Modeling Community. The Case of ‘Digital Graffiti’ The physical version of graffiti has a mixed history of being considered both vandalism and art, and its digital version has carried forward that legacy in many ways. Part of the reason for this is the competing definitions of what constitutes digital graffiti. One of the earliest publications on the topic in 2004, considers digital graffiti to be digital content that anonymously connects individual contributions to an open audience with a public feedback option or “person to place to people to persons content.” 226 Examples of this kind of content include annotations on public websites, tagging, as well as open comments on and augmentations of published material.227 This definition overlaps a great deal with the concept of crowdsourcing. More recent analysis of the topic sees the concept as leveraging new technologies such as Augmented Reality to adapt physical graffiti to the digital space.228 Digital graffiti can thus range from activities as commonplace as adding tags to web-based materials, through to the ability to draw virtually on a historical monument through a phone app while visiting its location.229 Common to both these open-ended and very specific conceptualizations of digital graffiti is the idea of a semantic relationship, the idea that the nature of the graffiti is rooted in the relationship between the 225 A passing curiosity in the Micropasts project could bring some potential volunteers to the site for a day but perhaps upon closer inspection the project was not as interesting as they initially thought. 226 Xxxxx Xxxxxx et al., “Digital Graffiti: Public Annotation of Multimedia Content,” in Extended Abstracts of the 2004 Conference on Human Factors and Computing Systems - CHI ’04 (Extended abstracts of the 2004 conference, Vienna, Austria: ACM Press, 2004), 1207, 227 Ibid 228 Xxxxx Xxxx et al., ‘Rethinking Engagement with Online News through Social and Visual Co-Annotation’, in Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery, 2018), 1–12, 229 Xxxxxx Xxxxx and Xxxx Xxxxx Xxxxxxx, “‘I Was Here’: Enabling Tourists to Leave Digital Graffiti or Marks on Historic Landmarks,” in Human-Computer Interaction – INTERACT 2015, ed. Xxxxx Xxxxxxx et al., Lecture Notes in Computer Science (Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2015), 490–94, xxxxx://xxx.xxx/10.1007/978-3-319- 22723-8_45. thing being graffitied and the content of the gr...
Modeling Community. Digital Citizenship Digital citizenship, not unlike community, has several competing definitions. While the term citizen on its own can refer to persons who are engaged in the civic life of a physical region the definition does not make an easy transition to the digital space. One definition of citizen could mean that a person in London need only to engage in the civic life of the city through actions such as voting, working, spending, volunteering, to be considered a citizen. According to this conception of citizenship, as long as they participate in the political, economic, or social aspects of the city and receive output from the city in the same way (notably by living there) they are citizens of London. However, the political and economic aspects of the digital space are not the same as in the physical space Spending money at Amazon does not make one a citizen of Amazon because there is a disconnect between Amazon and any geographic region in a way that a store on a local high street contributes directly to its local area. Along the same lines a person cannot vote for an MP of the internet to represent their interests. The global nature of the internet means that defining digital citizenship has to adapt to the way in which people engage with digital spaces. In some ways it is possible to get closer to the definition of digital citizenship by understanding it through accessibility. According to Xxxxxxxxxx, et al. 2020, a digital citizen is, in its most basic sense, a person who uses the internet daily. This is one side of the digital divide where the other side is made up of people that are unable to connect to the internet or have limited access/skills.237 The digital citizen here is defined as the opposite of what they are not: they are not restricted in their ability to participate in the online world. Once a person becomes a regular digital participant, their identity is inextricably linked to the digital in terms of learning, economic potential, and social interaction. Xxxx, et al. 2017 argue that self-efficacy, or the ability to accomplish a certain task, is essential to defining digital citizenship. Those who believe they can be technologically capable are digital citizens and those who believe they cannot are not.238 This takes a more expansive view of who is left out by the digital divide 237 Xxxxxxxxxx, et. Al. The MIT Press, “Digital Citizenship | The MIT Press” (The MIT Press), accessed September 2, 2020, xxxxx://xxxxxxxx.xxx.xxx/books/digi...
Modeling Community. Digital Nomad In some ways very different from the digital citizen there is the digital nomad. In brief, a digital nomad is someone who does not need to report to a physical site for their employment or social engagement and as a result is no longer tied to a fixed geographical location.260 This is inclusive of a broad range of individuals including those who work in the gig economy, people who engage in global adventure travel 255 Ibid 256 Xxxxxxx Xxxxxx, Interview By Author, London 05 September 2018 257 Subject I, Interview by Author, London September 2019 258 Subject F, Interview by Author, London 20 April 2020 259 Xxxx et al, p 113 260 Caleece Xxxx et al., “Digital Nomads Beyond the Buzzword: Defining Digital Nomadic Work and Use of Digital Technologies,” in Transforming Digital Worlds, ed. Xxxxxxx Xxxxxxxxx et al., Lecture Notes in Computer Science (Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2018), 207–17, xxxxx://xxx.xxx/10.1007/978-3-319-78105-1_25. while working online, and others who have the option of telework for jobs in major cities and use that to find a less expensive lifestyle outside of the city. While the COVID-19 pandemic has increased the popularity of the later with the increased emphasis on ‘work-from-home’ work patterns, the key distinction is that Digital Nomads are not trying to maintain the same basic social and work patterns they experience from a traditional office job in their home. Instead, Digital Nomads see distance working as part of a holistic shift in their personal, and professional lives with alternations in their family dynamics and social lives in addition to a shift in work pattern. Digital Nomads are more often than not motivated by a passion for the modern nomadic lifestyle and hold this above competing interests such as financial security.261 That dedication to the digital space and to the freedom of movement makes digital nomads unique to the current era and their seeming lack of loyalty to a place or an institution puts them in contrast to the digital citizen concept. Where as digital citizens develop a loyalty to a digital space or to a singular digital identity, Digital Nomads loyalty is often cited as being to their own personal interests without any attachment to a single platform, location, or industry.262 One of the elements missing from the digital nomad lifestyle is the sense of community and connection that digital citizens develop naturally. Digital nomads frequently report feelings of isolation and lonel...
