The expressive turn of citizenship in digital late modernity

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to connect the idea of expressive rationality to current debates on citizenship and political participation online. Socialising, cultural consumption/ production, identity management, information and publication strategies are both different and accentuated in digital, networked and late modern environments. In the paper I argue that the kind of network sociability that is emerging today favours an expressive form of rationality. I also claim that expressive rationality transcends the bipolar instrumental — communicative dimension that has been so important for normative theorizing in Political (and Social) Sciences and hence is a more rewarding theoretical concept for understanding political participation in digital late modernity.