Data-Driven Citizenship Regimes in Contemporary Urban Scenarios: An Introduction

Abstract

This Special Issue presents new perspectives on the idea of digital citizenship by delving into the nexus between its emerging concepts, the consequences of the global pandemic crisis, and the urban environment. It does so by addressing a wide range of case studies from three continents and developing two main hypotheses. First, the COVID-19 outbreak has expanded the impact of digital technologies on citizens’ everyday life. Second, the urban realm is the environment where new citizenship regimes are emerging through platformization, datafication, and the rescaling of the state. To introduce the Special Issue, this article: (i) examines recent scholarship about the effects of the pandemic on digital citizenship; (ii) discusses and expands concepts of digital citizenship through case studies; and (iii) assesses how emerging forms of digital citizenship are fostered by uneven ‘pandemic citizenship’ regimes worldwide.