The digital delinquent: Knowledge of the digital media and goal inconsistency

Summary

Digital media researchers celebrate the Internet as a promise of democratic renewal arranged by collective intelligences within an arena of mutual andmulticultural collaboration. Nonetheless, the digital self also delivers a set of features not nearly as attractive. Focusing on the analysis of the individual,rather than the collective, this paper aims to discuss the fundamentals of the digital self. As a guide for this not quite so appealing side of cyberspace,we present a character referred to here as digital delinquent. Being around everywhere in cyberspace, the delinquent processes information (s)he cannotunderstand and gives life to a particular type of Internet user. As a byproduct of information overload, there is in every one of us a little bit of adigital madman.