Digital Citizenship in the 21st Century

This monograph features the work of six researchers from the Fielding Media Psychology program who have helped illuminate the world of digital citizenship and social change. Each has approached research from a very different perspective. The monograph begins with a consideration of how large group narrative is unconsciously constructed using social media. Dr. Mike Neal considered how narrative forms emerged from a large-scale Twitter feed, in order to see how a real life event, in this case a Republican convention, was repurposed into narrative expression using one channel of our second world, in this case Twitter. Dr. Jenny Fremlin considers the sense of community that participants feel across multiple communities spanning real life and immersive reality. Her study of World of WarCraft users asked participants to explore, compare, and contrast their sense of community in their local neighborhood, an online community, their online gaming team, and a community of choice. Dr. Yashica Holmes-Smith examines teens’ perceptions of living media saturated lifestyles. From her work we gain an in-depth consideration of the world of teenagers who are growing up fully acclimated to living two places at once. Dr. Christoph Morin, a leader in consumer neuroscience, considers the specific impacts of one kind of media message, the PSA, on the lives of young people. In particular he was interested in how brain-based persuasion models might explain the success or demise of many public health campaigns. Dr. Deirdre Bradley addresses aspects of the gender digital divide and empowerment of women through mobile technology, particularly in underserved populations. Dr. Jon Cabiria’s research addresses the interplay of our two worlds in terms of personal identity. His research sought to understand the experiences of selected lesbian and gay participants in their online social activities, and to discover whether positive benefits experienced online were transferrable to real-world lives. Taken together, the content of this volume provide a broad base of research about our lives as digital citizens, and the social change that has developed because of the two places we now live. Readers are invited to read this work and then ponder the question that all of us are asking these days, in one form or Just what does it mean to be a digital citizen?