Civic Education in the Digital Age
A special issue of Social Sciences (ISSN 2076-0760).
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 20 May 2026 | Viewed by 418
Special Issue Editors
Interests: agonistic pluralism; citizenship education; competences for democratic culture; critical digital literacy; critical thinking; hate speech; hegemonic discourses; polarization; social studies; teacher education
Interests: citizenship education; competences for democratic culture; future education; critical digital literacy; critical thinking; hate speech; controversial issues; social studies; historical thinking; teacher education
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Civic education has long functioned as a floating signifier and a contested political battleground, reflecting the tensions and aspirations of each historical moment. Its meaning has shifted dramatically across contexts, from legitimizing authoritarian regimes to fostering democratic values and practices. At its core, civic and citizenship education reveals how a society envisions itself, how it seeks to organize politically, and how it projects its future.
In the digital era, civic education faces renewed and intensified challenges. Alongside traditional debates about citizenship and democracy, educators must contend with the proliferation of misinformation, hegemonic discourses, echo chambers, hate speech, and political polarization, to name a few. More recently, the rapid expansion of artificial intelligence has introduced unprecedented issues: deepfakes that enable identity manipulation, threats to intellectual property, the mass production of biased or erroneous information, algorithmic opacity, and the automation of influence at scales previously unimaginable.
Nevertheless, the digital era also offers opportunities. Civic education can harness new technologies to promote public debate, expand spaces for deliberation, and encourage direct forms of political participation. By cultivating citizens oriented towards social justice and embracing a maximalist vision of democracy, civic education can transform digital risks into pathways for more inclusive, critical, and participatory democratic cultures.
Given this background, the aim of the Special Issue is to answer the following research questions through theoretical and empirical studies:
- In what ways can education foster a democratic culture among young people in a context marked by digital polarization and the emergence of both democratic and non-democratic attitudes through online interactions?
- What forms of social and critical thinking should democratic education promote to empower students to act autonomously and responsibly in relation to the information that circulates on digital networks?
- How can education equip young people to confront hate speech and to construct counter-narratives that challenge hegemonic discourses and the invisibilization of identities in the digital sphere?
- How might civic education be redefined in the digital era to place human rights, global social justice, and democracy at its core, while drawing on insights from agonism and radical democracy?
Dr. Jordi Castellví
Dr. Antoni Santisteban-Fernández
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
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Keywords
- artificial Intelligence in Schools
- civic and citizenship education
- competences for democratic culture
- critical thinking against misinformation
- digital citizenship among young people
- online hate speech
- social justice education
- students’ counter-narratives
- youth polarization
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