Civil Society in the Digital Environment -Does Technology Affect Civil Society Efforts to Promote Civic Engagement?-

Abstract

The paper examines the impacts of technology on civil society organizations as a space between the state and the individual, represented on the one hand by the opportunities that the digital environment provides to civil society organizations in terms of the enormous potential for communication, access, mobilization and organizing activities. On the other hand (represented) by the organizational challenges, funding and horizontal administrative hierarchy, in addition to digital illiteracy and the risks of censorship in an undemocratic political environment.

The paper is based on the widespread and profound presence of technology in the daily lives of individuals and societies, which has made them - in effect - digital societies, a situation that places civil society organizations inevitably in dealing with broad segments of society - that can only be reached - through phone screens or Internet-supported computers. The paper concludes that the essence of the traditional roles of civil society do not change (consolidating civic participation through representation, organizing demands and protests, consolidating the values ​​of cooperation and solidarity, advocacy...), but its success requires a change in the mechanisms of activity.