticipate the context of statements and to actively take part in public discourses online, even if forms of hate speech occur. To overcome the effect of silencing of victims or bystanders, it is necessary to draw red lines between expressions that should be tolerated in the interests of free speech and those which include forms of discrimination and should be actively opposed.
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Digital evaluation skills that enable people to critically reflect on the new constellations of power and authority connected to information processing and excluding mechanisms.
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Digital participation skills in order to articulate and represent one’s own interests on the Internet.
Based on this understanding of inclusive digital citizenship education, digitization can be discussed as a challenge, but also as an opportunity for citizenship education. We will conclude by suggesting some of the opportunities that arise.
7 Conclusion
On the one hand, it can be observed that Haraway’s vision of cyborgs constructing new forms of identity in the digital sphere has come true. Users of the Internet act as digital citizens, communicating across borders, sharing information and using innovative strategies of political participation. On the other hand, social cleavages and forms of multiple discrimination rooted in the analogue world remain powerful and affect public discourses online. The Internet has grown into a complex, heterogeneous system beyond the conventional borders between the private and public spheres, culminating in a transformation of societies and political systems.
Digital transformation can have a positive impact on the processes of democratisation of our time. However, this requires an inclusive digital citizenship education that teaches people technical skills, enables them to deal competently with digital media and allows them to develop a critically reflected awareness of including and excluding mechanisms in a digitized society. Citizenship education is necessary for this process to be developed. Analytical skills that adapt to the new conditions are needed. Citizenship education needs to enable people to recognise underlying technical conditions, to question them and to develop a digital understanding of themselves and the world (Kenner and Lange 2019, 2020b). “The increase in the possibilities of communication and interaction through digital media also means increased demands on the responsibility of the users.” (Kneuer 2017, p. 51, translated by the authors).
Digital media offer the opportunity to create diverse learning environments that establish an interactive and multi-perspective exchange about political and social problems. These opportunities must be used didactically. The advancing digitization of knowledge and the increased integration of such knowledge into everyday school life must, however, always be critically reflected upon. For citizenship education, digitization establishes new forms of learning, and digitization itself becomes an object of learning (Kenner and Lange 2018, p. 17). Inclusive digital citizenship education is, therefore, always ambivalent: it seeks possibilities, potentials and opportunities for political articulation in the digital world. However, at the same time, it reflects on the dangers and threats that digitization poses for democracy.