Rethinking civic education in the digital era: How media,school,and youth negotiate the meaning of citizenship

The evolving civic education

It is widely recognized in literature that a key goal of education, and schooling in particular, is to prepare individuals for effective participation in societies. This area of learning is commonly known as citizenship education or civic education. Depending on the social and political contexts of different societies, other related terms used for this area of learning include values education, moral education or character education (Lee et al., 2004). Traditionally, citizenship education is largely confined within the physical boundaries of nation-states, and places strong emphasis on young people's formal understanding of their country's political, legal and economic systems, their citizenship rights and responsibilities, and how their government works (Heater, 2004). With globalization and technological advancement, such traditional conceptions of citizenship education is inadequate in preparing young people for the complexities of societies. It is now necessary, and crucial, to broaden the traditional conception of citizenship education to involve the development of competencies for active participation in, including critical understandings and deliberations of the complexities inherent in exercising the rights and responsibilities of community life (Giroux and Bosio, 2021).

In this study, we attempt to unpack the conception of civic education in the contemporary digital era. More specifically, we tried to understand the concept from the younger generation's perspective, clarifying how young people make sense of civic learning when involved in or exposed to multiple sources of learning (e.g., formal schooling, interpersonal interaction, and social media activities).

Historically, education systems had played important roles in citizenship development, particularly for purposes of nation building to support the rise of nation-states (Green, 1997). Consequently, citizenship education ‘act[ed] as a vehicle of social integration through the transmission of culture,’ thereby functioning as a socialization tool to facilitate the maintenance of social order (Green, 1990: 36). In the last three decades, citizenship education in many Western and Asian societies started to find ways to balance the focus on forging national identity with the cultivation of democratic and civic values for active participation. This is usually done by the goal of equipping younger generations with the necessary knowledge, skills and attitudes for participation in modern democracies as informed, responsible, committed and effective citizens (Print and Coleman, 2003;Zhang, 2013).

Here, it is important to acknowledge that citizenship education is context-specific, with its form reflecting influencing factors such as cultural norms, political priorities, social expectations, national economic development aspirations, geo-political contexts and historical antecedents (Kennedy, 2004). As a result, there will be multiple conceptions of the meanings of ‘democratic’ and the values that underpin democratic forms of citizenship education. Nonetheless, there is an implicit assumption that democratic education and citizenship education are one and the same in many liberal democratic societies in the Anglosphere. The scholarly literature on civics and citizenship education in the Anglosphere emphasizes democratic citizenship, traditionally focusing on developing young people's understanding of the formal structures of government in a particular liberal democracy (Zhang and Lallana, 2013). With globalization and technological advancement, the future facing young people is highly dynamic and undetermined (Jackson, 2019). This means that citizenship education needs to ‘engage young people with new ideas and practices as they are unfolding, rather than simply produce or conserve a singular predesigned social end’ (Jackson, 2019: 249).

This opens up the space for debates in scholarship on citizenship education over the substance and nature of liberal democratic citizenship. Discussions range from whether citizenship education should focus on personal responsibility, obeying the laws within the existing system (Westheimer, 2015), encouraging deliberative participation so that student can discuss and deliberate controversial issues as a way to develop competencies to engage as active and informed citizens (Hess and Mcavoy, 2015), or social justice oriented citizenship that emphasizes activism and advocacy towards improving societal equity (Westheimer, 2015).

Though the substance of civic education is debatable, the aforementioned conceptions, to a large extent, can be organized around three sets of learning including knowledge based and related understanding (e.g., identity); skills or processes (e.g., active participation); values such as social justice and social cohesion (Print and Coleman, 2003). Regardless of the various aspects, civic education faced the opportunities and challenges brought by information and communication technologies such as the Internet.

Multi-faceted relations between media and civic education

The prevalence of information and communication technologies (ICTs), especially the popularity of digital media among the younger generation, has led scholars to consider a more extended understanding of citizenship (e.g., Vromen et al., 2015). The relation between media and citizenship has long been discussed. Back to the 1990s when traditional media (such as newspaper and TV) were dominant, both education and media are considered as public spheres for people to represent themselves to one another and negotiate shared civic virtues (Buckingham, 1997). Related to the first aspect of civic education (i.e., knowledge and related understanding), media use is expected to promote citizenship by cultivating political knowledge and understanding (i.e., to create ‘informed citizens’). It has been empirically found that informational use of media, such as reading news, may translate into political knowledge and efficacy (Chen and Chan, 2017; Zhang, 2016a).

In addition to informational use, more and more people engage in mediated communication nowadays (e.g., discussion via Facebook, Twitter, and WhatsApp). As de Tocqueville (1984) noticed, political talk is the soul of democracy. By discussing public issues with others, people may process the information received more carefully, develop understandings and meanings of the social reality, identify problems and opportunities, and build consensus and guides for further actions (Reichert and Print, 2017). This is why Cho et al. (2009: 74) emphasized that ‘political discussion is… a crucial construct through which reasoning materializes’. In this sense, media use may help build the skills and process necessary for reaching civic consensus, resonating with the second aspect of civic education–skills and processes (Print and Coleman, 2003).

That said, the influence of media on citizenship cannot be reduced to communicating ‘information’ or building ‘understanding,’ since being truly ‘informed’ by using media is sometimes an illusion due to the difficulty with digesting political messages. Moreover, instead of simply disseminating ‘accurate’ or ‘objective’ information, news media quite often play a role in reassuring individuals that the world is as comprehensible as usual (Buckingham, 1997). As such, scholars contend that the effect of media on citizenship is not simply about the information per se. Instead, it is the forms of consciousness created by media that matter (e.g., Dahlgren, 1986). In this sense, in relation to citizenship, media is not just a means of information dissemination, but also a deliberative space that enables individuals to construct and define their relationship with broader, public issues–the public sphere (Buckingham, 1997). Moreover, with technological advancement, individuals nowadays can do much more than ‘deliberating’ with media. For instance, emerging online consumer activists, fandom groups, and lifestyle movements (e.g., Bennett, 2012; Zhang, 2016b) present a picture of engaged individuals that is different from the traditional vision of ‘informed’ citizens, whose participation is largely limited to the act of 'voting' in elections. The prevalence of digital media comes hand in hand with the rise of a set of values that underlines individuality, diversity, and self-expression (Bennett and Segerberg, 2012). In this regard, media use in the contemporary context goes beyond facilitating discursive, deliberative efforts to promoting individualized values through participatory activities. Taken together, media use nowadays should better be seen as a deliberative and/or participatory space that allows people to define/negotiate/experience the relationship between the personal and the political/public. Accordingly, an extended understanding of citizenship should shift from imparting universalized norms (such as liberal democracy in the Anglosphere) or preaching objective truth to appreciating diverse values as well as from creating ‘informed citizens’ to cultivating participatory citizenship. Pluralistic, diverse, and participatory political culture, resulting in part from the development of ICTs (Peters, 1993; Vromen, 2007), may reshape the underlying values of citizenship.

In this study, we therefore see media as a means for individuals to expose themselves to knowledge and information about citizenship and as a process to carry out civic actions and reach consensus (Crick, 2013). More importantly, we also view media as a deliberative and/or participatory space for individuals to experience their relationship with broader civic, political worlds (including both issues and other citizens and develop their value orientations towards the civic (including both virtues and vice). In doing so, we supplement formal civic education research by not just examining additional civic knowledge and/or actions the younger generation gain from media, but also clarifying the dynamic scenarios where the experience and development of the values of citizenship happen.

Young people and civic education

When it comes to civic education, young people have always been a focus. Recent trends across the globe show that young people are less interested and engaged in various civic activities. Taking the US as an example, middle-aged and older people have higher rates of voting turnouts than younger people (Schlozman and Yohai, 2008), are more interested in politics (Putnam, 2000: 247), and have higher interpersonal trust (Shah et al., 2001). The US is not an exceptional case – the pattern has been found in the UK, Europe, Australia, almost all the established democracies. In the new or hybrid democratic systems, young people shows a similar trend of increasing civic disengagement. Japan is the democracy with the longest history in Asia (Desjardins, 2019), and the overall pattern in Japan has been lower participation among young people. Voters in their 20s have been consistently at the bottom of voting turnout rates compared to other age groups including those in their 70s (The Association for Promoting Fair Elections, 2016). Other political activities such as attending a protest, joining a political party, and writing to government officials are ‘almost negligible’ (Takaya, 2017: 136) among Japanese young people. If Japan is now a stable new democracy, other new democracies have experienced turmoil and struggles. Older generations in the Latin American countries have fought for democracy with their lives, but the democratization wave in the 1980s resulted in hybrid systems that still carry legacies from authoritarian enclaves and corruptions (Carreras and İrepoğlu, 2013). Therefore, the younger generation feels disillusioned about the systems – they demonstrate lower turnout rates, lower political interest, even lower support to democracy and trust in government compared to older generations (Treviño et al., 2016).

Despite the vastly different contexts and development trajectories, both established and developing democracies seem to have lost their appeal to younger generations. This brings the question about the effectiveness of civic education young people have received, especially in the formal school setting. The pervasive presence of digital media in the lives of young people is believed to be one challenge that civic education has to tackle.

In this study, we take the younger generation's own perspective to understanding civic education in the digital era. Instead of treating them as under-developed human subjects waiting to be educated, we recognize the complexity of their life experience as digital natives. As the first generation to be born in a world largely mediated by digital technologies, existing civic education approaches may not be able to capture the rapid changes young people are subject to. Through first-hand conversations with young people in small group settings, our study aims to bring out the collective voice from the younger generation and understand how they make sense of and live in the digital world, which could be viewed as an integrated learning environment for civic education. Moreover, by focusing on the Singaporean young people, our study provides evidence from a non-Western democracy that is fully digitalized, to further the theoretical debate on what citizenship means in societies that follow different civic cultures.

Research context

As Singapore obtained independence only in 1965 as a result of the eviction of Singapore from Malaysia, the young nation started with an urgent sense of survivalism (Chan, 1971). Pressing challenges such as the lack of natural resources in the island city-state and the relative small size compared to its neighboring countries led to a discourse of developmentalism, which prioritizes economic development (Chua, 2011). The prevalence of survivalism and developmentalism in Singapore might be the reason why older generations concentrated their civic participation on survival, such as consolidating a political system that functions in the young nation, and supporting community members during economically difficult times. The younger generations, however, started to move away from the survival-driven approach of civic participation to focus on civic issues that are non-political but relevant to the entire society, as prior studies have demonstrated (Zhang, 2013).

As for the civic education program in Singapore, in line with the developmental goals the nation has been pursuing, it is hardly surprising that Singapore has been focusing on nation-building and the cultivation of national identity. Considering Singapore's history of student unrests, strikes and racial riots at her independence in 1965, this has consistently provided the context for the Singapore government to emphasize a sense of vulnerability and survival through the belief that political argument, debate and opposition will destabilize and detract citizens from more pressing issues of economic growth and national unity (Baildon and Alviar-Martin, 2016; Gopinathan, 1996). This ‘survival-driven’ ideology has constructed the way that the Singapore curriculum is designed, which shapes the conception of citizenship education in schools that is reflected by this study's participants’ largely apolitical view of civic participation (Chia, 2016). The various citizenship education curriculum in Singapore since 1959 are summarized in Table 1. ¹

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Table 1.

Brief historical sketch of citizenship education curriculum in Singapore (Adapted from Lee, 2013; Chiong and Gopinathan, 2020).

Phase	Emphasis	Citizenship Education Curriculum
The ‘ideal citizen’ (1959–1978)	Developing ‘good’ citizens Nation-building and civic knowledge	‘Ethics’ (1959)‘Civics’ (1967)‘Education for living’ (1973)‘Review of moral education’ (1978)
‘Asian values’ and social cohesion (1979–1996)	Refining and clarifying multiculturalism and values National solidarity and cohesion	‘Good citizens’ (1981)‘Being and becoming’ (1981)‘Religious knowledge’ (1982)‘Social studies’ (primary) (1984)
Coping with globalization (1997–2011)	National solidarity and cohesion Balancing global (economic) and national agendas	‘Civics and moral education’ (1994)‘National Education’ (1997)‘Social studies’ (secondary) (2001)
Coping with anti- globalization (2011–present)	National solidarity and cohesion Balancing global (economic) and national agendas Twenty-first-century competencies	Character and citizenship education (2014)

In terms of the digital landscape of Singapore, it has been leading the Southeast Asian region in its digital infrastructure building. From ‘intelligent island’ to ‘smart nation,’ Singapore has witnessed a continuous increase in Internet penetration and new media adoption. Computer ownership rate was 84% in 2010 and increased to 89% in 2019 (Infocomm Media Development Authority, 2020). Internet access increased from 78% in 2010 (Infocomm Development Authority, 2010) to 98% in 2019. The use of traditional mass media such as print newspapers has been steadily declining but their online versions are still popular among the citizens (Zhang, 2012, 2016a). Online only media, including social network sites, have become the top media used by younger generations (Soon, 2020). The enhanced significance of new media in civic engagement is clearly shown in young activists’ usage of them: new media functioned as not only a digital tool but also an activist style that is non-confrontational and distant from traditional party politics (Zhang, 2013).

Focus group discussions

This study employs focus group discussions with Singaporean young people (21–34 years old) in 2020 (roughly corresponding to Generation Z). The groups had an average of 4 to 6 participants and discussions lasted from 1.5 to 2 h. In total, we recruited 40 participants (8 groups) through online advertisements and snowballing from the earlier participants. They received SGD40 for their participation. The sample's average age is 22 years old, with half men and half women. The recruited participants were avid and long-term Internet users: an average of 12 years of Internet use was reported and almost every participant said they used the Internet several times a day.

The group discussions were all conducted in English. Two experienced and trained moderators conducted the discussions, who were graduate and undergraduate students from social science majors such as communication and political science. Both moderators went through training sessions conducted by the lead author. Training included both topical knowledge about political participation in Singapore and basic methodological concepts such as grounded theory, constant comparative approach, and the three-step coding analysis. The moderators closely followed the discussion guide but were also told to ask follow-up and probing questions when necessary. The participants were firstly asked about their understanding and feeling about civic or citizens, supported by a set of real-life local examples as prompts. As disengagement of the younger generation is a general background, we followed up with a set of questions on the declining interest in conventional political activities and its underlying reasons (e.g., efficacy, motivation, knowledge, skills, opportunities, political system/culture, and social norms). Our last set of questions focused on new media and their potential impacts on curbing or encouraging civic activeness. Several real-life local examples were provided to illustrate problems such as information overloading, filter bubbles, fake news, cyberbullying, envy and depression.

In 2020, the pandemic made physical groups impossible and we relied on Zoom for the discussions. The recordings were later transcribed and summarized for analysis. In total, there were about 200 pages of transcribed data. The three-step coding analysis (Tracy, 2019) was conducted: Open coding was first applied to a line-by-line analysis, during which unrestricted and recurring ideas and concepts were identified. Second, axial coding was used to group related ideas and concepts to create categories. Third, selective coding combined overlapping categories and refined categories to create themes.

Being civic: the consensus and contention

The common theme of ‘making society better’ encapsulated our participants’ responses towards their understanding of ‘civic’ in Singapore. Most participants understood being ‘civic’ as abiding by legal rules and social norms that inform what so-called ‘good’ behavior is. Abiding by the laws was considered being ‘civic’ because laws forbid ‘bad’ behavior. Adhering to social norms such as helping others was also agreed to be ‘civic.’ However, participants diverge in the type of actions in making society better. Some opined that being civic is to contribute to the community and to act in its interest. This requires a degree of involvement in society, either by voicing out opinions or keeping institutions accountable. For instance, whether participating in a petition is civic depends on the causes or objectives of the petition. One type of action that is under debate refers to boycotting and canceling. Some participants thought such actions ‘institute divides,’ ‘infringe on the rights’ of minorities, and could be a result of judgement of the person being canceled, instead of focusing on the social cause in question. A number of participants thought otherwise: they stated that boycotting or canceling someone is a form of political expression, a show of support for certain causes to ‘signal to higher authorities that people want change.’

Similar to the debate we see in what can be counted as proper civic behaviors (e.g., whether it is abiding by laws or boycotting), our participants shared with us the mixed feelings about being civic. A number of participants felt positive about being ‘civic’ when ‘civic’ was referred to as community engagement. Participant 711-2PM-D ² shared that:

I feel heartened. There is this form of engagement that shows that people are not self-interested. There is a community interest at large and we think about one another. We think about how to reach out to them. The thought that we have a role to play and it is a good thing to have a civic culture in Singapore. People are not thinking about themselves and they do care about society.

The sources of varied understanding

Considering the changing notion of citizenship against the current backdrop of globalization and technological advancement, young people's understanding of being civic also varies. First, the participants in this study demonstrated basic understanding of the concepts of ‘agency’, ‘diversity’ and ‘equity’. They were able to identify the agency that citizens have in improving the society, the diversity of values that people hold in the society, and an understanding of the concept of equity, where civic contributions can differ according to the diverse backgrounds and abilities of people and are all considered valuable contributions to society. There is evidence of a shared moral foundation to support civic understanding.

Second, some participants can identify different methods of civic participation, including voicing their opinions online, boycotting, and signing petitions to support a cause. This demonstrates there is an understanding of the relational nature of the different aspects involved in civic participation and of social agency (Giroux and Bosio, 2021). Moreover, it also explicates that digital media functions as a deliberative and participatory space (Bennett and Segerberg, 2012), where young people can negotiate about different facets of civic values and exercise their agency. In particular, the participants did not hold naïve perspectives of ‘civic participation’. The presence of some levels of scepticism and frustrations expressed by some participants about the limited significant changes that have been brought about by civic movements shows that the young people are at least, concerned about the social issues that surround them. These are all positive starting points for the exercise of civic agency. For example, participant 811-4PM-B shared his/her reflection on joining a civic action group:

It was tough to gather people for the cause. I realised we need to have extensive knowledge about the institution and needing connections with different people. The interpersonal and empathetic portion of civic is also required. We might get desensitized, thinking about the macro level and individual needs to consider how change can be enacted. I learned how to understand different people and ways in which to engage the communities.

Our participants shared that they learned about being civic mostly from the civic education program they took at schools, family and friends, as well as through experiencing what is happening in the social media space. The civic education program apparently helps in getting young people engaged in civic work. As 711-2PM-A said:

Schools give us the opportunities and plants the idea of being civic, by forcing us to have Community Involvement Programme (CIP) hours. That opens up the idea of coming out of my comfort zone to give back to society. Schools serve as an avenue. I might not willingly do civic work if not for such education. But if it is mandated, I found myself developing an interest within the work I was doing.

The role of social media

Participants tend to recognize the role of social media through contrasting it to other means of civic learning. One of the most frequently mentioned means is traditional media. The key difference between traditional and social media identified by most participants is the participatory culture. In general, participants recognized that traditional media mainly focus on ‘knowledge’ while social media advance ‘engagement.’ For instance, 811-11AM-C told us that traditional media always heighten the connection between being knowledgeable and being a good citizen. In other words, in order to be civic, you just need to learn more or read more.

But when you see people actively participating in discussions on social media, then it advances my understanding that being civic means that you have to do more than just reading. Have to engage the opinions of others. More actively enacting the civic by engaging in the dialogues on social media.

Seeing media not just as a tool but a deliberative/participatory space enables us to comprehend more concerns raised by our participants. For instance, some of them even put traditional media in the opposite of social media, saying that traditional media discourage the participatory culture that is upheld by social media. For example, as 811-11AM-C noticed:

Social media exposes me to different forms of activities I could take. Traditional media, it tends to dissuade activism. Whereas on social media it is easier for me to access resources to participate in movements, sign a petition or to volunteer for a certain social cause that may be underlooked in traditional media; e.g. climate rally: Headline on ST [Straits Times] was quite negative towards the people who went down versus social media was celebrating the efforts of participants.

Another means of civic learning—social ties or interpersonal communication—was frequently compared to social media by the participants as well. On one hand, the younger generation can notice that there are always differences between what they learned from social media and from friends and family. On the other hand, they also showed that they tend to agree with their friends or family, rather than social media, if differences between the two occur. As 811-9AM-A contended, ‘social media may tell you what's going on in the world, but ultimately it's within your family and group of friends that determine why should we care about this. Does it really affect me, or us?’

When asked why, 811-9AM-A further elaborated that social media does not really tell us what is going on the ground. ‘They [social media] just tell you a very one-sided view on this. When you talk to different people, talk to your friends, maybe they have different views on what they think is correct and what you think is correct…how we learn things is through interactions.’

Apart from being a participatory sphere that is full of diverse voices, social media demonstrates some unexpected consequences on young people's civic learning process. For instance, some participants found that there are too many uncivil incidents on social media. ‘I learn how to be civic in real life, not through online media. Through interactions with other people. From online, I mainly learn what uncivic people would do. It doesn’t teach me how to be civic,’ said 711-4PM-C. Yet, the exposure to diverse values and cultures per se can be considered as a process of learning, even though some of them are uncivil. As 711-4PM-C noticed, it is through exposing to those ‘uncivic’ situations that the participant can realize the ‘civic’ counterpart in real life.

What we should be more concerned about is the dwindling of the diversity itself. It is somewhat ironic that, though digital development was supposed to promote pluralistic and diverse culture (Vromen, 2007), the younger generation is facing the risk of being ‘silenced’ by ‘social media’ nowadays. This could be related to the intricate socio-technical attributes of social media. For instance, there is growing concern that some mechanisms of social media, such as social network homophily and algorithmic recommendation, may encapsulate people into ‘echo chambers’, where the information shared mainly reinforces people's pre-existing political views (Bail et al., 2018). As a result, political polarization might be exacerbated and people become less tolerant of different viewpoints. It is, however, noteworthy that social media alone should not bear the blame for polarizing people. Yet, certain practices and cultures derived from social media, such as the aforementioned canceling culture, may contribute to such perceived risks. Some participants shared their worries about the pressure of conformability in the online settings. For example, 811-11AM-F shared that,

Sometimes, I also find social media quite overwhelming. I also feel this pressure that I don’t really say out my thoughts… [Social media] is like a double-edged sword. It helps to spark discussion, but sometimes it can also silences people. You feel this pressure that you have to conform with the general of what is right.

Reflection

Most discussions and findings regarding civic education in the digital era have taken social media as a space for learning about civic notions and participating in civic actions. It values the opportunities for young people to develop and exercise their rights and responsibilities to participate actively in effecting changes on a variety of social issues. This perspective takes a ‘maximal’ conception of citizenship that acknowledges the inevitable presence of ‘politics’, where young people use their share in power to engage in activities to conciliate differing interests (Crick, 2013). This requires young people to have the knowledge, skills, dispositions and importantly, the institutional support to think critically about issues to consider how they can work within, change, or challenge the ‘given unit of rule’ (Johnson and Morris, 2010; Westheimer, 2015). Though social media seems conducive to cultivating skills for participatory citizenship, the presence of mixed messages on the Internet conveyed confusing, rather than always informative, civic knowledge. Critical dispositions on citizenship seem to be limited by one's social relations and the dominant ethos in one's immediate social circles.

Further, drawing on Giroux and Bosio's (2021: 4) discussion on global citizenship, the notion of digital citizenship is extended beyond just the political issue of rights and responsibilities, to include having the confidence to take on the ‘ethical challenge to narrow the gap between the promise and the reality of a global democracy’. Social media functions as the space in which the gap is made explicit or even amplified. When observing or even joining the uncivil behaviors on social media, young citizens are exposed to the danger of defying the ideal promises of democracy they learned from schools and retreating from formal politics such as democratic participation.

Moreover, young citizens need to have a good understanding of the relational nature of the different aspects of life as part of a broader political and moral goal of democracy (Giroux and Bosio, 2021; Jackson, 2019). Specifically, citizens need competencies to strengthen critical and social agency amid conflicts and chaos (Giroux and Bosio, 2021), to understand the influence of inherent unequal dynamics in human relations on shaping one's perspectives on a range of social issues. As Shani (2020, 404) posits, ‘one's understanding of whom one is, is always dependent upon the existence of an ‘other’, whom one is not’. Schools, families, and friends used to dominate the social relations young citizens have. However, social media opened an enormous space for new social relations or relational views to be formed with young people. The old and new types of social relations do not necessarily get along with each other.

In view of the various tensions between old versus new social relations, the promise versus the reality of democracy, and the mixed experiences using social media, the optional approach of citizenship adds a layer of complexity to the notion of digital citizenship. On top of following basic civic duties such as abiding by the laws and norms, our young interviewees embrace different types of civic actions and values with different levels of commitment. In other words, the notion of digital citizenship has become pluralized --- some of them are political, some are taking active actions to influence others, some are actively paying attention to civic issues, some are just doing the minimum to serve their civic role. The diversity found at this layer of optional citizenship speaks to recent thoughts on classifying citizens. Instead of using active or passive to understand digital citizenship, scholars referred to other ways to understand the types of citizenship. Amnå and Ekman (2013) found that in addition to active citizens, three categories of citizens who look passive but differ significantly in their civic dispositions include standby citizens who are ready to be activated, disengaged citizens who are not making actions but paying close attention to civic issues, and disillusioned citizens who are genuinely passive. The plural notion of optional citizenship is particularly relevant to Asia, a region with high diversity in culture, language, history, political and economic systems. Diversity within one country is high too, such as that Singapore is made up of three major ethnicities and four major languages. These specific identity markers plus more universal ones such as gender and class intersect with civic identity and further complicates the options of being a citizen in the Asian contexts (see Yue et al., 2019 for an exemplary discussion).

Knowing that digital citizenship has multiple types and young people can choose which type they want to adopt, our next question becomes how civic education can go beyond teaching about duties and start to empower young people in this challenging task of choosing the right type of digital citizenship for themselves. Contemporary forms of civic education need to offer young people new ideas and practices as digital technologies unfold a diverse reality (Jackson, 2019). This means civic education needs to perform the dual functions of simultaneously socializing young people to existing forms of participation, perspectives and understanding of the society, while developing competencies to help them exercise agency in a highly dynamic, controversial, and diverse future. Reflecting on the Singapore context, traditional institutions such as schools need to engage the emerging social relations and institutional powers seen in social media, in a direct manner with updated content and methods. For instance, schools can co-develop media literacy programs, which aim for cultivating a set of capacities related to social media consumption and creation, with other parties such as social media platforms and NGOs. Another direction for Singapore to pursue is probably to open up non-school based spaces for younger people so that various options of citizenship can be experimented and explored. National Youth Council, for example, can lead on creating such alternative spaces for deliberation and participation. Leaving young citizens to themselves won’t solve the dilemma between the ideals learned in civic education programs (e.g., the dutiful approach) and the opposite realities seen in social media (e.g., the optional approach). We need to reform our civic education strategies to effectively address the challenges by social media in turning citizenship into options.