What is Digital Citizenship?
The concept of Digital Citizenship emerged along with the increasingly powerful development of information technology and the internet which was supported by the presence of various networking sites, both in the form of macroblogs and microblogs. Currently, hundreds of millions of people from various parts of the world have taken advantage of the presence of networking sites as a place for digital interaction between one individual and another. They join and form certain communities to share information and take advantage of various content distributed, whether in the form of videos, e-books, images, and others.The use of networking sites in Indonesia appears to have shown significant development and has penetrated almost all walks of life, from presidents, politicians, celebrities, academics, to ordinary people, including our children. Until 2012, judging from the growth rate of users, Indonesia was recorded as the second largest country, after India, and is estimated to reach a growth rate of around 51.6% . ( popsurvey.net ).
Facebook seems to still be the favorite choice and ranks first as a networking site that is widely used by the public, followed by Twitter in second place. Based on data owned by the Ministry of Communication and Informatics, a total of around 43.06 million people use the social networking site Facebook ( AntaraNews.com ). Those who use and join various networking sites then form the presence of the concept of Digital Citizenship.
So, what exactly is Digital Citizenship ? Teachthought.com provides a formulation of Digital Citizenship as " the quality of an individual's response to membership in a community ". Meanwhile, digitalcitizenship.net defines Digital Citizenship as " the norms of appropriate, responsible behavior with respect to technology use" . The formulation of Teachthought.com has more to do with the use of social networks, while digitalcitizenship.net provides the meaning of Digital Citizenship in the context of broader use of technology. From the two formulations it appears thatDigital Citizenship refers to the quality of individual behavior in interacting in cyberspace, especially in social networks, by demonstrating responsible behavior, in accordance with applicable norms and ethics.
Digital Citizenship relates to the ability to manage and monitor behavior in using technology, which includes security, ethics, norms, and culture.How should we use information technology safely, not to cause harm and endanger the safety of ourselves and others.
How should we communicate in social networks while maintaining ethics, referring to the norms that apply internally, nationally and universally.
How should we transact information in cyberspace, especially in uploading/downloading content and transacting through online shops .
Seeing the rapid development of the use of the internet and networking sites in Indonesia, on the one hand it can be said as progress – at least people have learned to recognize technology, but on the other hand it raises its own concerns, especially when it comes to Digital Citizenship . Budiono Darsono, Editor-in-Chief of Detikcom, said that the use of social networking sites in Indonesia faces challenges because many people still use them for things that are less productive. ( Kompas.com ).
It is suspected that certain people or groups often use networking sites to insult and defame other people. If you have time to follow the comments on various online media, especially those that are connected to social networking sites, you can find tens or hundreds of comments that illustrate the need for increased understanding and awareness of Digital Citizenship .
To become a healthy and dignified digital citizen, education is certainly needed . At school, students need to be taught how to access various information via the internet correctly and be able to communicate in a civilized manner on the networking sites they participate in. " Digital Citizenship must become part of our school culture—not just a class or lesson but the way we do business in education," said Mike S. Ribble and Gerald D. Bailey . On the other hand, Agus Sampurno in the blog he manages reminds us of the importance of educators to keep students safe on the internet.
source:akhmad