How do the roles and responsibilities of being a global digital citizen affect our decisions locally, nationally, and internationally?
Digital citizenship has the paradoxical effect of allowing people to show their true selves to the world at the same time it provides many incentives for people to lie. Truthfully, as a digital citizen, you should always be acting like a diplomat. Rightly or wrongly, the internet forces us to represent our communities.
On a local level, think of every crazy “Florida man” story you’ve heard. At this point, it is such a trope that “Florida-man-level” is easily understood to mean “stupidly weird.” Online we are all Florida men. If you are online or on camera you need to assume you will be representing your neighborhood, probably in a negative light. Context is for suckers. Provocative soundbites chopped and screwed into a slick propaganda video on YouTube generate views. Responsible digital citizenship in 2022 involves the knowledge that anything you say may be intentionally misrepresented.
This goes nationally as well, especially for hot-button political and moral issues. Media outlets on either side of the issue will post “Twitter reacts to XYZ” articles highlighting absurd takes from the opposition. But, many more reasonable people hold the same opinion and are not spouting off nonsense online. Anyone who puts something online about abortion, gun rights, income inequality, or anything that is remotely controversial needs to be aware their words live forever. These words can be used by bad-faith actors to make an entire organization or belief system look dumb, not just the speaker. As a result, don’t say anything too wild or inflammatory online if you are concerned about the image of your movement.
These same issues exist on an international scale. Look at how China reacted to Daryl Morey’s tweets during the Hong Kong protests and how the NBA was forced to apologize. China was able to punish the organization for the words of an individual because those words were online. If Morey did not know there would be possible repercussions for his words, he did not understand the fundamental difficulties of digital citizenship.
Global digital citizenship in 2022 is a bit of a paradox. Because digital citizenship is available to any person or any organization, a responsible digital citizen is aware that such inclusiveness allows bad actors as well as good actors. No Constitution is underpinning the digital world. There are no courts holding governments accountable for targeting individuals based on social media posts. We can’t even be sure our digital spaces have any reason to exist other than making a profit or as a billionaire’s vanity project. All this results in the uncomfortable truth that the most responsible thing a digital citizen can do is to stay quiet and self-censor when appropriate. If they don’t, they may find themselves the poster child for an online, or even real-life, witch hunt.
The Keasy Depot 