Digital Citizenship and the Relationship between Publicity, Democracy and Citizenship

This report explains the relationship between digital citizenship, publicity, democracy and citizenship. It also discusses the benefits and challenges of transitioning to digital archives in social institutions.

DIGITAL CITIZENSHIP

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Contents
INTRODUCTION.................................................................................................................................2
Relationship between publicity, democracy and citizenship..............................................................3
The ideals of citizenship, democracy and Publicity...........................................................................4
Transition to digital archives.............................................................................................................5
CONCLUSION.....................................................................................................................................7
REFERENCES......................................................................................................................................7

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INTRODUCTION
The world is getting connected to many kinds of digital and this is making the people
living in it has become digital citizens (Hong, Hwang, Hsu, Wong & Chen, 2011). Digital
citizen is understood to be as the person that utilises information and technology so as to
engage in society, government, politics and many other things. The use of digital mediums
has very popular in the day to day activities of an individual. Some also terms digital citizens
as the ones who are regularly connected with the internet mediums and take effective use of it
for doing various tasks. But this term is more used for the persons who uses blogs, social
networking sites and takes part in online journalism. A person becomes the digital citizen on
the day he starts take using of online mails, posts pictures online, buys online products or
participates in any kind of electronic functions. The governments all around the world have
started to take use of the digital mediums for their operations. This brings transparency in the
system and hence helps in providing a better democratic environment. This report explains
citizenship, transparency and democracy as well as the relationship between them. It also
explains the ways in which digital means provides opportunities for social firms to become
more interactive with the social institutions.
Publicity and transparency
Publicity refers to as the openness in the life that tells about the something more clearly.
Publicity is the state of something where everything is shown without keeping anything
secret. In democratic environment publicity is a state where most of the people becomes
accountable to the society for whatever he or she is doing. Transparency is another form of
publicity and is generally attributed to any social institutions. In the state of being transparent
a social active grow up has to showcase each and every details of theirs so that everyone
remains aware of the things that are going on (Barr, 2017). In the modern day world people

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are demanding to more transparent social institutions so that they can be accountable in front
of the masses.
Democracy
Over the years a several definitions of democracy has been given. It is a form of government
that is highly accountable to the general public (Christiano, 2018). A definition given by
Abraham Lincoln states it t be a government that is “It is to the people, for the people and by
the people”. Some other definitions of democracy states that it is a form of government that is
more participatory. It allows the people from different domains to join the government. It is
the form of social institution where every suggestion of the people is heard and hence acted
upon in a more social way. The social institutions that are democratic must entertain every
kind of idea (Fallis, 2011). People have rights to do things what they want unless they are not
destroying the rights of others. A democratic form of government is more genuine and does
not supress any idea because they are in minority. The forms of government can be different
under the democracy. This is sometimes also understood to be as the form of government
where people enjoys power either directly or through their representatives. In this system
social institutes is not controlled by any single force rather a more collaborative decisions are
made as everyone has the same rights. Democracy has a more struggling nature where the
forces in social institutes have to repeatedly struggle for the realisation of their interests. They
become the devolution of power from the group of people to a set of rules.
Citizenship
It is the status of the person recognised under the laws and customs as being a legal member
of the state that is sovereign or say belong to any particular nation. It can be possible that a
person can be a multiple citizen of different states at the same time. It just depends on the
criteria they must fulfil so as to become the citizen of any particular person (Christensen &
Cheney, 2014). Many a time citizenship is understood to be as the synonym for nationality
but it is not correct and they both have a different meaning. There can be many ways in
which one can become citizen of a nation like citizen by birth or citizen by marriage etc. The
history of providing citizenship lies way back in the times of Ancient Greece where you were
considered as the legal person to live inside the nation.

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Relationship between publicity, democracy and citizenship
There is a very close relationship between democracy, citizenship and publicity. In
democracy one of the most important aspects is to be accountable to the citizens under the
state. It is necessary within the democracy that a person living in it must have a legal right to
stay inside the nation if he qualifies all the rules and regulations related with it. Being a
citizen under the democracy gives a very enormous amount of rights to the people which they
can utilise for living (Beer & Burrows, 2013). In democracy the people have to make sure
that they have a right to access the things that are going on inside the nation. The more the
democratic form of government the more is the chance that there will be transparency. There
is false interpretation of that democracy can work with being transparent. Democracy and
publicity are part and parcel of each other. This makes the social institutions more
accountable as well more significant. The other form of government promotes secrecy over
the transparency. Being a transparent social institution allows people to access the things that
are done by the government for its citizens. In democracy the right to live is equal for every
citizen and hence provides them valid citizenship. It is to be understood that if the people that
are coming under citizenship have powers to participate in the decision making of the whole
institute. In a broader sense a democratic citizen have the rights to access all the information
regarding working, policy making of the social institutes so they can fight for their interests.
The ideals of citizenship, democracy and Publicity
It is to be understood that the ideals of all the three helps in the foundation of archives
and museums. It a broader context it is understood that whenever any social institution comes
up they must be highly democratic especially when they are archives and museums
(Nicholson, 2013). Some of the major ideals like the accountability and clarity in whatever
being done is the most important thing while development of any social institutions. In the
social context the archives and museums are not just the pace where the data is collected
rather it is a place where there is representation the cultural and historical background of any
state. It is crucial that a museum and archives are accountable to the people and shows
whatever they are doing. They are the first places where any details regarding the various
things can be found and a probable answer can be taken out (Bearman & Lytle, 1985).
On the other hand the ideals of democracy act as a starting place for archives as they make
these places more open to all and everyone has the rights to access the information that are
present in there. These places must give equal right to everyone so that everyone must have
the equal access to knowledge (Povinelli, 2011). Apart from this the ideals of citizenship

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suggests that archives and museums must be open to all the citizens irrespective of who they
are. It is to be understood that people can visit to these archives or museums for
understanding what their rights are. The things present provide knowledge to the citizens of
the country regarding the resources of the country on which they have access to
(Kirschenbaum, 2013).
The social institutes must record all the data at these places so that people can come and
access to the information. This will help them in justifying the ideals of citizenship,
democracy and transparency. If the government is not putting the data on the social
institutions like archives and museums then they are somehow restricting the people to
understand their rights which are not correct in the sense of all the three (David Bearman,
Pittsburgh Archives & Museum Informatics, 1994).
Transition to digital archives
In the modern times it was seen that most of the social institutes are getting digitalise. These
digital archives are very helpful as to upload and accessing of the data from these platforms
can be easier. This can also be justified by the fact that most of the people are today getting
connected to the digital archives through the use of digital devices (Hong, Hwang, Hsu,
Wong & Chen, 2011). Number of people who are connected with such digital mediums are
increasing at much faster rate hence people can easily gain knowledge about the required
data. The younger generation people do not have time to go for the places like the traditional
archives or museums for accessing the data. This kind of transition was going on in all over
the world (Purdy, 2011). This has two kinds of benefit; first that it helps in storing the large
amount of data at a very small place and second is that it helps in making data easily
available for accessing and taking use of. This is highly beneficial for the museums and
archives to get transformed into digital mediums so that they can reach to the larger number
of people (Rothenberg, 1995). This will help them in storing a very high quantity of
information in a space that takes negligible as compared to the traditional modes of
information. It will also smoothen the process of data collection as well as retrieval since
uploading and removal of data on these mediums can be easier. Use of digital mediums in
such kind of social institution helps in broadening the democracy (Library and archives
Canada, 2012). There are two reasons for it. The first is that it helps in speeding up the
process of data entry and second is that it can be simultaneously accessed by number of
people which cannot be possible in the traditional archives (David Bearman, Pittsburgh
Archives & Museum Informatics, 1994).

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Collective management is another aspect of maintain the place so that it is becomes easier to
store the data as well as it can updated on regular basis. It is the role of the people associated
with such institutions to make sure that they update it on regular basis. Collective
management gives more opportunities to such institution to reduce the efforts of the people
who are working there as well as that of audience (Bearman, 2007).
Collective management and transforming to digital archives helps in facing the challenges
that are faced by such social institution. The first and foremost challenges that it helps to
tackle is related to the cost cuts since the use of digital technology is cheaper. This will also
benefit audience as they are can take use of the services at cheaper rates. Another problem
that it solves is about the accessibility. Most of these archives and museums are present in the
city areas and hence the people from the villages cannot access to these data in a better
manner. Since the connectivity of the digital mediums has reached in foremost places also
and hence the people living at these places can easily get access to such type of data. This is
more in the interest of democracy as the people from the lower class of the society and from
the upper class of the society can easily get access to all the data at the same time. This will
also help in the educational mechanism of the country as everybody will have access to these
data.
It is also said many a time that digitalisation deepens the roots of democracy. This is
somehow true as the use of digital mediums allows the people to get access to the data that
are even fresh. Collective management helps in making this transformation very fast and
appropriate (Yang, Chen & Yen, 2011). It is to be made sure that which data has to be
provided to the people and which is not to be provided. This is due to the reason that
transforming to the digital archives has a bigger problem i.e. of security. There are large
numbers of system hackers that are present in various parts of the world. These hackers are in
search of stealing the data which can be dangerous for such social institutes. This is due to the
fact that such social institutes have information related to so many people and any leakage to
these data can be an ethical concern. Another part of this is that some hackers are not
interested in stealing of the data rather they are more interested in corrupting the data. This
kind of security breach can be loss to so many important data (Oliver, Chawner & Liu, 2011).
It is also not in the interest of people as the data can be tampered and false and hence
becomes of no use. The biggest threat attached with it is that this can be done in one go i.e.
storing of data can take large amount of time while destroying it can take a very little amount

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of time. With the use of internet mediums this problem becomes very wide as the loop hole in
the whole internet system is larger in numbers.
Another challenge that it produces in front of the stakeholder is that the technology is
changing at very faster speed and hence they need to make sure that they have sufficient
resources to upgrade their systems and networks. If the technology is not upgraded when
required then there will chances of failure of the whole system (Xuefang, 2013). There will
be requirement of training to the employee so that they can get familiar with the new
technologies for updating the data. This will help them in making sure that the transformation
does not lead to job cuts which may violate the ethical concerns of the company.
Along with this there is another challenge that comes to this is that people that there will be
problem in storage of such a large amount of data. If the hardware and software associated
with it gets corrupted then there is always a chance that there will be loss of some important
data. This can be dangerous for the audience as well as the others associated members. For
making the data safe a more formal structure needs to be designed.
CONCLUSION
From the above report it can be concluded that today most of the people have started to use
digital mediums for their daily operations. Such kind of people within a state is considered as
digital citizens. Democracy is a form of structure where the people comes in the power either
directly or by sending their representatives. Citizenship is the legal right that is given to any
people to live in a state. Transparency is the concept that helps in making the social
institutions more accountable. All the three is having a direct relationship with each other.
The ideals of these three acts as a starting point for the social institutions like the archives and
museums. It is the need of the time that they convert it in digital archives so that more people
can get access to these resources. Along with this opportunity there is a challenge associated
with it. This challenge is of being more secured in terms of data protection so that there is no
data loss.
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