Strengthening the Role of Citizens in Governing Disruptive Technologies: The Case of Dutch Volunteer Hackers

Digitization can be understood as a socially disruptive technology. To deal with this disruption, the social challenge is to find cybersecurity solutions to protect society and its citizens from this disruptive impact. Citizens as the end-users of software are widely portrayed as the ‘weakest link’ in cybersecurity, indicating that they are insufficiently knowledgeable or not taking enough cybersecurity measures. In contrast, this paper about Dutch volunteer hackers demonstrates that citizens can make an important contribution to the governance of digitization. This paper argues that the roles of citizens in the governance of disruptive technologies should be better recognized and supported so they can contribute to maintaining the public interest in the digital society.