Examining digital citizenship levels of digital hybrids in terms of news dissemination

Digital citizenship has been a topic of research in the literature since the last decade. The related research basically deals with educational issues such as qualities of digital citizens, determining their self-efficacy levels and training programs. As one of the few studies in the field of communication, this study aims to determine digital citizenship levels of digital hybrids in terms of news dissemination and to explore the relationships between digital citizenship and news dissemination (news credibility and news sharing). For the purposes of the study, two different scales were administered to 500 digital hybrids: Digital Citizenship Scale and News Dissemination Scale. The clustering analysis as well as correlation, regression and ANOVA analyses revealed the following findings: Nine dimensions of digital citizenship are, in fact, perceived as eight dimensions as shown by the factor analysis. Digital access and digital literacy dimensions were combined under one single factor. The dimensions with the highest levels were found to be digital commerce, digital communication, digital access and literacy, digital ethics and digital rights and responsibilities while the lowest levels were digital law, digital health and digital security respectively. As digital law level increases, news credibility decreases. As digital communication and digital health levels increase, news dissemination of digital hybrids also increases. In conclusion, this study, which analyzed the correlation between digital citizenship levels and news dissemination, found that news credibility does not correlate with high levels of digital citizenship. In addition, news dissemination slightly increases as digital citizenship level increases. Finally, the digital hybrids with high levels of digital citizenship question news credibility, inquire and verify the source of news and tend to be unbiased against news contents.