Digital Responsibility: Current Perspectives and Future Directions

The capacity of digital technology to afford both profound benefits and substantial harm means that careful stewardship of the development, deployment, adoption, and appropriation of digital technologies is required through the practice of digital responsibility. Digital responsibility entails three key aspects: accountability for both harmful and beneficial outcomes of engaging with digital technology, the obligation to enable positive outcomes of digitalization while safeguarding against possible negative consequences of the same, and dependability: a continuous commitment to maintaining accountability and obligation in the face of constantly emerging new digital artifacts and the consequences that flow from their deployment. In this editorial, we develop an organizing framework for investigating digital responsibility, identify different ways in which digital responsibility could manifest in IS research and practice, and summarize how the papers included in this special issue advance our understanding of digital responsibility.