It's Not About Gadgets

It's About Governance

by Lucy Bernholz

I've been researching and talking a lot lately about Digital Civil Society. These are the elements of our society where we use our private resources for public good in and on digital platforms.

It includes "digital activism," civic technology, social network organizing, open data sharing, and nonprofits built on digital assets - such as WikiMedia, Creative Commons, Mozilla Foundation, Kiva, DoSomething, the Digital Public Library of America, Public Library of Science, Reg4All and many, many others. 

Lucy Bernholz

To make talking about it easier, I refer to the non-digital ways of using private resources for public good as "analog" civil society - the ways we've been doing things like organizing, protesting, helping, sharing our private resources for centuries. The distinction is rhetorically easy, but also makes it sound as if the activities are more distinct than they might be. We are doing many of the same things - giving, volunteering, sharing, protesting, helping - but using digital tools. Read more