Digitalizing the welfare state: citizenship discourses in Danish digitalization strategies from 2002 to 2015

As governments worldwide become increasingly reliant on digital technologies and e-government, ‘digital citizenship’ has become an important topic for research and policy-makers alike. While often described as the contemporary ‘ideal’ of citizenship, research has tended to downplay the normative dimensions of digital citizenship. Counter to such depoliticized approaches, this article argues that the digital citizen is a deeply political figure. Through a discourse-theoretical analysis of Danish governmental digitalization strategies from 2002 to 2015, the article shows how these have relied on a very particular image of the digital citizen. More specifically, we showcase how this figure has reproduced neoliberal conceptions of subjectivity, concerned with efficiency, productivity, individualization and collective responsibilization. By shedding light on these novel links between neoliberal and digital citizenship, the article challenges current views on digitalization. The article foregrounds how digitalization serves to reproduce and recast already-existing political rationalities and must be considered in relation to neoliberal hegemony.