This paper maps and unpacks the discursive construction of digital citizenship within the institution of public libraries in Sweden, situating it within the broader context of the nation’s digital government. By adopting a discursive approach, the paper responds to the scholarly call for nuanced theoretical insights into the evolving digital citizenship field and reflects upon how an analysis on digital citizenship can further our understanding of digital government. Data sources are the Swedish National Digitalization Strategy, the Swedish Library Act, and library staff interviews.

Findings show active citizenship as a central idea in the discourse, placing high demands on individuals. In contrast to previous research, this study also finds ideas of a more inclusive citizenship. Finally, the findings show conflicts and ongoing negotiation of what digital citizenship, and thus digital citizens, ought to be, and point towards a need of deepening and questioning our understanding of digital government as inclusive.  

The governments of the Western Balkan (WB) countries, like all other European governments, arerequired to adapt to the challenges that have emerged in the digital era. Digital citizenship, as rightsand responsibilities, has become integral to a democratic state in this era, necessitating policies andinstitutional designs focused on inclusive digital welfare.

The following paper examines the role of digital inclusion in the WB, utilizing the framework of researcher Jan van Dijk1 for understanding digital inclusion, to assess its influence on digital citizenship. Using the EU’s Digital Society and Economy Index, the Balkan Barometer, and a professional training program, the analysis reveals a discrepancy between high internet access and low digitalinclusion, particularly in digital competence and public digital service usage. Notable variationsamong the WB countries are also explored, alongside EU and regional collaboration. The paperhighlights policy measures for improving digital inclusion, thereby fostering inclusive digital citizenship in the WB. Key policy recommendations include conducting national and regional surveys,establishing citizen centers to support digital inclusion, and designing inclusive, user-friendly public digital services.

Den här rapporten är ett av resultaten i ett forskningsprojekt om smarta städer och smart teknik i utsatta bostadsområden. Den presenterar resultat från en forskningsöversikt inom projektet Hur smarta är egentligen smarta städer, byggnader och boenden? Vad kan vi lära oss av forskning och kunskap på fältet, samt vad fattas? (Formas bidrag: 2022-00015). Vi tackar Forskningsrådet Formas för möjligheten att genomföra denna studie.

Smart cities aim to create more livable, sustainable, and inclusive urban environments by leveraging the potential of technology and data. But whose future is smart? This is the overall question addressed in this paper when we conduct a systematic literature review on smart city research focusing on disadvantaged neighborhoods in Western welfare states. Disadvantaged neighborhoods are characterized by lower socio-economic status and social exclusion among its residents and a higher share of migrants and/or people of color. We search for how disadvantaged neighborhoods are included inb smart city research. This literature review prologues with a scoping review to find central key words and definitions which are later used as search words for a systematic review in Scopus and Web of Science. The identified publications are afterwards analyzed focusing on how smart city applications in disadvantaged neighborhoods are presented and analyzed. This review shows an astonishing lack of research and knowledge on smart city applications in disadvantaged neighborhoods. Furthermore, a lack of inclusion of disadvantaged neighborhoods in the imagination and implementation of smart cities, together with a digital divide. There are few associations to social policy and other ambitions to increase digital and other forms of inclusion in the smart city and make smart technologies to a tool to leverage inclusion and equity.

Medieanvändning är uttryck för demokratiskt deltagande, och fria samt opartiska medier blir därför en förutsättning för att vår demokrati ska kunna fungera. Idag, när samhället blir alltmer digitalt, är det väsentligt att gemensamma och offentliga värden upprätthålls. I hållbara demokratier behöver alla medborgare därför ha såväl möjligheter som lämplig kompetens att ta del av dessa medier.

Nya digitala medier används allt mer och blir därför mer betydelsefulla för kunskap om och dialog kring demokrati, särskilt bland ungdomar Flera tidigare studier har visat att ungdomars medieanvändning och demokratiska deltagande går hand-i-hand med utvecklingen av ny teknik. Men människor som av olika orsaker inte har samma förutsättningar att tillgodogöra sig den nya digitala tekniken riskerar således att hamna utanför. En av dessa grupper som övergripande har sämre förutsättningar att nyttja den digitala tekniken är invånare, och inte minst unga sådana, i bostadsområden med socioekonomiska utmaningar. Denna grupp av unga har generellt visat sig vara svårstuderad, och detta gäller även specifikt deras användning av digitala medier. Vi resonerar därför i denna rapport kring två övergripande frågor. Dels ämnar vi visa vilka metoder som använts i internationell forskning om ungas användning av digitala medier, särskilt i bostadsområden med socioekonomiska utmaningar, dels diskuterar vi möjliga alternativa metoder för att kunna beskriva ungas användning av digitala medier, särskilt i bostadsområden med socioekonomiska utmaningar.

Rapportens resultat visar bland annat att det finns få studier i internationell forskning som direkt pekar på hur just unga i områden med socioekonomiska utmaningar använder digitala medier. Därför vet vi fortsatt lite om denna grupps användning av dessa medier i olika sammanhang. Det finns dock en del exempel på hur forskare försöker nå dessa grupper i mer utforskande studier, exempelvis genom att samverka med olika samhällsaktörer kopplade till just socioekonomiskt utsatta områden. Sådan samverkan med olika samhällsorganisationer framstår därmed som ett viktigt verktyg för att hitta och inkludera dem som annars inte nås av samhällsvetenskapliga studier.

Vi visar också på vissa alternativa, och ibland okonventionella, metodval som har potential att bättre inkludera denna grupp i undersökningar och vetenskapliga studier. Att anpassa studiers enkät- eller intervjufrågor till de olika språk som är vanligt förekommande i dessa områden är ett bredare applicerbart tillvägagångssätt, som därtill kan vara stödja en rad andra vetenskapliga metoder. Att därtill ta användning av personal med språkkunskaper i dessa språk kan förbättra både den initiala rekryteringen av respondenter samt deras motivation att delta. I tidigare forskning finns goda exempel på att använda observationer som metod vid tillställningar som äger rum av andra skäl än forskning. För att beskriva just användningen av digitala medier finns några studier som visar på hur appar kan användas för att samla in data om denna grupp, men ett sådant tillvägagångssätt för med sig viss etisk problematik som måste tas i beaktande. Mediaanvändning, kan enligt tidigare studier, kartläggas med appar både etablerade teknik och specifikt utformade appar där deltagare själva (aktivt eller inaktivt) rapporterar sitt medieanvändande. Vi ser även att så kallad ”gamification”, det vill säga att apparna och därmed studien konstrueras med spelliknande moment, i tidigare studier har visat sig nå bättre resultat.

Slutsatserna är således att tidigare forskning visar att det finns behov av mer prövande och utforskande metoder för att skapa kunskap om hur unga särskilt i socioekonomiskt utsatta områden använder digitala medier. Sådan kunskap är viktig för att offentliga organisationer och aktörer ska kunna möta även dessa grupper och tillsammans utveckla hållbar och inkluderande demokrati med tillit till våra medier.

The e-Government form of governing is thought to enable transparency, efficiency and develop user-centered public service delivery. Usage of e-Government services is seen as one of the prerequisites for full participation in society. However, the success of e-Government is contingent on a combination of factors that determine people's willingness to use e-Government services. Previous research finds trust in government to be one of the key predictors of e-Government use. In this study we test the relationship of trust in government and e-Government usage, also including factors of digital inclusion. We focus on European Union countries and the less studied Western Balkan (WB) countries in the attempt to give an overview of the whole European region. For this purpose, we employ comparable secondary data from reliable datasets following standardized methodology for the EU and the WB countries. We performed a correlation and regression analysis to first test the trust in government and e-Government usage relationship and control the effects by adding two factors of digital inclusion and GDP per capita. The findings problematize and develop the relationship of trust in government, digital inclusion, and e-Government usage.

eGovernment continues to expand in the Swedish welfare state. Sweden aims to “become world leader in harnessing the opportunities of digital transformation” (Government Offices of Sweden, 2017 p.1), and is highly ranked in indexes measuring digital development such as UN’s e-Government Development Index and EU’s Digital Society and Economy Index. Digital development is still partly understood as ‘neutral’ and ‘progressive’. However, previous research on eGovernment and related fields have highlighted that governmental policies, institutions, and services are embedded in ideological imaginaries, which challenges the idea of technology as being value-neutral and without ideology (Schuilenburg & Peeters, 2020; Hintz et al., 2019; Verdegem & Fuchs, 2013). Still fewer have focused on questions about what citizenship ideals are imagined and pursued based on ideological grounds of eGovernment. A recent literature overview (Chen et al. 2021) has found that there is a lack of critical perspectives in digital citizenship studies. However, Isin and Ruppert (2020) offer a critical conceptualization of digital citizenship, that challenges the dominating conceptualizations which focus on internet-usage (Mossberger et al. 2007) and digital literacy (Ribble, 2015). While Isin and Ruppert (2020) argue that digital citizens come to existence through imaginary, legal, and performative dimensions, Mejer (2012) brought to discussion the prospective of a new type of citizen-driven production of public benefits that would transcend the traditional state-led welfare structures.  

This paper answers to the call for more critical perspectives on digital citizenship, by identifying and unpacking the imagined ideals of digital citizenship in the Swedish digital welfare state. Inspired by Isin and Ruppert’s (2020) conceptualization, Laclau & Mouffe’s (1985) discourse theory, and Schou and Hjelholt’s (2017) citizenship framing in the Danish context, this paper identifies and unpacks imagined citizen ideals by analysing imaginary, legal, and performative dimensions of the Swedish digital welfare state. Data for the imaginary dimension consists of the Swedish national digitalization strategy (Government Offices of Sweden, 2017). Data for the legal dimension consists of the Swedish Library Act (‘Bibliotekslag’ SFS 2019:961). Lastly, data for the performative dimension and imaginary dimension is gathered from 11 Swedish municipal libraries, including observations of daily citizen-interactions regarding digital issues collected in 2019, and interviews with library staff collected in 2022. Libraries are one of the primary public organizations which facilitate digital motivation, access, competence, and usage (van Dijk, 2020) in Sweden (Bernhard et al., 2019; Mersad, 2019), and where citizens are assisted in claiming their citizenship rights in a digital society (Gustafsson et al., 2020).  

This paper contributes to eGovernment and digital citizenship studies by investigating the Swedish case and by identifying and unpacking specific imagined ideals to move beyond digital citizenship as an “catch-all phrase to describe an ideal” (Becker, 2019). This paper also enables comparison with the Danish case, which both are characterized by the Nordic welfare state model but also vary in terms of approaches to digital transformation. The contribution is both empirical and theoretical by investigating the Swedish case and expanding critical conceptualizations of digital citizenship. 

Digital government applications and models oftenadd layers to existing structures, organizations,and routines to facilitate public services. In most statesdigital government is thus added to established structuresand organizations, but what happens when egovernmentdevelop at as an integrated part of newstate building? This is the overall question in this paperpresenting an analysis of best practices of e-governmentin six countries in the Western Balkans – Albania,Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro,North Macedonia and Serbia. The cases of best practicehave been identified through an interactive researchprocess, and analyzed through a combined lensof eGovernment stage-models and core public values.The analysis shows how new digital government applicationsand innovations are designed and used innew democracies as part of new state building structures.The findings indicate a lack of new institutionalarrangements for digital government. Taken togetherit shows that the development of eGovernment in theWestern Balkans follows a path-dependence of otherstates, in spite of the opportunities for more innovativeand sustainable eGovernment by continuing the institutionalreformation.

We investigate digital citizenship by exploring attitudes and experiences of digital inclusion and eHealth with data from a survey study based on face-to-face interviews in differentlanguages, in a marginalised hard to survey neighbourhood. Through public eHealth services,people can exercise digital citizenship. We explore differences between the marginalised neighbourhood and the national level, and among residents in the neighbourhood, with disaggregateddata. The results show that the respondents in Skäggetorp report lower usage of the internet,lower access to smartphones, a somewhat lower usage of BankID, higher concern for surveillance, and a higher number of respondents feel excluded from digital society in comparison tothe nationwide survey. The results in the disaggregated data show some differences in attitudesto and experience of digital inclusion among residents in Skäggetorp. We conclude that thestudies of digital citizenship need to be broadened to address feeling included, social rights,and difference.