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Digital civics refers to a range of ethical and responsible civic behaviours, citizenship, or democratic engagement in the digital realm. [1] The term itself is still establishing currency. [2]
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Digital civics refers to a range of ethical and responsible civic behaviours, citizenship, or democratic engagement in the digital realm. [1] The term itself is still establishing currency. [2]
Digital civics has arisen from concerns regarding the challenges faced by individuals and society in the digital age. As science and technology have advanced, so too, has human understanding of their place in the world. This has altered the way people interact with one another and the broader context in which they exist. Digital civics respond to these challenges by formulating a robust foundation upon which initiatives into digital citizenship and digital citizen engagement can be developed. [2]
Researcher Estelle Clements defines digital civics as "the study of the rights and responsibilities of citizens who inhabit the info-sphere and access the world digitally." [3] [4] Clements, who was a doctoral researcher at the Dublin Institute of Technology, first put forward this definition in 2010 as part of an educational project done in conjunction with the Dublin City Public Libraries and Archive. The goal of their project was to teach about life in the online world.
According to Clements this definition meets three objectives: [5]
Other conceptions of digital civics are still emerging. Newcastle University has suggested that Digital Civics is about "Digital technologies and citizen-driven design." [6]
Numerous scholars have suggested that the Philosophy of Information is the most logical course to underpin policy and project work for life in the digital age. [7] [8] The Information Philosopher Luciano Floridi has played a critical role in the success of such work, particularly in exploration of Information Society, European Policy, and the European Commission's Onlife initiative. [9]
Clements identifies four underlying pillars that contribute to a robust digital civics [2] [3] [5] [10] as well as five key concepts in which digital civics is grounded.
Source: [2]
In considering the ethical issues that arise from digital age civic issues, numerous scholars have suggested that such ethical initiatives should use virtue ethics as a basis for a shared global information ethics: namely, Charles Ess, [13] [12] Shannon Vallor, [14] and Richard Volkman [15] (2010). In her doctoral work on digital civics pedagogy, Clements suggests that her findings were compatible with a framework of virtue ethics. [3] However, the information philosopher Luciano Floridi asserts that a global information ethics cannot be built upon virtue ethics, because virtue ethics is "intrinsically egopoeitic," [16] and thus does not take into account responsibilities owed to the surrounding community or environment. [17] To date, this matter is still contested.
In 2010, the first pedagogical program for digital civics was started by the Oscar Wilde Facebook Laboratory. It was a collaboration between the Dublin City Public Libraries and Archive and the Dublin Institute of Technology's Estelle Clements. A global team of researchers and educators created a multi-platform (online and offline) learning environment to teach students and the public about digital civics. The project formed the basis of Clements' doctoral work, which formulated a Model for Digital Civics in pedagogy. At the time, Clements was particularly concerned that new digital citizenship initiatives were not considering the necessary underlying philosophical and ethical issues raised by the digital age and sought to provide a robust foundation to solve this problem. [3]
In 2014, Newcastle University, launched a program to teach digital civics to postgraduate students at their Open Lab. The program research concentrates on "exploring how digital technologies can empower citizens and communities" [18] and "trains doctoral students in the design, deployment and evaluation of community-driven digital technologies and services." [19]
In 2018, The MacArthur Research Network on Youth and Participatory Politics (YPP) released a digital civics toolkit described as: "a collection of resources for educators to support youth to explore, recognize, and take seriously the civic potentials of digital life." [20] The toolkit draws heavily from digital media literacy, focusing on five modules: Exploring Community Issues, Investigation, Dialogue, Voice, and Action". [20]
The ethics of technology is a sub-field of ethics addressing ethical questions specific to the technology age, the transitional shift in society wherein personal computers and subsequent devices provide for the quick and easy transfer of information. Technology ethics is the application of ethical thinking to growing concerns as new technologies continue to rise in prominence.
The Oxford Internet Institute (OII) serves as a hub for interdisciplinary research, combining social and computer science to explore information, communication, and technology. It is an integral part of the University of Oxford's Social Sciences Division in England.
Computer ethics is a part of practical philosophy concerned with how computing professionals should make decisions regarding professional and social conduct.
Information ethics has been defined as "the branch of ethics that focuses on the relationship between the creation, organization, dissemination, and use of information, and the ethical standards and moral codes governing human conduct in society". It examines the morality that comes from information as a resource, a product, or as a target. It provides a critical framework for considering moral issues concerning informational privacy, moral agency, new environmental issues, problems arising from the life-cycle of information. It is very vital to understand that librarians, archivists, information professionals among others, really understand the importance of knowing how to disseminate proper information as well as being responsible with their actions when addressing information.
Luciano Floridi is an Italian and British philosopher. He is the director of the Digital Ethics Center at Yale University. He is also a Professor of Sociology of Culture and Communication at the University of Bologna, Department of Legal Studies, where he is the director of the Centre for Digital Ethics. Furthermore, he is adjunct professor at the Department of Economics, American University, Washington D.C. He is married to the neuroscientist Anna Christina Nobre.
The philosophy of information (PI) is a branch of philosophy that studies topics relevant to information processing, representational system and consciousness, cognitive science, computer science, information science and information technology.
The International Association for Computing and Philosophy (IACAP) is a professional, philosophical association emerging from a history of conferences that began in 1986. Adopting its mission from these conferences, the IACAP exists in order to promote scholarly dialogue on all aspects of the computational/informational turn and the use of computers in the service of philosophy.
The ethics of artificial intelligence covers a broad range of topics within the field that are considered to have particular ethical stakes. This includes algorithmic biases, fairness, automated decision-making, accountability, privacy, and regulation. It also covers various emerging or potential future challenges such as machine ethics, lethal autonomous weapon systems, arms race dynamics, AI safety and alignment, technological unemployment, AI-enabled misinformation, how to treat certain AI systems if they have a moral status, artificial superintelligence and existential risks.
The philosophy of computer science is concerned with the philosophical questions that arise within the study of computer science. There is still no common understanding of the content, aims, focus, or topics of the philosophy of computer science, despite some attempts to develop a philosophy of computer science like the philosophy of physics or the philosophy of mathematics. Due to the abstract nature of computer programs and the technological ambitions of computer science, many of the conceptual questions of the philosophy of computer science are also comparable to the philosophy of science, philosophy of mathematics, and the philosophy of technology.
John Weckert is an Australian philosopher who has been an influential figure in, and substantial contributor to the field of information and computer ethics. He has published many books and journal articles outlining his research in this field.
Atomium – European Institute for Science, Media and Democracy (EISMD) is an international non-profit organisation based in Brussels. The Institute convenes European universities, media, global businesses, governments and policymakers to develop innovative initiatives and frontier thinking based on scientific evidence to provide evidence-based analysis and advice in governmental and decision-making processes.
Michelangelo Baracchi Bonvicini has been president of Atomium - European Institute for Science, Media and Democracy, since its launch with the former French President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing on the 27th November 2009 at the European Parliament. He is currently President of AI4People Institute.
Value sensitive design (VSD) is a theoretically grounded approach to the design of technology that accounts for human values in a principled and comprehensive manner. VSD originated within the field of information systems design and human-computer interaction to address design issues within the fields by emphasizing the ethical values of direct and indirect stakeholders. It was developed by Batya Friedman and Peter Kahn at the University of Washington starting in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Later, in 2019, Batya Friedman and David Hendry wrote a book on this topic called "Value Sensitive Design: Shaping Technology with Moral Imagination". Value Sensitive Design takes human values into account in a well-defined matter throughout the whole process. Designs are developed using an investigation consisting of three phases: conceptual, empirical and technological. These investigations are intended to be iterative, allowing the designer to modify the design continuously.
Simon Rogerson is lifetime Professor Emeritus in Computer Ethics at the Centre for Computing and Social Responsibility (CCSR), De Montfort University. He was the founder and editor for 19 volumes of the Journal of Information, Communication and Ethics in Society. He has had two careers; first as a technical software developer and then in academia as reformer. He was the founding Director of CCSR, launching it in 1995 at the first ETHICOMP conference which he conceived and co-directed until 2013. He became Europe's first Professor in Computer Ethics in 1998. His most important research focuses on providing rigorously grounded practical tools and guidance to computing practitioners. For his leadership and research achievements in the computer and information ethics interdisciplinary field he was awarded the fifth IFIP-WG9.2 Namur Award in 2000 and the SIGCAS Making a Difference Award in 2005. He is author of the World's first Ethical Digital Technology trilogy comprising The Evolving Landscape of Ethical Digital Technology (2021), Ethical Digital Technology in Practice (2022) and Imagine! Ethical Digital Technology for Everyone (2023).(link to Taylor Francis)
Shannon Vallor is an American philosopher of technology. She is the Baillie Gifford Chair in the Ethics of Data and Artificial Intelligence at the Edinburgh Futures Institute. She previously taught at Santa Clara University in Santa Clara, California where she was the Regis and Dianne McKenna Professor of Philosophy and William J. Rewak, S.J. Professor at SCU.
Mariarosaria Taddeo is an Italian philosopher working on the ethics of digital technologies. She is Professor of Digital Ethics and Defence Technologies at the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford and Dslt Ethics Fellow at the Alan Turing Institute, London.
Eftychia ("Effy") Vayena is a Greek and Swiss bioethicist. Since 2017 she has held the position of chair of bioethics at the Swiss Institute of Technology in Zurich, ETH Zurich. She is an elected member of the Swiss Academy of Medical Sciences.
Bluewashing is a term used to describe deceptive marketing that overstates a company's commitment to responsible social practices. It can be used interchangeably with the term greenwashing but has a greater focus on economic and community factors. Alternatively, it could be phrased in a way that companies hide the social damage that their policies have caused.
Onlife is a neologism coined by philosopher Luciano Floridi in 2012. The concept is a portmanteau of online and life referring to "the new experience of a hyperconnected reality within which it is no longer sensible to ask whether one may be online or offline". The term has taken inspiration from Hannah Arendt's The Human Condition (1958) "to better understand and articulate the interactions of [Information and communications technology] with notions of public space in particular and our contemporary lifeworld more generally". The term gained significant recognition with the publication of the 2015 Onlife Manifesto, edited by Floridi himself. The manifesto brought together academics from across Europe to discuss the social effects, policy-making, ethical implications, and legal advancements related to hyperconnectivity in Europe and beyond.
Nicolas Gertler is a Nicaraguan-American student, AI ethicist, and entrepreneur at Yale University. He is known for his work in the development and deployment of responsible artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, particularly in education and research. Gertler is the Co-Founder and CEO of Mylon, an AI-powered platform aimed at democratizing access to philosophical and ethical knowledge. Gertler collaborated with Luciano Floridi, one of the world's most cited philosophers, to build the Luciano Floridi Bot, the first-ever publicly released AI assistant trained on an academic's corpus of knowledge.