ABSTRACT

There are various understandings of citizenship stemming from different historical and political contexts and ideologies. With the depoliticisation of society (Habermas, 1972), citizenship has become increasingly apolitical and technicist, with some speaking of the “marketization of citizenship” (Somers, 2008). In the media and web spheres, marketisation and commercialisation have resulted in a gap between the digital citizen, including the young, the educated, the political and the economic elite who have acquired social and cultural “digital capital” on the one hand, and large populations of the excluded “non-digitals” on the other.