In this paper I offer a new conceptualization of democratic citizenship education in light of the transformations of contemporary Western societies that the use of technologies of the digital net have brought about. My conceptualization adopts a deliberative understanding of democracy that provides a systemic perspective on society-wide communicative arrangements and employs a non-ideal, critical methodology that concentrates on overcoming democratic deficits. Based on this systemic, deliberative conception of democracy I provide an analysis of the public sphere鈥檚 normative deficits and argue that current political communication may be systemically distorted. This distortion, I maintain, is due to the economic imperatives that structure many aspects of the digitally transformed public sphere, the fragmentation of this public sphere, and the predominantly affective nature that is characteristic of a substantial part of political discourse. Drawing on this analysis, I suggest that practices of democratic citizenship education in digitized societies must not concentrate narrowly on the effective and responsible use of digital technologies. Instead, these practices should also focus on the economic and cultural conditions that are co-responsible for the structural problems of political communication as well as address the democratic deficits that are reflected in inadequate communicative arrangements.
Julian Culp is Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Program Coordinator for Philosophy, and Fellow of the Center for Critical Democracy Studies聽at The American University聽of Paris.聽Culp is the author of聽聽(Palgrave, 2014) and聽聽(Routledge, 2019), as well as of numerous articles in journals such as聽Philosophy Compass, Theory and Research in Education,聽Third World Quarterly听补苍诲听Zeitschrift f眉r philosophische Forschung. He聽also serves co-editor of聽the book series聽聽(Brill and Mentis).