Conceptualization and measurement of digital citizenship across disciplines

Abstract

A corollary to the exponential growth of digital technology is the increase in research interest in the construct of digital citizenship (DC) in diverse disciplinary areas. Although the term DC is used widely in research, scholars do not commit to a common definition. This integrative review investigates the conceptualizations and measurements of DC, across disciplines, in the extant literature. A systematic search of 11 databases identified a total of 350 unique items that contain “digital citizenship” in the title or keywords published by December 2018, with the majority published after 2010. Of these, 114 were peer-reviewed journal articles published in a wide range of discipline-specific venues, more than half of which were education-related. In-depth analyses show that each of the dominant conceptualizations of DC has been adopted by different disciplines, albeit with different popularities in adoption. Findings also revealed widely shared stakeholder concerns and research foci in DC research across the disciplines. However, there is a stark lack of empirical research on the young children, and an absence of commonly deployed research instruments in DC-related research. The present integrative review implicates the need for interdisciplinary collaboration for significant advances in DC research to address issues in policy and practice.