Citizenship Education and New Media: Opportunities and Challenges

Abstract

Some decades after being introduced to all social spheres, the “new” Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) are a fixed feature in current citizenship education. This chapter highlights and discusses some of the opportunities – as well as some challenges – with regard to citizenship education and new media in formal education. Digital media, for example, offer a variety of possibilities of enhancing interactivity and of voicing one´s opinion. Additionally, citizenship education can make use of these tools by allowing for a “testing” and “trying out” of political action within the small scale. Still, digital media in citizenship education also bear some challenges that educators should take into account. For example, the expectation that all students – as the so-called digital natives – are competent in using digital media, may reproduce further exclusions for groups of people that don´t have access to or (yet) have the competencies of using these new tools. One major function of citizenship education therefore is to aim for the inclusion of all groups of people and to make use of all options to reach learners by the means of new media. Additionally, this chapter introduces some examples of good practice – with a focus on formal education – that make use of applying digital media within citizenship education.