Digital citizenship in later life: Insights from participatory action research with older content creators

Abstract

Within the context of rapid digitalisation of societies, older people increasingly require digital skills to participate civically. However, research has largely overlooked the digital dimension of older adults’ civic participation. Grounding my research in Serrat and colleagues’ (2019) later life civic participation framework, I explored digital content creation and community radio as pathways to increased civic participation and digital engagement in later life. Working collaboratively with older adults using participatory action research (PAR), I locate older adults’ digital citizenship at the intersection of Gerontology and Human-Computer Interaction research. Using qualitative methods, I explored: 1) an older people’s organisation’s media output as part of their age-friendly efforts, and 2) community radio production as a pathway to increased digital participation in later life. Both research strands, interwoven in a process of PAR, shed light on older adults’ digital citizenship. My collaboration with the older people’s organisation exemplifies a collective social civic activity organised by older adults themselves. Findings highlight the importance of older adults as active contributors in digitalised societies. My collaboration with older radio show hosts and other stakeholders, brought together at a radio festival, evolved into the Later Life Audio and Radio Co-operative. Findings demonstrate the importance of community radio to facilitate age-inclusive citizen dialogue and highlight how digital technologies can support communities of practice in bridging collective social and political forms of civic participation in later life. I reflect on my PAR journey, highlighting the process of doing research within an evolving ecosystem of individuals, third sector organisations and technologies, especially throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. I discuss the contributions of my research to current debates on older adults’ civic participation and propose a digital citizenship perspective rooted in community-based research, outlining implications for policy and practice to prioritise the concept of digital participation to support older adults’ civic participation online.