Citizenship and the Digital Context with Anowa Quarcoo

Season: 2 Episode: 5 [download this episode (MP3, 24.1MB)]

Co-founder of CivicTechTO and self-declared certified nerd, Anowa Quarcoo chats with Elizabeth about the idea of citizenship. They talk about legal and cultural definitions of citizenship before jumping into a discussion of what counts as a citizen in a digital era. From civic leaders, to publics, to users, to citizens - they talk about how some terms can be empowering while others can be exclusionary. Key take-away? Context matters. You need to ask why you are trying to define a group with this kind of term and pick accordingly.

Additional Resources

• There are a lot of definitions of citizenship out there. Elizabeth summarizes legal and cultural definitions quickly in the episode, drawing on what she and Florian Martin-Bariteau wrote in their Introduction to the Citizenship in a Connected Canada book (available open access!).

• Check out CivicTechTO, one of North America's largest civic hacking communities.