At the beginning of their book on digital citizenship, Engin Isin and Evelyn Ruppert warn readers: "We cannot simply assume that being an online citizen already means something (whether it is the ability to participate or the ability to remain secure) and then seek out those whose conduct conforms to this meaning.' (19) So what can new media scholars surmise after the arrival of ubiquitous mobile and social media? In the age of high-tech classrooms and wearable self-tracking devices, attention seems to be turning to cultures of use and the types of governance that could enable digital life and enable a connected society to thrive. While we may question the universality of this scenario, it is clear that this is an idea whose time has come. Growing public commentary on online harassment, trolling, hacking scandals, and the promises and dangers of eSociety, eHealth, data retention, and cybersecurity has effectively shaped a sociopolitical language of “digital citizenship” in the name of security or of social good. In all this talk about digital citizenship two scenes tend to come to mind are broad questions about how governments and internet giants like Google and Facebook collect and possibly meddle in ours. private lives, reshaping the very boundaries between advertising and privacy. Or we hear about the risks of anonymity, like trolling, cyberbullying, and all the unknown things young people do online that might border on the socially irresponsible. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay From the start, Isin and Ruppert's Being Digital Citizens takes aim at some of the commonly reported issues relating to the role of digital technology and social rights. multimedia platforms. Rather than engaging in digital alarmism, they argue that the way we act through the Internet is changing our political subjectivity as new rights claims and struggles develop around platforms like Wikileaks or Pirate Bay and new heroes or cultural demons emerge like Edward Snowden. Digital hotspots, such as debates about how to make the wild corners of the Internet safe, civil and responsible, now overwhelm ordinary Internet users, like the young person navigating rules around mobile and social media use media in and out of school and who is regularly confronted with choices regarding piracy, sharing, trolling and responding to online harassment, or the transgender person must negotiate Facebook's "real name" policy while maintaining a presence on social media. These everyday social actions have already given rise to the “digital citizen” as an emerging political subject whose behavior is subject to regulation and control (as in current examples of sexting and harassment) and increasingly the subject of research investigation. Over the Last Fifteen Years In recent years, the research area known as “online participation” has grown with the proliferation of mobile devices and social media. Throughout this period, academic interest in online activities has maintained a dominant focus on political participation or civic engagement, but has also become fragmented in method and object of study. Studies exist on everything from traditional politics to activism, from digital communities to DIY cultures, as researchers struggle to keep pace with the ever-expanding uses to which new media are being put. Being Digital Citizens offers a conceptual tool to frame this disparatefield of research and contest the often implicit notion of digital citizenship embedded in this work. To find a theoretical foothold in digital debates, Isin and Ruppert work through some of the central and contested tenets of citizenship studies. They trace a useful theoretical line through the social theory of Deleuze and Guattari, Derrida, Foucault, Lyotard, Wittgenstein, Nancy, Ranciere, Latour, Butler, and Balibar, among other thinkers on subjectivity, agency, and power. But it is JL Austin's How to Do Things with Words that is central to their exploration of "digital acts." Austin's speech act theory has clear advantages when the focus of analysis is the modes of participation, connection, and sharing that underpin digital life. Following Austin's model, Isin and Ruppert identify the types of speech acts that make up digital life and the conditions necessary for their execution. Understanding the language of online communication as a performed activity rather than as code lays the foundation for a broader interrogation of digital acts understood as all the acts of expression and exchange that constitute our digital lives and give life to our digital selves. (53) Isinand Ruppert's theorization of digital acts is precise, supported, and accessible. While there are other theorists in this area who could have been considered, such as Whitehead and James, this may be work for others to pursue rather than a limitation of the current volume. Taking a pragmatic approach to digital citizenship means that Isin and Ruppert are able to move beyond the binary of freedom and control that shapes much of the current debate on the Internet. (79) Instead of continuing the debate on one side or the other of this shaky fence, Isin and Ruppert begin to unpack the question of how ordinary social media users, activists, governments, Internet companies, and developers web may continue to act in relation to each of them. more through the Internet and associated technologies. There are multiple facets to these interactions: “digital acts are reshaping, inventing and creating citizen-subjects through the play of obedience, submission and subversion.” (77) The starting point for future empirical work lies in the need to learn more about the direction and effects of digital acts, and this is where Austin proves useful once again. Drawing on Austin's speech act theory, Isin and Ruppert use the distinction between locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary speech to introduce a terminology of calls, openings, and closings to interrogate digital acts. Following Austin they argue that language has a force of action. Speech acts refer to what is actually said, while illocutionary acts are those actions that arise from what is enacted by saying something: "This is a speech act whose force creates a potential effect in a state of affairs" . (54) The notion of digital citizenship is itself the result of the illocutionary force of governmental acts, such as the establishment of "eSafety" policies or commissioners. These actions bring together a specific range of behaviors in the form of safety, security and citizenship. In contrast, perlocutionary acts refer to the response that speech acts elicit in others, however that response is expressed. Evoking the significance of the perlocutionary, Isin and Ruppert highlight the importance of nonverbal expression, gestures, movement, and other embodied responses in what we consider digital acts. This awareness that expressive intentionality and consequences are recorded beyond the track.