Digital citizens? Data Traces and Family Life

In the last decades, different scholars have focused on how political participation has been transformed by digital media. Although insightful, current research in the field lacks a critical understanding of the personal and affective dimension of online political participation. This paper aims to address this gap by looking at the interconnection between digital storytelling, identity narratives and family life. Drawing on an ethnographic research, the paper shows that activists construct their political identities online through complex practices of digital storytelling that involve the reinterpretation of early childhood and family life. These processes of digital storytelling have an un-intended consequence: they enable the political profiling of different family members. The paper argues that these digital practices, which produce politically identifying digital traces, are transforming political socialisation in family life and introducing new ways in which we can think digital citizenship across the life course.