digital democracy essay

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Digital technology, power, and democracy, decentralized participatory democracy, digital public infrastructure, empowering digital democracy.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 March 2024

This article examines the role of digital technology in enabling and enhancing democratic practices and forms of governance. It contributes to emerging debates on democratic innovations by proposing a novel theoretical account of decentralized participatory democracy. To develop our account, we draw on the experience of two EU-funded projects, D-CENT and DECODE, which produced innovative citizen participation platforms and digital public infrastructure. Bringing democratic theory into conversation with critical data studies and the new municipalism movement, we theorize how these projects advanced three political aims: organizing political communities to build collective power, empowering citizens through direct participation in decision making, and transforming political institutions. The article then analyzes the strengths and limitations of these projects to draw lessons for policy makers and practitioners for future digital democratic experiments.

Digital technology has played a leading role in recent experiments that attempt to revitalize democratic government (Bernholz, Landemore, and Reich Reference Bernholz, Landemore and Reich 2021 ; Simon et al. Reference Simon, Bass, Boelman and Mulgan 2017 ). Its advocates claim that digital platforms and online fora have the potential to create more trust in public institutions, engage citizens in participatory action, and enhance the quality of democratic decision making. What is more, the past decade has indeed experienced a rapid spread of digital tools in democratic governance around the world. In France and Brazil, for example, citizens have engaged in large-scale deliberation in online spaces on national issues (Landemore Reference Landemore 2020 ; Simon et al. Reference Simon, Bass, Boelman and Mulgan 2017 ). In Iceland and Spain, meanwhile, political parties such as the Icelandic Pirate Party and the Spanish Podemos have used digital tools to crowdsource policies, set legislative priorities, and allocate municipal budgets (Gastil Reference Gastil 2021 ; Landemore Reference Landemore 2015 ). In turn, political scientists have studied the conditions under which these tools lead to better-quality democratic processes and more empowering outcomes for citizens.

This article contributes to this discussion in three respects. First, it traces the contours of an emerging body of literature on what we call digital democracy , which has previously been studied across a range of disciplines using different terminology, such as democratic innovations, e-participation, civic tech, and data commons (Gilman Reference Gilman 2016 ; Hague and Loader Reference Hague and Loader 1999a ; Sadowski Reference Sadowski 2021 ; Smith Reference Smith 2009 ). Bringing democratic theory into conversation with critical data studies (CDS), it shifts the focus from more traditional forms of digital democracy toward proposals that prioritize questions of power and political transformation. This also helps us to develop a nuanced account of the potential value of digital technology for democracy and the challenges involved, as well as important lessons for the emancipatory and complementary functions it could perform.

Second, we offer a new theoretical lens to interpret emerging experiments in digital democracy, which we call decentralized participatory democracy , developed from an analysis of two European pilots: D-CENT (Decentralised Citizens Engagement Technologies) and DECODE (Decentralised Citizen-Owned Data Ecosystems). This approach is attentive to questions of structural power and shows how political collectives can build organizational power by mobilizing citizens through digital technologies (Klein Reference Klein 2022 ; Muldoon Reference Muldoon 2022 ). Informed by the new municipalism movement, our approach shifts the locus of decision-making power from the institutions of the nation-state to more local and decentralized institutions of municipal associations and organized citizen networks (Russell Reference Russell 2019 ; Thompson Reference Thompson 2021 ). With participatory democrats, it seeks to open the structures of power to citizens and democratize broader aspects of the state and society (Forestal Reference Forestal 2022 ; Landemore Reference Landemore 2020 ). However, it also broadens the range of institutions under analysis, moving from formal political structures to systems of “neoliberal urbanism” (Thompson Reference Thompson 2021 ) and instances of “digital public infrastructure” (Fischli Reference Fischli 2022 ; Zuckerman Reference Zuckerman 2020 ) that aim to counteract corporate power and democratize the digital economy.

Our analysis is animated by a broader vision of the transformation of individuals and social structures through participatory processes, which goes beyond a limited set of administrative reforms characteristic of many recent approaches to participatory democracy (Fung Reference Fung 2004 ; Smith Reference Smith 2009 ). Rather than framing political and governance issues as practical problems to be solved, our approach focuses on the structures of power that might pose barriers to the realization of its normative goals. In some democratic innovations, “participation” is figured mainly through cogovernance schemes in which administrators retain the upper hand and usually control decision-making processes (Fung and Wright Reference Fung and Wright 2001 ). Decentralized participatory democracy, in contrast, is best characterized as an attempt to open up new pathways for citizens to exercise genuine control over political processes through the use of digital technology.

Following from this, the third contribution of this article is to interrogate the strengths and limitations of the discussed projects to draw lessons for policy makers and practitioners for future digital democratic experiments. Drawing on empirical material about these cases, we focus on one experiment from each set of projects and highlight the factors that subsequent empirical analyses identified as contributory to success or failure, such as strong political leadership, a favorable political context, continuous community engagement, and an agile administrative department willing to embrace changes (Sagarra et al. Reference Sagarra, Hoffmann, Clotet, Espelt, Calleja-López, Rodríguez and Balcells 2019 ). We also highlight factors that may hinder success, such as changes in political power, administrative inertia, technical obstacles, and a lack of willingness by governments to devolve decision-making power to citizens. In this way, the article contributes to the ongoing effort to bridge normative democratic theory with the empirical study of political institutions (Fung Reference Fung 2007 ).

The method we adopt for this project is in line with what Hélène Landemore ( Reference Landemore 2020 , 20) has called “inductive political theory,” a “form of political theory that builds on the generalization, refinement, and deeper exploration of collective intuitions already widely shared in the public as well as those tested on the ground by activists.” Inductive political theory, as we understand it here, is a method that draws inspiration from an engagement with democratic experiments tested on the ground by activists and politicians. The idea behind this approach is to learn from specific empirical examples of democratic practices to develop normative concepts and institutional principles. This bottom-up approach of theorizing departs from more traditional, deductive, forms of political theory, which tend to take theoretical principles as given and apply them to the world. With its focus on learning from real-world experiments, it is characteristic of a more recent turn within political theory that wishes to engage more closely with the insights and experiences of citizens, policy makers, and activists “on the ground” (Herzog and Zacka Reference Herzog and Zacka 2017 ; Wolff Reference Wolff 2020 ).

That said, we do not conduct our own primary research involving interviews with stakeholders. Rather, we synthesize existing research related to the projects, drawing from extensive project documentation, academic articles, and activist reflections on the two sets of projects, D-CENT and DECODE, that represent a particular European tradition of decentralized participatory democracy made possible through digital technology. Together, these two EU-funded projects constitute nearly a decade of experiments with digital democracy from which we can learn (Morozov and Bria Reference Morozov and Bria 2018 ; Simon et al. Reference Simon, Bass, Boelman and Mulgan 2017 ). While some of these pilots have been discussed in previous literature, they have not yet been properly contextualized within a specific tradition of democratic practice (Bernholz, Landemore, and Reich Reference Bernholz, Landemore and Reich 2021 ; Gastil Reference Gastil 2021 ).

An analysis of these two European initiatives makes an important contribution to the primarily US-centric literature on democratic government and highlights two sets of democratic innovations that can be integrated into existing participatory frameworks. They complement the range of innovative experiments in governance taking place in the United States (although primarily at a municipal or state level). Many of these experiments tend to be animated by the deliberative tradition (Landemore Reference Landemore 2020 ; Neblo, Esterling, and Lazer Reference Neblo, Esterling and Lazer 2018 ; Newsom Reference Newsom and Dickey 2014 ) and analyze how digital technology can facilitate online deliberative spaces to provide citizens with new avenues for participation in democratic politics and generating legitimacy for existing institutions (Bernholz, Landemore, and Reich Reference Bernholz, Landemore and Reich 2021 ; Cohen and Fung Reference Cohen, Fung, Bernholz, Landemore and Reich 2021 ; Fishkin et al. Reference Fishkin, Garg, Gelauff, Goel, Munagala, Sakshuwong, Siu and Yandamuri 2018 ; Gastil Reference Gastil 2021 ). We want to add to this debate by drawing attention to a different set of experiments that focused on how digital technology could contribute to building the collective power of citizens and facilitating their direct participation in, and transformation of, political institutions.

The article proceeds as follows. First, we define our conception of digital democracy and situate it in the long-standing debate about the potentials and challenges of digital technology for democracy. Then, we introduce the D-CENT pilot and show how it aids the development of a decentralized participatory democratic perspective on digital democracy. Following this, we analyze empirical findings of the pilots from D-CENT through the lens of CDS. Next, we introduce the DECODE pilot and show how the decentralized participatory democratic tradition is developed and extended by this pilot to include a novel conception of digital public infrastructure (Fischli Reference Fischli 2022 ; Zuckerman Reference Zuckerman 2020 ). We then analyze empirical evaluations of one of its pilots through the lens of CDS to identify the conditions for failure or success. We conclude by reflecting upon the lessons that could be learned from these recent innovations in digital democracy.

Ever since the advent of the internet, digital technology has been heralded either as the ultimate harbinger or destroyer of democracy. Cyber-enthusiasts emphasized its emancipatory and decentralizing potential (Barlow Reference Barlow 1996 ; Negroponte Reference Negroponte 1995 ), while others were more skeptical, cautioning against a “Big Brother” surveillance society (Davies Reference Davies 1996 ). An important point raised in this first wave of digital democracy literature during the 1990s is that for a digital democratic project to be successful, its technologies must be anchored in the communities it seeks to serve (Hague and Loader Reference Hague and Loader 1999a ). Similarly, Hagen ( Reference Hagen, Hacker and van Dijk 2000 , 56) argues that digital technology “is not an independent force working for the better or worse of democracy,” but rather amplifies existing trends, which requires a close consideration of the social, political, economic, and cultural factors of the political system in question. Finally, and crucially for our undertaking, political scientists at the time noted that debates on digital democracy had been “highly Americano-centric,” which risks an overly narrow focus on this geographic region and adds little value to debates outside the United States (Hoff, Horrocks, and Tops Reference Hoff, Horrocks and Tops 2000 , 2).

Fast-forward two decades, and the debate about digital democracy is still in full swing. Techno-optimists embrace digital technology’s potential for a democratic revival (Cohen and Fung Reference Cohen, Fung, Bernholz, Landemore and Reich 2021 , 25; Forestal Reference Forestal 2022 ), while skeptics warn of “post-truth politics, polarization, and radicalization” (Hannan Reference Hannan 2018 , 214). Against this background, what is needed is an analysis of how digital technology could be harnessed to improve the functioning of democratic government. However, as the editors of Digital Technology and Democratic Theory note, democratic theorists have so far paid insufficient attention to the ways in which digital technology has had a profound effect on democratic institutions and practices (Bernholz, Landemore, and Reich Reference Bernholz, Landemore and Reich 2021 , 3).

Digital democracy, as we define it here, refers to a sociotechnical system that incorporates the use of digital technologies to enable or enhance democratic practices and forms of governance. It incorporates a diverse array of practices, from open-government initiatives that foster greater transparency and legitimacy to citizens providing ideas to governments and even making binding decisions on policies and legislation. What is essential to our broad definition of digital democracy is not the size, scale, or institutional location of new innovations, but the presence of digital tools in new forms of democratic practices. That said, we regard society and (digital) technology as inextricably linked. Scholars from science and technology studies (STS) have long pointed out that technology is not neutral and that “artifacts have politics” (Winner Reference Winner 1980 ). In other words, while society changes and evolves with the new affordances offered by digital technology, users also adapt the technology to fit their specific needs. Julie E. Cohen ( Reference Cohen 2012 , 27) summarizes this relationship well when she argues that “as we struggle to shape our technologies and configure our artifacts, they also and quite literally configure us, guiding us toward the well-worn paths that render the material a matter of habit.” Similarly, Barry Hague and Brian Loader ( Reference Hague, Loader, Hague and Loader 1999b , 10) argue for the importance of citizens being “exposed to the current capabilities of ICTs [information and communication technologies] and … encouraged to consider whether and how they might be utilized to the betterment of their individual and collective lives,” and to “allow them to decide for themselves what use ICTs may be to them.” In this article, we adopt this perspective by attending not just to how the introduction of digital tools affects citizens, but also to how citizens make use of technology to pursue their own ends.

Importantly, digital democracy specifies only the mechanisms for enhancing democratic practices, which makes it theoretically open to a variety of democratic ideals and practical goals. At the same time, many of these reforms gesture toward what Hélène Landemore ( Reference Landemore 2020 , 11) has described as an “open democracy,” understood as a “general accessibility of power to ordinary citizens” through new avenues of direct citizen participation. Considered as a progressive shift away from the concentration of power in relatively closed and oligarchic institutions, transformations made possible by digital democracy could in the future come to fundamentally reconfigure representative institutions in ways that open up the possibility of speaking of a new type of democratic regime (12).

Digital democracy can be an alternative to traditional ideas of representative government, but it does not have to be. For example, crowdsourcing policies for a political party or a one-off consultation of citizens would count as instances of digital democracy without significantly altering the structure of a democratic regime. However, there are also more fundamental processes, such as establishing permanent extra-electoral institutions, that push toward a reconfiguration of political power, which in turn changes core aspects of how representative democracies operate.

As we will see, the political actors responsible for the D-CENT and DECODE projects were particularly attentive to questions of equalizing power between democratic citizens and seeking to open pathways to transform the political system. Rather than conceiving of the problem of politics as a lack of opportunities for ongoing discussion, they centered their analysis on the distribution of political power and the domination of the political process by wealthy and powerful elites. By properly contextualizing these experiments of digital democracy, we aim to contribute to existing discussions developing an approach that shows how political collectives can build organizational power by mobilizing citizens through digital technologies.

Within the digital democracy literature, it is perhaps Hélène Landemore’s research project that shares most with the theoretical framework developed here. In “Open Democracy and Digital Technologies” (2021), Landemore imagines how key institutional principles of her new paradigm of open democracy—a vision of democratic popular rule that centers on the role that minipublics with lottocratic and self-selected representation play in allowing a broader range of citizens to access decision-making power—could be facilitated using digital tools. Drawing inspiration from recent democratic experiments in Iceland and France, Landemore argues that technologies have rendered the promise of deeper democracy considerably more plausible through new forms of empowered citizen participation in policy making and decision making. These institutions range from online platforms for policy development to referenda and participatory budgeting. Through these tools, citizens gain a capacity to exercise agenda-setting power by creating new proposals and—with a sufficient level of support—seeing these through to new policies and laws.

To this approach, with which we substantially agree, we seek to add a greater attentiveness to the dynamics of political power and how democratic communities can mobilize to challenge entrenched structures of power and transform political institutions. We place less emphasis on the institutional design of a minipublic and instead look to the vitality and democratic agency of people organized through social movements and municipal institutions. With Landemore ( Reference Landemore, Bernholz, Landemore and Reich 2021 ), we argue that digital democracy, understood from this perspective, allows for a progressive shift away from the concentration of power in relatively closed and oligarchic institutions.

To do so, we bring literature on democratic theory into conversation with CDS, which are chiefly interested in the ways in which “data are generated, curated, and how they permeate and exert power on all manner of forms of life” (Iladis and Russo Reference Iliadis and Russo 2016 , 2). The relationship between digital technology and power is one that has been widely documented, particularly in the context of social welfare (Eubanks Reference Eubanks 2018 ), the workplace (Ajunwa Reference Ajunwa 2020 ), or the digital economy more broadly (Cohen Reference Cohen 2019 ; Zuboff Reference Zuboff 2019 ). That said, CDS offer an important lens of analysis for the two projects we are interested in, as they do not just seek to “expose data power, but to challenge its operation and promote alternative data imaginaries and practices” (Kitchin Reference Kitchin 2022 , 80). In the development of our account of decentralized participatory democracy and the subsequent assessment of the two pilots, we pay attention to three questions inspired by the CDS research agenda: Did the democratic experiments challenge existing (data) power relations? Did they empower citizens with concrete counterinterventions that facilitate participation in decision making and emphasize data literacy and activism (Kitchin Reference Kitchin 2022 , 80)? And to what extent did they transform (political) institutions through new “data imaginaries” and activities?

Our aim in the next two sections is to develop a perspective on the possibilities of digital democracy that focuses on citizen empowerment through the use of digital technology. In this section we start by theorizing the first of two experiments, the D-CENT pilot. D-CENT was a Europe-wide project in digital democracy that developed digital tools to assist citizens, political parties, social movements, and municipal governments to undertake democratic processes. It was EU-funded, starting in October 2013 and ending in May 2016, with all the code development uploaded to GitHub. D-CENT developed a “toolbox” of digital software for democratic governance, including citizen notifications of legislative decisions, a collaborative policy-drafting tool, a social network for citizens, a new voting system, and an open authentication and identity management tool (D-CENT 2016 ). These were distributed via an open-source platform that enabled any organization or government to utilize them for new projects (D-CENT 2014 ). Collaborating with partners in different cities, the project involved software developed and tested in four large-scale pilots across Spain, Iceland, and Finland:

• Better Reykjavik: a social network for citizens with a participatory budgeting platform (My Neighborhood) used by the city of Reykjavik, which enabled citizens to discuss and propose new policies and suggest how part of the city budget would be spent.

• Decisions Helsinki: a tool employed by the city government to allow citizens to follow notifications of municipal policy decisions that are of interest to them.

• Decidim Barcelona and Decide Madrid: a digital participation platform used by the city of Barcelona and the city of Madrid to enable citizens to propose, discuss, and vote on policies for the city government.

In D-CENT, the central concern for designers was developing technology that would support modes of participation that would allow citizens to have a more direct role in policy making and decision making. The pilots were part of a wave of participatory democratic experiments in the wake of Occupy Wall Street, the 15M movement in Spain, and the European “squares movements” in the early 2010s that sought to address the disparities of political power between citizens and political elites (Kioupkiolis and Katsambekis Reference Kioupkiolis and Katsambekis 2014 ). These mobilizations set up collective assemblies, built broad coalitions, created new programs of reform, and called for more participatory processes to be incorporated into democratic states. They were driven by criticisms of the failure of representative democracy—namely the oligarchic structure of political parties and the disempowering effects of representative institutions—leading many citizens to feel increasing dissatisfaction with their politicians and democratic institutions (Foa and Mounk Reference Foa and Mounk 2017 ; Manin Reference Manin 1997 ). In municipal elections in 2015, Barcelona en Comú won the mayor’s office on a mandate to bring a new type of politics to the city. Its leader, housing activist Ada Colau, championed a vision of participatory democracy for the city and implemented changes to how the city related to technology companies and citizens.

The background of the main activists who developed these projects was in the Indymedia scene in the 1990s, the free and open software movement, the anti-globalization movement, and the pink tide in Latin America (Bria and Morozov Reference Bria and Morozov 2022 ). These efforts to create innovative forms of digital democracy were inspired by the desire to learn from the experiences of Project Cybersyn in Chile (1971–73)—an attempt to create a digital network for the democratic control of the national economy during the presidency of Salvador Allende (Medina Reference Medina 2011 ). Francesca Bria, then Barcelona’s chief technology and innovation officer, was the project coordinator for both projects and played a key role in their development. She recounts how her team was “consciously drawing on the Latin American experiences” to design “genuinely European alternatives to Web 2.0” (Bria and Morozov Reference Bria and Morozov 2022 ). Barcelona was also the center point of each set of pilots and had been a leading example of smart-city innovation during the early 2010s (March and Ribera-Fumaz Reference March, Ribera-Fumaz, Karvonen, Cugurullo and Caprotti 2019 ).

To understand the political perspective of these experiments, we can draw on the theoretical tradition of “new municipalism” represented by the Fearless Cities summits, in which Barcelona was a key player (Thompson Reference Thompson 2021 ). This tradition is important because it reveals how citizen platforms such as Consul are not apolitical technical devices that can be plugged into different political systems with little regard for political context. Moreover, the new municipalists who came to power in Barcelona and elsewhere argue that the city is a strategically important site for contesting power. There are a variety of “municipalisms,” from the pragmatic to the entrepreneurial, but the expansive and transformative program of these activists imagines how power can be devolved from the nation-state to municipal institutions that are closer to democratic citizens (Aldag, Kim, and Warner Reference Aldag, Kim and Warner 2019 ; Saunier Reference Saunier 2002 ; Thompson Reference Thompson 2021 ). This was based on an idea that these institutions will be more responsive to citizen demands and better able to be controlled by organized citizen power. The variety of municipalism developed through the Fearless Cities network was united around a proactive and contentious vision of challenging neoliberal urbanism and building centers of power in municipal institutions (Thompson Reference Thompson 2021 ).

Drawing from this municipalist tradition, we theorize three specific aspects of a decentralized participatory democracy as embodied in the D-CENT projects: using digital technology to build collective power, facilitating direct participation in decision making, and transforming political institutions. At its base, this is a variety of participatory democracy and shares many of the common goals of this tradition, seeking to create opportunities for citizens to participate directly in political decisions that affect their lives (Lafont Reference Lafont 2019 ; Pateman Reference Pateman 1970 ). We use the adjective “decentralized” in this context to refer to the particular confluence of new municipalism, a radical reformist ideology, and the use of digital technology, which came together in these two sets of pilots. The idea of shifting—or decentralizing—power from the nation-state to citizen networks and municipal authorities was essential to these projects and is captured in both their names. In contrast to certain other forms of politics at the local level, such as New England town hall meetings, these projects had a more contentious and transformative vision of challenging how power operated and seeking to transform political institutions.

To start, the software trialed in the D-CENT pilots promises a unique pathway for citizen empowerment by allowing citizens to participate online in specially designed spaces with a real impact on government decisions (Neblo, Esterling, and Lazer Reference Neblo, Esterling and Lazer 2018 ). If used appropriately, it could enable citizens to reverse what Hélène Landemore ( Reference Landemore 2020 , 5) describes as the “enclosure of power” that occurs in representative democracies in order to make this power accessible on a more egalitarian basis. Citizens have multiple pathways on these digital platforms to have their voices heard in proposing new legislation, commenting on potential laws, and voting on laws and city budgets (Monge et al. Reference Monge, Barns, Kattel and Bria 2022 ). The platforms add to a rich ecology of different associations in which citizens can participate, which includes both formal and informal processes of deliberation and decision making. In theory, this provides new opportunities for citizens to express their views and reach an audience on issues of public concern.

Deliberation with other citizens is an important aspect of these digital platforms, but it is not the primary perspective around which they are organized. Instead, these municipal movements are about returning power to ordinary citizens by building on the potential of the urban setting to construct what Bertie Russell ( Reference Russell 2019 ) has called “a politics of proximity,” which refers to the strategic importance of the municipal level as a space that is potentially more accessible to direct citizen participation and more open to transformative change. Ada Colau, the former mayor of Barcelona, characterizes the movement as “an agora, not a temple,” referring to the open arena for deliberation and citizen input into policy making in the city-states of ancient Greece (Russell Reference Russell 2019 ). The city offers a closer connection between citizens and representatives and more pathways for the former to participate in politics.

Second, digital tools can create new participatory processes that enable a broader mobilization and organization of political communities (Rahman Reference Rahman 2017 , 751). At the same time as they give citizens a voice in government, the tools also become embedded in a broader organization of citizens around key issues (Peña-López Reference Peña-López 2017 ). Research shows that citizens’ motivation to participate and prioritize political activity in their lives is closely tied to their perceived ability to influence political decisions (Fung Reference Fung 2004 ). These digital platforms provide new forms of political contestation around projects that citizens feel they have a degree of control over. Participating on digital platforms becomes part of a broader process of citizens making demands, organizing through social movements, and advocating for their communities (Klein Reference Klein 2022 , 32). This process of demand formation allows political communities to build power by increasing communication and strengthening networks in grassroots organizations. In this way, the process of proposing, deliberating, and voting on issues of importance helps communities to generate power through common action.

As Steven Klein ( Reference Klein 2022 , 37) points out, “democratic institutions not only distribute power as decision-making rights, but also realize power by organizing the disorganized over and against the already organized, such as the wealthy and incumbent state actors.” His perspective of a “democratic power approach” (27) to understanding the proper role of democratic institutions provides a useful lens to highlight our more empowered and transformative view of digital democracy. According to Klein’s approach, democratic institutions are not simply formal procedures, but also “substantive mechanisms for organizing different actors, interests, and groups in society” (27). Thus, for an institutional order to be properly democratic it should organize collective power by assisting individuals to participate in collective activities and coordinate with others, particularly those who are less wealthy and powerful (27). Klein’s approach and new municipalism share an emphasis on democratic institutions that generate the collective dimension of political power and help to equalize power between citizens in a democratic regime. Democracy, in this view, is best understood as entailing both fair procedures that guarantee a minimum level of inclusion and equal influence and mechanisms that help to organize and mobilize citizens and equalize power between them.

Third, decentralized participatory democracy includes a transformative dimension that can produce a qualitative shift in how democratic government functions through a transfer of power to citizens. This transformative perspective contributes to our understanding of an important dimension of democratic practice related to the creative agency of democratic actors and their capacity for institutional innovation (Asenbaum Reference Asenbaum 2021b ). It also chimes with other recent transformative perspectives within democratic theory that seek to institute changes to the current configuration between neoliberal capital and the state (Asenbaum Reference Asenbaum 2021a ; Kioupkiolis Reference Kioupkiolis 2019 ).

Thus, instead of asking how digital technology can contribute to increasing the legitimacy of existing institutions, we should also be attentive to how it could change them. Even though citizen platforms often gain attention by participating in municipal electoral politics, this engagement is not limited to appropriating the powers of the state to use it for progressive ends. Rather, new municipalists are concerned with transforming the institutions by opening them to a broader vision of collective self-government. They have pursued progressive policy agendas that, at their most radical end, have included calls for “the democratization of society and the socialization of production” (Akuno and Nangwaya Reference Akuno and Nangwaya 2017 ). But even less radical manifestations have included ideas around introducing more cooperative principles into urban economies and creating networks of community wealth-building (Guinan and O’Neill Reference Guinan and O’Neill 2019 ). When Barcelona en Comú were elected they pursued a democratic-socialist agenda of developing the cooperative economy, instituting progressive procurement strategies, remunicipalizing some public services, and promoting greater social rights for citizens (Blanco, Salazar, and Bianchi Reference Blanco, Salazar and Bianchi 2020 ).

Municipalists do not understand this as simply a transfer of power from national institutions to municipal ones, but as a change in how this power is developed and used. The city is framed as a strategic site for developing citizen power and challenging traditional party politics by providing citizens new avenues to participate through digital platforms (Thompson Reference Thompson 2021 ). This is why municipalists attempt to forge international connections between cities and demonstrate how corporate power across the globe affects citizens in similar ways, connecting local issues with global networks of power (Russell Reference Russell 2019 ). Yet the notion of place and proximity plays an important role in this style of transformative politics. A municipalist politics is one that is interested in more than winning as many seats as possible; it seeks to forge connections between citizens, mobilize resources to build political power, open up municipal institutions to organized citizens, and develop a policy agenda. Building on the demands of the Spanish 15M movement for “real democracy,” the substantive policy agenda of municipalist movements centers upon ways in which democratic principles can be extended from the political sphere of the state to other social and economic institutions to distribute power and decision making to ordinary citizens.

Decide Madrid and Consul

In this section, we turn to an analysis of one of the most prominent experiments within the D-CENT pilot to assess how successful it was in implementing these principles. In doing so, we investigate if the technology in question was used by citizens to build collective power and challenge existing power relations, if it provided citizens with “practical counterinterventions” that facilitate participation in decision making, and whether it transformed political institutions through the promotion of new “data imaginaries” and activities (Kitchin Reference Kitchin 2022 , 80).

The cornerstone of the D-CENT project was in Madrid, where “Decide Madrid” was launched in 2015. The project was greeted as “a decentralization of power that equips communities with the instruments to make decisions collectively … [t]o encourage the use of digital infrastructures that can be reappropriated and to ensure they can be accessible and that people can learn to use them” (Roth, Lander, and Pin Reference Roth, Lander and Pin 2018 , 115, quoted in Charnock, March, and Ribera-Fumaz Reference Charnock, March and Ribera-Fumaz 2021 , 590). Today, Decide Madrid is one of the best examples of Consul, the open-source software developed by D-CENT.

This software underpins a participation platform that enables citizens to perform a variety of tasks (D-CENT 2014 , 14–15). First, it allows citizens to propose policies to the city government. If they pass a given threshold of approval from other citizens, these proposals become subject to a vote that sends the proposal forward to be reviewed by the government. The platform also enables citizens to discuss proposals that have originated from the city government or from a collaboration between citizens and government, and to engage in participatory budgeting. Furthermore, citizens can use the platform as a discussion forum on a variety of topics other than legislative proposals. In short, Consul allows citizens to participate digitally in five areas (debates, proposals, polls, processes, and participatory budgeting), thereby contributing to “three moments of the policy cycle”: agenda setting, policy analysis, policy formulation—and, to a limited degree, policy monitoring (Royo, Pina, and Garcia-Rayado Reference Royo, Pina and Garcia-Rayado 2020 , 7).

In public and policy circles, Decide Madrid is widely considered a success. In 2018 it won a United Nations Public Service award and is listed in the OECD Observatory of Public Sector Innovation. The Consul software has been exported to more than 35 countries, and has been used by 135 institutions and 90 million citizens (Consul 2022 ). For example, D-CENT software was used to build a participatory budgeting platform in Reykjavik and to allow Finish citizens the right to propose new bills to parliament if they received support from 50,000 other citizens. In Madrid, a strong communications plan from the city and high expectations from citizens led to elevated participation levels in the initial stages of the project. By the end of 2018, more than 400,000 users were registered on the platform, with participatory budgeting being the most popular aspect of the software (Royo, Pina, and Garcia-Rayado Reference Royo, Pina and Garcia-Rayado 2020 , 2). What is more, citizens had used the platform to decide over one thousand action items, including choosing which squares should undergo renovation (12).

Reports conducted during and after the project, including exploratory case studies that consisted of interviews with politicians and civil servants as well as desk research, indicate three main factors were particularly relevant for the project’s success (Royo, Pina, and Garcia-Rayado Reference Royo, Pina and Garcia-Rayado 2020 , 1). First, support by political leaders, specifically the serving mayor, was crucial in successfully launching the platform because it improved the coordination of council departments and ensured the financial, political, and managerial support required to develop and sustain the platform (13). This allowed citizen engagement to be integrated into more traditional structures of the city government. Moreover, the city council went to considerable lengths to avoid the traditional restrictions on citizen participation in Spain by committing to take the results of the polls and participatory budgets as binding, irrespective of the number of participants—a factor that has been key to the technology’s implementation and internal institutionalization (14).

Second, and in line with Hagen’s (2022) observations, contextual factors played a significant role in the success of the technology. Madrid has had a long experience of neighborhood-based associations collaborating with the municipality in the coproduction of public services (Royo, Pina, and Garcia-Rayado Reference Royo, Pina and Garcia-Rayado 2020 , 6; Sánchez Medero and Pastor Albaladejo Reference Sánchez Medero and Pastor Albaladejo 2018 ). The possibility of direct citizen participation in public affairs and individual or collective petitions is recognized in the 1978 Constitution. Another was the political crisis that preceded the pilot’s implementation. Spain, and particularly Madrid, were the locus of a political crisis, which in turn provided fruitful soil for an initiative that sought to empower citizens and give them a more prominent voice in local policy making. Spain also had a long history of embracing digital technology and being at the forefront of civic tech initiatives.

Third, the project prioritized a user-friendly design for the technology. To make proposals and comment on all sections of the platform, citizens only needed to provide an email address. Voting on proposals, however, required information that confirmed citizenship, such as a national identity number, their date of birth, and their postal code. The platform also attempted to be open to citizens with disabilities by allowing many of the participatory activities and the verification process to be undertaken offline, which included distributing printed signature forms to support citizen proposals.

From a decentralized participatory democracy perspective, the D-CENT project did indeed meet its own political aims: citizens used the participation platform to rally around shared issues, desires, and concerns, thereby providing a pathway toward building collective power (Klein Reference Klein 2022 , 32). In enabling citizens to have their voices heard, decide on action items, engage in participatory budgeting, and contribute their ideas to the policy cycle, the Consul software allowed participating citizens to facilitate direct access to decision making. By changing the way in which citizen proposals entered the policy cycle, the software used in the pilot also transformed political institutions. However, the CDS research agenda also highlights a number of challenges that need to be addressed in future iterations.

One of the most important challenges concerns questions of representation and inclusion. Despite an initial peak in popularity, overall registration rates for the platform remain relatively low (less than 10% of the population is registered). While the software theoretically challenges existing power relations by empowering citizens equally, it fell short of a more widespread form of citizen participation. This fact deserves attention, as one of the stated goals of the activists behind the project was to enable a broader range of ordinary citizens to access a political process dominated by wealthy and well-organized elites. Which part of the citizenry used these tools most is currently unknown. This lack of insight into the demographic and socioeconomic background of participants is a feature of the technology, not a bug: the technology was specifically designed to not collect these sensitive attributes of the citizens using the platform, thereby protecting their privacy. This makes it difficult to assess how participation was distributed among different social groups, and to come up with new ideas as to how to reach the underrepresented.

Research indicates that public awareness of Decide Madrid tends to be strongest among university-educated citizens (Simon et al. Reference Simon, Bass, Boelman and Mulgan 2017 , 49). This raises a well-known concern that opening up new opportunities for participation could exacerbate existing inequalities by empowering those with more time and resources over less influential members of society (Elliott Reference Elliott 2023 ; Neblo, Esterling, and Lazer Reference Neblo, Esterling and Lazer 2018 , 30). This issue was not adequately addressed in the pilot and requires active prioritization if these tools are to become part of an empowering digital democracy.

What is more, the lack of data related to questions of representation and inclusion highlights an uncomfortable tension between privacy and public value inherent in projects that seek to navigate this difficult terrain: from a privacy perspective, we would like to see as little data as possible being collected, while from a technological—and indeed, public policy—perspective, more datapoints are better for understanding how the process is functioning. In the pilot, designers followed a data minimization principle, which, while being attentive to people’s privacy, also resulted in a lack of information for addressing issues around diversity and inclusion. There is no “quick fix” to deal with these substantive questions, and it makes democratic inclusion and deliberation even more important for any city or community that contemplates implementing such technologies.

On a more optimistic note, research suggests that small changes to the institutional structure of digital platforms through a well-designed recruitment strategy can enable a broader cross section of the community to participate (Neblo, Esterling, and Lazer Reference Neblo, Esterling and Lazer 2018 , 53–68). Neblo and colleagues use empirical evidence from their experimental trials in online deliberation to suggest that reaching out to diverse groups of citizens and encouraging them to participate can help to ameliorate concerns about the overrepresentation of dominant groups.

A second challenge relates to the process through which participation on the platform translates into creating binding laws, which ties directly into the practicality criterion of the CDS research agenda. Even though the platform was designed to minimize the administrative burden on citizens, one issue was that it was difficult for citizens to identify duplicate proposals, which in turn led to a lot of citizens proposing similar ideas, making it harder for a proposal to reach the necessary threshold of votes. Despite 25,418 proposals being made by the end of 2018, only two, “Madrid 100% sustainable” and “single ticket for public transport,” reached the voting phase and were enacted as legislation (Royo, Pina, and Garcia-Rayado Reference Royo, Pina and Garcia-Rayado 2020 , 11–12). In response, some citizens sought to add previously unsuccessful proposals into participatory budgeting votes or polls to avoid the high threshold of required votes (13). This suggests that greater attention needs to be given to improving the practicality of such counterinterventions, such as by introducing filtering and sorting processes that could aggregate proposals, or by lowering the threshold of required votes to ensure that more citizen initiatives were successful. That said, lowering the threshold for required votes might introduce new risks to representation and inclusion, as it would make it easier for well-organized interest groups to achieve their policy goals by mobilizing (or manipulating) fewer members of the public. Thus, increasing citizen power by lowering the threshold of required votes would have to be balanced against other democratic concerns, such as avoiding elite capture. Where possible, such efforts would have to be accompanied by rules or guidelines designed to prevent such coordinated collective action.

It also appears that citizens were excited, but not ultimately convinced, about the project’s ability to meaningfully promote different data practices. Subsequent reports noted a perceived lack of transparency over how proposals would become new laws (Royo, Pina, and Garcia-Rayado Reference Royo, Pina and Garcia-Rayado 2020 , 15). Citizens interviewed about the pilot indicated their strongest motivation was the possibility of seeing their contributions implemented as law or taken into account in the policy-making process. The fact that so few of their proposals appeared to make it into the final stages of the process raised skepticism that the process was merely for show and that the governing party was not committed to genuine empowerment of citizen voices. Thus, figuring out how these tools can be made widely accessible is crucial not just on a technical but also on a normative level, especially if the serving government promises to treat proposals as binding. For digital participation platforms to attract serious interest from citizens and truly promote a different data imaginary built around collective power, they should prioritize equalizing access for all citizens; adopt a user-friendly design; and install processes that are easy to navigate and understand, and which will see the creation of binding laws if the appropriate steps are taken.

In the next section, we turn to a second set of pilots that sought to institute what Zuckerman ( Reference Zuckerman 2020 ) and Fischli ( Reference Fischli 2022 ) have coined “digital public infrastructure.” At first glance, an idea about citizen-controlled data may seem far removed from participatory platforms and digital democratic tools. But a cursory look at the CDS research agenda and the new municipalism movement reveals a common theme of building collective power in public institutions to allow citizens to participate more directly in processes of self-governance.

The DECODE pilots and the idea of building digital public infrastructure can be understood as an extension of the decentralized participatory democratic approach to the economic domain of data markets. Whereas the D-CENT pilots were about using digital tools to create new participatory forms of governance, DECODE sought to build a public system of data governance by counteracting the power of Big Tech firms and developing an ecosystem of public and cooperative alternatives. In other words, rather than exploring ways in which existing democratic institutions could better function through greater levels of citizen participation, the DECODE pilot sought to democratize the digital economy by building public systems of data governance.

Building on the legacy of D-CENT, DECODE was an EU-funded three-year project running between January 2017 and December 2019 in Amsterdam and Barcelona, designed in response to concerns about the loss of control over people’s data when using large centralized corporate platforms. The overarching aim of the pilots was to implement a new municipal data policy that challenged the power of Big Tech companies and created a new infrastructure for managing citizens’ data (Sagarra et al. Reference Sagarra, Hoffmann, Clotet, Espelt, Calleja-López, Rodríguez and Balcells 2019 ).

DECODE was again conceived of and coordinated by Francesca Bria, and gained significant attention as a leading innovator in creating new digital infrastructure for the city that enabled citizens to gain greater control over their data (Cardullo, Kitchin, and di Feliciantonio Reference Cardullo, Kitchin and di Feliciantonio 2019 ; Charnock, March, and Ribera-Fumaz Reference Charnock, March and Ribera-Fumaz 2021 ). It was recognized that municipal data generated by citizens would be crucial for future city administrations to run public services. A 2018 poll indicated that 73% of respondents would “share personal data in an effort to improve public services if there was a simple and secure way of doing it” (Nesta 2018 , para. 5). City governments, such as those in Barcelona and Amsterdam, are an important site for the development of such prototypes because they are responsible for delivering basic services to citizens and can be more amenable than national governments to transformative political projects. They also often have regulatory powers over tech companies and can act on behalf of local citizens to counteract the power of global digital platforms. The pilots sought to allow citizens to manage their own devices for generating data and create a “data commons” as a shared public resource that was accessible and transparent in how data was collected and used (Old and Bass Reference Old and Bass 2020 , 4).

These pilots were:

• Digital Democracy and Data Commons: Barcelona City Council integrated a new mechanism into the digital democracy software Decidim to enable citizens to sign petitions anonymously while still using authentication requirements, such as place of residence.

• Citizen Science Data Governance: this Barcelona pilot used citizen-placed sensors in homes and neighborhoods to gather data on social and environmental issues, such as noise levels and pollution, to create a municipal data commons through data shared anonymously by citizens.

• Gebiedonline (Neighbourhood Online): this pilot tested more privacy-preserving attribute-based credentials on users accessing a local neighborhood social network in Amsterdam, giving them more control over the data they shared.

• Amsterdam Digital Register: this pilot enabled citizens to access information stored in a municipal database through blockchain technology to verify their age without having to share their full identity or social security number.

The need for such an intervention in the digital economy arises due to tech companies, such as Airbnb and Uber, now playing a more active role in shaping the agenda of urban governance. While these companies began by attempting to ignore and evade regulations, many now see themselves as partners with governments in urban policy and law making (Pollman and Barry Reference Pollman and Barry 2017 ). These companies aim to co-shape not simply the terms of their own regulation, but also broader patterns of urban life in housing, tourism, transportation, and planning (van Doorn Reference van Doorn 2020 ). Sarah Barns ( Reference Barns 2017 , 56) has argued that these companies follow a logic of “platform urbanism” in which “platform-based business models ensure the generation of urban data largely takes place within proprietary data ecosystems.” Private companies such as Google’s Sidewalk Labs in Toronto and other smart-city projects have attempted to privatize previously public data in urban environments. The confinement of this data to private silos limits the value that can be generated from it. In response, the DECODE pilots directly challenged privatized corporate power over digital life and sought to reclaim power for the public sphere, where it could be exercised democratically.

Just as in the D-CENT pilot, this idea is an important element of a broader new municipalist strategy, which is concerned not only with transforming the state and developing new forms of municipal governance, but also with intervening in a capitalist economy. Municipalists have pursued projects of “community wealth building” and have developed networks of worker-owned cooperatives as part of an ambition to create “cooperative cities” (Guinan and O’Neill 2020; Sutton Reference Sutton 2019 ). The idea is to support alternative forms of economics that promote solidarity, cooperative activity, and collective self-provisioning. A key pillar in this program is the remunicipalization of public services and utilities as a mechanism to prevent rent-seeking behavior from private companies with monopolies over essential services. In Barcelona, this also included counteracting the power of short-term-rental companies such as Airbnb and a more stringent regulation of the tourism industry, which affected residents’ capacity to find affordable housing (Blanco, Salazar, and Bianchi Reference Blanco, Salazar and Bianchi 2020 ). Asserting public power over citizen-produced data can be understood in the context of this remunicipalization of privatized public assets. It draws on a tradition of municipal socialism and shows how it could be applied to the digital economy (Cumbers Reference Cumbers 2012 ; Muldoon Reference Muldoon 2022 ).

In this context, digital infrastructure consists of the systems and tools upon which much of our current economy and society operate: artificial intelligence, web services, computational systems, regimes for the accumulation of data, and proprietary software platforms (Rahman Reference Rahman 2018 ). There is now a large literature on the infrastructural role large tech companies play in modern economies and the public sphere (Aytac Reference Aytac 2022 ; Cohen Reference Cohen 2023 ; Rahman Reference Rahman 2017 ; van Dijck, Nieborg, and Poell Reference van Dijck, Nieborg and Poell 2019 ). In response, critics such as Ethan Zuckerman ( Reference Zuckerman 2020 , 2) have called for “a robust ecosystem of public service digital spaces, tools and resources,” to provide internet users with basic tools so they have more control over their online experiences. Europe has invested significant resources in its digital policy to become a leading regulator of technology companies, particularly with its Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act.

The move to counteract the concentrated private power that tech companies have accumulated can be usefully interpreted through the CDS research agenda, which prioritizes practical initiatives that enable citizens to build collective power, imagine different data practices, and challenge existing power relations. Whereas D-CENT was chiefly interested in empowering citizens in their political role as decision makers, the DECODE pilot sought to empower them vis-à-vis technology corporations, as data producers. The idea of digital public infrastructure understood through this lens is a concrete way in which citizens can challenge and transform existing power relations—particularly regarding their dependency on large tech companies—and collectively use the data they generate for their own public benefit.

The DECODE pilot advanced three main principles in the digital economy: (1) creation of a data commons, (2) democratic data governance, and (3) data sovereignty. First, digital public infrastructure involves creating new institutions for the governance of a data commons, understood as a collective pool of information generated by citizens that can be democratically managed and yield public value. This strategy differs considerably from other, more market-oriented, approaches that envision digital empowerment through the strengthening of individual property rights. Such approaches would offer individuals the possibility of selling their data to third-party actors as a means to supplement their income and accommodate the intuition that people should enjoy a share of the value their data generates (Cheneval Reference Cheneval 2021 ). This accepts the current propertization logic of personal data and attempts to expand the benefits for individuals in their interactions with companies. At the same time, the introduction of new individual property rights around personal data could have adverse effects on privacy, particularly in the contemporary digital context where a small number of technology companies continue to enjoy widely asymmetrical power relations with users. Even advocates of individual data ownership schemes have acknowledged that offering individuals property rights over their data is not likely to change the current power imbalance between corporate actors and users, as the former would continue to enjoy rights to primary data use (Fischli Reference Fischli 2022 ). As a result, individuals might be incentivized to produce even more data about themselves than previously, making privacy a privilege for the wealthy.

Data commons, on the other hand, depart from this market logic, as they entail shared resources that are collectively governed through democratic participation (Ostrom Reference Ostrom 2015 ). In the digital realm, the data commons model is adopted by institutions such as Wikipedia and the Creative Commons, and by free and open software (Muldoon Reference Muldoon 2022 ; Old and Bass Reference Old and Bass 2020 ). What is more, collective data related to mobility, energy use, and well-being has the potential to help public authorities act on important issues related to transport, health services, and the environment. With appropriate legal and technical safeguards in place, this citizen data can be used without endangering the individuals who did not share their information. We can imagine a data commons that functions as a repository of publicly available statistical data that could be accessed by everyone and used to generate further value, or a combination of private and public data that could be used under certain conditions by public authorities to enact big infrastructure projects (Old and Bass Reference Old and Bass 2020 ). Contemporary examples include the National Cancer Institute Data Commons research data repository, and the data trusts piloted by the Open Data Institute (Old and Bass Reference Old and Bass 2020 , 15).

Second, this conception of a data commons requires a new understanding of democratic data governance to assist with its stewardship. DECODE tested new methods through which people could be given more control over their data through a “public-commons” model (Milburn and Russell Reference Milburn and Russell 2018 ). The project was financed by public institutions and was directed from a municipal institution consisting of public servants and elected representatives. Yet it also involved groups of citizens, university researchers, digital activists, volunteers, and staff from foundations. Governance over the data took place through a public organization but involved democratic action and civic participation by communities. There is a tension within this model between control exercised by public bureaucrats, on the one hand, and the power of organized citizens, on the other (Monge et al. Reference Monge, Barns, Kattel and Bria 2022 , 21). This leads to the need to build great knowledge and capacity among civil servants and the public so that both can be properly involved in managing the project, or creating synergies with other digital tools, such as the Consul software, that make it easier for citizens to voice their priorities and concerns.

Third, this idea of democratic data governance also relies on a “data sovereignty” approach to deal with private companies seeking to benefit from citizens’ data. In the pilot, the city government made revisions to procurement deals with private companies, including “data sovereignty” clauses so that companies were obliged to provide governments with data they had gathered in a machine-readable format (Old and Bass Reference Old and Bass 2020 , 8). This enables the government to make use of the data and turn it into a public good that can be stored in a privacy-preserving manner in the public domain. This idea of data sovereignty concerns the assertion of public ownership over data created by citizens as a prima facie position rather than private companies automatically assuming ownership over data that can then be commercially exploited. Previously, ownership over data produced on digital platforms was a difficult subject because multiple parties could potentially claim some kind of proprietary interest in the data. Data sovereignty clauses assert a presumption in favor of open data so that others can build off the data to develop new tools and services. Changing the rules of procurement services is seen as essential to building a new generation of digital public infrastructure.

Barcelona’s Citizen Science Data Governance

For a more in-depth analysis, we have selected the Barcelona pilot focusing on creating a data commons, because the Amsterdam pilots were about establishing a proof of concept for the technology rather than utilizing it in collaboration with the municipal government to build the capacity of local communities (Old and Bass Reference Old and Bass 2020 , 24). In one of the Barcelona pilots, one hundred city residents deployed sensors in their neighborhoods that would connect to the city’s data network and gather information on urban issues such as noise pollution and air quality (28). The aims of the pilot were to run a social test on people’s willingness to share this type of data, test the cryptographic technology used for data gathering, and cocreate data-sharing policies (Sagarra et al. Reference Sagarra, Hoffmann, Clotet, Espelt, Calleja-López, Rodríguez and Balcells 2019 ). Citizens could choose to share this data as part of a broader data commons to create public value from the information they generated. This was part of a new decentralized system of data governance and identity management that enabled citizens to take part in a privacy-enhanced data-sharing regime. By using a specially designed app, each individual citizen could select their preferred anonymity level and control which aspects of their data they shared for public use, if any. This data could then be integrated into the City Hall digital infrastructure. In theory, such a digital public infrastructure enables companies, cooperatives, and other public departments to build off the data while sharing the insights generated from the data with the citizens who produce it. This creates a regulated environment in which data can be shared and used for the public good and for business purposes.

The pilot successfully continued to engage stakeholders and gather data from the sensor network. In total, 24 sensors were deployed with 1.7 million readings over a period of three months, and 330 people attended community sessions (Sagarra et al. Reference Sagarra, Hoffmann, Clotet, Espelt, Calleja-López, Rodríguez and Balcells 2019 , 47). Subsequent project evaluations revealed that a key reason for the pilot’s success was its early and frequent community consultations. The pilot team spent time setting up a series of community workshops in which they introduced the technology and facilitated discussion around shared goals and how the sensor kits could address local community problems. DECODE designers considered it necessary to make the data available and accessible to residents while also equipping them with the knowledge to make decisions about how the data would be used (Old and Bass Reference Old and Bass 2020 , 34). This is in line with the CDS research agenda that prioritizes not just practicality, but also data literacy and digital initiatives that benefit the local community (Kitchin Reference Kitchin 2022 ).

The project also had a well-planned dissemination strategy to promote public awareness of the tools and the benefits of having free and open data commons (Symons and Old Reference Symons and Old 2020 , 8). This also involved building a community of people who supported the use of the technology and could participate in communicating the project to a broader audience. The pilot designers learned that participants were best activated through a combination of online and offline participation, involving in-person “workshops, deliberations, and interactive sessions” (Old and Bass Reference Old and Bass 2020 , 27). There were a variety of digital tools and online fora that participants could use, but many of the objectives of the pilot were achieved through in-person participation (27).

Another key factor supporting Barcelona’s data commons pilot was the strong leadership played by the mayor’s office through the creation of the post of chief technology and information officer (CTIO), which elevated the importance of the project within the bureaucracy (Monge et al. Reference Monge, Barns, Kattel and Bria 2022 , 19). The political support of the mayor and the managerial resources of a senior department figure helped to push through the reforms and maintain a coherent vision of a digital economy based on democratic principles. This leadership also relied on a broader coalition of forces from across civil society to help to legitimize the project and provide necessary support, creating a community of practice around the project (19–20).

One downside of the central role this leadership played was that the project became highly reliant on the role of a charismatic leader, and struggled to institutionalize the reforms in the wider bureaucracy once Francesca Bria’s term was finished. After new local elections in 2019, Barcelona en Comú lost ground and a new political party (the Socialist Party) entered into coalition government and took charge of digital policy. This shifted the priorities of the government “from digital sovereignty to digital humanism,” according to researcher Antonio Calleja-López, which changed the willingness of the city administration to continue building its capabilities with regard to leveraging a data commons (Monge et al. Reference Monge, Barns, Kattel and Bria 2022 , 16).

Barcelona’s history as a city that has embraced digital innovation and civic participation made it easier for the city’s administrative departments to adapt to the new institutional and regulatory innovations as part of the pilot. In 2011, the city’s municipal government had committed to making Barcelona one of the world’s leading smart cities and digital innovators (March and Ribera-Fumaz Reference March, Ribera-Fumaz, Karvonen, Cugurullo and Caprotti 2019 ). But unlike earlier digital innovations in the early 2010s, the DECODE project made it a priority to develop the capabilities of public institutions rather than outsourcing the technical side of the project to external consultants (Monge et al. Reference Monge, Barns, Kattel and Bria 2022 , 20). Designers of the pilot recognized that the capabilities of administrators within municipal institutions would need to be developed to achieve the goals of the pilot.

One of the main challenges for the pilot was the lack of staff trained in data science within the administration, which translated into poor data literacy (Monge et al. Reference Monge, Barns, Kattel and Bria 2022 , 17). There was also the difficulty of encouraging changes to working practices around the adoption of free and open-source software as part of the project. A degree of organizational inertia and resistance to change was combined with genuine concerns about the capability of free and open-source alternatives to meet the organizational and technical needs of the city in the long term (15). On top of these challenges, the pilot faced technical issues around how to integrate the data collected in the pilot with the city’s existing data infrastructure. The city was aided in its efforts through the rollout of new software, but there was a broader need to “map the whole data universe in the city and integrate all the existing datasets into a single data lake,” which is a complex project that would take significant time (15).

Given the limitations of the size of the pilot and the nature of the data being collected, it is as yet unclear how such a data commons would interact with a broader ecosystem of digital firms and services. The vision for the model is for civic associations, cooperatives, and small and medium enterprises to be able to create additional value from the data and to use it on terms set by the public authority. But it is difficult to judge how successful such a model would be at the level of a city with only a small pilot as the case study. It is on this point that designers of the pilot hoped that it could serve as an impetus for larger funding from the EU and for articulating a democratic approach to data governance that could be replicated in other cities and at an international level.

Bringing CDS back into the conversation, we can draw an additional set of conclusions. To start, because of its limited scope and size, such a pilot faces significant limitations in its ability to counteract existing power relations between citizens and large technology corporations. This is underscored by the limited success of the city in marketing its data sovereignty clause to data-generating businesses. During its time of operation, Vodafone remained the only large company that agreed to the city’s terms, and it took almost a year to finalize the conditions of the deal (Monge et al. Reference Monge, Barns, Kattel and Bria 2022 , 11). Against this backdrop it is important to remain realistic about the degree to which such initiatives can challenge Big Tech’s control over social media apps or other key digital infrastructure. Digital public infrastructures, including the way they were envisioned and tested in the DECODE case, are specifically not designed to follow the addictive and extractive logic of “surveillance capitalism” to create a panoptic surveillance state, or generate exploitable insights about people’s most intimate information (Zuboff Reference Zuboff 2019 ). Thus, the main role of the pilot was to promote a different data imaginary and different practices that challenge the paradigm of private companies controlling smart-city initiatives. With its novel approach toward data sovereignty in public procurement contracts, the Barcelona pilot served as a reminder that a more emancipatory digital future is possible.

If the concept of digital public infrastructure was to have a larger impact on this issue in the future and increase citizens’ collective power, it would have to be expanded from a very limited model of urban infrastructure into much broader domains that would begin to replace key functions currently performed by private tech companies. In either case, implementing sufficient democratic—and technical—safeguards to avoid “data creep” and ensure individual privacy and self-determination remains crucial for the democratic legitimacy and desirability of such efforts. To navigate this tension between individual privacy and collective empowerment, we suggest a “solidarity-based data governance” approach recently put forth by Prainsack and colleagues ( Reference Prainsack, El-Sayed, Forgó, Szoszkiewicz and Baumer 2022 ). This approach adopts a rationale that prioritizes collective data ownership and control to “ensure that the benefits and costs of digital practices are borne collectively and fairly,” while being restricted to instances where “data use creates public value” that “benefits people and communities without posing grave risks” (2022, e773).

In sum, the ultimate success of the DECODE pilot heavily depends on the criteria and expectations one adopts. The broader horizon of the Barcelona project was to begin building a working prototype of a data commons to reveal the possibilities of alternative models of building a digital economy—a task the project undoubtedly achieved. What is more, the pilot has attracted considerable public and academic attention and inspired a follow-up project called “The New Hanse” in Hamburg. Thus, we can conclude that the political aim of these experiments to empower citizens through digital technologies has succeeded in the greater scheme of things. By offering a different data imaginary and different practices, the DECODE project has shifted the Overton window from a model of data as a commodity extracted by corporations from passive citizens to one in which citizens make use of public institutions to gain control over how their data is collected and used.

In this article, we have sought to highlight a particular tradition of decentralized participatory democracy that relies on digital technology to achieve its goals. In this tradition, citizen engagement in government decision making is justified not simply in the instrumental sense of leading to more efficient policy making, but for the sake of cultivating a more participatory democratic society. At the same time, we have sought to contribute to an emerging and exciting research program on digital democracy, which interrogates how digital tools can be embedded in political institutions to facilitate democratic practices. These forms of digital democracy are still in their infancy and many skeptics question the efficacy of these initiatives, pointing to instances where they failed to attract significant public interest or have remained disconnected from sites of power (Gastil and Richards Reference Gastil and Richards 2017 , 760). Against this attitude, we have argued that there can be a wide range of positive democratic-use cases for digital tools. Technology can have an important role not simply in allowing people to produce and share content on social media, but in revitalizing democratic governance by empowering citizens through new kinds of democratic institutions and practices that promote different data imaginaries and offer practical counterinterventions.

An overview of the pilots under examination in this article reveals a number of important conditions for the success of experiments in digital democracy. The first is strong leadership behind the project and the ideological support of political authorities with the will and resources to fully implement the initiative (Monge et al. Reference Monge, Barns, Kattel and Bria 2022 , 19). When this leadership was changed in the case of Barcelona, the project faltered, indicating that more needed to be done to institutionalize the reforms so they were not overreliant on the actions of a single office holder. Nevertheless, and in line with existing research in this area, it might be difficult to transplant proposals from one political context to another without the same background conditions, organizational culture, and balance of political forces (Hagen Reference Hagen, Hacker and van Dijk 2000 ).

A second lesson is that successful initiatives tend to have strong public support achieved through continuous stakeholder engagement and by passing genuine decision-making power to citizens. A robust dissemination and communications strategy was essential to both projects, as was a commitment to cocreation at each stage of the project cycle, allowing citizens to make suggestions and for these to be included in future iterations of the pilots. That said, for citizens to express confidence in the process and outcome, it is important that they feel like their voices are heard, making practicality of these interventions a central criterion for the success of these initiatives.

Third, digital democratic practices should be seen as part of broader processes of citizen empowerment that require online and offline mechanisms and rely on the creation of virtuous circles of citizens making demands, participating in political processes, and building grassroots power. When citizens feel as if they have a greater say in political decision making they become more engaged and hold officials more accountable (Fung Reference Fung 2004 ). This, in turn, strengthens the democratic process and leads government agencies to be more responsive and to incorporate more direct forms of participation in their governance structures. The pilots show that digital democracy is effective when paired with face-to-face assemblies, forms of deliberations, and stakeholder meetings.

As we have shown with our theorization of decentralized participatory democracy, these pilots should encourage democratic theorists to engage more seriously with how digital democracy changes the underlying conditions for democratic government. Digital technology allows scholars to return to debates about the practical possibilities of participatory democracy at scale in ways that were not possible even a decade or so ago. It also highlights how resources available in neighboring disciplines, such as new municipalism and CDS, can inform key discussions in democratic theory (Kitchin Reference Kitchin 2022 ; Russell Reference Russell 2019 ). Drawing on these disciplines, we have shown that an attentiveness to how these technologies alter the fundamental dynamics of power between social groups is key to understanding how effective they will be as tools of democratic empowerment. This approach also broadens our frame of analysis from a narrow focus on formal democratic institutions to a larger one on “digital public infrastructure” through which citizens can exercise power and democratize the digital economy.

At the same time, our examples also show that merely setting up scalable technology is not enough if citizens do not feel like their voices are being heard. Thus, while these instances of decentralized participatory democracy present a way to overcome “traditional” challenges faced by classic participatory approaches, they replace them with new challenges, such as securing digital literacy, promoting representation and inclusion, and responding to the threat of coordinated collective action. In other words, digital technology can be used to promote democratic ends, but its success depends strongly on historical context and the attitude of the actors involved, as well as the guidelines and benchmarks that accompany its implementation.

The same holds for democratic experiments that seek to take on powerful technology corporations. As the DECODE project in Barcelona showed, the success of such citizen empowerment efforts might be limited and largely ineffective unless it is accompanied by more fundamental changes in the structure of ownership and control of the infrastructures and underlying technologies that so strongly shape the digital economy as we know it. This adds an important notion for future experiments in digital democracy. As the creation of digital public infrastructure in Barcelona revealed, at times, the true emancipatory quality of such projects is to provide a new vision for what is possible, inspiring follow-up experiments in different cities, and ultimately paving the way to a more citizen-led digital future.

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Digital democracy: A systematic literature review

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Democracy, Social Media, and Freedom of Expression: Hate, Lies, and the Search for the Possible Truth

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This Essay is a critical reflection on the impact of the digital revolution and the internet on three topics that shape the contemporary world: democracy, social media, and freedom of expression. Part I establishes historical and conceptual assumptions about constitutional democracy and discusses the role of digital platforms in the current moment of democratic recession. Part II discusses how, while social media platforms have revolutionized interpersonal and social communication and democratized access to knowledge and information, they also have led to an exponential spread of mis- and disinformation, hate speech, and conspiracy theories. Part III proposes a framework that balances regulation of digital platforms with the countervailing fundamental right to freedom of expression, a right that is essential for human dignity, the search for the possible truth, and democracy. Part IV highlights the role of society and the importance of media education in the creation of a free, but positive and constructive, environment on the internet.

I. Introduction

Before the internet, few actors could afford to participate in public debate due to the barriers that limited access to its enabling infrastructure, such as television channels and radio frequencies. 1 Digital platforms tore down this gate by creating open online communities for user-generated content, published without editorial control and at no cost. This exponentially increased participation in public discourse and the amount of information available. 2 At the same time, it led to an increase in disinformation campaigns, hate speech, slander, lies, and conspiracy theories used to advance antidemocratic goals. Platforms’ attempts to moderate speech at scale while maximizing engagement and profits have led to an increasingly prominent role for content moderation algorithms that shape who can participate and be heard in online public discourse. These systems play an essential role in the exercise of freedom of expression and in democratic competence and participation in the 21st century.

In this context, this Essay is a critical reflection on the impacts of the digital revolution and of the internet on democracy and freedom of expression. Part I establishes historical and conceptual assumptions about constitutional democracy; it also discusses the role of digital platforms in the current moment of democratic recession. Part II discusses how social media platforms are revolutionizing interpersonal and social communication, and democratizing access to knowledge and information, but also lead to an exponential spread of mis- and disinformation, hate speech and conspiracy theories. Part III proposes a framework for the regulation of digital platforms that seeks to find the right balance with the countervailing fundamental right to freedom of expression. Part IV highlights the role of society and the importance of media education in the creation of a free, but positive and constructive, environment on the internet.

II. Democracy and Authoritarian Populism

Constitutional democracy emerged as the predominant ideology of the 20th century, rising above the alternative projects of communism, fascism, Nazism, military regimes, and religious fundamentalism . 3 Democratic constitutionalism centers around two major ideas that merged at the end of the 20th century: constitutionalism , heir of the liberal revolutions in England, America, and France, expressing the ideas of limited power, rule of law, and respect for fundamental rights; 4 and democracy , a regime of popular sovereignty, free and fair elections, and majority rule. 5 In most countries, democracy only truly consolidated throughout the 20th century through universal suffrage guaranteed with the end of restrictions on political participation based on wealth, education, sex, or race. 6

Contemporary democracies are made up of votes, rights, and reasons. They are not limited to fair procedural rules in the electoral process, but demand respect for substantive fundamental rights of all citizens and a permanent public debate that informs and legitimizes political decisions. 7 To ensure protection of these three aspects, most democratic regimes include in their constitutional framework a supreme court or constitutional court with jurisdiction to arbitrate the inevitable tensions that arise between democracy’s popular sovereignty and constitutionalism’s fundamental rights. 8 These courts are, ultimately, the institutions responsible for protecting fundamental rights and the rules of the democratic game against any abuse of power attempted by the majority. Recent experiences in Hungary, Poland, Turkey, Venezuela, and Nicaragua show that when courts fail to fulfill this role, democracy collapses or suffers major setbacks. 9

In recent years, several events have challenged the prevalence of democratic constitutionalism in many parts of the world, in a phenomenon characterized by many as democratic recession. 10 Even consolidated democracies have endured moments of turmoil and institutional discredit, 11 as the world witnessed the rise of an authoritarian, anti-pluralist, and anti-institutional populist wave posing serious threats to democracy.

Populism can be right-wing or left-wing, 12 but the recent wave has been characterized by the prevalence of right-wing extremism, often racist, xenophobic, misogynistic, and homophobic. 13 While in the past the far left was united through Communist International, today it is the far right that has a major global network. 14 The hallmark of right-wing populism is the division of society into “us” (the pure, decent, conservatives) and “them” (the corrupt, liberal, cosmopolitan elites). 15 Authoritarian populism flows from the unfulfilled promises of democracy for opportunities and prosperity for all. 16 Three aspects undergird this democratic frustration: political (people do not feel represented by the existing electoral systems, political leaders, and democratic institutions); social (stagnation, unemployment, and the rise of inequality); and cultural identity (a conservative reaction to the progressive identity agenda of human rights that prevailed in recent decades with the protection of the fundamental rights of women, African descendants, religious minorities, LGBTQ+ communities, indigenous populations, and the environment). 17

Extremist authoritarian populist regimes often adopt similar strategies to capitalize on the political, social, and cultural identity-based frustrations fueling democratic recessions. These tactics include by-pass or co-optation of the intermediary institutions that mediate the interface between the people and the government, such as the legislature, the press, and civil society. They also involve attacks on supreme courts and constitutional courts and attempts to capture them by appointing submissive judges. 18 The rise of social media potentializes these strategies by creating a free and instantaneous channel of direct communication between populists and their supporters. 19 This unmediated interaction facilitates the use of disinformation campaigns, hate speech, slander, lies, and conspiracy theories as political tools to advance antidemocratic goals. The instantaneous nature of these channels is ripe for impulsive reactions, which facilitate verbal attacks by supporters and polarization, feeding back into the populist discourse. These tactics threaten democracy and free and fair elections because they deceive voters and silence the opposition, distorting public debate. Ultimately, this form of communication undermines the values that justify the special protection of freedom of expression to begin with. The “truth decay” and “fact polarization” that result from these efforts discredit institutions and consequently foster distrust in democracy. 20

III. Internet, Social Media, and Freedom of Expression 21

The third industrial revolution, also known as the technological or digital revolution, has shaped our world today. 22 Some of its main features are the massification of personal computers, the universalization of smartphones and, most importantly, the internet. One of the main byproducts of the digital revolution and the internet was the emergence of social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok and messaging applications like WhatsApp and Telegram. We live in a world of apps, algorithms, artificial intelligence, and innovation occurring at breakneck speed where nothing seems truly new for very long. This is the background for the narrative that follows.

A. The Impact of the Internet

The internet revolutionized the world of interpersonal and social communication, exponentially expanded access to information and knowledge, and created a public sphere where anyone can express ideas, opinions, and disseminate facts. 23 Before the internet, one’s participation in public debate was dependent upon the professional press, 24 which investigated facts, abided by standards of journalistic ethics, 25 and was liable for damages if it knowingly or recklessly published untruthful information. 26 There was a baseline of editorial control and civil liability over the quality and veracity of what was published in this medium. This does not mean that it was a perfect world. The number of media outlets was, and continues to be, limited in quantity and perspectives; journalistic companies have their own interests, and not all of them distinguish fact from opinion with the necessary care. Still, there was some degree of control over what became public, and there were costs to the publication of overtly hateful or false speech.

The internet, with the emergence of websites, personal blogs, and social media, revolutionized this status quo. It created open, online communities for user-generated texts, images, videos, and links, published without editorial control and at no cost. This advanced participation in public discourse, diversified sources, and exponentially increased available information. 27 It gave a voice to minorities, civil society, politicians, public agents, and digital influencers, and it allowed demands for equality and democracy to acquire global dimensions. This represented a powerful contribution to political dynamism, resistance to authoritarianism, and stimulation of creativity, scientific knowledge, and commercial exchanges. 28 Increasingly, the most relevant political, social, and cultural communications take place on the internet’s unofficial channels.

However, the rise of social media also led to an increase in the dissemination of abusive and criminal speech. 29 While these platforms did not create mis- or disinformation, hate speech, or speech that attacks democracy, the ability to publish freely, with no editorial control and little to no accountability, increased the prevalence of these types of speech and facilitated its use as a political tool by populist leaders. 30 Additionally, and more fundamentally, platform business models compounded the problem through algorithms that moderate and distribute online content. 31

B. The Role of Algorithms

The ability to participate and be heard in online public discourse is currently defined by the content moderation algorithms of a couple major technology companies. Although digital platforms initially presented themselves as neutral media where users could publish freely, they in fact exercise legislative, executive, and judicial functions because they unilaterally define speech rules in their terms and conditions and their algorithms decide how content is distributed and how these rules are applied. 32

Specifically, digital platforms rely on algorithms for two different functions: recommending content and moderating content. 33 First, a fundamental aspect of the service they offer involves curating the content available to provide each user with a personalized experience and increase time spent online. They resort to deep learning algorithms that monitor every action on the platform, draw from user data, and predict what content will keep a specific user engaged and active based on their prior activity or that of similar users. 34 The transition from a world of information scarcity to a world of information abundance generated fierce competition for user attention—the most valuable resource in the Digital Age. 35 The power to modify a person’s information environment has a direct impact on their behavior and beliefs. Because AI systems can track an individual’s online history, they can tailor specific messages to maximize impact. More importantly, they monitor whether and how the user interacts with the tailored message, using this feedback to influence future content targeting and progressively becoming more effective in shaping behavior. 36 Given that humans engage more with content that is polarizing and provocative, these algorithms elicit powerful emotions, including anger. 37 The power to organize online content therefore directly impacts freedom of expression, pluralism, and democracy. 38

In addition to recommendation systems, platforms rely on algorithms for content moderation, the process of classifying content to determine whether it violates community standards. 39 As mentioned, the growth of social media and its use by people around the world allowed for the spread of lies and criminal acts with little cost and almost no accountability, threatening the stability of even long-standing democracies. Inevitably, digital platforms had to enforce terms and conditions defining the norms of their digital community and moderate speech accordingly. 40 But the potentially infinite amount of content published online means that this control cannot be exercised exclusively by humans.

Content moderation algorithms optimize the scanning of published content to identify violations of community standards or terms of service at scale and apply measures ranging from removal to reducing reach or including clarifications or references to alternative information. Platforms often rely on two algorithmic models for content moderation. The first is the reproduction detection model , which uses unique identifiers to catch reproductions of content previously labeled as undesired. 41 The second system, the predictive model , uses machine learning techniques to identify potential illegalities in new and unclassified content. 42 Machine learning is a subtype of artificial intelligence that extracts patterns in training datasets, capable of learning from data without explicit programming to do so. 43 Although helpful, both models have shortcomings.

The reproduction detection model is inefficient for content such as hate speech and disinformation, where the potential for new and different publications is virtually unlimited and users can deliberately make changes to avoid detection. 44 The predictive model is still limited in its ability to address situations to which it has not been exposed in training, primarily because it lacks the human ability to understand nuance and to factor in contextual considerations that influence the meaning of speech. 45 Additionally, machine learning algorithms rely on data collected from the real world and may embed prejudices or preconceptions, leading to asymmetrical applications of the filter. 46 And because the training data sets are so large, it can be hard to audit them for these biases. 47

Despite these limitations, algorithms will continue to be a crucial resource in content moderation given the scale of online activities. 48 In the last two months of 2020 alone, Facebook applied a content moderation measure to 105 million publications, and Instagram to 35 million. 49 YouTube has 500 hours of video uploaded per minute and removed more than 9.3 million videos. 50 In the first half of 2020, Twitter analyzed complaints related to 12.4 million accounts for potential violations of its rules and took action against 1.9 million. 51 This data supports the claim that human moderation is impossible, and that algorithms are a necessary tool to reduce the spread of illicit and harmful content. On the one hand, holding platforms accountable for occasional errors in these systems would create wrong incentives to abandon algorithms in content moderation with the negative consequence of significantly increasing the spread of undesired speech. 52 On the other hand, broad demands for platforms to implement algorithms to optimize content moderation, or laws that impose very short deadlines to respond to removal requests submitted by users, can create excessive pressure for the use of these imprecise systems on a larger scale. Acknowledging the limitations of this technology is fundamental for precise regulation.

C. Some Undesirable Consequences

One of the most striking impacts of this new informational environment is the exponential increase in the scale of social communications and the circulation of news. Around the world, few newspapers, print publications, and radio stations cross the threshold of having even one million subscribers and listeners. This suggests the majority of these publications have a much smaller audience, possibly in the thousands or tens of thousands of people. 53 Television reaches millions of viewers, although diluted among dozens or hundreds of channels. 54 Facebook, on the other hand, has about 3 billion active users. 55 YouTube has 2.5 billion accounts. 56 WhatsApp, more than 2 billion. 57 The numbers are bewildering. However, and as anticipated, just as the digital revolution democratized access to knowledge, information, and public space, it also introduced negative consequences for democracy that must be addressed. Three of them include:

a) the increased circulation of disinformation, deliberate lying, hate speech, conspiracy theories, attacks on democracy, and inauthentic behavior, made possible by recommendation algorithms that optimize for user engagement and content moderation algorithms that are still incapable of adequately identifying undesirable content;

b) the tribalization of life, with the formation of echo chambers where groups speak only to themselves, reinforcing confirmation bias, 58 making speech progressively more radical, and contributing to polarization and intolerance; and

c) a global crisis in the business model of the professional press. Although social media platforms have become one of the main sources of information, they do not produce their own content. They hire engineers, not reporters, and their interest is engagement, not news. 59 Because advertisers’ spending has migrated away from traditional news publications to technological platforms with broader reaches, the press has suffered from a lack of revenue which has forced hundreds of major publications, national and local, to close their doors or reduce their journalist workforce. 60 But a free and strong press is more than just a private business; it is a pillar for an open and free society. It serves a public interest in the dissemination of facts, news, opinions, and ideas, indispensable preconditions for the informed exercise of citizenship. Knowledge and truth—never absolute, but sincerely sought—are essential elements for the functioning of a constitutional democracy. Citizens need to share a minimum set of common objective facts from which to inform their own judgments. If they cannot accept the same facts, public debate becomes impossible. Intolerance and violence are byproducts of the inability to communicate—hence the importance of “knowledge institutions,” such as universities, research entities, and the institutional press. The value of free press for democracy is illustrated by the fact that in different parts of the world, the press is one of the only private businesses specifically referred to throughout constitutions. Despite its importance for society and democracy, surveys reveal a concerning decline in its prestige. 61

In the beginning of the digital revolution, there was a belief that the internet should be a free, open, and unregulated space in the interest of protecting access to the platform and promoting freedom of expression. Over time, concerns emerged, and a consensus gradually grew for the need for internet regulation. Multiple approaches for regulating the internet were proposed, including: (a) economic, through antitrust legislation, consumer protection, fair taxation, and copyright rules; (b) privacy, through laws restricting collection of user data without consent, especially for content targeting; and (c) targeting inauthentic behavior, content control, and platform liability rules. 62

Devising the proper balance between the indispensable preservation of freedom of expression on the one hand, and the repression of illegal content on social media on the other, is one of the most complex issues of our generation. Freedom of expression is a fundamental right incorporated into virtually all contemporary constitutions and, in many countries, is considered a preferential freedom. Several reasons have been advanced for granting freedom of expression special protection, including its roles: (a) in the search for the possible truth 63 in an open and plural society, 64 as explored above in discussing the importance of the institutional press; (b) as an essential element for democracy 65 because it allows the free circulation of ideas, information, and opinions that inform public opinion and voting; and (c) as an essential element of human dignity, 66 allowing the expression of an individual’s personality.

The regulation of digital platforms cannot undermine these values but must instead aim at its protection and strengthening. However, in the digital age, these same values that historically justified the reinforced protection of freedom of expression can now justify its regulation. As U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres thoughtfully stated, “the ability to cause large-scale disinformation and undermine scientifically established facts is an existential risk to humanity.” 67

Two aspects of the internet business model are particularly problematic for the protection of democracy and free expression. The first is that, although access to most technological platforms and applications is free, users pay for access with their privacy. 68 As Lawrence Lessig observed, we watch television, but the internet watches us. 69 Everything each individual does online is monitored and monetized. Data is the modern gold. 70 Thus, those who pay for the data can more efficiently disseminate their message through targeted ads. As previously mentioned, the power to modify a person’s information environment has a direct impact on behavior and beliefs, especially when messages are tailored to maximize impact on a specific individual. 71

The second aspect is that algorithms are programmed to maximize time spent online. This often leads to the amplification of provocative, radical, and aggressive content. This in turn compromises freedom of expression because, by targeting engagement, algorithms sacrifice the search for truth (with the wide circulation of fake news), democracy (with attacks on institutions and defense of coups and authoritarianism), and human dignity (with offenses, threats, racism, and others). The pursuit of attention and engagement for revenue is not always compatible with the values that underlie the protection of freedom of expression.

IV. A Framework for the Regulation of Social Media

Platform regulation models can be broadly classified into three categories: (a) state or government regulation, through legislation and rules drawing a compulsory, encompassing framework; (b) self-regulation, through rules drafted by platforms themselves and materialized in their terms of use; and (c) regulated self-regulation or coregulation, through standards fixed by the state but which grant platform flexibility in materializing and implementing them. This Essay argues for the third model, with a combination of governmental and private responsibilities. Compliance should be overseen by an independent committee, with the minority of its representatives coming from the government, and the majority coming from the business sector, academia, technology entities, users, and civil society.

The regulatory framework should aim to reduce the asymmetry of information between platforms and users, safeguard the fundamental right to freedom of expression from undue private or state interventions, and protect and strengthen democracy. The current technical limitations of content moderation algorithms explored above and normal substantive disagreement about what content should be considered illegal or harmful suggest that an ideal regulatory model should optimize the balance between the fundamental rights of users and platforms, recognizing that there will always be cases where consensus is unachievable. The focus of regulation should be the development of adequate procedures for content moderation, capable of minimizing errors and legitimizing decisions even when one disagrees with the substantive result. 72 With these premises as background, the proposal for regulation formulated here is divided into three levels: (a) the appropriate intermediary liability model for user-generated content; (b) procedural duties for content moderation; and (c) minimum duties to moderate content that represents concrete threats to democracy and/or freedom of expression itself.

A. Intermediary Liability for User-Generated Content

There are three main regimes for platform liability for third-party content. In strict liability models, platforms are held responsible for all user-generated posts. 73 Since platforms have limited editorial control over what is posted and limited human oversight over the millions of posts made daily, this would be a potentially destructive regime. In knowledge-based liability models, platform liability arises if they do not act to remove content after an extrajudicial request from users—this is also known as a “notice-and-takedown” system. 74 Finally, a third model would make platforms liable for user-generated content only in cases of noncompliance with a court order mandating content removal. This latter model was adopted in Brazil with the Civil Framework for the Internet (Marco Civil da Internet). 75 The only exception in Brazilian legislation to this general rule is revenge porn: if there is a violation of intimacy resulting from the nonconsensual disclosure of images, videos, or other materials containing private nudity or private sexual acts, extrajudicial notification is sufficient to create an obligation for content removal under penalty of liability. 76

In our view, the Brazilian model is the one that most adequately balances the fundamental rights involved. As mentioned, in the most complex cases concerning freedom of expression, people will disagree on the legality of speech. Rules holding platforms accountable for not removing content after mere user notification create incentives for over-removal of any potentially controversial content, excessively restricting users’ freedom of expression. If the state threatens to hold digital platforms accountable if it disagrees with their assessment, companies will have the incentive to remove all content that could potentially be considered illicit by courts to avoid liability. 77

Nonetheless, this liability regime should coexist with a broader regulatory structure imposing principles, limits, and duties on content moderation by digital platforms, both to increase the legitimacy of platforms’ application of their own terms and conditions and to minimize the potentially devastating impacts of illicit or harmful speech.

B. Standards for Proactive Content Moderation

Platforms have free enterprise and freedom of expression rights to set their own rules and decide the kind of environment they want to create, as well as to moderate harmful content that could drive users away. However, because these content moderation algorithms are the new governors of the public sphere, 78 and because they define the ability to participate and be heard in online public discourse, platforms should abide by minimum procedural duties of transparency and auditing, due process, and fairness.

1. Transparency and Auditing

Transparency and auditing measures serve mainly to ensure that platforms are accountable for content moderation decisions and for the impacts of their algorithms. They provide users with greater understanding and knowledge about the extent to which platforms regulate speech, and they provide oversight bodies and researchers with information to understand the threats of digital services and the role of platforms in amplifying or minimizing them.

Driven by demands from civil society, several digital platforms already publish transparency reports. 79 However, the lack of binding standards means that these reports have significant gaps, no independent verification of the information provided, 80 and no standardization across platforms, preventing comparative analysis. 81 In this context, regulatory initiatives that impose minimum requirements and standards are crucial to make oversight more effective. On the other hand, overly broad transparency mandates may force platforms to adopt simpler content moderation rules to reduce costs, which could negatively impact the accuracy of content moderation or the quality of the user experience. 82 A tiered approach to transparency, where certain information is public and certain information is limited to oversight bodies or previously qualified researchers, ensures adequate protection of countervailing interests, such as user privacy and business confidentiality. 83 The Digital Services Act, 84 recently passed in the European Union, contains robust transparency provisions that generally align with these considerations. 85

The information that should be publicly provided includes clear and unambiguous terms of use, the options available to address violations (such as removal, amplification reduction, clarifications, and account suspension) and the division of labor between algorithms and humans. More importantly, public transparency reports should include information on the accuracy of automated moderation measures and the number of content moderation actions broken down by type (such as removal, blocking, and account deletion). 86 There must also be transparency obligations to researchers, giving them access to crucial information and statistics, including to the content analyzed for the content moderation decisions. 87

Although valuable, transparency requirements are insufficient in promoting accountability because they rely on users and researchers to actively monitor platform conduct and presuppose that they have the power to draw attention to flaws and promote changes. 88 Legally mandated third-party algorithmic auditing is therefore an important complement to ensure that these models satisfy legal, ethical, and safety standards and to elucidate the embedded value tradeoffs, such as between user safety and freedom of expression. 89 As a starting point, algorithm audits should consider matters such as how accurately they perform, any potential bias or discrimination incorporated in the data, and to what extent the internal mechanics are explainable to humans. 90 The Digital Services Act contains a similar proposal. 91

The market for algorithmic auditing is still emergent and replete with uncertainty. In attempting to navigate this scenario, regulators should: (a) define how often the audits should happen; (b) develop standards and best practices for auditing procedures; (c) mandate specific disclosure obligations so auditors have access to the required data; and (d) define how identified harms should be addressed. 92

2. Due Process and Fairness

To ensure due process, platforms must inform users affected by content moderation decisions of the allegedly violated provision of the terms of use, as well as offer an internal system of appeals against these decisions. Platforms must also create systems that allow for the substantiated denunciation of content or accounts by other users, and notify reporting users of the decision taken.

As for fairness, platforms should ensure that the rules are applied equally to all users. Although it is reasonable to suppose that platforms may adopt different criteria for public persons or information of public interest, these exceptions must be clear in the terms of use. This issue has recently been the subject of controversy between the Facebook Oversight Board and the company. 93

Due to the enormous amount of content published on the platforms and the inevitability of using automated mechanisms for content moderation, platforms should not be held accountable for a violation of these duties in specific cases, but only when the analysis reveals a systemic failure to comply. 94

C. Minimum Duties to Moderate Illicit Content

The regulatory framework should also contain specific obligations to address certain types of especially harmful speech. The following categories are considered by the authors to fall within this group: disinformation, hate speech, anti-democratic attacks, cyberbullying, terrorism, and child pornography. Admittedly, defining and consensually identifying the speech included in these categories—except in the case of child pornography 95 —is a complex and largely subjective task. Precisely for this reason, platforms should be free to define how the concepts will be operationalized, as long as they guide definitions by international human rights parameters and in a transparent manner. This does not mean that all platforms will reach the same definitions nor the same substantive results in concrete cases, but this should not be considered a flaw in the system, since the plurality of rules promotes freedom of expression. The obligation to observe international human rights parameters reduces the discretion of companies, while allowing for the diversity of policies among them. After defining these categories, platforms must establish mechanisms that allow users to report violations.

In addition, platforms should develop mechanisms to address coordinated inauthentic behaviors, which involve the use of automated systems or deceitful means to artificially amplify false or dangerous messages by using bots, fake profiles, trolls, and provocateurs. 96 For example, if a person publishes a post for his twenty followers saying that kerosene oil is good for curing COVID-19, the negative impact of this misinformation is limited. However, if that message is amplified to thousands of users, a greater public health issue arises. Or, in another example, if the false message that an election was rigged reaches millions of people, there is a democratic risk due to the loss of institutional credibility.

The role of oversight bodies should be to verify that platforms have adopted terms of use that prohibit the sharing of these categories of speech and ensure that, systemically, the recommendation and content moderation systems are trained to moderate this content.

V. Conclusion

The World Wide Web has provided billions of people with access to knowledge, information, and the public space, changing the course of history. However, the misuse of the internet and social media poses serious threats to democracy and fundamental rights. Some degree of regulation has become necessary to confront inauthentic behavior and illegitimate content. It is essential, however, to act with transparency, proportionality, and adequate procedures, so that pluralism, diversity, and freedom of expression are preserved.

In addition to the importance of regulatory action, the responsibility for the preservation of the internet as a healthy public sphere also lies with citizens. Media education and user awareness are fundamental steps for the creation of a free but positive and constructive environment on the internet. Citizens should be conscious that social media can be unfair, perverse, and can violate fundamental rights and basic rules of democracy. They must be attentive not to uncritically pass on all information received. Alongside states, regulators, and tech companies, citizens are also an important force to address these threats. In Jonathan Haidt’s words, “[w]hen our public square is governed by mob dynamics unrestrained by due process, we don’t get justice and inclusion; we get a society that ignores context, proportionality, mercy, and truth.” 97

• 1 Tim Wu, Is the First Amendment Obsolete? , in The Perilous Public Square 15 (David E. Pozen ed., 2020).
• 2 Jack M. Balkin, Free Speech is a Triangle , 118 Colum. L. Rev. 2011, 2019 (2018).
• 3 Luís Roberto Barroso, O Constitucionalismo Democrático ou Neoconstitucionalismo como ideologia vitoriosa do século XX , 4 Revista Publicum 14, 14 (2018).
• 4 Id. at 16.
• 7 Ronald Dworkin, Is Democracy Possible Here?: Principles for a New Political Debate xii (2006); Ronald Dworkin, Taking Rights Seriously 181 (1977).
• 8 Barroso, supra note 3, at 16.
• 9 Samuel Issacharoff, Fragile Democracies: Contested Power in the Era of Constitutional Courts i (2015).
• 10 Larry Diamond, Facing up to the Democratic Recession , 26 J. Democracy 141 (2015). Other scholars have referred to the same phenomenon using other terms, such as democratic retrogression, abusive constitutionalism, competitive authoritarianism, illiberal democracy, and autocratic legalism. See, e.g. , Aziz Huq & Tom Ginsburg, How to Lose a Constitutional Democracy , 65 UCLA L. Rev. 91 (2018); David Landau, Abusive Constitutionalism , 47 U.C. Davis L. Rev. 189 (2013); Kim Lane Scheppele, Autocratic Legalism , 85 U. Chi. L. Rev. 545 (2018).
• 11 Dan Balz, A Year After Jan. 6, Are the Guardrails that Protect Democracy Real or Illusory? , Wash. Post (Jan. 6, 2022), https://perma.cc/633Z-A9AJ; Brexit: Reaction from Around the UK , BBC News (June 24, 2016), https://perma.cc/JHM3-WD7A.
• 12 Cas Mudde, The Populist Zeitgeist , 39 Gov’t & Opposition 541, 549 (2004).
• 13 See generally Mohammed Sinan Siyech, An Introduction to Right-Wing Extremism in India , 33 New Eng. J. Pub. Pol’y 1 (2021) (discussing right-wing extremism in India). See also Eviane Leidig, Hindutva as a Variant of Right-Wing Extremism , 54 Patterns of Prejudice 215 (2020) (tracing the history of “Hindutva”—defined as “an ideology that encompasses a wide range of forms, from violent, paramilitary fringe groups, to organizations that advocate the restoration of Hindu ‘culture’, to mainstream political parties”—and finding that it has become mainstream since 2014 under Modi); Ariel Goldstein, Brazil Leads the Third Wave of the Latin American Far Right , Ctr. for Rsch. on Extremism (Mar. 1, 2021), https://perma.cc/4PCT-NLQJ (discussing right-wing extremism in Brazil under Bolsonaro); Seth G. Jones, The Rise of Far-Right Extremism in the United States , Ctr. for Strategic & Int’l Stud. (Nov. 2018), https://perma.cc/983S-JUA7 (discussing right-wing extremism in the U.S. under Trump).
• 14 Sergio Fausto, O Desafio Democrático [The Democratic Challenge], Piauí (Aug. 2022), https://perma.cc/474A-3849.
• 15 Jan-Werner Muller, Populism and Constitutionalism , in The Oxford Handbook of Populism 590 (Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser et al. eds., 2017).
• 16 Ming-Sung Kuo, Against Instantaneous Democracy , 17 Int’l J. Const. L. 554, 558–59 (2019); see also Digital Populism , Eur. Ctr. for Populism Stud., https://perma.cc/D7EV-48MV.
• 17 Luís Roberto Barroso, Technological Revolution, Democratic Recession and Climate Change: The Limits of Law in a Changing World , 18 Int’l J. Const. L. 334, 349 (2020).
• 18 For the use of social media, see Sven Engesser et al., Populism and Social Media: How Politicians Spread a Fragmented Ideology , 20 Info. Commc’n & Soc’y 1109 (2017). For attacks on the press, see WPFD 2021: Attacks on Press Freedom Growing Bolder Amid Rising Authoritarianism , Int’l Press Inst. (Apr. 30, 2021), https://perma.cc/SGN9-55A8. For attacks on the judiciary, see Michael Dichio & Igor Logvinenko, Authoritarian Populism, Courts and Democratic Erosion , Just Sec. (Feb. 11, 2021), https://perma.cc/WZ6J-YG49.
• 19 Kuo, supra note 16, at 558–59; see also Digital Populism , supra note 16.
• 20 Vicki C. Jackson, Knowledge Institutions in Constitutional Democracy: Reflections on “the Press” , 15 J. Media L. 275 (2022).
• 21 Many of the ideas and information on this topic were collected in Luna van Brussel Barroso, Liberdade de Expressão e Democracia na Era Digital: O impacto das mídias sociais no mundo contemporâneo [Freedom of Expression and Democracy in the Digital Era: The Impact of Social Media in the Contemporary World] (2022), which was recently published in Brazil.
• 22 The first industrial revolution is marked by the use of steam as a source of energy in the middle of the 18th century. The second started with the use of electricity and the invention of the internal combustion engine at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century. There are already talks of the fourth industrial revolution as a product of the fusion of technologies that blurs the boundaries among the physical, digital, and biological spheres. See generally Klaus Schwab, The Fourth Industrial Revolution (2017).
• 23 Gregory P. Magarian, The Internet and Social Media , in The Oxford Handbook of Freedom of Speech 350, 351–52 (Adrienne Stone & Frederick Schauer eds., 2021).
• 24 Wu, supra note 1, at 15.
• 25 Journalistic ethics include distinguishing fact from opinion, verifying the veracity of what is published, having no self-interest in the matter being reported, listening to the other side, and rectifying mistakes. For an example of an international journalistic ethics charter, see Global Charter of Ethics for Journalists , Int’l Fed’n of Journalists (June 12, 2019), https://perma.cc/7A2C-JD2S.
• 26 See, e.g. , New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254 (1964).
• 27 Balkin, supra note 2, at 2018.
• 28 Magarian, supra note 23, at 351–52.
• 29 Wu, supra note 1, at 15.
• 30 Magarian, supra note 23, at 357–60.
• 31 Niva Elkin-Koren & Maayan Perel, Speech Contestation by Design: Democratizing Speech Governance by AI , 50 Fla. State U. L. Rev. (forthcoming 2023).
• 32 Thomas E. Kadri & Kate Klonick, Facebook v. Sullivan: Public Figures and Newsworthiness in Online Speech , 93 S. Cal. L. Rev. 37, 94 (2019).
• 33 Elkin-Koren & Perel, supra note 31.
• 34 Chris Meserole, How Do Recommender Systems Work on Digital Platforms? , Brookings Inst.(Sept. 21, 2022), https://perma.cc/H53K-SENM.
• 35 Kris Shaffer, Data versus Democracy: How Big Data Algorithms Shape Opinions and Alter the Course of History xi–xv (2019).
• 36 See generally Stuart Russell, Human Compatible: Artificial Intelligence and the Problem of Control (2019).
• 37 Shaffer, supra note 35, at xi–xv.
• 38 More recently, with the advance of neuroscience, platforms have sharpened their ability to manipulate and change our emotions, feelings and, consequently, our behavior in accordance not with our own interests, but with theirs (or of those who they sell this service to). Kaveh Waddell, Advertisers Want to Mine Your Brain , Axios (June 4, 2019), https://perma.cc/EU85-85WX. In this context, there is already talk of a new fundamental right to cognitive liberty, mental self-determination, or the right to free will. Id .
• 39 Content moderation refers to “systems that classify user generated content based on either matching or prediction, leading to a decision and governance outcome (e.g. removal, geoblocking, account takedown).” Robert Gorwa, Reuben Binns & Christian Katzenbach, Algorithmic Content Moderation: Technical and Political Challenges in the Automation of Platform Governance , 7 Big Data & Soc’y 1, 3 (2020).
• 40 Jack M. Balkin, Free Speech in the Algorithmic Society: Big Data, Private Governance, and New School Speech Regulation , 51 U.C. Davis L. Rev. 1149, 1183 (2018).
• 41 See Carey Shenkman, Dhanaraj Thakur & Emma Llansó, Do You See What I See? Capabilities and Limits of Automated Multimedia Content Analysis 13–16 (May 2021),https://perma.cc/J9MP-7PQ8.
• 42 See id. at 17–21.
• 43 See Michael Wooldridge, A Brief History of Artificial Intelligence: What It Is, Where We Are, and Where We Are Going 63 (2021).

Perceptual hashing has been the primary technology utilized to mitigate the spread of CSAM, since the same materials are often repeatedly shared, and databases of offending content are maintained by institutions like the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) and its international analogue, the International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children (ICMEC).

• 45 Natural language understanding is undermined by language ambiguity, contextual dependence of words of non-immediate proximity, references, metaphors, and general semantics rules. See Erik J. Larson, The Myth of Artificial Intelligence: Why Computers Can’t Think the Way We Do 52–55 (2021). Language comprehension in fact requires unlimited common-sense knowledge about the actual world, which humans possess and is impossible to code. Id . A case decided by Facebook’s Oversight Board illustrates the point: the company’s predictive filter for combatting pornography removed images from a breast cancer awareness campaign, a clearly legitimate content not meant to be targeted by the algorithm. See Breast Cancer Symptoms and Nudity , Oversight Bd. (2020), https://perma.cc/U9A5-TTTJ. However, based on prior training, the algorithm removed the publication because it detected pornography and was unable to factor the contextual consideration that this was a legitimate health campaign. Id .
• 46 See generally Adriano Koshiyama, Emre Kazim & Philip Treleaven, Algorithm Auditing: Managing the Legal, Ethical, and Technological Risks of Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Associated Algorithms , 55 Computer 40 (2022).
• 47 Elkin-Koren & Perel, supra note 31.
• 48 Evelyn Douek, Governing Online Speech: From “Posts-as-Trumps” to Proportionality and Probability , 121 Colum. L. Rev. 759, 791 (2021).
• 53 See Martha Minow, Saving the Press: Why the Constitution Calls for Government Action to Preserve Freedom of Speech 20 (2021). For example, the best-selling newspaper in the world, The New York Times , ended the year 2022 with around 10 million subscribers across digital and print. Katie Robertson, The New York Times Company Adds 180,000 Digital Subscribers , N.Y. Times (Nov. 2, 2022), https://perma.cc/93PF-TKC5. The Economist magazine had approximately 1.2 million subscribers in 2022. The Economist Group, Annual Report 2022 24 (2022), https://perma.cc/9HQQ-F7W2. Around the world, publications that reach one million subscribers are rare. These Are the Most Popular Paid Subscription News Websites , World Econ. F. (Apr. 29, 2021), https://perma.cc/L2MK-VPNX.
• 54 Lawrence Lessig, They Don’t Represent Us: Reclaiming Our Democracy 105 (2019).
• 55 Essential Facebook Statistics and Trends for 2023 , Datareportal (Feb. 19, 2023), https://perma.cc/UH33-JHUQ.
• 56 YouTube User Statistics 2023 , Glob. Media Insight (Feb. 27, 2023), https://perma.cc/3H4Y-H83V.
• 57 Brian Dean, WhatsApp 2022 User Statistics: How Many People Use WhatsApp , Backlinko (Jan. 5, 2022), https://perma.cc/S8JX-S7HN.
• 58 Confirmation bias, the tendency to seek out and favor information that reinforces one’s existing beliefs, presents an obstacle to critical thinking. Sachin Modgil et al., A Confirmation Bias View on Social Media Induced Polarisation During COVID-19 , Info. Sys. Frontiers (Nov. 20, 2021).
• 59 Minow, supra note 53, at 2.
• 60 Id. at 3, 11.
• 61 On the importance of the role of the press as an institution of public interest and its “crucial relationship” with democracy, see id. at 35. On the press as a “knowledge institution,” the idea of “institutional press,” and data on the loss of prestige by newspapers and television stations, see Jackson, supra note 20, at 4–5.
• 62 See , e.g. , Jack M. Balkin, How to Regulate (and Not Regulate) Social Media , 1 J. Free Speech L. 71, 89–96 (2021).
• 63 By possible truth we mean that not all claims, opinions and beliefs can be ascertained as true or false. Objective truths are factual and can thus be proven even when controversial—for example, climate change and the effectiveness of vaccines. Subjective truths, on the other hand, derive from individual normative, religious, philosophical, and political views. In a pluralistic world, any conception of freedom of expression must protect individual subjective beliefs.
• 64 Eugene Volokh, In Defense of the Marketplace of Ideas/Search for Truth as a Theory of Free Speech Protection , 97 Va. L. Rev. 595, 595 (May 2011).
• 66 Steven J. Heyman, Free Speech and Human Dignity 2 (2008).
• 67 A Global Dialogue to Guide Regulation Worldwide , UNESCO (Feb. 23, 2023), https://perma.cc/ALK8-HTG3.
• 68 Can We Fix What’s Wrong with Social Media? , Yale L. Sch. News (Aug. 3, 2022), https://perma.cc/MN58-2EVK.
• 69 Lessig, supra note 54, at 105.
• 71 See supra Part III.B.
• 72 Doeuk, supra note 48, at 804–13; see also John Bowers & Jonathan Zittrain, Answering Impossible Questions: Content Governance in an Age of Disinformation , Harv. Kennedy Sch. Misinformation Rev. (Jan. 14, 2020), https://perma.cc/R7WW-8MQX.
• 73 Daphne Keller, Systemic Duties of Care and Intermediary Liability , Ctr. for Internet & Soc’y Blog (May 28, 2020), https://perma.cc/25GU-URGT.
• 75 Decreto No. 12.965, de 23 de abril de 2014, Diário Oficial da União [D.O.U.] de 4.14.2014 (Braz.) art. 19. In order to ensure freedom of expression and prevent censorship, providers of internet applications can only be civilly liable for damages resulting from content generated by third parties if, after specific court order, they do not make arrangements to, in the scope and technical limits of their service and within the indicated time, make unavailable the content identified as infringing, otherwise subject to the applicable legal provisions. Id .
• 76 Id. art. 21. The internet application provider that provides content generated by third parties will be held liable for the violation of intimacy resulting from the disclosure, without authorization of its participants, of images, videos, or other materials containing nude scenes or private sexual acts when, upon receipt of notification by the participant or its legal representative, fail to diligently promote, within the scope and technical limits of its service, the unavailability of this content. Id .
• 77 Balkin, supra note 2, at 2017.
• 78 Kate Klonick, The New Governors: The People, Rules, and Processes Governing Online Speech , 131 Harv. L. Rev. 1598, 1603 (2018).
• 79 Transparency Reporting Index, Access Now (July 2021), https://perma.cc/2TSL-2KLD (cataloguing transparency reporting from companies around the world).
• 80 Hum. Rts. Comm., Rep. of the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, ¶¶ 63–66, U.N. Doc A/HRC/32/35 (2016).
• 81 Paddy Leerssen, The Soap Box as a Black Box: Regulating Transparency in Social Media Recommender Systems , 11 Eur. J. L. & Tech. (2020).
• 82 Daphne Keller, Some Humility About Transparency , Ctr. for Internet & Soc’y Blog (Mar. 19, 2021), https://perma.cc/4Y85-BATA.
• 83 Mark MacCarthy, Transparency Requirements for Digital Social Media Platforms: Recommendations for Policy Makers and Industry , Transatlantic Working Grp. (Feb. 12, 2020).
• 84 2022 O.J. (L 277) 1 [hereinafter DSA].
• 85 The DSA was approved by the European Parliament on July 5, 2022, and on October 4, 2022, the European Council gave its final acquiescence to the regulation. Digital Services: Landmark Rules Adopted for a Safer, Open Online Environment , Eur. Parliament (July 5, 2022), https://perma.cc/BZP5-V2B2. The DSA increases transparency and accountability of platforms, by providing, for example, for the obligation of “clear information on content moderation or the use of algorithms for recommending content (so-called recommender systems); users will be able to challenge content moderation decisions.” Id .
• 86 MacCarthy, supra note 83, 19–24.
• 87 To this end, American legislators recently introduced a U.S. Congressional bill that proposes a model for conducting research on the impacts of digital communications in a way that protects user privacy. See Platform Accountability and Transparency Act, S. 5339, 117th Congress (2022). The project mandates that digital platforms share data with researchers previously authorized by the Federal Trade Commission and publicly disclose certain data about content, algorithms, and advertising. Id .
• 88 Yifat Nahmias & Maayan Perel, The Oversight of Content Moderation by AI: Impact Assessment and Their Limitations , 58 Harv. J. on Legis. 145, 154–57 (2021).
• 89 Auditing Algorithms: The Existing Landscape, Role of Regulator and Future Outlook , Digit. Regul. Coop. F. (Sept. 23, 2022), https://perma.cc/7N6W-JNCW.
• 90 See generally Koshiyama et al., supra note 46.
• 91 In Article 37, the DSA provides that digital platforms of a certain size should be accountable, through annual independent auditing, for compliance with the obligations set forth in the Regulation and with any commitment undertaken pursuant to codes of conduct and crisis protocols.
• 92 Digit. Regul. Coop. F., supra note 89.
• 93 In a transparency report published at the end of its first year of operation, the Oversight Board highlighted the inadequacy of the explanations presented by Meta on the operation of a system known as cross-check, which apparently gave some users greater freedom on the platform. In January 2022, Meta explained that the cross-check system grants an additional degree of review to certain content that internal systems mark as violating the platform’s terms of use. Meta submitted a query to the Board on how to improve the functioning of this system and the Board made relevant recommendations. See Oversight Board Published Policy Advisory Opinion on Meta’s Cross-Check Program , Oversight Bd. (Dec. 2022), https://perma.cc/87Z5-L759.
• 94 Evelyn Douek, Content Moderation as Systems Thinking , 136 Harv. L. Rev. 526, 602–03 (2022).
• 95 The illicit nature of child pornography is objectively apprehended and does not implicate the same subjective considerations that the other referenced categories entail. Not surprisingly, several databases have been created to facilitate the moderation of this content. See Ofcom, Overview of Perceptual Hashing Technology 14 (Nov. 22, 2022), https://perma.cc/EJ45-B76X (“Several hash databases to support the detection of known CSAM exist, e.g. the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) hash database, the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) hash list and the International Child Sexual Exploitation (ICSE) hash database.”).
• 97 Jonathan Haidt, Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid , Atlantic (Apr. 11, 2022), https://perma.cc/2NXD-32VM.

Digital Democracy: The Tools Transforming Political Engagement

• Ravi Gurumurthy

About Nesta

Nesta is an innovation foundation. For us, innovation means turning bold ideas into reality and changing lives for the better. We use our expertise, skills and funding in areas where there are big challenges facing society.

Julie Simon

Head of Government Innovation Research

Julie was the Head of Government Innovation Research in the Policy and Research Team.

Senior Researcher, Government Innovation

Theo was a Senior Researcher in Nesta's Research, Analysis and Policy Team

Victoria Boelman

Principal Researcher, Government Innovation

Victoria was Principal Researcher in Government Innovation in the Policy and Research team. She worked on the potential of new digital tools to transform democracy and the exploring th…

Geoff Mulgan

Chief Executive Officer

Geoff Mulgan was Chief Executive of Nesta from 2011-2019.

This paper shares lessons from Nesta’s research into some of the pioneering innovations in digital democracy which are taking place across Europe and beyond

This paper shares lessons from Nesta’s research into some of the pioneering innovations in digital democracy which are taking place across Europe and beyond.

Key findings

• Digital democracy is a broad concept and not easy to define. The paper provides a granular approach to help encompass its various activities and methods (our ‘typology of digital democracy’).
• Many initiatives exist simply as an app, or web page, driven by what the technology can do, rather than by what the need is.
• Lessons from global case studies describe how digital tools are being used to engage communities in more meaningful political participation, and how they are improving the quality and legitimacy of decision-making.
• Digital democracy is still young. Projects must embed better methods for evaluation of their goals if the field is to grow.

Thanks to digital technologies, today we can bank, read the news, study for a degree, and chat with friends across the world - all without leaving the comfort of our homes. But one area that seems to have remained impervious to these benefits is our model of democratic governance, which has remained largely unchanged since it was invented in the 20th century.

New experiments are showing how digital technologies can play a critical role in engaging new groups of people, empowering citizens and forging a new relationship between cities and local residents, and parliamentarians and citizens.

At the parliamentary level, including in Brazil and France, experiments with new tools are enabling citizens to contribute to draft legislation. Political parties such as Podemos in Spain and the Icelandic Pirate Party are using tools such as Loomio, Reddit and Discourse to enable party members and the general public to deliberate and feed into policy proposals. Local governments have set up platforms to enable citizens to submit ideas and information, rank priorities and allocate public resources.

After a detailed exploration of these case studies and the lessons from them, we explore the challenges which digital democracy will need to address in the future. This includes how to develop a more nuanced understanding of what we mean by ‘participation’ and tackling the digital divide.

Lessons from the innovators

• Develop a clear plan and process : Pioneers in the field engage people meaningfully by giving them a clear stake; they conduct stakeholder analysis; operate with full transparency; and access harder-to-reach groups with offline methods.
• Get the necessary support in place : The most successful initiatives have clear-backing from lawmakers; they also secure the necessary resources to promote to the process properly (PR and advertising), as well as the internal systems to manage and evaluate large numbers of ideas.
• Choose the right tools : The right digital tools help to improve the user-experience and understanding of the issue, and can help remove some of the negative impacts of those who might try to damage or ‘game’ the process.

Julie Simon, Theo Bass, Victoria Boelman and Geoff Mulgan​

Also of interest

The future of early-years data

When billboards stare back: how cities can reclaim the digital public space

Nurturing the seeds of change

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SYSTEMATIC REVIEW article

Digital democracy: a systematic literature review.

• 1 Department of Public Administration, Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, Universitas Mahammadiyah Sinjai, Sinjai, Indonesia
• 2 Department of Accounting and Finance, Faculty of Economics and Business, Regional Campus of International Excellence “Campus Mare Nostrum”, University of Murcia, Murcia, Spain
• 3 Department of Government Studies, Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, University Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta, Yogyakarta, Indonesia
• 4 Department of Government Studies, Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, University Muhammadiyah Malang, Malang, Indonesia

Digital democracy provides a new space for community involvement in democratic life. This study aims to conduct a systematic literature review to uncover the trend of concepts in the study of digital democracy. This study used descriptive analysis with data sources derived from the Scopus database from the period between 2014 and 2020 (a total of 230 articles) and processed with VOSviewer. The results showed three dominant concepts, namely democracy, the internet, and movement. In addition, it was found that the digital era provides positive and negative impacts on democracy, that public knowledge in a quality digital democracy is important, and that there is strong elite control in virtual democracy. The results of this research can be used as a basis for developing digital democracy studies. Meanwhile, this study was limited by the fact that the articles reviewed were only sourced from Scopus and did not include publications from 2022. Therefore, future studies need to take a comparative analysis approach that uses the Web of Science (WoS) database and increases the time period in which articles are sourced.

1. Introduction

The advancement of technology, information, and telecommunications (ICT) has resulted in significant changes to practically every aspect of human life in the 21st century. Nowadays, virtualization and digitalization are comprehensively affecting the pattern of people's lives, in state, social, cultural, economic, political, and religious environments ( Blühdorn and Butzlaff, 2020 ). Particularly, in regard to democracy, there are many advancements or modern patterns caused by the rapid development of ICT. Communities and countries across the digital world can now communicate with each other very easily and accessing information is no longer a complicated process ( Bastien et al., 2020 ). Meanwhile, democracy in the old era used conventional patterns in which it was quite difficult for people to gain access to information related to government and state issues. Additionally, people found communicating or expressing opinions challenging. This was because of the complexity of the systems in democratic countries in the old era, which led to minimal public participation in activating democracy ( Dunan, 2020 ).

The development of the pattern of democracy through ICT advancement has brought about a great deal of change and provided many convenient benefits. Democracy in the digital era is able to provide easy access for the community, especially in terms of obtaining and expressing information ( Hardiman, 2018 ). However, as well as the positive impacts, digital democracy is also associated with negative impacts. The misuse of digital platforms as a means of community democracy is common. The key part of democracy in the digital era that all internet users must consider is their ethics and manners when expressing their thoughts ( Mahliana, 2019 ).

Digital democracy in its development is very much influenced by virtual space, especially social media. Meanwhile, social media is an embodiment of virtual space. The provision of internet access is the most important issue in this instance ( Indianto et al., 2021 ). The existence of virtual space and social media is one aspect that can provide great benefits for democratic life. Social media, if used by people as a means to activate democracy, will fulfill the true purpose of digital democracy ( Mahliana, 2019 ). The general population can readily obtain information and express their goals using social media platforms, such as Instagram, Whatsapp, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, Line, blogs, websites, and other similar platforms. Moreover, nowadays, social media users are more likely to see content with varied meanings. This ease of access may undoubtedly be used to voice opinions, acquire information, and mobilize the populace on important topics in a democracy ( Waluyo, 2019 ). Lower-earning citizens can also take advantage of new technologies, such as social media (e.g., Facebook), which are extremely popular, inexpensive, and simple to use. In this instance, low-income individuals may demand increased information disclosure via these media, and local governments may use these tools to reach out to these citizens ( Guillamón et al., 2016 ). Additionally, candidates/politicians often use social media during political campaigns in which they use various platforms, such as Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, to disseminate political programs and ideas that will be implemented.

When looking at the long journey of democratic methods in the past using conventional patterns and comparing them with digital democracy in the modern era, there is a fairly strong distinction. In the 1990s, internet information technology became known in the community. This had implications for how people adapted to democratic life ( Waluyo, 2018 ). In the past, people could only access information and express opinions through mass media, such as radio, television, and printed newspapers. Now, this behavior has shifted and people generally use digital platforms. Today, the public can promote democracy freely using the internet and social media ( Vittori, 2020 ). An additional benefit of the internet and social media is that they may be used to inspire and motivate. In the past, it was difficult to communicate directly with the government and society as they seemed so far away, but this has now been made possible by the internet and social media ( Hardiman, 2018 ).

Digital democracy is related to the use of digital media and networks for political and government purposes. In the context of democracy, digital technology greatly influences the democratic process through political mobilization, campaign strategies, and polarization of public opinion ( Gilardi, 2016 ). Furthermore, digital democracy is also related to the implementation of e-government ( Bastick, 2017 ; Sundberg, 2019 ; Filipova, 2020 ), e-Voting ( Yang et al., 2021 ; Lorenz-Spreen et al., 2022 ), and social movements ( Treré, 2015 ; Canella, 2017 ; Agur and Frisch, 2019 ; Pavan and Felicetti, 2019 ; Leong et al., 2020 ; Storer and Rodriguez, 2020 ).

Based on some of the explanations above, studies related to digital democracy are needed. The problems that arise in a digitally democratic society are things that must be minimized and normalized. Studies related to digital democracy in the world of democracy and science are fundamental and can provide implications or benefits for future democratic life. Therefore, researchers consider this to be an important issue and are interested in studying and analyzing how digital democracy is discussed and how it should be implemented. In studies related to democracy in the digital era, researchers try to use a structured literature review system when this method is considered to be capable of answering the researcher's basic questions and presenting relevant conclusions.

Several studies have demonstrated the development of digital democracy across the world. Bessant (2014) points out that digital democracy has succeeded in driving political change in Arab countries through the Arab Spring due to the involvement of students, who were able to use social media as a means of communication in developing resistance movements. Wells (2014) states that social media encourages the rise of civil politics because people are more concerned with political issues. Vlachokyriakos et al. (2014) show that the presence of e-voting succeeded in making the election process more efficient and effective. Lee et al. (2014) demonstrated that social media succeeded in breaking the chain of political inequality in Thailand, where young people were more active, especially in the case of the referendum. Natale and Ballatore (2014) highlighted the role of new media, specifically websites, in spreading influence and campaigning during the growth of the Five Star Movement (M5S) in Italy. Bessant and Watts (2017) show that Aboriginal tribes in Australia, as indigenous people, have succeeded in increasing their equality and political influence using social media. Vaccari and Valeriani (2018) argue that people's political participation via social media is greater in established democracies, such as Denmark, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States than in “third wave” democracies, such as Greece, Poland, and Spain. Michaesel (2018) looks at how the Iranian government strictly controls the internet through censorship of information to prevent the emergence of a democracy promotion movement.

Evans (2019) shows a strong correlation between massive internet use and the development of democracy in Africa. This study shows that democracy in African countries is currently heading in a new direction due to the strengthening of digital politics in the community to oversee the running of government and protest. Chitanana and Mutsvairo (2019) show how social media has succeeded in growing a repressive community resistance movement in Zimbabwe; people are using social media for citizen journalism and fighting for democracy. In Russia, Glazunova (2020) shows how YouTube has succeeded in becoming an alternative media used by Alexey Navalny as an opposition figure to organize mass protests in Russia, especially in the anti-corruption protest event in 2017. Finally, Flew and Iosifidis (2020) emphasize how populism is an aspect of the right wing that exploits the spirit of nationalism and has become stronger lately because it maximizes the use of social media. Another study analyzes the determinants of public engagement on municipal Facebook pages ( Metallo et al., 2020 ). The sample included 170 cities in Italy and Spain that used Facebook in 2014. The data indicate that excessive publication of city information on Facebook Pages has little effect on citizen involvement. Additionally, routinely posting information does not constitute public participation. However, if it is posted and made publicly available (for example, on a holiday), the possibility of public engagement increases. Additionally, citizen engagement on the city's Facebook page is dependent on the person's income level, with a negative correlation between income and participation. In comparison to these studies, which were conducted explicitly, this research makes a novel addition by using the systematic literature review (SLR) approach to demonstrate the trend of digital democracy studies and their analysis to make them more comprehensive and comparative.

2. Literature review

2.1. democracy in the digital era.

The development of globalization has many implications for present society. The current rapid globalization has minimized limitations in the global community. This is based on the rapid development of technology and information so that it is easy for the global community to access information ( Kud, 2021 ). Changes in the democratic patterns of society and government in each country have coincided with this massive development of information technology and globalization. Advances in technology, information, and communication have changed the democratic patterns of society and government so that they can move in digital spaces ( Blühdorn and Butzlaff, 2020 ).

There are positive and negative sides to the study of democracy in the digital era. The positive aspects make it easier for people to express their aspirations, form groups, protest policies, control policies put forward by governments, and so on. The point is, from this perspective, democratic countries are becoming more democratic because virtual spaces and internet access can provide opportunities for users to express their opinions ( Dwifatma, 2021 ). However, in this case, good understanding and ethics are needed so that people do not use freedom of expression to violate ethics in the virtual world as well as human rights ( Nasution, 2020 ). On the other hand, there is a negative side to democracy in the digital era. Public understanding of social media is something that is often a problem. Many cases of ethical violations and use are out of the realm of the public in the virtual world. These cases can be in the form of hoaxes, hate speech, defamation, and so on ( Masduki, 2021 ). The basic understanding of society in conveying and using freedom of expression on digital platforms is sometimes far beyond limits. This is one of the problems and challenges for democracy in today's digital era.

Based on the explanation above, digital democracy has a significant impact on society and government. Digital democracy can support the realization of democratization in a country. This can happen because the digital world makes it easier for people to control and express their aspirations regarding existing problems ( Charnock et al., 2021 ). On the other hand, the government as a policymaker should also provide substantial and periodic socialization, as well as education regarding how to use digital platforms properly ( Blühdorn and Butzlaff, 2020 ).

2.2. Virtual space and social media

Virtual space is a space that results from a simulation of reality and then becomes a hyperreality or the adoption of reality on a digital platform. Virtual space can also be interpreted as a form of virtual communication. Virtual space is present as an alternative solution for meeting human needs to socialize widely beyond limits. Meanwhile, social media is an embodiment of the virtual space. Internet access is the most important factor in this instance ( Indianto et al., 2021 ). The existence of virtual space and social media is one aspect that can provide extraordinary benefits for democratic life. The meaning or value of democracy can be achieved through social media, which make it easier for people to actively participate in a democratic country ( Mahliana, 2019 ). People can readily obtain information and express their goals using social media networks, such as Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Twitter, Line, blogs, and websites, among others. This ease of access can certainly be used as a means of expressing opinions and gathering and mobilizing the masses regarding certain issues in a democratic country ( Waluyo, 2019 ).

To support this, substantial and periodic virtual political education is needed to support democratization in today's digital era. This is an important aspect for supporting the basic understanding of the community regarding how to use various digital platforms to support democracy ( Malik et al., 2020 ). There will be complex problems if the virtual political understanding of society is not fully fulfilled. Hoaxes, hate speech, defamation, discrimination, political stereotypes, and so on are things that can arise if the social media user community is not able to use social media properly.

3. Research method

This study examines various articles that are closely associated with digital democracy. Articles of an international scale and reputation are the main sources of reference in the preparation of this study. The focus of the review discussed in this study is based on several basic factors, especially in terms of understanding the concepts, impacts, and patterns related to digital democracy. Researchers are attempting to summarize studies that have been reviewed by previous researchers to find a common thread to understand how digital democracy takes place in the current era.

Figure 1 shows that this research began with a search for articles using the keyword “digital democracy” in the Scopus database for the 2014–2021 period. This search identified 258 articles that were then reviewed based on stages: a search for articles, import articles in the application software, and mapping of discussion topics.

Figure 1 . Flow diagram showing the different stages of the method used in this review with PRISMA.

Several articles that had strong links were obtained by researchers based on the following procedure: first, article identification attempted to sort and select various articles so that only those related to the topic were used. This was carried out by inputting the keywords “digital democracy” in the search column, with restrictions from 2014 to 2021. Based on the search process, 2,508 articles related to the topic were obtained. The second stage involved verifying the various articles found to determine whether they were really needed and were closely related to democracy issues in the digital era. Verification was carried out by limiting the subject area (social sciences), document type (article), publication stage (final), and language (English). The verification process identified 258 articles/journals that were relevant to digital democracy. These articles were used as a reference for studying “digital democracy”.

4. Data analysis

4.1. publication and leading author.

Articles on the topic of digital democracy are one of the the most popular types of study and continue to increase every year. Figure 2 shows that from 2014 to 2021, in general, there was an increase even though there was a stagnation in 2016. Furthermore, the year in which the highest number of articles were published was 2021 (89 articles). By contrast, the year in which the fewest articles were published was 2014 (14 articles).

Figure 2 . Number of publications from 2014 to 2021.

Furthermore, the 10 authors with the highest number of publications related to digital democracy between 2014 and 2021 are shown in Figure 3 . De Blasio had the highest number of publications (four articles). Furthermore, three authors, Casserro Ripolles, Sorice, and Trere, published three articles. Finally, six authors, Vaccari, Assenbaum, Ballatore, Berg, Condy, and Davies, published two articles.

Figure 3 . Top 10 authors of publications related to digital democracy between 2014 and 2021.

4.2. Correlation and grouping of themes in digital democracy studies

The following description is a follow-up procedure sourced from various articles/journals after the previous selection and verification process. The results of the review were processed using the VOSviewer application to categorize concepts based on groups. Figure 4 shows the various concept names displayed with cluster densities, with a total link of 511 and a total link strength of 821. The difference between cluster colors is an indication of differentiation between one discussion group and another focus group. This makes it easy for researchers to map groups of data so that they can be studied and analyzed. Regarding the study of digital democracy, Figure 4 displays different colors for each existing cluster and refers to the grouping of their respective concepts.

Figure 4 . Clusters of discussion topics related to digital democracy.

Figure 4 shows how the themes were grouped, and these groups were sorted for review with those that actually have a correlation based on the themes discussed. Table 1 maps concepts or themes based on clusters related to the study of digital democracy.

Table 1 . Themes grouped based on clusters.

Table 1 shows that cluster 1 predominantly discusses how the internet or digital space can be used as a forum to participate in strengthening democracy. In cluster 1, the most dominant keyword is internet. This shows that the topic of the internet has the highest frequency, or is often mentioned, in cluster 1. This happens because all the concepts written by the author always refer to the internet.

Gauja (2021) , for example, explains that the presence of digital networks can strengthen democracy as people can participate online to strengthen and activate it. Nowadays, public opinion can be channeled through digital platforms or social media. Twitter, Facebook, websites, and various other platforms can be used to communicate public opinion in a virtual form. Digital democracy, or what can also be referred to as e-democracy, on the other hand can function as campaign media. The breadth of access and the number of internet users are the main reasons why online participation is massive ( Flew and Iosifidis, 2020 ).

A fairly monolithic scientific argument is also elaborated by Smith and Martín (2021) . This study, conducted in Madrid and Barcelona in Spain, reveals that digital or technopolitical platforms can influence democratic activity and democratize a region or country. Smith and Martín (2021) also explain that digital features have become a platform for aspirations of community involvement and activism. This underlies the notion that the pattern of digital democracy must be strengthened through socialization and strong education so that people can understand the pattern of democracy in the virtual space. Additionally, Vittori (2020) further reveals that the community can influence policymakers through the digital space, where the masses can be mobilized virtually to provide reflection so that policies made by the government or members of parliament can be influenced. Thus, the digital space is highly beneficial for activating democracy. Democracy is one thing that can be realized through the active participation of citizens, and the internet and social media can be a platform to manifest this participation ( Fuchs, 2021 ).

Cluster 2 predominantly features the function of the community to control government policies and is also related to public understanding during political arguments in digital media. In cluster 2, the most dominant keyword is citizenship as all the concepts written by the authors always refer to the topic of citizenship because citizens participate in politics, primarily to control government policies; therefore, many authors research this topic.

To activate democracy and foster a participatory political culture, the public should massively control and oversee government policies. Democracy and participation is not only defined as using voting rights in general elections but also as guarding the elected political actors to keep the public interest first ( Masduki, 2021 ). Feldman (2020) finds that one of the most important things in digital democracy is a good basic knowledge of digital media users. Sometimes, there is a misunderstanding in society that freedom of expression in digital media is defined as a very high level of freedom. This is biased and out of control and leads to the violation of the human rights of individuals or political actors, hoaxes, SARA, black campaigns, and so on. Therefore, it is necessary for the public to have a strong awareness about how to argue when using digital media. Understanding which words to use and which arguments to engage with exemplifies this and underpins the appropriate manner in which to express opinions or argue in the digital world ( Moya, 2020 ).

Similar to the dominant concept in the previous cluster, cluster 3 predominantly features community participation in enlivening democracy. Therefore, the dominant keyword is participant, which means all authors refer to it in cluster 3. Even though every democratic country has its own representative council, the advancement of ICT allows people to directly control policy and debate freely through digital media ( Dommett et al., 2021 ). In terms of the implications or problems that arise because of regulations that deviate from government, the public can use social media to raise cases and mobilize the masses to oppose government regulations. This is what is referred to as public participation in the new era of digital democracy ( Siagian and Yuliarti, 2021 ). In the conventional era, people had to report to the government at the closest level and to representatives; however, in the era of digital democracy, people can express their opinions in digital spaces or platforms. The expression of public dissatisfaction on social media has led to governments improving policies or redelivering policy intentions. This is certainly very democratic, with the benefits of digital media positively impacting democracy ( Attatfa et al., 2020 ).

Cluster 4 predominantly discusses the impact of the presence of the internet and digital media on democracy, which has an impact on the ease and equality of public access to participation. Therefore, the dominant keyword is access, which means all authors refer to it in cluster 4. Bastien et al. (2020) explain that the ease of access offered by the digital space can be of great benefit to marginalized and disabled people. For example, social media can be used as a forum for channeling the opinions of this group of people. Social media that does not prioritize social stratification provides a positive space for this group. A democratic system that requires any citizen to have an opinion through social media can indirectly be properly accommodated. Social media is an alternative way for people to participate in and activate democracy ( Vittori, 2020 ). Finally, Dunan (2020) also suggests that democracy in the digital era makes people closer to the state and government. This is because of the lack of boundaries in the digital world, which allows people to easily convey their aspirations to the government. The community in this case can move away from the political culture of the subject and participate politically. In general, democracy in the digital era, putting aside its negative impacts, can provide great benefits for the community so that they can actively participate in a democratic state system.

The dominant themes or concepts featured in cluster 5 are capitalism and digital democracy. Marenco (2021) explains that digital democracy has a strong causality with the capitalist system. The dominant keyword is capitalism, which is referred to by all authors. The focus of cluster 5 is to link capitalism with political democracy; in a capitalist system, political democracy must be carried out. The concentration of economic and political power in a handful of groups indicates a pattern of digital democracy mobilization. In this instance, democracy in the digital era faces challenges. Capitalist groups can control and supervise internet users. This is a real problem for democracy in the digital age. To minimize this, digital media users are required to have knowledge about verifying the information contained in various digital platforms ( De Blasio and Viviani, 2020 ).

Finally, in cluster 6, the concept predominantly discusses the presence of digital media as an alternative to society in democracy. This is indicated by the fact that alternative digital medium is the dominant keyword, which means it is the main reference for authors in cluster 6. Democracy in the digital era requires citizens to have accounts on various social media platforms. These accounts can be used to as a weapon to convey opposing arguments against the government as a policymaker ( Gao et al., 2021 ). Additionally, digital media are now used as a tool for political advertising by political groups and individuals. In this instance, these advertisements have positive and negative values. This requires the public to be observant so that they can understand information in advertisements delivered on digital platforms ( Gauja, 2021 ). To support public understanding of democracy in digital media, the government should also massively provide socialization and education regarding how digital media should be used as a means of channeling aspirations. This is considered important for democracy in today's digital era. Positives and negatives are always present in democracy in the digital era; therefore, it is important to understand how to properly express opinions on social media or the internet ( Gauja, 2021 ).

4.3. The dominant themes in the study of digital democracy

Based on the data analysis undertaken, there are several dominant themes or themes that have a strong association with the study of digital democracy. This categorization or grouping of dominant themes aims to make the study more focused so that it can present a relevant conclusion. Additionally, the categorization and classification of dominant themes are also used because they can make it easier for the author to map out any topics that have a strong association with the topics discussed. Reviewing the studies of democracy requires verification or sorting of the data so that it is truly in line with the topic of a study. This is carried out so that the discussion or subject of the study is not too general and widespread. Figure 5 shows some of the dominant concepts associated with the study of digital democracy.

Figure 5 . Dominant topics in the study of digital democracy.

Looking at the group of words featured in Figure 5 , it would appear that of the various previous discussions on digital democracy, several groups discussed the dominant themes or concepts that tended to be discussed the most. Researchers in this study used an analytical tool called VOSviewer to process data and come up with dominant themes or concepts related to the study of digital democracy. The dominant concepts/themes that were often discussed by previous researchers included democracy, internet, movement, concept, public sphere, control, implication, framework, representative democracy, democratization, relationship, knowledge, participatory civic, citizenship, public opinion, media control, e-democracy, and online participation.

The color thickness in Figure 5 indicates how dominant each focus group is. The group of themes with the thickest colors were discussed the most. These various groups of dominant concepts have a strong mutualism symbiosis that makes it easier for researchers to come to conclusions that are truly conical to studies related to democracy in the digital era. This review of the dominant theme was needed to provide a reference for concepts that were often discussed. Therefore, the results of the processed data are shown in Figure 5 .

Based on the dominant concepts or themes related to digital democracy, as described in Figure 5 , several topics are quite dominant or have been frequently studied. The first dominant topic, democracy, is at the center of studies related to digital democracy. Democracy in the digital era is one of the topics discussed in the modern era. The presence of digital media has strong implications for democratic life. The positives and negatives presented by democracy in the digital era are complex and interesting issues to study. This foundation is one of the reasons why “democracy” has become the dominant discussion in various previous studies. Another dominant theme indicated by color thickness in Figure 5 is the internet. Democracy and the internet are groups that have strong causality in studies related to digital democracy. The presence of the internet raises the spirit of democracy in the community because of the convenience offered in the various virtual spaces in it. The internet arrived and changed people's democratic habits. However, there are many problems associated with the digitalization of democracy. These problems have been predominantly studied by several researchers.

Another dominant theme in the study of digital democracy is knowledge. The active participation of the community in the era of digital democracy must be accompanied by strong knowledge regarding the use of digital media in democracy. This is important to discuss because there are many cases of violations and irregularities when opinions are expressed on digital platforms ( Reiter and Matthes, 2021 ). Then there is the dominant theme of public opinion in the era of e-democracy. E-democracy, in this sense, is intended as a pattern of delivering public opinion through digital systems. In the modern era, people can more easily and freely express their opinions, conduct campaigns, and mobilize the masses ( Flew and Iosifidis, 2020 ). The presence of the internet has improved democracy. Although there are many drawbacks with virtual democracy, the minimal limitations associated with digital platforms are positive for society in terms of activating democracy and presenting democratic values ( Gauja, 2021 ).

There were other dominant themes that could not be fully covered by this study. Nevertheless, each dominant theme contained in Figure 5 has a correlation with one another and can be used as a reference for studies related to digital democracy. When conducting studies related to digital democracy, it is necessary to first understand the dominant concepts that have been discussed by previous studies. This is important because it can make it easier for researchers to summarize and produce relevant conclusions regarding the theme of digital democracy.

4.4. Period of article publication in digital democracy studies

The next elaboration relates to the period of publication of articles in the study of digital democracy.

Figure 6 shows articles published during the period from 2014 to 2020. When examined based on thickness or color dominance, studies related to digital democracy published between 2014 and 2016 were more dominant in discussing the internet, participants, services, and so on. This means that during the 2014–2016 period, focused or dominant studies discussed how the internet can be used as a field for community participation in democracy. From 2016 to 2018, the study that was dominant began to change and attempted to examine the benefits of the internet for presenting democracy in democratic countries. The studies in this time span were also dominant in discussing the internet as a means of control and conveying aspirations and as a space for movements that can support democracy. Then, the period from 2018 to 2020 saw the emergence of capitalism, digital advertising, and virtual space controlled by certain groups. This means that there has been a very dynamic study of digital democracy. However, in general, studies on related themes are always dominantly related to, or have implications for, “democracy”.

Figure 6 . Publication trend of the study of digital democracy.

Studies and publication of articles on digital democracy are considered very important given the massive changes that have occurred in the modern era. Additionally, democracy in the digital era has challenges and shortcomings associated with its implementation; therefore, future studies need to be scaled up to provide updates and communicate the lessons learned about digital democracy. The novelty presented in studies related to digital democracy provides benefits as a reference and alternative solution for the future. Therefore, researchers expect to undertake large-scale studies and present new findings to provide lessons that can be incorporated into future studies related to digital democracy. One of the important studies conducted by De Blasio and Viviani (2020) , “Platform party between digital activism and hyper-leadership: the reshaping of the public sphere”, emphasizes that politicians/political parties can maximize social media to repair their damaged image in the eyes of the public through smart and sustainable political advertising. In addition, politicians/political parties must improve their intensive communication skills through digital means (social media) to connect them with the public so that their damaged reputation can be repaired.

4.5. Co-authorship analysis

Network mapping by author's name was also carried out in this study. The involvement of the authors in relevant studies is important because it can show the intensity of the author and the relationship between authors in this area of study. Network mapping by author can also show how active an author is in collaborating with other researchers and can also find references between authors to indicate who might collaborate with each other in the future.

As shown in Figure 7 , the author with the most publications was De Blasio (four articles). However, when a co-authorship analysis of collaboration between authors was undertaken, of the 43 selected authors with at least two articles, only one cluster with four authors (Reinhard, Knufher, Heft, and Meyerhofer) was identified and indicated a very minimal collaboration in the topic of digital democracy. De Blasio was not among those who collaborated with other authors.

Figure 7 . Co-authorship analysis.

5. Conclusion

Studies related to digital democracy are important and need to be widely presented. The rapid development of ICT has brought change and dynamism to the pattern of democracy in the digital era. This research reveals several dominant studies related to digital democracy. Some of the most important aspects of digital democracy were as follows: first, the digital era and its benefits for democracy—the presence of the internet has many implications for the pattern of democracy. The internet, which offers freedom and easy access for users, can be used as a forum for community participation to actively contribute to democracy. Virtual space provides a new dignity to the rise of democracy, thus democratic values can be presented in today's digital era. A second aspect involves people's knowledge of democracy in the digital era. In the era of digital democracy, freedom of expression is not regarded as a completely unlimited freedom. Values and ethics need to be applied when expressing opinions in virtual/digital spaces. Therefore, public knowledge is fundamental in the era of digital democracy (e-democracy). Finally, another important aspect is the presence of capitalism and control in democracy. In today's studies of digital democracy, there are indications of control by a group of elites in the virtual democratic pattern of society. This negativity affects democracy in the digital era, but the basic understanding of society is one of the main shields against this problem.

This research is useful for showing the development of, and urgent need for, digital democracy at a global level. However, this research also has limitations. First, the articles reviewed were only sourced from the Scopus database; therefore, there are no comparison data. Second, it excludes articles published in 2022, during which time the COVID-19 pandemic endured and even worsened in several places, which of course greatly affected virtual democracy. Therefore, further studies need to apply a comparative analysis approach that uses the Web of Science (WoS) database as a source of highly reputable international journals and widen the time period from which to source published research.

Data availability statement

The original contributions presented in the study are included in the article/supplementary material, further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding author.

Author contributions

All authors listed have made a substantial, direct, and intellectual contribution to the work and approved it for publication.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Publisher's note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

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Treré, E. (2015). Reclaiming, proclaiming, and maintaining collective identity in the #YoSoy132 movement in Mexico: an examination of digital frontstage and backstage activism through social media and instant messaging platforms. Inf. Commun. Soc. 18, 901–915. doi: 10.1080/1369118X.2015.1043744

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Keywords: digital democracy, government, participation, social media, internet, movement

Citation: Congge U, Guillamón M-D, Nurmandi A, Salahudin and Sihidi IT (2023) Digital democracy: A systematic literature review. Front. Polit. Sci. 5:972802. doi: 10.3389/fpos.2023.972802

Received: 19 June 2022; Accepted: 09 January 2023; Published: 09 February 2023.

Reviewed by:

Copyright © 2023 Congge, Guillamón, Nurmandi, Salahudin and Sihidi. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

Digital Democracy

Internet Policy Review, Vol 10, Issue 4, 2021 https://doi.org/10.14763/2021.4.1612

23 Pages Posted: 28 Feb 2022

Sebastian Berg

WZB Berlin Social Science Center

Jeanette Hofmann

Social Science Research Centre Berlin; Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society; Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society

Date Written: December 20, 2021

For contemporary societies, digital democracy provides a key concept that denotes, in our understanding, the relationship between collective self-government and mediating digital infrastructures. New forms of digital engagement that go hand in hand with organisational reforms are re-intermediating established democratic settings in open-ended ways that defy linear narratives of demise or renewal. As a first approach, we trace the history of digital democracy against the background of its specific media constellations, describing continuities and discontinuities in the interplay of technological change and aspirations for democratisation. Thereafter, we critically review theoretical premises concerning the role of technology and how they vary in the way the concept of digital democracy is deployed. In four domains, we show the contingent political conditions under which the relationship between forms of democratic self-determination and its mediating digital infrastructures evolve. One lesson to learn from these four domains is that democratic self-governance is a profoundly mediated project whose institutions and practices are constantly in flux.

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Sebastian Berg (Contact Author)

Wzb berlin social science center ( email ).

Reichpietschufer 50 D-10785 Berlin, 10785 Germany

Social Science Research Centre Berlin ( email )

Berlin, 10785 Germany

Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society ( email )

Bebelplatz 1 | 10099 Berlin Germany

Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society ( email )

Berlin Germany

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How can digital government advance global development and democracy?

Subscribe to the sustainable development bulletin, george ingram and george ingram senior fellow - global economy and development , center for sustainable development meagan dooley meagan dooley former senior research analyst - global economy and development , center for sustainable development.

December 15, 2021

Digital technology was a reoccurring theme last week at the Biden administration’s Summit for Democracy on “defending against authoritarianism, addressing and fighting corruption, promoting respect for human rights.” COVID-19 has highlighted how central digital capabilities are for all aspects of life—work, health, education, commerce, and government. Digital infrastructure and government services are no longer just nice to have, but essential elements of a 21st century nation. Digital capabilities are ideologically neutral and can serve authoritarian as well as democratic tendencies, so development donors must be wary of whom they partner with and how they deliver assistance for digital government.

Components of digital government

In a new working paper , we identify the key elements of digital government, present data on how developing countries are adopting digital government, and provide recommendations for donor support.

There is no definitive definition of digital government, sometimes referred to as e-government, nor agreement on its principal components. The paper, based on an assessment of what is required for a government to effectively function digitally, identifies six key components of digital government:

• Digital infrastructure. A comprehensive network of digital infrastructure is required to run digital government platforms and for individuals, business, and civil society to access and utilize those resources.
• Digital literacy. Government staff and digital users must be literate, not just digitally, but in the basic skills of traditional school learning.
• Digital data/communications/services. Digital government data and services need to be constructed on a common platform, not department-by-department or service-by-service, that is based on whole-of-government standards and interoperable.
• Digital participation. Digital government must facilitate and encourage citizen use by being easy to access and responsive to user input and needs.
• Digital institutions/policies/regulations. Existing institutions and policies must be modified to function alongside digital applications and adapted for digital use, depending on whether the specific application lends itself to being fully digital or requires companion analog operations.
• Digital security and rights. The systems must be secure from cyberattack and protect data privacy and rights.

The digital divide among countries

Digital development largely tracks with national income (Figure 1). Eighty-seven percent of the population in developed countries is reached by 4G coverage, compared with 65 percent in developing countries and 25 percent in least-developed countries. The urban-rural divide is 87 percent-81 percent in developed countries, 65 percent-28 percent in developing countries, and 25 percent-10 percent in least-developed countries. The gender gap in internet usage is modest in developed countries, at 88 percent-86 percent; the gap widens to 49 percent-40 percent in developing countries and to 28 percent-15 percent in least-developed countries.

Consistent with the level of economic development, the sub-Saharan Africa region scores the lowest on indexes of overall digital government readiness and lags on all six components. South Asia follows next and is particularly in need of support in digital literacy and digital infrastructure. There is a wider range of digital readiness across the six components for East Asia & Pacific, Middle East & North Africa, and Latin America & Caribbean. The developing countries of Europe & Central Asia score better than other regions, but still lag considerably behind wealthy countries. Overall, developing countries score best on digital literacy and worst on government effectiveness.

How donors can engage

Low-income countries (LICs) and lower-middle-income countries (LMICs) are in dire need of assistance in all aspects of digital government. Support is required not only on the strictly digital components of ICT (information and communication technology) infrastructure, digital data and services platforms, digital participation, and digital security, but also on upgrading and adapting to the digital world the analog components of government institutions and regulations, in addition to digital literacy and human capital development.

Donors are currently supporting various digital development initiatives, but too often in one-off, siloed applications rather than as part of a comprehensive, strategic plan. Donors should build their support around national digital strategies and find ways to overcome barriers to donor coordination. The scale and urgency of need are such that donors should collaborate through establishing a comprehensive global digital initiative and regional efforts like the African Union’s digital transformation strategy for Africa . As appropriate, they should draw from and contribute to global public goods, as cataloged by the Digital Impact Alliance in its Catalogue of Digital Solutions , and utilize existing capabilities and platforms as provided by Future State , MOSIP , and GovStack .

Expectations for donor support must be realistic. An initiative can undertake only so much. A digital government initiative, even a comprehensive one, is likely to focus mainly on digitally specific components—telecommunications infrastructure, government digital capacity and online services, digital participation, and cybersecurity. For the other components that support digital government, there are existing well-established donor programs in building human capacity through education and training, in strengthening government institutions, services, policies, and regulations, and in advancing democracy and political participation. Ideally, a digital lens would be embedded in these traditional programs to create mutually strengthening synergies with digital government: education programs addressing digital literacy, institution building efforts adapted to the digital world, and democracy programs focused on citizen engagement in an online world.

The benefits and challenges ahead

If there is any question about the value and urgency of moving to digital government, one need only look at how a few digitally ready developing countries responded rapidly to COVID-19. Sri Lanka was able in two days to configure an existing digital health platform to track incoming travelers from high risk areas. India was able within a few weeks to use its Aadhaar digital ID system to begin transferring $8 per month to 200 million vulnerable women. Within 10 days, Togo built on an existing digital platform a system to enroll and transfer monthly cash payments via mobile phone.

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The benefits of digital government are clear. Done properly, it allows government to be more efficient, more responsive to citizen input and needs, more transparent and accountable, and to act and adapt more quickly. With the right data and “last mile” connection efforts, it allows government services to be better targeted and to reach remote and underserved communities.

But along with the benefits come dangers. The misuse of digital capabilities extends from demagoguery to repression and abuse of human rights. Digital technology can be deployed by authoritarian regimes to maliciously strengthen their power over citizens. The same digital capabilities that allow government to be more engaged with and responsive to citizens also allow it to be more controlling. It provides government the tools to infringe on citizen privacy and track their communications and movements. It can be used for misinformation and disinformation and to misrepresent and block communications of opposition forces.

Principles of good digital government

As donors work to advance the digital capabilities of developing country governments, they must be constantly alert as to how those capabilities can be misused. They must carefully choose the partners with whom they work. The support they provide must be accompanied by the ethos of full transparency and, first and foremost, be citizen-centric.

At the Summit for Democracy, USAID Administrator Samantha Power called for a Surveillance Principles Initiative , consistent with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the rule of law, that protects user data and fights discrimination. Beyond that, donors, to ensure their support for digital development is deployed for benevolent and constructive purposes, should develop a set of principles designed to wall off the capabilities of digital government from misuse and abuse and protect open government and the rights and privacy of citizens.

This is not something for government to do alone. The private sector possesses the technology, does much of the investment, and is constantly innovating, so must be a party to any set of principles. Civil society is best at protecting the rights of individuals and holding government and the private sector accountable. Partner countries have to be in accord with what is put forward. So, if it is to be effective, this set of principles must be a multi-stakeholder charter jointly built and with mutual accountability.

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Digital Democracy: The Winners and Losers

The Social, Cultural and Environmental Costs of Hyper-Connectivity: Sleeping Through the Revolution

ISBN : 978-1-83909-979-3 , eISBN : 978-1-83909-976-2

Publication date: 17 August 2021

Hynes, M. (2021), "Digital Democracy: The Winners and Losers", The Social, Cultural and Environmental Costs of Hyper-Connectivity: Sleeping Through the Revolution , Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 137-153. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-83909-976-220211009

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2021 Mike Hynes

This work is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this work (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode

Free and fair elections are the heart of every democracy. During the 2016 election, we were actively looking for traditional cyberattacks, and we found them. What we didn’t find until later were foreign actors running coordinated campaigns to interfere with America’s democratic process. Mark Zuckerberg

There is no reason to believe that the foundation for liberty in cyberspace will simply emerge. Indeed, the passion for that anarchy – as in America by the late 1890s, and as in the former Eastern bloc by the late 1990s – has faded. Thus as, our framers learned, and as the Russians saw, we have every reason to believe that cyberspace, left to itself, will not fulfill the promise of freedom. Left to itself, cyberspace will become a perfect tool of control. Lawrence Lessig

The Digital Promise of Democracy

From the early days of the internet, the influence, power and reach of such hyperconnectivity was acclaimed as a potential vital instrument in democratising the world. There was a somewhat naïve assumption that once people were exposed to the virtues of democracy through the medium of the information superhighway, there would be inevitable civic transformation and popular uprisings towards such a political system driven by masses of well-informed citizens of former authoritarian and communist regimes. Many of these states and regions simply needed to know about the merits of democracy to completely and unequivocally embrace this political system, and they would get this understanding directly from the internet. And the basis of such optimism was promising. The outwardly unstoppable march of freedom that began in the 1980s and culminated, by the end of that decade, in the fall of communism in the Soviet Union brought with it a sense of victory: a sense of good winning over evil, of a world of common-sense politics prevailing over the perverse and malevolence. The triumph of the West, of the Western civilisation ideals, was evidence, it was claimed, of the total exhaustion of viable systematic alternatives to Western liberalism leading to what Francis Fukuyama termed ‘The End of History’. 1 In other states like China that called themselves communist, political and economic reforms were also heading in the direction of a liberal order, he claimed. But lethargy set in over the following decades with regard to approaches to international democratisation that was to see the resurgence of authoritarianism and the emergence and rise of a new form of populism that has now engulfed countries right across the world: from Brazil to Hungry, to Turkey, Egypt and the United States. All the while digital information and communication technology (ICT) was held out as a sabre of freedom that merely needed a deeper appreciation and activation and a willing population to revolutionise, reform and direct towards democracy. People would march to freedom just waving their smartphones in the air. Whether it was the 2009 Iranian ‘Twitter’ revolution, the Arab Spring or the more recent efforts of Hong Kong residents to retain a semblance of their own autonomy, all these civic uprisings and conflicts would be powered by the freedom enabled by the internet and a host of smart devices and that would ultimately lead to good triumphing over evil.

It is a very seductive notion to think that information alone sets us free and that access to the internet with its vast stores of information will lead those oppressed by authoritarians into the light of democracy. But such technological determinist thinking ignores the underlying social and economic realities that pre-exist and that are the real grounds for civil disobediences and revolution within nations in favour of simplistic cyber-utopianisms unreal expectations as to the power of digital technology and a raft of technological quick fixes. Such high exceptions of what digital technology could achieve in democratising the world have today given way to the reality that these very same digital technologies have now been weaponised by other more sinister darker forces in the world and have ironically and skilfully been turned against the very pillars of democracy itself. While many within established Western democracies dithered and failed to truly understand and embrace the real power inherent in digital ICT, others were less hesitant and seized upon the opportunity to use the technology to undermine the institutions of democracy in some of the leading countries of the West. Western liberal democracies not only have failed to truly understand the power that has been unleashed, many of them have been complicit in allowing such a situation develop in the first instance. By failing to rein in the immense influence, power and reach of big tech authorities in the West has abducted their responsibilities to protect their democracies and, in turn, have left their citizens helplessly exposed to persistent misinformation, lies, fake news and manipulation on a vast scale. Yet while countries comforted themselves with blankets of cyber-delusionism, a few lone tech writers have been sounding the alarm bells for some time now.

Watching Freedom Fail

Evgeny Morozov is a writer, researcher, and intellectual from Belarus who studies the political and social implications of digital ICT. His 2011 book, The Net Delusion , challenges the myth of ‘internet freedom’ and argues that technology has failed to democratise the world as some had previously told us would happen. 2 Behind many of the eloquent words spoken in high praise of digital ICT lies a combination of utopianism and ignorance that grossly misrepresents the internet’s political role and potential. Morozov argues that the West’s irresponsible promotion of technological tools as pro-democratic agents has provoked a backlash from authoritarian regimes to crack down on online activity, not just closing down or blocking websites but using online social platforms to infiltrate protest groups and track down protesters and dissenters. They are also sowing the seeds of their own agenda and propaganda online and generally out-resourcing and out-smarting their own beleaguered people and governments of the West. Two misapprehensions about digital information technology, in particular, concern Morozov: cyber-utopianism and internet-centrism. Cyber-utopianism is the belief that the culture of the internet is inherently emancipatory and the stubborn refusal to acknowledge its limitations and downsides. It stems from:

[T]he starry-eyed digital fervor of the 1990s, when former hippies, by this time ensconced in some of the most prestigious universities in the world, went on an argumentative spree to prove that the Internet could deliver what the 1960s couldn’t: boost democratic participation, trigger a renaissance of moribund communities, strengthen associational life, and serve as a bridge from bowling alone to blogging together. And if it works in Seattle, it must work in Shanghai. 3

Internet-centrism is the conviction that every important issue and concern about modern society and politics can be framed in terms of the internet. It is not a set of beliefs rather; it is a philosophy of action that informs how decisions are made and long-term strategies are developed. Internet-centrists tend to react and response to every question about democratic change by first reframing it in terms of the internet rather than the exact context in which that change is to occur.

Morozov presents a good example of the unrealistic expectations and the broadly misrepresented impacts of digital ICT in social and civil unrest. In June 2009, mostly young Iranians took to the streets of Tehran and other cities to protest what they believed to be fraudulent and rigged elections, later to become known as ‘the green revolution’ or green movement. While these protests grew in number, a counter argument surfaced among many other Iranians that the elections were, in fact, fair and they set out to defend the incumbent president of the day Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. As the two sides – representing modernity and conservatism – squared up to each other, the country faced its worst social and political crisis since the 1979 revolution which saw the return of the Ayatollah Khamenei. Meanwhile, in the West, a very simple and alluring narrative of what was occurring began to emerge and of how the internet was beginning to usher in the building blocks of freedom and a new dawn of democracy in Iran. In a series of blogs for The Atlantic, Andrew Sullivan proclaimed ‘the revolution will be twittered’ in which he claimed that the microblogging site Twitter not only managed to avoid the shutdown of communications in the country but that it was becoming a critical tool for organising the resistance in Iran. 4 He offered little evidence to back up such claims. But his claims did echo with many cyber-utopianists who had patiently waited for digital tech’s big break in beginning about global democratisation, and if the evidence was not as apparent yet it was only a matter of time before it emerged. Such optimism quickly went mainstream with prominent print media organisations such as The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Baltimore Sun and Financial Times , as well as other non-governmental organisation (NGO) and religious publications, eulogising the power of Twitter – and by default the internet – for its ability to organise and empower ordinary citizens in the face of authoritarianism and tyranny. Even when Twitter scheduled maintenance for the website, the US state department requested the company to postpone this work so that the service would not be interrupted as, they claimed, it was being used to rally people into the streets to protest against the election. Former deputy national security advisor in the George W. Bush administration, Mark Pfeifle, even launched a public campaign to nominate Twitter for the Noble Peace Prize arguing that ‘without Twitter, the people of Iran would not have felt empowered and confident to stand up for freedom and democracy’. 5

But this story was not to have its fairy tale ending. The green movement quickly lost much of its momentum in the months following the election, and realisation slowly began to dawn on those people so fervent in their belief that the internet was destined to be a liberating tool against the oppressors across the world. Young people, merely armed with their smartphone and a Twitter account, were not, in fact, leading the charge to freedom and the spread of democracy. So, what had gone so wrong? It was later discovered that estimates of fewer than 1,000 active Twitter users were actually living in Iran at the time of the election and not all had joined the demonstrations. 6 Many supporters of the green movement were from outside the country – the Iranian diaspora is highly active on social media – and got carried away by the enthusiasm of the protests, and numerous Twitter users across the world switched their location setting to Tehran in an attempt to confuse Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s security forces and shield individuals within the movement. The Iranian government itself also worked to audaciously turn the technology against the protesters, and officials from within the regime started several fake opposition accounts on Twitter which began tweeting propaganda and misleading information. Iran had not undergone a Twitter revolution, and it was argued by Reese Erlich, an author and freelance journalist who had covered the election and had extensive knowledge of the circumstances of the protests, that the term simultaneously mischaracterises and trivialises the important mass movement that had developed at that time in Iran. 7 Later, similar claims were made about the influence and power of Facebook, YouTube and other social media platforms as a catalyst for change in the context of the Arab Spring, and although there’s some evidence that these were used for mobilising and organising street protests and gatherings, the true vehicles for change during that period of time were the protests themselves and the underlying grievances against the ruling authorities. Digital ICT has the potential to play a significant role in unifying and rallying people around a cause, but in the face of subsequent leaderless disorganisation, what happens then? It is also earlier for authorities to combat such protest by simply spreading misinformation through the same medium used to organise in the first instance and to single out individual deemed to be arranging such protests.

Weaponising the Internet against Liberty

One of the most significant developments with regard to the organisation and ultimate collapse of the green movement and protests in Iran was the way the authorities fought back, in particular, the use of sophisticated means of disinformation by governmental officials and agencies. The regime quickly understood the real potential in the use of social media and how it can be a willing and more than capable instrument in disrupting the messages of the protest. Propaganda and government misinformation are nothing new, but social media and other forms of online broadcast media available on the internet just makes it much easier and much more effective. The real state originator of this use of online misinformation was Russia, and they have been doing this for some time now. Long before the 2016, US presidential election and the Brexit referendum, Russia, China and Iran were just some of the states who had begun to use such cyber techniques to thwart dissidents and opponents of their own regimes. As the Soviet Union began to crumble in the early 1990s, the enormous cost and elaborate planning that went into surveillance of individuals began to be questioned. Such expense and time were also no indicator of success, and the human factor could easily ruin months of diligent surveillance work.

The shift in communications into the digital realm solved this problem. Not only was the storage of enormous amounts of data now possible, mining through such data was made much simpler. Identifying keep words or phrases in communications such as ‘democracy’, ‘freedom’, ‘free elections’ or ‘Putin must go’ was achievable by a simple search for such keywords or phrases, thus exposing the individuals involved in such communications. What’s more, much of this information is given up freely and widely available online, so authorities do not even have to hack communications for some evidence. Many people elect to freely give away much of their personal data on social networking platforms and are then surprised when authorities know so much about them. Morozov recounts the story of a young activist from his native Belarus who was called into his university to talk to the KGB, which still exists and remains very active in that country. 8 The officers had detailed knowledge of Pavel Lyashkovich’s travel arrangements, his involvement with anti-government organisations and his associates in the dissident community, merely from checking his online social networking activity. While it is easy to say that Lyashkovich is to blame for his own predicament, the point is social networking platforms were initially set up as the means for us to stay connected to one another, but now even our most casual conversations broadcast online can be intercepted and misrepresented by authoritarian regimes and others to build a damaging case against us.

A persistent myth with regard to the internet and authoritarian governments has been that they are weak and ineffective regimes that do not truly understand the technology nor how to use it effectively. But anti-democratic forces have become very savvy and immensely sophisticated at manipulating the Web, and one of the main reasons for this is that they have surrounded themselves with the best and brightest talent and online visionaries from their country. The Kremlin, for example, have been particularly successfully in cultivating strong connections with Russia’s vibrant internet culture and have used such experience to their own ideological advantage. Morozov suggested that no one embodies this level of sophistication and linkage more than Kontntin Rykov, a key figure of the early Russian internet and now working as head of the internet department of the Russia’ Channel On, and creator of a range of political websites and staunch ally of Vladimir Putin. In addition to his own personal involvement in Russian politics, Rykov has also reportedly used his internet credentials and relationship with Kremlin officials to involve himself in various political campaigns and referendums in both Russia and other countries. 9 Rykov developed tactics to help the Kremlin boost support for its image online and showed how to spread competing narratives on social media to deflect attention away from reporting that was critical of that regime’s activities. These kinds of disinformation techniques and campaigns were used to great effect when the Russian Federation annexed Crimea in 2014. In 2015, Rykov built a new website using the domain Trump2016.ru, which marked the beginning of active campaigning for Donald Trump and Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential elections. According to the special counsel investigation’s Mueller Report , the first indication of Russian interference was the use of the Internet Research Agency, a Kremlin-linked troll farm based in St Petersburg, to wage a social media campaign that favoured Donald Trump and disparaged Hillary Clinton in those elections. 10 These campaigns also sought to provoke and amplify political and general social discord across the United States by spreading fabricated election articles and disinformation. For such transnational meddling to truly succeed, trust in traditional media and pillar institutions of state first needed to be undermined and then their creditably destroyed.

A Free and Open Press

One of the central tenets of a democratic system is a free and open press, which is also critical to sustaining the rule of law. In the past, traditional newspapers and broadcasters created the possibility of a single debate or conversation on an issue of national importance. This helped citizens to join together, not in a like-minded set of opinions but rather a singular conversation. Newspaper and broadcast journalism were required to conform to formal and informal ethical and moral codes of practice. But the rapid and wholesale shift in advertising revenue to digital internet giants has, within just a short decade or so, severely damaged the ability of both traditional print and broadcast media to investigate, collect and report on malpractice and convey essential information. This has led some media outlets discontinuing reporting news altogether, and yet others to assume an extreme partisan position in their reporting. The arrival and proliferation of digital online media means there are no longer common debates nor common narratives. Indeed, it is argued, that people have always had different opinions, but now they are presented with different facts. 11 Anyone and everyone can now be anonymous and no one needs to take responsibility for what they report or say, or whether it is true or false. In what he termed ‘the cult of the amateur’, Andrew Keen argues that our most valued cultural institutions – our professional newspapers, magazines, music and movies – are being overtaken by an avalanche of amateur, user-generated free content. 12 In this present self-broadcasting culture, where amateurism is celebrated, and anyone with an opinion, however ill-informed or ridiculous, can publish a blog or post a video on a sharing platform, the distinction between accomplished and experienced experts and uninformed amateurs has become dangerously blurred. When anonymous bloggers and videographers, unconstrained by professional standards or editorial norms, can alter the public debate and manipulate public opinion, then truth becomes a commodity to be bought, sold, packaged and reinvented. The ongoing erosion of trust, whether it be in the political realm or in the media, weakens the democratic system, and the ever-changing and developing digital ICT landscape and an evolution in the way people now consume news has brought about critical challenges in how we do politics and what we want our society to look like. Among them, fabricated and misleading news stories shared on social media sites and a tendency of readers to only consider news stories that adhere to their own political ideology are undermining press freedoms and leading to levels of mistrust that are severally damaging for a free, open and democratic society.

Lawrence Lessig suggests that unless we find a reason for democracy, there is no fight for democracy to be had. 13 As a former self-confessed apologist for the internet, he is now a critic of how digital-enabled news has become fragmented and polarising and is damaging to the ideals and notion of democracy. In his analysis of the twentieth century and the development of the television, he notes that in 1977 almost 90% of people in the United States got their news from just three networks, and these were the sole sources of national and international news. Having this concentration of news through channels that was inherently understandable to everybody – the ordinary citizen as well as the elites alike – gave everyone an egalitarian exposure to politics because they were exposed to trusted sources that created a common understanding and common set of facts. Instead of just polarised extremes voting in elections, ordinary people were much more engaged and turned out to vote based on knowledge and understanding, and this shifted the political landscape of the country in true expressions of democracy. While he does not set out to eulogise this era and does point to issues of bias within this system at that time, he argues that the underlying architecture made it possible for a public to understand a common set of questions and issues. However, in the twenty-first century, there are no longer concentrated, universally trusted sources of news information, and many people now consume news through social media platforms, which are unrestrained by any form of editorship or formal and informal codes of conduct. Such fragmentation of news information means there are no longer any common stories, common facts, and the resulting radical polarisation is damaging for democracy. More worrying, he suggests that the business model now employed by many of these new digital media outlets is to increase this polarisation, thus increasing media brand loyalty.

But traditional media organisations themselves must foot some of the blame. The 24-hour news cycle, made possible by advancements in digital technologies over the recent past, can be distracting for many individuals and, it is suggested, is trivialising much of what we now understand as news. 14 The Reuters Institute Digital News Report provides crucial new insights into key issues including people’s willingness to pay for news, the move to private messaging applications and groups and how people see news media from around the world performing their civic and public roles and responsibilities. 15 The report is based on a survey of more than 75,000 people in 38 markets, along with additional qualitative research, which together make it the most comprehensive comparative study of news consumption in the world. The report pointed to a complex set of enduring challenges for the news industry specifically and for the media environment more broadly. This included the ongoing disruption of the inherited business model for news, persistent evolution in how individuals use digital media and the ways in which we are constantly reminded of how some of the information we come across is untrustworthy and sometimes spread with malicious intent and social upheaval associated with the rise of populism and general low trust in many state institutions. While the arrival of democracy usually results in enhanced levels of social trust, especially trust in government, this trend commonly reverses after several years or decades of citizens’ unmet expectations. It is argued that government is often the least trusted social actor, ranking below governing bodies, security institutions and the media. 16 This finding is somewhat inconsistent across societies however. In some of the most populated countries, such as the United States, Russia and China, people have more trust in the government than the media, which is now the least trusted institution in both the United States and Russia:

From a normative perspective, these results should be viewed with some concern. In democratic societies, the media are entrusted with the responsibility of serving as a watchdog for the public interest and to scrutinize the movements of all three branches of government (executive, legislative, and judicative). A media system in which citizens do not place their trust in will be hardly able to watch over any authority or institution. 17

Distrust, Disinformation and Discontent

Returning to the issue of interference in the 2016 US presidential elections, Russian’s use of social media platforms to spread propaganda and disinformation was expansive with the use of Facebook, Twitter and a host of other publicly accessible online outlets coming under the spotlight. Advertisements bought by Russian operatives for circulation on the Facebook social media website were estimated to have reached 10 million users, while many more users were also contacted by accounts created by Russian actors. In total, 470 Facebook accounts are known to have been created by Russians, of those accounts six generated content that was shared at least 340 million times according to research done by Columbia University’s Tow Center for Digital Journalism and New Knowledge, Canfield Research. 18 The Mueller Report also found the Russian-financed Internet Research Agency spent some $100,000 for more than 3,500 Facebook advertisements from June 2015 to May 2017, mostly anti-Clinton and pro-Trump proclamations. Facebook initially denied that fake news on its platform had influenced the election and insisted it had been unaware of any Russian-financed advertisements. They later admitted that Russia-based operatives had, indeed, published about 80,000 posts on the social network platform over a two-year period in an effort to sway US political opinion, and that about 126 million Americans may have seen the posts during that time. 19 While Facebook claim to have made significant changes to reduce the spread of misinformation and provide more transparency and control around political advertisements, in August 2019, a group of philanthropies working with the company to study the social network’s impact on democracy threatened to quit saying the company had failed to make data available to researchers as pledged. 20

Further insight into the growing sophistication of user manipulation for unfettered purposes was made public during the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Cambridge Analytica, also discussed in an earlier chapter, was formed around 2013 initially with a focus on the US elections, with $15 million in backing from billionaire Republican donor Robert Mercer and the backing of former Trump White House adviser Steve Bannon and funding from several UK Conservative Party’s biggest donors. It was an offshoot of the wider SCL Group, which had worked on psychological targeting methods across the world. Having trialled their methodology in poorly developed countries with weak data protection laws, often on behalf of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) military objectives, they went on to commercialise their product for use in targeting voters during elections and referendum campaigns in some democratic states. Cambridge Analytica markets itself as providing consumer research, targeted advertising and other data-related services to both political and corporate clients and was staffed by mostly British workers. In an undercover investigation by Britain’s Channel 4 News, the company boasted it had developed psychological profiles of voters, which was the ‘secret sauce’ it used to sway such voters more effectively than traditional advertising ever could. They had been able to achieve this by harvesting the data of some 50–87 million Facebook users by a means that deceived both the users and Facebook itself. They were then able to specifically micro-target political advertising back at these Facebook users that would psychologically appeal to some of their base instincts as voters. In identifying people most susceptible to persuasion, they were able to induce them to vote in a particular way: to get voters to see the world as you wanted them to see it. They called this group of susceptible individuals ‘the persuaders’. The company also stands accused of voter suppression, particular in the context of 2010 ‘Do So’ campaign and election in Trinidad and Tobago. 21 Ted Cruz had initially hired Cambridge Analytica to help with his presidential campaign, and Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign further utilised the harvested data to customise messages and target specific voters in key swing states. Cambridge Analytica was also hired to assist Leave.eu and the UK Independence Party throughout 2016 and assist with efforts to convince voters in that country to support leaving the European Union in the Brexit referendum. 22 In her testimony before a committee of UK parliamentarians, former Cambridge Analytica employee Brittany Kaiser, who has a deep understanding of the operations and techniques used by the firm, suggested that the psychographic micro-targeting used by the company should be classified as ‘weapons grade’ techniques and only used is conflict situations. 23

The Retreat from Reality

In the 2016 BBC documentary HyperNormalisation , Adam Curtis maintained that over the past 40 years, politicians, financiers and technological utopians, rather than face up to the real complexities of the contemporary world, had retreated into a simpler version of the world in order to hang onto what they believed to be power. 24 And as this unpretentious world grew more and more, people went along with it because the simplicity was reassuring to all. These were mostly the ‘starry-eyed’ former hippies who were hopeful that the digital age would deliver on the expectations and dreams of the 1960s that Morozov had referred to. 25 But in this retreat from the reality, an entire generation was beginning to lose touch with politics and the realities of power and governance. Reflecting on the works of William Gibson, who coined the phrase ‘cyberspace’, 26 Curtis suggested that by the middle of the 1980s, the banks and new corporations were beginning to link themselves together through computer systems creating a series of major networks of information that were invisible to ordinary citizens and politicians. Such networks gave these corporations and financiers remarkable new powers of control in a cyberspace where there were no laws or, indeed, politicians or governments to protect ordinary citizens. This was a vision of a future of raw brutal corporate power at work. Meanwhile, a group of technological utopian visionaries were emerging on the west coast of America, based around Silicon Valley, who began exploiting Gibson’s ideas of cyberspace and replacing this former frightening dark vision of a world oppressed and dominated by large and powerful corporations with a much safer cyberspace and world where radical dreams could come through. This, Curtis argued, was an ideal place for progressives and radicals to retreat to leaving behind the very harsh real world of Regan’s 1980s America and Thatcher’s Britain. What made this retreat from reality easier for these radicals were their roots in the counterculture of the 1960s and in particular the use of LSD. 27

The activists of the 1960s counterculture believed that taking LSD offered much more than just a short escape from their ordinary lives, it opened people’s perception and the mind to an entirely new possible certainty normally hidden from them. It freed them from the normal day-to-day constraints of life, such things as basic political decision-making and the workings of mundane governmental power. The early period of the 1980s saw computer networks appear and offer a new alternative reality, a space to again retreat from the real world, only this time one that was not chemically induced. In this new cyberspace, corporeality people were freed from the realities of normal politics, decision-making and power, and individuals could begin to explore new ways of being and living. Indeed, one of the leading advocates of this new reality, John Perry Barlow, wrote A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace 28 in response to the passing of the US Telecommunications Act of 1996 in which he sets out a rebuttal to government and against interference with the internet by any outside forces. It declared that the states and politicians did not have the consent of the governed to apply laws to the internet as it was outside any country’s borders. Instead, the internet was developing its own social contract to determine how to handle its own problems, based on language evocative of the US Declaration of Independence:

We must declare our virtual selves immune to your sovereignty, even as we continue to consent to your rule over our bodies. We will spread ourselves across the Planet so that no one can arrest our thoughts. We will create a civilization of the Mind in Cyberspace. May it be more humane and fair than the world your governments have made before. 29

Barlow had laid out an alternative existence to the harsh existing world in which people could be freer without the unnecessary oversight of interfering politicians and governments and the old systems of power. This vision has come to dominate the internet as we know it today. Meanwhile, moves towards Perception Management in the United States and Britain were beginning to blur the lines between fact and fiction by telling dramatic stories that would capture the public’s imagination, and it did not matter if the stories were true or false. 30 Many of these stories, Curtis claimed, were simply devised to distract people and other politicians from the realities of what was happening around them and the real complexities and challenges of the modern world. Then, with the collapse with the Soviet Union and the crumbling of the iron curtain, a new type of politics began to emerge in the West; one that was no longer focussed on trying to change things but simply managing things, trying to predict risk into the further and seek out ways of avoiding such risks.

The computer age affords us the ability to collect and analyse vast quantities of data rapidly. Computers were also beginning to hold a mirror to individuals, and they liked how that made them feel. They began to not only predict societal risk but also, at the micro level, what people liked and wanted based on their interactions with digital computing. Politics now became just part of the wider goal of managing the world in very simplistic ways. This was best epitomised by the approach adopted by George W. Bush and Tony Blair who viewed the removal of Saddam Hussein in Iraq as a simple fight between good and evil. Politics, democracy and movements for change began to become irrelevant in this new managed world, and a resentment to this began to grow and fester. Even when millions worldwide marched against the impending war in Iraq 31 both Bush and Blair ignored this considerable public opinion in favour of their simple narrative and went to war in 2003 in the face of these protests. The effects of this are now widely felt. Not only did millions feel they were lied to when the true extent of the threat from the Saddam Hussein regime become known, but more importantly, they felt helpless in the world and believed that no matter what they did, it had no real positive effect on any eventual outcome. Protesting the war has been a waste of time, and they were demoralised and powerless about the world as it was around them.

Curtis went further to suggest that liberals, radicals and a whole generation had by now retreated into another world that was free of such hypocrisy and what they saw as the corruption of power and politics. They withdrew into cyberspace and here they found comfort in the company of like-minded individuals brought together by filter bubbles and algorithms which sought out and grouped people by means of their own personal data and preferences freely given to mega online corporations and platforms. Such online companionship created echo chambers which worked simply to reinforce beliefs and opinions rather than challenge them. But while such beliefs were being buttressed by compatible thought and opinion, such online environments did not allow for such beliefs to be challenged or developed by opposing viewpoints, a natural and healthy way for individuals to develop their own capacity for critical thinking. Moreover, it did not allow these radical or progressive thinkers to challenge opposing viewpoints from other individuals simply because the online platforms were keeping divergent groups apart. Through the worst of the financial crisis, which began in 2008 and lasted for several years, people retreated deeper and deeper into these online like-minded groups, shouting at the world but failing to understand or lay a transformative glove on power. There is an illusion of control and power online, but it was something completely different altogether; it is delusion.

Back to Reality: Enter the Showman

Then, in 2016, with the election of Donald Trump, the real fallacy of the power of cyberspace and the retreat from the real world became apparent. Here was a president who could regularly and pathologically lie to the camera and mismanage a pandemic in one of the most powerful nations in the world and yet remained unwavering in his views and unchallenged in his actions to any great extent. He is an extremely savvy media operator who can ‘suck the oxygen out of the room’ 32 and whose own online rhetoric is designed to make those tied to the ideals of liberal democracy shocked, insulted, angry and offended at every opportunity. Cyberspace is the preferred forum for many progressives and liberals to vent this anger, but this did not in any way affect nor change the Trump administration’s policy positions. Meanwhile, Facebook, Twitter and other such social media platforms were teeming with comments and suggestions from individuals and groups feeling insulted, mistreated and angry and suggesting all manner of ways of removing Trump from office. Ironically, these people themselves are more removed from power that ever before in the democracy age. Trump supporters and those on the right of politics have also mobilised on social media platforms, albeit in separate filter bubbles and echo chambers. And as his presidency comes to an ignominious end in 2021, it is now the turn of these individuals to feel cheated, marginalised, angry and resentful, notwithstanding this is based on the lie of a stolen election. People have become more and more dissatisfied and demoralised as time goes by and blame their unhappiness on everyone and everything but themselves. Few point the finger at digital media, which in some cases is having a directly negative impact on our collective well-being. 33 Instead, retreating into cyberspace filled with echoes chambers and filter bubbles comforts individuals but also acts to widen the political divide between large sections of society, while fake news and the micro-targeting of voters with machine-generated messages designed to trigger individual prejudices reinforces the anger and hatred of the ‘other side’.

The playbook of many at the extremes of politics and society is to sow confusion and doubt about the legitimacy and authority of the institutions of democracy to represent all of the people. And whether its ‘fake news’ mainstream media or ‘draining the swamp’ of established politicians, digital ICT is today the extremist’s greatest weapon and means of spreading mistrust. There is an almost prefect symbiosis between conspiracy beliefs, such as the QAnon, 34 and digital ICT, which acts to channel anger and negative energy towards irrationality and illogical thinking and which ultimately harms social cohesion and democracy. Groups and individuals at the extremes of societal thinking use the maxim: to change society, you must first break it, and thus such forces seek chaos and a total disruption to the existing fundamentals of democracy. All the while big tech looks on and does nothing and in many ways must be viewed as complicit in such chaos.

We now live in a world where most political debate happens on partisan public media outlets or bias online forums. In cyberspace, to challenge authority, protest against injustice or seek redress or social change, you no longer need to take to the streets and convince others who may not hold similar views. The new form of way of revolution looks nothing like past ones. You simply login to a website that articulates like-minded views or converse with others of comparable views on social media platforms: that never-ending cyber filter bubbles and echo chambers that comfort people into thinking they are doing something meaningful. Political action in the form of Facebook and Twitter ‘likes’ and ‘shares’. But such online activism is frequently perceived as nothing more than white noise which in many democratic countries is simply ignored but in more authoritarian states exposes the individual as a person of interest to repressive regimes and security forces. As frustration grows, leading to a change in the public mood, a shift in civic sentiment, and the collapse of political party allegiance, many in the West have turned to the strongman and embraced the concept of all-powerful authoritarian rule. Donald Trump is the poster boy president of the digital age, carried to victory in no small way on the shoulders of big tech and complicacy about the need to continually work to protect and strengthen democracy.

As authoritarianism grows and expands across the world, it is interesting to observe how such regimes develop and receive their support. Anne Applebaum, a leading historian of communism and contemporary politics, maintains that the ‘authoritarian predisposition’ is not one of closed-mindedness but rather simple-mindedness. 35 People who are attracted to the notion and ideals of authoritarianism are bothered by complexity; they dislike diversity and prefer unity. They seek understanding and solutions in new political language that makes them feel safe and more secure. There is a revival of nostalgia, a disappointment with meritocracy, there is appeal in conspiracy theories, and a part of the answer may lie in the contentious, cantankerous nature of modern discourse itself; the ways in which we now read about, think about, hear and understand politics. 36 And much of this authoritarian validation and unity is seeded and fomented online. Our new digital lives mean people have now become unaccustomed to the normal political and social public discourses that occur in functioning democracies and instead have become entrenched and obstinate in their opinions and mindset.

The Wizards Behind the Curtain

The digital ICT revolution promised much for democratic politics in the twenty-first century but so far has delivered little but disruption. The dawn of the internet age was to bring a decisive shift towards the citizen and information was to become free and limitless, and enlightenment and empowerment would follow. But while digital technologies provide us with the opportunity to accumulate quantities of information that one time may not have been possible, big tech and the state remains much better equipped than any private citizen to take full advantage of this opportunity. In many ways, digital technology has been weaponised against the very system it was purported to support and defend and the citizens it was meant to engage, protect and enlighten. Authoritarian regimes across the world have seized upon the opportunities provided by such technology to increase surveillance and control of their people while simultaneously spreading misinformation and confusion, undermining many of the established Western liberal democracies. It would be rather naïve to think that democratic governments are not also regularly using similar digital surveillance technique under various guises and security apparatuses. And all the while big tech is the real big winner. The pioneers of surveillance capitalism Google were emboldened and benefitted from historical events when a national security apparatus, galvanised by the attacks of 11 September 2001, saw the emergent capabilities and the promise of some certainty in how Google’s storage and use of huge stocks of personal data could be used to shadow and predict the behaviour of individuals. 37 Zuboff believes that the concepts underpinning surveillance capitalism are facilitating the overthrow of the people’s sovereignty and is a prominent force in the perilous drift towards democratic deconsolidation that now threatens Western liberal democracies themselves.

And this is a common complaint in the twenty-first century; democracy itself has lost control of corporate power in the form of big tech companies, who use whatever means possible to hoard vast wealth and influence while fuelling inequality, damaging the planet and avoid paying their fair share of taxes. 38 Today’s big tech behemoths exist in a political culture that has grown accustomed and accommodating to their every need, and Runciman argues, in the United States, this was further cemented by the Supreme Court decision in the Citizens United case of 2010 to grant corporations the same rights to free speech as individual citizens. 39 The ideals and very notion of liberal democracy are now under constant pressure from many angles, and the traditional hierarchy of power is also under increasing danger. The power of modern corporate power, in the form of big tech, has grown exponentially over the past decade to the point where it now has the wherewithal to undermine how democracy itself operates and not be overly worried about the consequences. A major imperative now for every citizen and democratic nation must be to reassess the inequitable influence of big tech corporate power and the internet, particularly as it relates to our personal data, and to question: who owns and controls such power, and what right do they have to use and misuse our personal data to undermine our key democratic institutions? Democracy must be seen to represent the wishes of the people rather than viewed as a system of corporate tyranny.

Fukuyama (1989) .

Morozov (2011) .

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Morozov (2011 , p. 4).

In 2009, the population of Iran was estimated to be around 73 million inhabitants.

Erlich, R. (2009). It’s not a Twitter revolution in Iran. Reuters , June 26. Retrieved from http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2009/06/26/its-not-a-twitter-revolution-in-iran/

Morozov (2011 , p. 155).

Schwartz, M. (2018). The man who taught the Kremlin how to win the internet. The World , May 31. Retrieved from https://www.pri.org/stories/2018-05-07/man-who-taught-kremlin-how-win-internet

Read and search the full Mueller report. CNN Politics . Retrieved from https://edition.cnn.com/2019/04/18/politics/full-mueller-report-pdf/index.html

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Ingram, D. (2017). Facebook says 126 million Americans may have seen Russia-linked political posts. Reuters , October 30. Retrieved from https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-russia-socialmedia/facebook-says-126-million-americans-may-have-seen-russia-linked-political-posts-idUSKBN1CZ2OI

Paul, K. (2019). Funders threaten to quit Facebook project studying impact on democracy. Reuters , August 28. Retrieved from https://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-election-research/researchers-studying-facebooks-impact-on-democracy-threaten-to-quit-idUKKCN1VI04F?edition-redirect=uk

This 2019 documentary The Great Hack lays bare the circumstances surrounding Cambridge Analytica’s harvesting of personal information from millions of Facebook users, and how these data were used in a number of different ways of voter suppression and manipulation: see https://www.thegreathack.com/ .

MacAskill, A. (2018). What are the links between Cambridge Analytica and a Brexit campaign group? Reuters , March 21. Retrieved from https://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-cambridge-analytica-leave-eu-idUSKBN1GX2IO

Brittany Kaiser testifies before MPs. YouTube . Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZAvQzRhJ0I

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Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) is an extremely potent hallucinogen and long-lasting psychoactive drug that distorts and alters perceptions and sensations. The use of LSD reached its peak in the 1960s and 1970s when it was said by some to be the key to unlocking the inner mind, although this is heavily disputed by many in the scientific community.

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Barlow, J. P. (1996). A declaration of the independence of cyberspace. Electronic Frontier Foundation , February 8. Retrieved from https://www.eff.org/cyberspace-independence .

Siegel (2005) defines perception management as the ability to shape worldwide perceptions in one’s favour to foster compliance and facilitate mission accomplishment. A critical part of perception management is efforts to understand others’ perceptions and basis for those perceptions as a path towards understanding how one might then influence them. The ‘basis’ for perceptions includes many issues that are not just outside Department of Defence’s but US government control - such as television and cable sitcom or even the millions of personal home pages of American teenagers that are accessible to anyone with internet access.

According to French academic Dominique Reynié, between 3 January and 12 April 2003, 36 million people across the globe took part in almost 3,000 protests against the war in Iraq.

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QAnon is a disproven and discredited far-right conspiracy theory network that alleges, for instance, that a cabal of Satan-worshiping paedophiles – made up of liberal Hollywood actors, Democratic politicians and high-ranking government officials – is running a global child sex-trafficking ring and plotting against President Donald Trump, who is battling against this cabal.

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Digital Democracy: Social Media and Political Participation Essay

I. introduction.

Digital democracy refers to the use of digital technologies and platforms to enhance democratic participation and representation. It contains various practices such as online voting , e-petitions , and political deliberation on social media. Social media has become an integral part of political participation in recent years. It has revolutionized the way citizens access information, engage in political discussion and mobilize for social and political causes. The purpose of this essay is to examine the impact of social media on political participation. It will highlight both the benefits and challenges of digital democracy. It will also explore the role of social media in shaping public opinion and the need for further research and regulation in this area.

II. The Impact of Social Media on Political Participation

A. increased access to information and political discussion:.

Social media has greatly increased access to information and political discussion for citizens. Platforms such as Twitter and Facebook provide a space for individuals to share news, express their views, and participate in political discussions. This allows citizens to stay informed about current events and access different perspectives on political issues.

For example , during the 2016 US Presidential elections , Twitter became a major platform for political discussion. Both candidates used it to communicate with their supporters and the general public.

Also Read: Political Instability Leads to Economic Downfall Essay

B. Increased Citizen Engagement and Mobilization:

Social media has also been used as a tool for mobilization during political campaigns and social movements. The Arab Spring , which began in 2010 , saw widespread protests organized and coordinated through social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter.

Similarly, the Black Lives Matter movement , which began in 2013 , saw widespread mobilization through social media. It saw individuals using platforms such as Instagram and Twitter to share information, organize protests, and raise awareness about racial inequality. This demonstrates the potential of social media to mobilize citizens and bring about political change.

C. Increased Political Polarization and Echo Chambers:

However, social media can also contribute to increased political polarization. The formation of “ echo chambers ” are also created by it. Echo chambers are where individuals are only exposed to information that confirms their pre-existing beliefs. This can lead to a lack of diversity in opinions and a lack of exposure to differing perspectives. Social media algorithms, which are designed to personalize content, can contribute to this phenomenon by only showing users information that aligns with their beliefs and interests.

For example , in India’s recent general elections in 2019 , social media platforms played a significant role in shaping public opinion and political participation. The ruling party, Bharatiya Janata Party ( BJP ), effectively used social media platforms to mobilize support, spread their message, and influence public opinion. They used platforms like WhatsApp to spread false and misleading information. This helped them to secure a landslide victory.

D. Facilitation of Direct Democracy:

Social media platforms have also enabled direct democracy by allowing citizens to participate in online voting, e-petitions, and other forms of direct engagement with government and political representatives.

For example , some countries have implemented online voting systems for elections. This allowed citizens to cast their ballots from their computers or mobile devices. Estonia is one of those countries. Here, online voting has been implemented for all national and local elections since 2005 . E-petitions also have become a popular way for citizens to express their views and demand change on specific issues.

Similarly, in Canada , online voting has been introduced in some municipalities, including the City of Markham in Ontario. It used online voting in the 2018 municipal elections. Additionally, the government of Canada provides the MyVoice platform . Here, citizens can voice their opinions on issues, join online discussions and participate in online polls.

E. Influencing Public Opinion:

Social media also plays a significant role in shaping public opinion. Through social media, individuals and organizations can disseminate information. They also can express their views and shape public discourse. This has the potential to influence political decision-making and public policy. Additionally, social media platforms can be used to target specific audiences and demographics, which can impact public opinion and the outcome of elections.

Its examples were seen during the 2011 Arab Spring uprising, the 2016 US general elections, and the Black Lives Matter Movement.

F. Amplification of Marginalized Voices:

Social media platforms can also amplify the voices of marginalized communities and individuals, giving them a platform to share their perspectives and experiences. This can contribute to increased diversity in political discourse and representation. However, it also highlights the need for further research and regulation in this area to ensure that social media is inclusive, transparent, and fair for all voices.

The #MeToo movement is a specific example of how social media platforms can amplify the voices of marginalized communities and individuals. It gave them a platform to share their perspectives and experiences. The movement, which began in 2017 , aimed to raise awareness about sexual harassment and assault and to support survivors. The hashtag #MeToo was used extensively on social media platforms, such as Twitter and Facebook. Many women shared stories and experiences of sexual harassment and assault.

Also read: The Debate Over Renewable Energy: Is it the Solution to Climate Change?

III. The Challenges of Digital Democracy and Social Media

While social media and digital platforms have the potential to enable greater political participation and amplify marginalized voices, there are also several challenges that need to be addressed. Some of these challenges include:

• Misinformation and fake news : Social media platforms have been used to spread misinformation and fake news, which can undermine the democratic process and manipulate public opinion.
• Privacy and security : Social media platforms collect and store vast amounts of personal data, which can be vulnerable to breaches and misuse. This can compromise the privacy and security of individuals and threaten the integrity of the democratic process.
• Digital divide : Not all citizens have access to digital technologies and platforms, which can lead to a digital divide and exclude certain groups from participating in the democratic process.
• Lack of regulation : Social media platforms are currently not subject to the same regulations as traditional media, leading to a lack of accountability and oversight.
• Lack of diversity : Social media platforms can be dominated by certain groups or individuals, which can limit the diversity of voices and perspectives in political discourse.
• Cyberbullying and hate speech : Social media platforms have been used to spread hate speech and cyberbullying, which can undermine the democratic process and harm marginalized communities.

IV. Conclusion

In conclusion, social media and digital platforms have the potential to enable greater political participation and amplify marginalized voices. However, there are also several challenges that need to be addressed, including misinformation and fake news, privacy and security, digital divide, polarization and echo chambers, lack of regulation, lack of diversity, and cyberbullying and hate speech.

Addressing these challenges will require further research and regulation of social media and digital platforms, as well as efforts to increase access to digital technologies and platforms for all citizens. It’s also important to note that addressing these challenges will require the collaboration of government, the private sector, civil society, and citizens. Ultimately, a healthy digital democracy requires a balance between the benefits and challenges of social media and digital platforms, and the need to ensure that they are inclusive, transparent, and fair for all voices.

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• Many Tech Experts Say Digital Disruption Will Hurt Democracy
• 3. Concerns about democracy in the digital age

Table of Contents

• 1. Themes about the digital disruption of democracy in the next decade
• 2. Broader thoughts from key experts on the future of democracy at a time of digital disruption
• 4. Hopeful themes and suggested solutions
• 5. Tech will have mixed effects that are not possible to guess now
• About this canvassing of experts
• Acknowledgments

About half of the experts responding to this canvassing said people’s uses of technology will mostly weaken core aspects of democracy and democratic representation, but even those who expressed optimism often voiced concerns. This section includes comments about problems that were made by all respondents regardless of their answer to the main question about the impact of technology on democracy by 2030. These worries are organized under seven themes.

Empowering the powerful: Corporate and government agendas generally do not serve democratic goals or achieve democratic outcomes. They serve the goals of those in power

An internet pioneer and technology developer and administrator predicted, “My expectation is that by 2030, as much of 75% of the world’s population will be enslaved by artificial intelligence-based surveillance systems developed in China and exported around the world. These systems will keep every citizen under observation 24 hours a day, seven days a week, monitoring their every action.”

Dan Gillmor, co-founder of the News Co/Lab at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, and professor of practice in digital media literacy commented, “Governments (and their corporate partners) are broadly using technology to create a surveillance state, and what amounts to law by unaccountable black-box algorithm, far beyond anything Orwell imagined. But this can only happen in a society that can’t be bothered to protect liberty – or is easily led/stampeded into relinquishing it – and that is happening in more and more of the Western democracies. The re-emergence of public bigotry has nothing to do with technology, except to the extent that bigots use it to promote their malignant goals. Meanwhile, the institutions that are supposed to protect liberty – journalism among them – are mostly failing to do so. In a tiny number of jurisdictions, people have persuaded leaders to push back on the encroachments, such as a partial ban on government use of facial recognition in San Francisco. But the encroachments are overwhelming and accelerating.”

Leah Lievrouw, professor of information studies at the University of California-Los Angeles, wrote, “To date, virtually no democratic state or system has sorted out how to deal with this challenge to the fundamental legitimacy of democratic processes, and my guess is that only a deep and destabilizing crisis (perhaps growing out of the rise of authoritarian, ethnic or cultural nationalism) will prompt a serious response.”

Seth Finkelstein, programmer, consultant and EFF Pioneer of the Electronic Frontier Award winner, wrote, “Warren Buffett has said, ‘There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.’ We can examine how this class warfare changes with advances in technology, analogous to how military warfare has been affected by technology. But no weapons technology to date has inevitably produced democracy over dictatorship (or vice-versa). For example, there once was a type of boosterism that talked about how ordinary people could make websites and promoted its very rare cause célèbre success. But that storyline is now going out of fashion. It’s finally getting to be pundit knowledge that there’s a whole system behind which material gets promoted. Paid professional liars can both make websites themselves and work this system better than amateurs. There’s currently a national panic over Russian trolls. But native fiends can do the same thing, with more skill, incentive and opportunities.”

David Bray, executive director for the People-Centered Internet Coalition, commented, “The power of narratives is exactly their ability to shape and institutionalize norms and power distribution in our human communities. … Now, however, our world is much broader than our immediate environment, and this has dangerous side effects, such as challenges in reaching consensus or disputing the relevant facts for a situation. We are seeing increasing polarization in open societies, partly as a result of these questions of where we want to go not being considered in ways that can translate to action. An even larger question is where do different localities want to go in terms of progress in parallel to what values or norms they want to hold dear? This is a question that spans sectors. No one organization or influencer or group with power can either solely answer or execute actions toward that desired future state. In the absence of finding ways to build bridges that span sectors, power – through narratives, laws, or technologies – will be grabbed by whomever aspires to this. An important question for the future is can we build such bridges across sectors? Will our divisions be our undoing as open, pluralistic societies? Can we develop narratives of hope for open, pluralistic societies that bring people together?”

Technology can improve or undermine democracy depending on how it is used and who controls it. Right now, it is controlled by too few. Kevin Gross

Miguel Moreno, professor of philosophy at the University of Granada, Spain, an expert in ethics, epistemology and technology, commented, “There is a clear risk of bias, manipulation, abusive surveillance and authoritarian control over social networks, the internet and any uncensored citizen expression platform, by private or state actors. There are initiatives promoted by state actors to isolate themselves from a common internet and reduce the vulnerability of critical infrastructures to cyberattacks. This has serious democratic and civic implications. In countries with technological capacity and a highly centralized political structure, favorable conditions exist to obtain partisan advantages by limiting social contestation, freedom of expression and eroding civil rights.”

Richard Jones, an entrepreneur based in Europe, said, “Government will lag exploitation of data by state and corporate actors in unforeseen ways. Biased censorship (both well-intentioned and corrupt) and propaganda onslaughts will shape opinions as – combined with an anti-scientific revolution – confidence in the institutions and establishment figures essential to peaceful orderly improvement of societies crumbles further. Hysterical smear attacks will further intensify as attempts to placate minority pressure groups continue. Biased technocratic groupthink will continue its march toward authoritarianism. Charismatic leadership will flourish in truly liberal systems. Authoritarianism will take root elsewhere. Online preference surveys may be developed to guide many choices facing government, but it is not clear that can correct the current democratic deficit in a helpful way. As during the Gutenberg process, accompanying the digestion of ‘free-range’ information will be the reevaluation of secular and religious values and objectives.”

John Sniadowski, a systems architect based in the United Kingdom, wrote, “It is proving very difficult to regulate multinational corporations because of the variety of different national government agendas. A globally enacted set of rules to control multinationals is unlikely to happen because some sovereign states have very illiberal and hierarchical control over agendas and see technology as a way to dominate their citizens with their agendas as well as influence the democratic viewpoints of what they consider to be hostile states. Democracy in technological terms can be weaponized.”

Kevin Gross, an independent technology consultant, commented, “Technology can improve or undermine democracy depending on how it is used and who controls it. Right now, it is controlled by too few. The few are not going to share willingly. I don’t expect this to change significantly by 2030. History knows that when a great deal of power is concentrated in the hands of a few, the outcome is not good for the many, not good for democracy.”

Robert Epstein, senior research psychologist at the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology, said, “As of 2015, the outcomes of upward of 25 of the national elections in the world were being determined by Google’s search engine. Democracy as originally conceived cannot survive Big Tech as currently empowered. If authorities do not act to curtail the power of Big Tech companies – Google, Facebook and similar companies that might emerge in coming years – in 2030, democracy might look very much as it does now to the average citizen, but citizens will no longer have much say in who wins elections and how democracies are run. My research – dozens of randomized, controlled experiments involving tens of thousands of participants and five national elections – shows that Google search results alone can easily shift more than 20% of undecided voters – up to 80% in some demographic groups – without people knowing and without leaving a paper trail (see my paper on the search engine manipulation effect ). I’ve also shown that search suggestions can turn a 50/50 split among undecided voters into a 90/10 split – again, without people knowing they have been influenced. The content of answer boxes can increase the impact of the search engine manipulation effect by an additional 10% to 30%. I’ve identified about a dozen largely subliminal effects like these and am currently studying and quantifying seven of them. I’ve also shown that the ‘Go Vote’ prompt that Google posted on its home page on Election Day in 2018 gave one political party at least 800,000 more votes than went to the opposing party – possibly far more if the prompt had been targeted to the favored party.”

A longtime internet-rights activist based in South Africa responded, “Whether the powers of states and tech corporations can be reined in effectively is the current struggle. The genie is out of the bottle and it does not bode well for systems of democracy that have already been undermined in Western states. A state of global cyber war now exists and is likely to persist over the next decade. The oligopoly of state-supported tech companies, whether in the U.S. or China, will be difficult to break. It is trite to differentiate between a Google or an Alibaba – both received substantial state support from their respective governments – the Googles by failure to apply antitrust law to prevent monopolization, the Alibabas by state protection against competition in China.”

David P. Reed, a pioneering architect of the internet expert in networking, spectrum and internet policy, wrote, “‘Democracy’ in 2030 will be democracy in name only. The mechanisms of widespread corporate surveillance of user behavior and modification of user behavior are becoming so sophisticated that the citizen interests of democratic-structured countries will no longer be represented in any meaningful way. That is, by collecting vast amounts of information about user preferences and responses, and the use of highly targeted behavior modification techniques, citizens’ choices will be manipulated more and more in the interests of those who can pay to drive that system. The current forms of democracy limit citizen participation to election events every few years, where issues and candidates are structured by political parties into highly targeted single-vote events that do not represent individuals’ interests. Instead, a small set of provocative ‘wedge’ issues are made the entire focus of the citizen’s choice. This is not representation of interests. It is a managed poll that can easily be manipulated by behavior modification of the sort that technology is moving toward.”

A pioneering technology editor and reporter for one of the world’s foremost global news organizations wrote, “I do not have great faith that the institutions tasked with ensuring that online discourse is civil and adheres to standards of truth and fairness will be able to prevail over tendencies of autocratic governments and powerful private sector actors to use cyberspace for narrow political ends. … The internet has never had an effective governing body with any considerable clout to set policy that might guarantee network neutrality on a global scale, inhibit censorship and apply such conventions as the Universal Bill of Human Rights. Further, a handful of platforms whose moral compass has been questioned have come to dominate the online world. Some are dominated by governments. Others owe allegiance only to shareholders.”

Jerry Michalski, founder of REX, the Relationship Economy eXpedition, wrote, “‘Capital G’ Government has devolved into a phony consumer mass-marketing exercise. ‘Small g’ governance could involve active, ongoing collaboration among citizens, but it won’t as long as the major platforms they use have as their business models to addict them to TikTok videos, and to sell off their private data to companies that want to stalk them.”

Jonathan Kolber, author of “A Celebration Society: Solving the Coming Automation Crisis,” said, “Deepfakes will completely muddy the difference between facts and falsehood, a distinction that few citizens are equipped to make even now. This will have devastating effects upon democratic institutions and processes. … We are increasingly seeing George Orwell’s nightmare unfold as governments learn to use internet-enabled smart devices (televisions, smartphones, etc.) for surveillance. When the Internet of Things extends to smart cars, smart homes and so forth, the surveillance will be universal and unending. Governments are also increasingly redefining facts and history.”

A professor of computer science said, “Artificial intelligence technology, especially machine learning, has a feedback loop that strongly advantages first movers. Google’s advantages in being a better search engine have now been baked in by its ability to accumulate more data about user search behavior. This dynamic is inherently monopolistic, even more so than prior technological advances. Persuasive technologies built using these technologies are capable of refining and shaping public opinion with a reach and power that totalitarian governments of the 20th century could only dream of. We can be sure that today’s regulatory mood will either dissipate with nothing done, or more likely, become a driver that entrenches existing monopolies further by creating technical demands that no competitor can surmount. Democratic institutions will have a very difficult time countering this dynamic. Uber’s ‘greyball’ program, intended to defeat regulation and meaningful audit, is a harbinger of the future.”

Jonathan Taplin, author of “Move Fast and Break Things: How Google, Facebook and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermined Democracy,” said, “Social media will continue to enable new and more-sophisticated forms of propaganda and disinformation. Artificial intelligence will enable deepfake videos that the average citizen will be taken in by. Facebook, YouTube and Twitter will continue to enable this content in their unending chase for revenue. Politicians will make noises about regulation, but since these platforms will become their primary source of advertising and publicity, they will never commit to the elimination of Safe Harbor and other rules that protect the social networks.”

Bulbul Gupta, founding adviser, Socos Labs, a think tank designing artificial intelligence to maximize human potential, responded, “Given the current state of tech and artificial intelligence ownership, I expect democracy to be even more unequal between the haves and have-nots by 2030, and a major uprising happening from the masses who are being quickly left behind. Tech and AI are owned by their creators, the top 1%, with decisions made about the 100% in every sector of society that have little to no transparency, human judgment or much recourse, and that may not get made the same if they were being forced to happen face to face. People will need their own personal AIs in their corner to protect their basic civil and human rights.”

Carlos Afonso, an internet pioneer and digital rights leader based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, wrote, “ Thomas Piketty and others demonstrate that inequality is, if anything, rising everywhere. Democracy understood as pluralist participation in political processes involving the electoral (supposedly unbiased) choices of government representatives, and the decision-making processes in building policies, legislation and regulation, cannot survive in these conditions. … One of the greatest achievements of the UN community was the consensus agreement on trying to reach the 17 sustainable development goals by 2030. However, conflicts of all kinds, internal and inter-country, give us no hope that the essential components of those goals will be achieved worldwide. Also, there is (partly in consequence of the various manifestations of a growing economic crisis with the financial speculators at the head of these processes) little chance that resources will increase to cover the essential needs of the majority.”

Even former pillars of democracy, Britain and France, are challenged by forces misusing digital tools. Norton Gusky

James Sigaru Wahu, assistant professor, media, culture and communication, New York University and fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center, wrote, “As we have seen across the Global North, tech has only worked to make worse offline tension. This has resulted in multiple challenges toward notions of democracy as shown by the Brexit debacle, 2016 presidential elections and violence against immigrant groups. We have also seen states get in the act through the use of technology to expand their surveillance powers, as is the case in China and in the UK (with its large CCTV camera presence). States in the Global South have also gotten into the surveillance game, which does not bode well for organizations and people advocating for human rights. What we have thus seen is countries like Russia and China growing in strength in tech surveillance and misinformation/disinformation while the United States and several police departments across the country rely on companies such as Palantir to expand their surveillance on citizens. Both of these have led to disastrous results.”

Lokman Tsui, professor at the School of Journalism and Communication of The Chinese University of Hong Kong, formerly Google’s Head of Free Expression in Asia and the Pacific, said, “The political economy of new technologies that are on the horizon leaves me with many concerns for how they will impact democracy and its institutions. First, many of the new technologies, including artificial intelligence, machine learning and big data, are closed and centralized in nature. Unlike the open web before it, these technologies are closed and centralized, both in terms of technical design and also in terms of business model. The technology can indeed be used to improve democratic institutions and processes, but it will be hard and there will be many obstacles to overcome. Second, the new technologies are not only not helping democracies, but they, by their design, are also helping and strengthening non-democracies to further censorship and surveillance. While there are also technologies to counteract these tendencies, the balance tends to tip (heavily) in favor of the other side. Third, I’m concerned there is a global rat race toward the bottom when it comes to the collection of (personal) data, which has the potential to enable the suppression of many other rights.”

Norton Gusky, a futurist and advocate for implementing technology to empower people, commented, “For many years I truly believed that the internet would bring greater access to information that would strengthen democracy. However, in the past four to five years, I’ve witnessed a darker side to the internet. We now see countries like Russia interfering in the elections of not just the United States, but other countries throughout the world. I think there will be a swing, but for the next two to four years, the darker forces will prevail. We’ll see countries like Turkey, China and Egypt limiting the access to the ‘truth.’ Even former pillars of democracy, Britain and France, are challenged by forces misusing digital tools.”

Paola Ricaurte, fellow, Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, wrote, “Even after we are aware of the negative implications that technology can have on democratic processes, we have not seen significant actions by the U.S. government to limit the power of tech corporations. The extraterritorial control of technology companies will be further expanded and will continue to have consequences for the democracies of the Global South. The knowledge gap between data-rich countries and data-poor countries will deepen.”

Ian O’Byrne, assistant professor of education at the College of Charleston, wrote, “Power and money ultimately influence decisions made by democratic bodies. With growing unrest, citizens can use social media and current/new digital tools to make themselves heard. Ultimately this will be pushed back again by existing powerholders and nothing may ultimately change. The existing powerholders will continue to exert their influence, and citizens will be left to continue to voice their opinions by shouting into the cyberverse.”

Jeffrey Alexander, senior manager for innovation policy at RTI International, said, “In societies where people are accustomed to power being centralized in a few institutions, and where central governments already exert power through surveillance and state authority, digital technology will facilitate intimidation, disinformation and other mechanisms for reducing individual liberty, suppressing minority opinion and enforcing authoritarian control. This will enable such governments to enhance the appearance of following democratic norms, such as offering ‘free and open’ elections, but use those mechanisms to reinforce their power by suppressing dissent well before voters reach the polls. In societies with strong individual education and a tradition of liberty and citizen-driven initiatives, digital technology could help thwart the rise of authoritarian rule, improve oversight and governance of law enforcement and policy processes, and enhance citizen involvement in government and politics.”

John Pike, director and founder of GlobalSecurity.org, said, “Democracy in 2030 will face the best of times and the worst of times. All the optimistic predictions about social media and other online implementations strengthening citizen participation will be realized. All the pessimistic predictions about the ease with which the surveillance state can manipulate public opinion will also be realized. Autocratic regimes such as Russia and China are skilled at such dark arts at home and will practice them globally. In the old days it was pretty obvious that the Communist Party USA member hawking the Daily Worker was working for Moscow, but now attribution is difficult and contested.”

Shane Kerr, an engineer for an internet security firm, said, “Those with resources will be able to harness technology more effectively to influence opinion and policies, ultimately working against democratic ideals. We already see this in a nascent form today, but it will likely evolve into such a pervasive narrative that the average citizen will not even be aware of it, unless they study history (assuming that ‘1984’-style revisionist history does not become the norm).”

[the fact that they]

Sasha Costanza-Chock, associate professor of civic media at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wrote, “Core aspects of the democratic process are deeply stressed or broken. In the United States, we need significant reforms to enable broader and more meaningful participation in democratic decision-making, such as instant runoff or rank-order voting, expansion of voting days and times, expanded voting rights for formerly incarcerated people, campaign finance reform, rethinking the electoral college and much more. Unfortunately, most of these are extremely unlikely. Instead, we seem locked into an elitist and extremely expensive electoral system where the players with the most money and connection to wealthy backers rig the system to their advantage. In this context, many technological tools primarily advance those who can develop and customize them for their own ends – again, the biggest players. There are some countervailing forces such as the ability of insurgent candidates to leverage social media.”

Denise N. Rall, academic researcher of popular culture, Southern Cross University, New South Wales, Australia, said, “I believe technology will help the dictators that we now have stay on top and control more aspects of all of our lives, worsening the prospects for democracy as has already happened in most economic powerhouses of the world (U.S., Russia, China, and right-wing elections in Europe, the absurdity of Brexit in the UK, North Korea, etc.). I think environmental degradation will increase exponentially and people will be fighting over resources like energy, water and food quite soon. I do not think technology will have the power to change these outcomes without real desire by governments to reduce resource consumption and a global birth control program of some kind.”

An anonymous respondent commented, “China has the potential to stall trends toward democracy and regime change through increased monitoring of their citizenry and refinement of their ‘social credit’ legislation/monetization of following the whims of their single party. There is a potential for China to help prop up regimes in developing countries where they have vested interests by distributing such technologies to undemocratic regimes that want to remain in power. I think that India could go either way depending on whether or not widespread corruptions in their political environment exploit or are thwarted by increased access to technology and information by their citizenry.”

Technologies of identification and surveillance will expand in usage, eating away at the private sphere of social life. Retired professor

Richard Lachmann, professor of political sociology at the State University of New York-Albany, said, “Democracy will continue to weaken but technology is only a secondary factor. More important in the decline of democracy are the disappearance or weakening of labor unions, the growing power of corporations in all sectors due to mergers, extreme levels of inequality and the ability of the rich and of political actors to manipulate ‘veto points’ to paralyze government initiatives, which then increases citizens’ cynicism about politicians and lessens their participation. All of these preceded the expansion of the internet and will not be significantly lessened by citizens’ online activities.”

Vince Carducci, researcher of new uses of communication to mobilize civil society and dean at the College of Creative Studies, wrote, “Institutional changes are occurring more as a function of power and money rather than technology, particularly in the selection of candidates and in the judicial system. Those are more of threat than technology.”

A cofounder of one of the internet’s first and best-known online communities wrote, “Democracy is under threat. The blame can’t ultimately go to the internet or to computer-aided automation or to artificial intelligence. The vast power of personal and corporate wealth to wield these technologies in support of their selfish interests will increasingly suppress egalitarian and democratic values.”

 A research scientist for a U.S. federal agency wrote, “We are in a period of growing isolationism, nativism and backlash that will weaken democracies around the world, and it will probably have reached a peak by 2030. Although technology and online dissemination of information will be a tool of information and disinformation, and it will be a tool of policing populations, the underlying economic and environmental shifts are mostly responsible for changes resulting in weaker democracies.”

A retired professor commented, “Corporations will have more power over employees and customers. This will be achieved as part of the ongoing corporate takeover of democratic institutions, which U.S. President Eisenhower warned of long ago. Technologies of identification and surveillance will expand in usage, eating away at the private sphere of social life. Social media will continue to reinforce strong social ties among family and friends while reducing the formation of the weak social ties among acquaintances that support intergroup cooperation necessary in a diverse society. Worsening climate and its consequences for health, agriculture and infrastructure will create increasing irrational forms of blame and global conflict. Global conflicts will include electronic and biological forms of aggression against the militarily powerful countries. More citizen backlash is to be expected, but will likely be directed against inappropriate targets. Societies as we know them will stumble from disaster to disaster, toward a massive die-off of our species. I hope I’m wrong. I would like to see our species survive with its democratic values intact. I have grandchildren. I would like their grandchildren to inherit a better world than the one that our present technocratic capitalist economy is racing toward.”

Anonymous respondents commented:

• “The internet under capitalism will only serve the few, not the many, and democracy will weaken as a result. The problem is about competitive economic imperatives rather than technological affordances.”
• “It’s not the technology that will cause the changes, but the systems and structures that create various tech.”
• “The loudest voices will continue to be those that are heard. While the media may change, the elite will still run everything.”
• “Technology companies and governments have incentives to avoid doing things to address the damaging ways in which internet platforms damage democratic institutions.”
• “Power corrupts. Look at the tech giants today – manipulation and propaganda. They are elitists who think they know best.”
• “The combination of big data and supercomputing power seems to be having a negative effect on democracy, and I see no signs that that can be effectively policed or regulated, particularly given the power (and data troves) of very large internet companies and of governments.”
• “I do not believe that governments understand the tools, and they will fail repeatedly to regulate or organize them properly; I also do not have faith the private companies are democratic, and therefore they are apt to reinforce capitalism alone, not democracy.”

Diminishing the governed: Digitally networked surveillance capitalism creates an undemocratic class system pitting the controllers against the controlled

Charles Ess, professor of digital ethics, at the University of Oslo, said, “Democracy – its foundational norms and principles, including basic rights to privacy, freedom of expression and rights to contest and conscientiously disobey – may survive in some form and in some places by 2030; but there are many strong reasons, alas, to think that it will be pushed to the margins in even traditionally democratic countries by the forces of surveillance capitalism, coupled with increasing citizen feelings of powerlessness against these forces, along with manipulation of information and elections, etc. Not to mention China’s increasingly extensive exports of the technologies of ‘digital authoritarianism’ modelled on their emerging Social Credit System.”

There is simply no reason to believe that technology can strengthen democracy. Gina Neff

Rob Frieden, a professor of telecommunications law at Penn State who previously worked with Motorola and has held senior policy positions at the Federal Communications Commission and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, said, “Technological innovations appear better suited for expanding government power versus improving the ability of individuals to evade surveillance. Across the entire spectrum of political ideology, national governments can justify increased budgets for ever-more-sophisticated surveillance technologies based on noble-sounding rationales, such as national security. Governments have little incentives and incur even fewer penalties when they fail to calibrate surveillance technology for lawful reasons. Innocent people will have reasonable privacy expectations eroded, particularly with technologies that have massive processing power and range coupled with an ambiguous mandate. Unless and until citizens push back, governments will use surveillance technologies to achieve goals beyond promoting national security. We risk becoming inured and numbed by ubiquitous surveillance, so much so that pushback seems too difficult and unproductive.”

Gina Neff, senior research fellow, Oxford Internet Institute, studying innovation and digital transformation, wrote, “There is simply no reason to believe that technology can strengthen democracy. Western democracies are grappling with the power from the increased concentration of financial capital and its response in the form of the rise of populism. Without attention to strengthening our core technology and communications infrastructure, those forces will continue to damage how people participate in – and indeed make – democracy.”

Zizi Papacharissi, professor of communication and political science, University of Illinois-Chicago, responded, “Our present system of governance supports strong capitalism/soft democracy. Until this balance is reorganized, to support soft capitalism/strong democracy, any technology we create will continue to underserve democracy. In short, the technology we have created was designed to generate profit, not to support democracy. It is possible to do both. We just have not designed it that way, however. By 2030, we will see a weakening of democratic and political processes facilitated by technology. This will happen not because there is something inherently bad or undemocratic about technology. It is because most technology is designed, implemented and/or deployed through mechanisms that support a strong capitalist model that was created centuries ago and needs to be updated in order to be compatible with contemporary societies, democratic and non.”

John Harlow, smart-city research specialist in the Engagement Lab at Emerson College, said, “Although there is rising anti-monopoly sentiment, 2030 is soon, and the dominant digital commons for speech (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube) are likely to draw out (in the courts) any regulatory action to change their business models and/or practices. Currently, they are governed by algorithms designed to maximize ‘engagement’ time and thereby advertising revenue, and those algorithms have prioritized extreme content over accurate content (among other problems). This has enabled and supported the rise of the authoritarian far right the world over, and has destabilized faith and participation in democratic institutions and processes.”

An expert on online trust and identity active in the multistakeholder organizations that build and maintain the internet said, “Uses are shaped by social and economic factors that drive toward consolidation and control. Having created a prefect panopticon that maps every endpoint and every device on the network, and with the rise of middle-box collectors that use massive computing power to correlate identifiers, the end result will tilt toward command and control.”

An expert in socio-technical systems wrote, “Social media tech firms will continue to resist control and meaningful regulation in order to preserve their core business, aptly described by Shoshana Zuboff as ‘surveillance capitalism.’ The oligarchs, perhaps still aided by foreign interests, will continue to manipulate public opinion for their own benefit. Economic inequality will continue to increase, as will resentment, misdirected toward immigrants and the ‘elites.’”

An expert in human-computer design wrote, “The decay of democracy should be attributed foremost to capitalism itself, and thus only in a secondary way to technology. Capitalism seems overdue for major shock, enough so that predicting much of anything so far ahead as 2030 seems foolish. The present moment witnesses the close of a decade of ever-intensified distraction engineering.”

An expert in the law who previously worked for a U.S. government agency wrote, “Increasingly sophisticated marketing based on data and inferred data on every individual threatens to cross the line between persuasion and manipulation and coercion, and the First Amendment restraints on government will require a substantial degree of proof of coercion before the government will be able to intervene to safeguard individuals from clear overreaching. The threat of manipulation – and we saw the first signs of that in 2018 with the Cambridge Analytica fiasco – is real and growing. Whether industry or government can curb it is an open question. Industry of course has a conflict of interest – the more successful its manipulation is, the more money industry makes. And government has the restraints of the First Amendment that limit its role.”

[cyberspace as a venue for war, along with land, sea, air, space]

The problem with everyone having a megaphone is that we get drowned in more noise than useful information. Sam Adams

Emilio Velis, executive director, Appropedia Foundation, said, “The way user participation has been shaped by technological platforms for the past 10 years turned the power of decentralized information back to the big corporations, platforms and stakeholders. Or, even worse, it has weakened the capacity of individuals of action while maintaining a false perception that they have control.”

Peter Lunenfeld, professor of design, media arts and digital humanities, University of California-Los Angeles, and author of “Tales of the Computer as Culture Machine,” wrote, “Commercial platform-driven communication technologies like Facebook, Twitter and their eventual successors are unlikely to strengthen representative democracy in the coming decades of the 21st century. They may add ‘voices’ to the conversation, but they will be unlikely to support and sustain the 20th century’s dominant forms of successful democracies – those that designated representatives to debate and legislate on their behalf, from coherent parties that had established ideologies and platforms. What we are starting to see is the development of dialoguing ‘communities’ that mimic the give and take of true democratic action without offering actual power to its participants, like the Italian Five Star Movement, or the emergence of personality-driven, single-issue pop-ups like Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party. Like Five Star and the Brexit Party, future political movements will use social media to offer the affordances of democratic dialogue without actually empowering participants to control or direct the movements. Social media technologies are creating skeuomorphs of democracies; they will have design attributes that look and feel democratic, but they will be authoritarian to the core.”

An anonymous responden t commented, “The degree of tracking of comments by individuals will increase dramatically in the future as DeepMind-style algorithms are applied to internet-based material. It will become much harder for people to make comments without knowing that their attitudes are being logged and accumulated by organisations of all manner, so there will be a reluctance to speak one’s mind. Hence ‘free speech’ will be constrained and thus the democratic process hindered.”

A distinguished professor of electrical engineering and computer science who is an expert in the future of communications networks at a U.S. university wrote, “Social media makes it possible to reach voters in targeted ways and deliver information from a distance that is tailored to specific goals, rather than fostering local community discussion and participation. The lack of privacy in internet service platforms, along with artificial intelligence and big data, now make it possible for candidates to identify and influence voters in ways that could not have been imagined only a few years ago. Without corrective action (such as new election rules limiting the use of private citizen information), these new capabilities could lead to increased political instability and possibly the breakdown of entire democratic systems. The U.S. appears to be the first such casualty in the Western world.”

Sam Adams, a 24-year veteran of IBM now working as a senior research scientist in artificial intelligence for RTI International, architecting national-scale knowledge graphs for global good, said, “The internet provides a global megaphone to everyone in that anyone can publish their opinions and views instantly and essentially for free. The problem with everyone having a megaphone is that we get drowned in more noise than useful information. This is even more problematic since interest groups from all sides have used their power and resources to amplify their own voices far above the average citizen, even to the point of effectively silencing the average citizen by burying their smaller voice under a landslide of blaring voices controlled by wealthy interest groups. Given the interest-driven news cycles and echo chambers of social media, only the loudest or most extreme voices get repeated. This further exacerbates the level of emotion in the public discussion and drives listeners to the extremes instead of more common ground. A democracy must fairly represent its people’s views if it is to succeed. And part of that fairness in this technology-dominant world must include balancing the volume of the voices.”

Philip Rhoades, a business futurist and consultant based in Australia, wrote, “The neoliberal, developed Western world is sliding into fascism as the world’s sixth mass extinction reaches its inevitable conclusion. As this ecological collapse and political regression proceeds, modern technology will mostly be used for suppression of the great majority of people/citizens. Some technology may help defend the populations against state suppression and terror, but its effectiveness will be minor in the greater scheme of things.”

David Noelle, professor and researcher into computational cognitive neuroscience, University of California-Merced, wrote, “In the U.S., policy and public opinion have been increasingly shaped so as to support powered interests rather than the interests of the people. Regulation is dismissed as a threat to our troubled economy, encouraging corporate powers to pursue dangerous short-sighted strategies for producing return for investors. The unrepresented have been all but muted by electoral processes designed to sustain those in power. The most influential technologies of our times have been designed to depend on large centralized infrastructure. Data drives many new innovations, and few are in a position to collect and aggregate extensive data on the people. The focus on technologies that depend on controllable infrastructure, whether privately held or manipulated by political powers, will strengthen the positions of those currently in power, increasingly limiting the ability of the people to demand democratic representation. Note that this opinion is not intended as a call to limit technology but as a cry to radically alter political and economic institutions so as to provide representation to all of the people. A more democratic system will produce more democratic technologies.”

Deirdre Williams, an independent internet activist based in the Caribbean, commented, “We are being taught that convenience is the most important priority. ‘Innovation’ is killing ingenuity. I would expect that over the next 10 years the pendulum will swing in the opposite direction, but it will take a while to repair the divide that has been (deliberately?) introduced between citizen and government, and to remind governments of their duty of care to all of the citizens.”

Giacomo Mazzone, head of institutional relations, European Broadcasting Union and Eurovision, wrote, “I don’t believe that internet platforms will be able to self-reform, despite all announcements and efforts shown. And so only a break-up solution or ‘publicization’ of the internet giants could change the future. The amount of power that has been transferred by citizens and by states to these actors that are not accountable to anybody (even to the U.S. government) is too big to think that they could renounce voluntarily. Do you remember ‘Sliding Doors’ – the 1998 movie with Gwyneth Paltrow as leading actor? The future could (in a 50/50 chance) go totally wrong or fantastically well. A digital interconnected society based on trust and respect of individual and human rights could be the next arcadia. A digital interconnected and mass-surveillance-oriented society based on exploitation of human weakness and on polarization of society could be the perfect implementation of the Orwell dystopia of ‘1984.’ The two futures are equally possible. It’s up to government and civil society to decide in which direction we shall go.”

Scott B. MacDonald, an experienced chief economist and international economic adviser, said, “The future has a very real potential to be a dark Orwellian place, transfixed between strong technology under the control of a few wealthy and powerful and the great unwashed masses made economically redundant by machines and waiting for their daily dose of Soylent Green. One big change is that people may no longer have to go and vote but vote from hand-held or implanted communications devices. If we are not careful technology will be a device for greater control, not democracy, much as in China. Facial recognition anyone?”

Estee Beck, author of “A Theory of Persuasive Computer Algorithms for Rhetorical Code Studies,” commented, “Unless Congress takes action and passes protective consumer legislation to limit private industry powers with technological growth, i.e., surveillance and privacy erosion, democratic institutions will face greater dangers from domestic and foreign threats, loss of trust among the American public and devaluation of private technological companies among the marketplace. The infrastructure of technology, with faulty programming that allows for penetration and deep hacks, the decisions made now with select leaders in technology companies driving pro-China surveillance growth, anti-U.S. and Mexico relations via border surveillance, marketing of biosecurity technologies and the eventual promotion of artificial intelligence consumer goods and services will divide the faith of the nation and leave the American public ill-trusting of Congress to take action for the public good.”

Matt Colborn, a freelance writer and futurist based in Europe, said, “I do not deny the potential for technology to strengthen or even revolutionise democracy. In fact, this is what I hoped for at the beginning of the revolution in the 1990s. However, from a citizen perspective, the new technology seems to me to have already reduced mental autonomy and the capacity for intelligent choice. Why? 1) Platforms like YouTube seem to be more appropriate for distributing propaganda and for involuntary brainwashing because of the algorithms used. 2) Extreme tribalism has also increased because of the ‘echo chamber’ nature of personalised media. 3) Government and corporations are demolishing any kind of privacy. Neurotech, where thoughts are read, is the ‘final frontier’ of this. The problem, too, is the toxic interaction between archaic authoritarian institutions, right-wing populism and new tech. These effects mean that democracy is diluted whilst a ‘surveillance’ state is strengthened and while deep tribal divisions are exacerbated. Although there are certainly counter movements to this, economic inequality is such that basically the rich and powerful are in a position to cash in on these developments and the rest of us are not. Those who want political innovation will find it tough in this environment.”

Democratic regimes could become less democratic from the misuse of surveillance systems with the justification of national security. Anonymous respondent

An artificial intelligence expert predicted, “‘Democracy’ is likely to be even more of an elitist endeavor by 2030 than it is now. Life is good if you’re a big corporation, but not if you’re an ordinary working-class citizen. Who has a voice in this world will depend even more on money and power. Civic technologists will first promise to save democracy with technology but then start charging for it after five years because ‘someone has to pay for maintenance.’ And they will get away with it, because no one will remember that political rights are a basic right and not a commodity.”

An anonymous respondent wrote, “Recently Hong Kong protesters had to buy single-trip transit cards with cash to be able to exercise democratic power; this will be impossible when mass face-recognition technology is implemented. Essentially, it is becoming almost impossible to behave democratically.”

• “Technology is going to aggregate people’s individual voices and remove individual democracy.”
• “Democratic regimes could become less democratic from the misuse of surveillance systems with the justification of national security.”
• “I am sadly confident that democratic institutions will not be affected in any positive way in future by citizen’s perspectives; instead, technology will continue to create disenfranchised, disempowered citizens.”

Exploiting digital illiteracy: Citizens’ lack of digital fluency and their apathy produce an ill-informed and/or dispassionate public, weakening democracy and the fabric of society

James S. O’Rourke IV, a University of Notre Dame professor whose research specialty is reputation management, said, “As Neil Postman wrote in 1985, ‘We no longer engage in civil public discourse. We are simply amusing ourselves to death.’ Among the more insidious effects of digital life has been a reduction in tolerance for long-form text. People, particularly the young, will read, but not if it involves more than a few paragraphs. Few among them will buy and read a book. News sites have discovered that more people will click on the video than scroll through the text of a story. Given how easy it now is to manipulate digital video images, given how easy it is to play to people’s preconceptions and prejudice, and given how indolent most in our society have become in seeking out news, opinion and analysis, those who seek to deceive, distract or bully now have the upper hand. Jesuits have long cautioned that ‘No man can understand his own argument until he has visited the position of a man who disagrees.’ Such visits are increasingly rare. The long-predicted ‘filter bubble’ effect is increasingly visible. People will simply not seek out, read or take time to understand positions they do not understand or do not agree with. A sizeable majority now live with a thin collection of facts, distorted information and an insufficient cognitive base from which to make a thoughtful decision. Accurate information is no longer driving out false ideas, propaganda, innuendo or deceit.”

Bernie Hogan, senior research fellow, Oxford Internet Institute, said, “Technology without civics is capitalism with crystallised logic and unbounded scope. Democratic institutions and civic societies are premised on boundaries and intelligible scales, like the ‘local paper’ or the ‘provincial radio.’ Technology is allowing for the transcendence of scale, which we might think is great. Certainly, from a logistics and delivery side it is very impressive. But social cohesion requires levels of understanding that there’s a coherent bounded population to care about and define one’s identity through and against. It requires people seeing and doing things as more than consumers and occasional partisan voters.”

People don’t know what to believe, so they often choose either to believe nothing or to believe whatever their gut tells them. Research scientist

Larry Rosen, a professor emeritus of psychology at California State University-Dominguez Hills, known as an international expert on the psychology of technology, wrote, “I worry that many in the public will and do not have the skills to determine truth from fiction, and twisted truth can and does lead to misunderstanding the content.”

Carolyn Heinrich, professor of education and public policy at Vanderbilt University, said, “As internet content is increasingly customized for us by who we know and where we click, the range of information and perspectives we are exposed to will narrow unless we make the effort to read more widely ourselves. To minimize the negative effects, we have to proactively make the effort to broaden our circles of communication and sources of information/knowledge. As technology increasingly pervades our K-12 school curricula, we also need to examine exactly what technology vendors are conveying in their content, and who is the ‘face’ of that content in instructional videos. That is something we are currently investigating in our research .”

Cliff Zukin, professor of public policy and political science, Rutgers University, responded, “In the U.S. anyway, increasing political apathy has accompanied increasing use of technology. It has, on the one hand, been diversional from attention to matters of governance and citizenship. On the other, the centrifugal forces of interests made more available by increasing technology has eroded the core knowledge base of citizens, as well as the norms of citizenship. It does allow for mass movements to organize more quickly and put pressure on leaders, but the right-wing, post-recession populism and withdrawal from globalism is not, in my judgment, a good thing.”

An anonymous respondent said, “Unfortunately, fundamentally undemocratic processes in the United States, like the electoral college, will continue to be undermined by fake news and technology-backed manipulation of rural states, which have outsized electoral college voting power but typically lack education and will likely remain vulnerable to such exploits.”

A fellow at a major university’s center for internet and society wrote, “I am worried that the ease with which hostile powers and trolls can manipulate public opinion will only increase and become more sophisticated, leading to voters having increasingly lower levels of factual information at their disposal or, worse yet, increasing apathy toward or cynicism about voting and the democratic process entirely.”

Eric Royer, assistant professor of political science, Saint Louis University, said, “The breakdown of norms creates an environment of false truths that is directly tied to political polarization, especially among the fringes, and citizen mistrust and apathy with anything ‘government.’ Technology, especially in social media platforms, holds unlimited potential to make the world less of an unfamiliar place, however, its manipulation and influence in our daily lives is truly misunderstood at the current expense of democratic processes and institutions globally and domestically.”

A research scientist focused on fairness, transparency and accountability in artificial intelligence said, “The rise of fake news and manipulated media like deepfakes has sown a greater distrust of media and institutions that is undermining democracy, leading to a less-informed and less civically engaged population. People don’t know what to believe, so they often choose either to believe nothing or to believe whatever their gut tells them. Moreover, foreign actors that use social media manipulation tactics to sway elections further undermine democracy’s legitimacy.”

Continuous media weakens people’s ability to seek information and form their own opinion. Gretchen Steenstra

Mark Andrejevic, associate professor of communications, University of Iowa, wrote, “Much of my career has been built around my profound concerns about the impact that technology is having on democratic processes of deliberation, public accountability and representation. This is because technology needs to be understood within the context of the social relations within which it is deployed, and these have been conducive to privileging an abstract consumerist individualism that suppresses the underlying commitment to a sense of common, shared or overlapping interests necessary to participation in democratic society. I see the forms of hyper-customization and targeting that characterize our contemporary information environment (and our devices and mode of information ‘consumption’) as fitting within a broader pattern of the systematic dismantling of social and political institutions (including public education, labor unions and social services) that build upon and help reproduce an understanding of interdependence that make the individual freedoms we treasure possible. Like many, I share concerns about rising political polarization and the way this feeds upon the weaponization of false and misleading information via automated curation systems that privilege commercial over civic imperatives. These trends predate the rise of social media and would not have the purchase they do without the underlying forms of social and civic de-skilling that result from the offloading of inherently social functions and practices onto automated systems in ways that allow us to suppress and misrecognize underlying forms of interdependence, commonality and public good. I am not optimistic that anything short of a social/political/economic disaster will divert our course.”

Carlos Afonso, an internet pioneer and digital rights leader based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, wrote, “Thinking here of a planet with 7 billion-plus persons, most of them (including many of the supposedly ‘connected’) are unable to discern the many aspects of disinformation that reaches them through traditional (entrepreneurial) media, social networking apps and local political influences.”

A longtime CEO and internet and telecommunications expert commented, “Citizens will increasingly act absent of any understanding of critical analysis and reasoning, fact-checking or even rule of law. Under the guise of ‘acting out against injustice’ we will continue to see cyber vigilantism, whereby social media firestorms effectively ‘try and convict’ anyone accused of word or deed not supportive of their values.”

Gretchen Steenstra , a technology consultant for associations and nonprofit organizations, wrote, “I am concerned about higher velocity of information that does not include all critical and supporting information. Data is used to inform one view without context. Consumers do not fact-check (on many issues regardless of party). Americans are not focused on social responsibility or downstream impacts – they only want instant results. Continuous media weakens people’s ability to seek information and form their own opinion. Constant connectedness prevents reflection and allows your brain to relax. No one can argue with the desire for understanding.”

A fellow at a think tank’s center for technology and innovation wrote, “Democracy will be driven by more artificial intelligence systems, which will automate a range of decisions. Consequently, individuals may have limited input into their own decisions because data will be extrapolated from machines. What this will mean is a looser connection to democratic processes or connections driven by what one sees, hears and senses through dominant platforms. Without some level of policy restraint when it comes to specific use cases, such as voting, technology may serve to erode public trust, while simultaneously relying less on actual public input due to the level of sophistication that emerging technologies offer.”

Ayden Férdeline, technology policy fellow, Mozilla Foundation, responded, “Technology will continue to be exploited by those who seek to increase political apathy and undermine our trust in established institutions. This may happen more subtly than in the past, but the corrosive effect on democracy will be just the same.”

The internet amplifies trends that have been with us for a while – extremism and apathy. Pamela McCorduck

Philip J. Salem, professor emeritus, Texas State University, expert in complexity of organizational change, said, “People will become increasingly more careful about how they use the internet. Each person must be more mindful of use. My concern is that reflexive, non-mindful reactions can spread so fast and have more tragic consequences with the speed of the internet.”

Jeff Johnson, a professor of computer science, University of San Francisco, who previously worked at Xerox, HP Labs and Sun Microsystems, said, “Today’s social media encourages the spread of unverified information, which can skew policymaking and elections. People tend to be lazy and do not even read most of the articles they comment on, much less check the truth of the articles. In the TV era, before social media, putting out false information about a political opponent or ballot measure was expensive and subject to laws against ‘false advertising.’ Political hit pieces had to be well-funded, vaguely worded and carefully timed (to just before the election) in order to sway elections. That is no longer true. Strong regulation of social media could perhaps mitigate this, but such regulation seems unlikely in the foreseeable future.”

Pamela McCorduck, writer, consultant and author of several books, including “Machines Who Think,” said, “I am not sanguine about democracy right now. The internet amplifies trends that have been with us for a while – extremism and apathy. Our proportion of potential voters who actually vote only rose once or twice in the past few elections. Mostly it is dismal. Partly this is a result of voter suppression (not just removing voters from the rolls, but also making the process of voting far more cumbersome than it needs to be). Partly this is the realization by voters that elected officials are more beholden to dark money than to the people who elected them. I hope I am wrong about the future of this country I love.”

Luis German Rodriguez, researcher and consultant on knowledge society and sociotechnical impact based at Universidad Central de Venezuela, commented, “Democracy is likely to be weakened by 2030. … Authoritarian rule seems to be growing stronger wherever you look, supported by the emerging technologies.”

• “People will not use the internet to research the issue, rather, they will simply go with whatever biased opinion is put in front of them.”
• “The problem is that with the erosion of critical-thinking skills, true journalism versus opinion journalism (and the prevalence of ‘sound bites’ in lieu of serious debate based on facts) lack of proper policy and governance principles, these tools are being used to spread false information.”
• “The public made more gullible by a short attention spans, eroding reasoning skills, becomes a malleable target for those who seek to erode the fundamental institutions of our democracy.”
• “I’m less concerned about technology than I am the ability and willingness of my fellow citizens to educate themselves about the sources of information they consult.”
• “The biggest threat to democracy is people’s lack of critical-thinking skills to be able to distinguish between information and misinformation.”

Waging info-wars: Technology can be weaponized by anyone, anywhere, anytime to target vulnerable populations and engineer elections

Richard Bennett, founder of the High-Tech Forum and ethernet and Wi-Fi standards co-creator, wrote, “The economic model of social media platforms makes it inevitable that these tools will do more harm than good. As long as spreading outrage and false information generates more profits than dealing in facts, reason, science and evidence, the bad guys will continue to win. Until we devise a model where doing the right thing is more profitable than exploiting the public’s ignorance, the good guys will keep losing. … One hypothetical change that I would like to see would be the emergence of social media platforms that moderate less for tone and emotion and more for adherence to standards of truthfulness and evidence. Making this approach succeed financially is the major obstacle.”

Mutale Nkonde, adviser on artificial intelligence at Data & Society and fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, wrote, “Without significant regulation, our future elections will be ruled by the parties that can optimize social media recommendation algorithms most effectively. In the present moment, those are parties like Cambridge Analytica who used fear, racism and xenophobia to influence elections across the world.”

Eduardo Villanueva-Mansilla, associate professor of communications at Pontificia Universidad Catolica, Peru, and editor of the Journal of Community Informatics, said, “The lack of agreement about how to deal with these issues among governments is a serious threat to democracy, as much as the potential for misuse of technological innovations. In the next decade, the complete control by a few multinational firms will be completely outside of regulatory and policy reach of developing countries’ governments. This will increase the instability that has been normalized as a feature of governance in these countries.”

This is not like armed revolution; this is small numbers of employees able to affect what thousands, if not millions, see. Rich Salz

An expert in the ethics of autonomous systems based in Europe said, “Digital devices provide more and more new means to enhance the power of leaders to control people and to manipulate an inferior substitute for democracy to their benefit. They simulate and broadcast false flavours of democratic representations to the population. Decisions that restrict people’s rights, autonomy and freedom are promoted as necessary for enhancing the security, care and well-being of the population, while in fact the purpose is to protect the interests of those who seek power and influence. New digital means (biometrics, facial recognition, big data, deep learning, artificial intelligence) allow those in power to recognize and to profile people (position, behavior, location, ways of thinking, ideas, political opinions, level of life, health, origins, money, social relationships and so on). Stakeholders can use these devices to make appropriate decisions concerning what they consider subversive people and moreover to fight them if necessary. Robots and autonomous AI systems will be very efficient slaves to help to educate people who will not fit the requirements and rules imposed by the dominant class. This model will be developed in more and more states in the world and will progressively narrow freedom and decrease the quality of life of ordinary people belonging to medium and low social classes. At the same time, the field of available jobs will be more and more narrow because AI and robots will replace human beings in most areas and lead the majority of people to be unable to find means to work to support and fulfill themselves.”

Larry Masinter, internet pioneer, formerly with Adobe, ATT Labs, Xerox PARC, who helped create internet and web standards with IETF and W3C, said, “Traditional democracy and democratic institutions rely on geographically defined boundaries for constituencies. Enabling technology will accelerate the rise of cross-jurisdictional malfeasance, whether it’s called collusion or something else.”

An anonymous respondent warned, “Authoritarians will weaken checks and balances, turn courts into extensions of those in power and thus undermine representative democracy – enabled by the manipulation of digital media to stoke fear and mask inconvenient truths. … Extreme partisanship is putting all of our democratic institutions at risk to the point that shared power and orderly transitions may not exist in 10 years. Civil unrest seems inevitable.”

Rich Salz, senior architect, Akamai Technologies, wrote, “Individual citizens cannot stand up to the organized ‘power’ of other countries. This is not like armed revolution; this is small numbers of employees able to affect what thousands, if not millions, see.”

Heywood Sloane, entrepreneur and banking and securities consultant, said, “The current U.S. administration is leading the way to misuse technology. It permeates the public air with disinformation and lies, while putting a heavy hand on the scale in the background. It welcomes trolls to conferences in the White House and encourages them. Even if the administration changes it will take time and work to undo the damage. Media technology corporations have lost control of their platforms and marketing staffs – witness Facebook and Cambridge Analytica. Already we have rogue state sponsors altering our dialogues, yet we ignore them and chortle away with their leaders.”

An associate dean of research for science and engineering said, “Over the next 10 years, we will see an increase in the current trend of using technology to further engineer elections (including gerrymandering) and to target those most vulnerable to manipulation (on all political sides). A result is overrepresentation in elected government of self-interested minority points of view (extremes on many sides), increased obstacles to ousting parties from power (especially in two-party systems like the U.S.), and, for a while at least, the continued divisiveness of political discourse.”

A consultant who works for U.S. government agencies said, “The biggest fear of technology will be the use of artificial intelligence. While at present we have control of AI, in time we will lose that control. As systems are augmented with AI, it will remove the human element over time. We can say what we like about technology and our control of technology, but in time external forces will replace the human element. This will happen in all areas of technology, including the governmental technology world. At some point it will go beyond its own programing doing what it believes is in our best interest.”

Sowing confusion: Tech-borne reality distortion is crushing the already-shaky public trust in the institutions of democracy

The leader of a technology innovation group at one of the world’s top five technology organizations wrote, “Technology has already and will continue to place huge strains on democracy. First, digital technology makes it immensely easy for a small number of leveraged actors to exercise great control over our public discourse. We see this as they exercise control over the information made available and presented to citizens. Second, digital technology makes it immensely easy for actors to hide or obscure their involvement and their intent. Third, digital technology makes it immensely easy to erode truth through fabrications or amplifications.”

Hate, polarization, oversimplification and lack of well-considered thought are and will be on the increase. Alejandro Pisanty

Nigel Cameron, president emeritus, Center for Policy on Emerging Technologies, said, “I fear deepening distortions in public perception by the leveraging of digital media on the part of governments (our own and foreign), tech corporations and other actors – as new technologies like fake video make it even easier to shape opinion. It will be some time before (assuming it happens) we have the will and the tech to rein in these abuses. As things stand, partisanship by politicians and the ‘sorry, not sorry’ approach of Mark Zuckerberg and the other tech leaders portend deepening problems.”

[Technology]

Alejandro Pisanty, professor at UNAM, the National University of Mexico, and an activist in multistakeholder internet governance, wrote, “Hate, polarization, oversimplification and lack of well-considered thought are and will be on the increase. They are orders of magnitude easier to construct and propagate than the ways of countering them (the ‘bullshit asymmetry’ principle, on steroids). Manipulation of elections and other processes will continue to be rife as long as there exist those who want to do it and those susceptible to manipulation. Among the hardest hit will be the U.S., which has a gullible population unable to see the meta-layers of attack they are subjected to. There is hope for improvement in a smaller, smarter, more-democratic sector of society fighting the acritical reactions of the naive and uneducated. Better information, resilient systems (by design) and deliberations nested at all levels from the ultra-local to the global, an architecture of multistakeholder deliberations and decisions, and a lot of luck, may lead to improvement. Otherwise splintering and other forms of dark days loom.”

Rich Ling, professor, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore; expert on the social consequences of mobile communication, said, “The forces that want to confuse/undercut legitimate information are learning how to best use these systems. They are also learning how to calibrate the messages they send so as to enhance their divisiveness. This division plays on confirmation bias and, in turn, undercuts the common ground that is needed for effective governing and democracy.”

Karl Auerbach, chief technology officer, InterWorking Labs, active in internet design since the early 1970s, had less faith in multistakeholder organizations, writing, “Democracy is dying at the hands of a concept called ‘stakeholder.’ This has little to do with technology except that people are being led to believe that they are not skilled enough or smart enough to decide for themselves, that technological experts ought to decide on their behalf. We are moving toward not improved democracy (direct or indirect) but closer to an oligarchy of ‘stakeholders.’”

Glyn Moody, a prolific technology journalist, blogger and speaker based in Europe, said, “Lies propagate more easily than truth. It is proving far easier to use the latest technology to undermine the things we thought were safe and stable. It is proving very hard to counter that abuse of technology.”

A computing science professor emeritus from a top U.S. technological university wrote, “As artificial intelligence technologies are employed to create ever-more-realistic disinformation videos and as multiplication of software AI disinformation bots can be replicated and spread easily by individuals or small groups, more and more people will be fooled by disinformation, thus weakening our democracy.”

A professor of sociology at a major California university said, “Powerful governments and their allies are using technology to destroy the concept of a single, accepted truth. While not always succeeding in implanting particular beliefs in the minds of citizens and residents, the constant assault on truth leads to fatigue and resignation, that the actual truth cannot be known, or that all political actors are equally bad. This resignation, moving into apathy, allows those in power to behave badly and centralize their power. The wild card is whether new technologies can detect bots and fake video/audio, and whether mainstream media and social media companies behave responsibly to bring an accepted truth back to life.” Alan Honick, project director for PROSOCIAL, said, “My work is focused on the need to make the internet and associated information technologies trustworthy and reliable. … The most important variable for the question at hand is whether or not information technology can move in the direction of becoming a trusted and reliable source of information, and at present the trend seems to indicate not.”

Annemarie Bridy, professor of law specializing in the impact of new technologies on existing legal frameworks, said, “Social media platforms have a steep hill to climb over the coming years when it comes to dealing effectively with disinformation and coordinated inauthentic behavior aimed at manipulating voters and electoral outcomes. Viral disinformation online will continue to be a serious threat to democratic institutions and the integrity of elections.”

Garth Graham, a longtime leader of Telecommunities Canada, said, “The digital age is characterised by a disintermediation of authority. Authority as a principle for structural organization is disappearing. Democracy is predicated by the agreement to accept authority to represent. Most people are no longer willing to accept that anyone else can represent them.”

Stephanie Fierman, partner, Futureproof Strategies, said, “Many parties have an incentive to issue false and damaging statements and content that people believe. Until we return to a world in which a fact is a fact is a fact, we will see a continuing degradation of truth and the existence of checks and balances, both of which being so vital to the presence of democracy.”

Stuart Umpleby, retired professor of management and director of research at George Washington University, commented, “The operators of social media platforms, such as Facebook, need to take responsibility for content. Otherwise they benefit by distributing falsehoods.”

Viral disinformation online will continue to be a serious threat to democratic institutions and the integrity of elections. Annemarie Bridy

Satish Babu, founding director of the International Centre for Free and Open Source Software, said, “If the world does not recognize the pitfalls and take corrective action, technology is likely to adversely impact the quality and practice of democracy. In particular, the pragmatics of democracy will deteriorate into an ‘anything goes,’ free-for-all fight where artificial intelligence will be used to dig up or magnify or even create antecedents of candidates from historical records and social media will be used to push such ‘facts’ to every citizen.”

A professor of sociology and public policy wrote, “Bot armies and databases of persuadable people that include information on what sets them off empower the worst nationalistic and international actors to tear down democracies. Via technology, people can enter alternate realities where others reinforce their fantasies and strengthen them – flat earthers, those who believe in vaccine and climate conspiracies, moon landing hoaxers and so forth. These are problematic in their own right, but also lend themselves to further manipulation, destruction of trust in institutions, scapegoat seeking, and the rejection of science.”

Filippo Menczer, a grantee in the Knight Foundation’s Democracy Project and professor of informatics and computer science at Indiana University, said, “Technology … mediates our access to information and opinions. This will in part strengthen democracy, for example making it easier to check facts. It will also weaken democracy, as vulnerabilities due to the interplay of cognitive, social and algorithmic biases continue to be exploited and new ones are discovered. On balance, my prediction is that things will get worse before they get better. We are only just beginning discussions about the legal implications of countermeasures, for example the issues related to social bots, disinformation campaigns, suppression of speech and the First Amendment in the U.S.”

Nancy Heltman , manager of a state agency based in the U.S., wrote, “The negative aspects of bots and influencers driving opinions are likely to outweigh the positive aspects of increasing involvement in the political process.”

David Gans, musician, songwriter and journalist, said, “I fear that deliberate falsehoods will continue to crowd objective reality out of the discourse. The social networks seem neither able nor particularly willing to intervene on behalf of the truth, and there are powerful and well-funded entities with a strong interest in misinforming the public.”

A research leader for a U.S. federal agency said, “Working to be respectful of First Amendment rights while not allowing the perpetuation of mis- or disinformation is of critical concern. I don’t expect that to be resolved within the next 10 years. We are living in the times of 50 shades of gray. In many cases, the determination is not black and white. The headline may be misleading, but not entirely untrue. I think that’s appealing to the media right now.”

Kenneth R. Fleischmann, associate professor at the School of Information at the University of Texas-Austin, wrote, “Technology will have complex effects on society that will be difficult to predict, that depend on the decisions of tech companies, governments, the press and citizens. … Trust will be key, not just blind trust, but trust based on transparent provenance of information that can help users exercise their autonomy and agency.”

• “Technology will weaken our ability to come to consensus; by nurturing smaller communities and fringe ideas, it will make compromise and finding a modus vivendi much more difficult.”
• “Social media will continue to erode faith in facts and reason; echo chambers and emotion-driven communications plus security problems in voting will undermine public discourse and faith in elections.”
• “There seems to be no realistic way to check the effects of IT on polarization and misinformation. The true beliefs and actions of political leaders will continue to have decreasing influence on voting.”
• “Foreign countries and hate groups will grow more sophisticated in their ability to infiltrate the web with biased stories and ads designed to suppress or sway voters and negatively impact public opinion.”
• “While it enables voices to be heard, tech has already weakened democracy by enabling governments and corporations to erode privacy and silence those who might otherwise speak out.”
• “We don’t need mass armies anymore. New technology enables centralized control to a degree never imagined before.”
• “In 2030, there will still be splintering and increased political polarization as individuals are able to challenge democratic ideals and influence political processes through anonymous activities.”
• “Democracy is, and will always be, filled with fake news and preposterous bloviation.”

Weakening journalism: There seems to be no solution for problems caused by the rise of social media-abetted tribalism and the decline of trusted, independent journalism

Christopher Mondini, vice president of business engagement for ICANN, commented, “The decline of independent journalism and critical thinking and research skills resulting from easy reliance on the internet make citizens more susceptible to manipulation and demagoguery. A growing proportion of politically active citizens are digital natives with no recollection of life before social media became the primary medium for debate and influence. The pursuit of clicks, retweets and page views encourages extremist or provocative rhetoric. Viral memes and soundbites distract from thoughtful analysis, deliberation and debate. Of course, the vast majority of citizens are not politically active, but they increasingly consume news and adopt a worldview shaped by their online communities. Participation in political processes may rise because of newly inflamed passions brought about by online discourse, but they may crowd out more measured voices.”

Yaakov J. Stein, CTO, RAD Data Communications, based in Israel, responded, “Social media as they are at present have a polarizing effect that destabilizes democracy. The reason is that advertising (and disinformation) is targeted at and tailored to people according to their preexisting views (as predicted based on their social media behavior). This strengthens these preexisting views, reinforces disparagement of those with opposing views and weakens the possibility of being exposed to opposing views. The result is that free press no longer encourages democracy by enabling people to select from a marketplace of ideas. Instead the right to free press is being used to protect the distribution of disinformation and being manipulated to ensure that people are not exposed to the full spectrum of viewpoints. Perhaps an even more insidious result is that people attempting to keep open minds can no longer trust information being offered online, but that free information online has led to the bankruptcy of traditional news outlets that spend resources on fact-checking.”

The decline of independent journalism and critical thinking and research skills resulting from easy reliance on the internet make citizens more susceptible to manipulation and demagoguery. Christopher Mondini

Rey Junco, director of research at CIRCLE in the Tisch College of Civic Life, Tufts University, said, “We can expect that attempts to influence public perceptions of candidates and elections are not only ongoing, but that they will continue to be successful. Technology use by citizens, civil society and governments will first weaken core aspects of democracy and democratic representation before there is a restructuring of technological systems and processes that will then help strengthen core aspects of democracy. There are two issues at play: 1) Ideological self-sorting in online spaces that is bolstered by algorithmic polarization and 2) The relative unwillingness of technology companies to address misinformation on their platforms. Individuals who get their news online (a larger proportion who are young – Pew Research ) choose media outlets that are ideologically similar and rarely read news from the opposing side (Flaxman, Goel, & Rao, 2018). In fact, these individuals are rarely exposed to moderate viewpoints (Flaxman, Goel, & Rao, 2018). Social media, in turn, allow for not just informational self-sorting as with online news, but such self-sorting is bolstered through algorithmic curation of feeds that promotes ideological separation. … Although major technology companies are aware of how misinformation was promoted and propagated through their networks during the 2016 elections and resultant congressional hearings on the topic, little has been done to mitigate the impact of such deliberate spreading of misinformation. Analyses from the security and intelligence communities show that state actors continue their attempts to manipulate public sentiment in social spaces, while the increased polarization of traditional outlets has minimized the impact of these reports. State actors are emboldened by the fact that the United States has not addressed the spread of misinformation through technological change or through public education.”

An associate professor of computer science who previously worked with Microsoft, said, “I worry about three related trends: 1) the increasing decentralization of news generation, 2) the lack of easy-to-use, citizen-facing mechanisms for determining the validity of digital media objects like videos and 3) personalization ecosystems that increase the tendency toward confirmation bias and intellectual narrowing. All three trends decrease the number of informed voters and increase social division. Governments will eventually become less averse to regulating platforms for news generation and news dissemination, but a key challenge for the government will be attracting top tech talent; currently, that talent is mostly lured to industry due to higher salaries and the perception of more interesting work. Increasing the number of technologists in government (both as civil servants and as politicians) is crucial for enabling the government to proactively address the negative societal impacts of technology.”

Kenneth Sherrill, professor emeritus of political science, Hunter College, said, “When I’m pessimistic, I believe that the fragmentation of information sources will interact with selective attention – the tendency only to follow news sources that one expects to agree with. This will generate even greater polarization without any of the moderating effects and respect for democratic processes that come from genuine participation. This can lead to the collapse of democratic processes. Right now, I’m pessimistic. The 2020 election may be the test.”

Eric Keller, lecturer in international relations and U.S. foreign policy, University of Tennessee-Knoxville, wrote, “Social media will heighten the current strong polarization that we already have. This is mainly from ‘information stovepipes’ and mutually reinforcing narratives that demonize the opposition. This creates the danger of democratic institutions being degraded in the name of ‘saving’ them from the opposing political party.”

A Europe-based internet governance advocate and activist said, “If current trends continue, there won’t be a real democracy in most countries by 2030. The internet’s funding model based on targeted advertising is destroying investigative journalism and serious reporting. More and more of what is published is fake news. Citizens cannot make informed decisions in the absence of reliable information.”

The coordinator of a public-good program in Bulgaria wrote, “By 2030 we will still see fighting between small groups and communities that leads to extremes. This will give ground to governments to become more authoritative and build up even stronger control via the internet.”

Bill D. Herman, researcher working at the intersection of human rights and technology said, “The combination of news fragmentation, systematic disinformation and motivated reasoning will continue to spiral outward. We’re headed for a civil war, and the hydra-headed right-wing hate machine is the root of the problem.”

An internet pioneer and technology developer and administrator said, “The foundation of democracy is an informed public. By undermining the economic foundation of journalism and enabling the distribution of disinformation on a mass scale, social media has unleashed an unprecedented assault on the foundation of democracy. The decline of newspapers, to just highlight one downside, has had a quantifiable effect (as measured in bond prices) on governmental oversight and investor trust.”

A professor and expert in learning in 3D environments said, “The explosion in the volume of information has led to the majority of people tending to rely on or trust the major platforms to filter and distribute information rather than managing their own personal learning environments with feeds from trusted independent sources. … As the filtering mechanisms become more sophisticated and more personalized to the individual, the opportunities for the wealthy to manipulate opinion will become even greater. The democratic system depends fundamentally on free access to reliable information, and once this is gone the system will effectively become less and less democratic.”

Mike Douglass, an independent developer, wrote, “Facebook sold people on the idea that a race to accumulate ‘friends’ was a good thing – then people paid attention to what those ‘friends’ said. As we now know, many of those ‘friends’ were bots or malicious actors. If we continue in this manner, then things can only get worse. We need to reestablish the real-life approach to gaining friends and acquaintances. Why should we pay any attention to people we don’t know? Unfortunately, technology allows mis/disinformation to spread at an alarming rate.”

Eric Goldman, professor and director of the High-Tech Law Institute at the Santa Clara University School of Law, commented, “Our politicians have embraced internet communications as a direct channel to lie to their constituents without the fact-checking of traditional media gatekeepers. So long as technology helps politicians lie without accountability, we have little hope of good governance.”

Janet Salmons, consultant with Vision2Lead, said, “The internet, with unregulated power in the hands of commercial entities that have little sense of social responsibility, will continue to unravel Western-style democracies and civic institutions. Companies profiting from sales of personal data or on risky practices have little self-interest in promoting the kinds of digital and advanced literacy people need to discern between fact and fiction. In the U.S., the free press and educational systems that can potentially illuminate this distinction are under siege. As a result, even when presented with the opportunity to vote or otherwise inveigh on decision-making, they do so from weak and uninformed positions. The lowest common denominator, the mass views based on big data, win.”

A researcher and teacher of digital literacies and technologies said, “In the early internet days, there was a claim it would bring a democratization of power. What we’re seeing now is the powerful having larger and more overwhelming voices, taking up more of the space rather than less. This leads to polarization, rather than a free-flowing exchange of ideas. Anyone falling within the middle of a hot issue is declared a traitor by both sides of that issue and is shamed and/or pushed aside.”

An anonymous respondent commented, “Increased engagement is largely a product of the media environment, and – in places where the press is absent, restricted or has become blatantly politicized – that engagement will bear the marks of a distorted information environment.”

Responding too slowly: The speed, scope and impact of the technologies of manipulation may be difficult to overcome as the pace of change accelerates

The core concepts of democracy, representation, elections and tenure of government will be greatly undermined by artificial intelligence. Emmanuel Edet

Kathleen M. Carley, director of the Center for Computational Analysis of Social and Organizational Systems at Carnegie Mellon University, said, “Disinformation and deepfakes in social media as well as the ability of individuals and media-propaganda teams to manipulate both who is and can communicate with whom and who and what they are talking about are undermining democratic principles and practice. Technological assistants such as bots, and information tools such as memes, are being used in ways that exploit features of the social media and web platforms, such as their prioritization rules, to get certain actors and information in front of people. Human cognitive biases, and our cognitive tendencies to view the world from a social or group perspective, are exploited by social media-based information maneuvers. The upshot is that traditional methods for recognizing disinformation no longer work. Strategies for mitigating disinformation campaigns as they play out across multiple media are not well understood. Global policies for 1) responding to disinformation and its creators, and 2) technical infrastructure that forces information to carry its provenance and robust scalable tools for detecting that an information campaign is underway, who is conducting it and why do not exist.”

Jason Hong, professor of Human-Computer Interaction Institute, Carnegie-Mellon University, said, “Basically, it’s 1) easier for small groups of people to cause lots of damage (e.g., disinformation, deepfakes), and 2) easier for those already in power to use these technologies than those who need to organize. In the early days of the internet, new technologies empowered new voices, which led to a lot of utopian views. However, we’ve seen in recent years that these same technologies are now being used to entrench those already in power. We see this in the form of targeted advertising (being used for highly targeted political campaigns), analytics (being used for gerrymandering), disinformation and fake news (being used both domestically and by foreign powers, both unintentionally and intentionally) and filter bubbles where people can seek out just the information that they want to hear. All of this was possible before the internet, but it was harder because of natural barriers. We also haven’t seen the political effects of deepfakes and are just starting to see the effects of widespread surveillance by police forces.”

Mark Raymond, assistant professor of international security, University of Oklahoma, wrote, “Over the next 30 years, democracy faces at least three kinds of technology-based risks. First, actual or apparent manipulation of voting data and systems by state actors will likely undermine trust in democratic processes. Second, social media manipulation (by states and by political campaigns and other nonstate actors) will compound echo chamber effects and increase societal polarization. Decreased trust will heighten social conflict, including, but not limited to, conflict over elections. Third, ‘deepfakes’ will undermine confidence even in video-based media reports. Taken together, there is the risk that these trends could increase the willingness of voters to accept fundamentally authoritarian shifts in their politics. Absent that, it is still likely that increased polarization will make the operation of democratic systems (which are heavily dependent on mutual acceptance of informal norms) incredibly difficult.”

Emmanuel Edet, legal adviser, National Information Technology Development Agency, Nigeria, said, “The core concepts of democracy, representation, elections and tenure of government will be greatly undermined by artificial intelligence. The use of social media coupled with faceless artificial intelligence-driven opinions can manipulate popular opinion that will deny people the right to express their choice for fear of going against the crowd.”

Matt Moore, innovation manager at Disruptor’s Handbook, Sydney, Australia, said, “The issue is not that essential democratic institutions will change, it is that they will not change enough. Elections, voting, representatives, parties – none of these things will go away. They may mean more or less (likely less) than they used to. The number of democracies in the world is likely to decrease as weak or destabilised states fall into authoritarian populism. Western democracies will continue to age and grow more economically unequal. States like China will continue to grow in power, often using new technologies to control their populations. Everyone is talking up the potential of blockchain for democracy. This is mostly nonsense. The issue is not that people do not have the opportunity to vote enough. It is that no one really knows what that vote means. Many of those who vote – or rather, who do not vote – have no sense of what their vote means. Many of those who are voted for, also do not know what that vote means – which is why they rely on polling and focus groups. Deliberative democracy offers a potential new form of political engagement and decision-making – if (and this is a big ‘if’) it can be made to work beyond isolated experiments.”

Mike O’Connor, retired, a former member of the ICANN policy development community, said, “There is cause for hope – but it’s such a fragile flower compared to the relative ease with which the negative forces prevail. ‘A lie can get around the world while truth is getting its boots on’ – pick your attribution.”

A longtime technology journalist for a major U.S. news organization commented, “Our laws and Constitution are largely designed for a world that existed before the industrial age, not to mention the information age. These technologies have made the nation-state obsolete and we have not yet grasped the ways they facilitate antidemocratic forces.”

Hume Winzar, associate professor and director of the business analytics undergraduate program at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia, said, “Corporations and government have the information and the technology to create highly targeted messages designed to favour their own agendas. We, as citizens, have demonstrated that we rarely look beyond our regular news sources, and often use easily digested surrogates for news (comedy shows, social media). We also seem to have very short memories, so what was presented as a scandal only a year ago is usual, even laudable, now. … None of this is new. The British and the U.S. have been manipulating foreign news and propaganda for many decades with great success, and the church before them. But now the scale and the speed of that manipulation is perhaps too great to combat.”

Ian Fish, ICT professional and specialist in information security based in Europe, said, “I expect the imbalance of power between the major global corporations and democratic national governments will increase to the detriment of democracy. I also expect non-democratic governments’ disruption of democratic norms to increase faster than the democracies can react.”

Puruesh Chaudhary, a futurist based in Pakistan, said, “Democracy needs to develop the capacity to negotiate in the interest of an ordinary citizen, who may not have direct influence on how key decisions play out in geopolitics but is invariably affected by it. The democratic institutions have to have systems that operate at the pace of technological advancements that have an impact on the society.”

Trust suffers when people’s infatuation with technology entices them away from human-to-human encounters

Several respondents argued there were circumstances when humans’ “slowness” was an advantage, but that technology was thwarting that side of life. They believe that a major cause of the loss of trust is the fact that many people are spending more time online in often-toxic environments than they spend in face-t0-face, empathy-enabling non-digital social situations.

Angela Campbell, professor of law and co-director, Institute for Public Representation at Georgetown University, said, “We are just seeing the beginning of how technology is undercutting democracy and social relations necessary to a democratic society. We don’t have good ways of telling what is true and what is false, what is opinion and what is fact. Most people do not yet understand how power technologies (especially combined with a lack of privacy protections) allow them to be manipulated. In addition, as people spend more time using technology, they spend less time interacting with other people (in person) and learning important social skills like respect and empathy.”

Yves Mathieu, co-director at Missions Publiques, Paris, France, responded, “Technology creates new forms of communications and messaging that can be very rough and divisive. Some contributors are rude, violent, expressing very poor comments, insulting or threatening elected citizens. There will be a strong need for face-to-face format, as the technologies will not allow process of deliberation. There will be need for regular meetings with voters, in meetings where people will have the time and the possibility to exchange arguments and increase their understanding of each other’s position. Being associated with media, this will reduce the divide that we know today, as it will increase mutual understanding.”

An anonymous respondent commented, “The expanded use of technology with respect to the democratic processes will tend to weaken one of the most important aspects of democracy and the democratic processes – the use of technology instead of person-to-person dialogue seriously degrades (or removes altogether) meaningful dialogue and exchange of ideas between individuals. When individuals use technology to express their political views/opinions instead of having direct human interactions, these views tend to be more extremely stated than if that person is speaking a view/opinion to another person. Also, in many cases, if someone else expresses a different view from what the original individual expressed, the first person is much less likely to pay any attention to a view expressed using technology than if that view were expressed in a person-to-person discussion. Additionally, the increased use of technology for analyzing segments of society to ‘shape’ delivery of messages for particular segments will result in an increase of messages that distort the reality of the message or distort the results of what the message is describing.”

The future will include a complex interplay of increased online activity but also increased skepticism of those virtual interactions and an enhanced appreciation of offline information and conversations. Melissa Michelson

A futurist and consultant said, “Democracy currently has a crisis in global leadership. Without significant change in 2020, for which I am hopeful, I can’t hold a lot of hope for democracy in 2030. I’m afraid the question is not what will change, but what must change. Without changes in democratic institutions, the future of democracy itself is in question. There is an urban/rural split at work in tandem with a severe disparity in the distribution of wealth – with climate change overshadowing it all. Technology will have a hand in providing as well as impeding solutions.”

Arthur Asa Berger, professor emeritus of communications, San Francisco State University, commented, “People who use Facebook are affected in negative ways by a ‘net effect,’ in which they exhibit impulsivity, grandiosity, etc., as explained in my book, ‘Media and Communication Research Methods’ (Sage). Some young people text 100 times a day and never talk on the phone with others, leading to a radical estrangement from others and themselves. The internet is used by hate groups, neofascists, right-wing ideologues, terrorist organizations and so on.”

An anonymous U.S. policy and strategy professional said, “Technology allows the creation of a bullying environment that polarizes people to the point at which they do not attempt to understand other opinions or views, weakening public discourse and driving outrage and attacks on minority views.”

Japheth Cleaver, a systems engineer, commented, “At the moment, the major social media networks function not by neutrally and dispassionately connecting disparate communicators (like the phone system), but are designed reinforce engagement to sell as many targeted ads as possible. This reinforcement creates resonant effects throughout a society’s culture, and in-person contextual interaction drops away in favor of the efficiencies that electronic communication offers, but without any of the risk of the ‘bubble’ of the like-minded being dropped, as that would hurt engagement. Internet as communications overlay is fine. Internet as a replacement for public space seems detrimental.”

Melissa Michelson, professor of political science, Menlo College, and author, “Mobilizing Inclusion: Redefining Citizenship Through Get-Out-the-Vote Campaigns,” said, “The future will include a complex interplay of increased online activity but also increased skepticism of those virtual interactions and an enhanced appreciation of offline information and conversations. As more adults are digital natives and the role of technology in society expands and becomes more interconnected, more and more aspects of democracy and political participation will take place online. At the same time, the increasing sophistication of deepfakes, including fake video, will enhance the value of face-to-face interactions as unfiltered and trustworthy sources of information.”

• “Unless there is transparency, tech will be the new digital atomic bomb – it has moved faster than individuals’ or the law’s understanding of its unintended consequences and nefarious uses.”
• “At the current rate of disregard and lack of responsibility by those who own and run large tech companies, we are headed toward a complete lack of trust in what is factual information and what is not.”
• “Public institutions move slowly and thoughtfully. People doing nefarious things move more quickly, and with the internet, this will continue to challenge us.”
• “It is the personal and social norms that we’re losing, not the technology itself, that is at the heart of much of our problems. People are a lot less civil to each other in person now than they were just a few decades ago.”
• “More access to data and records more quickly can help citizens be informed and engaged, however more information can flood the market, and people have limited capacity/time/energy to digest information.”

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Home — Essay Samples — Government & Politics — Democracy — Digital Democracy and Internet Freedom

Digital Democracy and Internet Freedom

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Published: Dec 5, 2018

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CSS 2022 Solved Essay | Digital Democracy: Social Media and Public Participation | CSS and PMS Solved Essays by Sir Syed Kazim Ali Students

Maleeha Sattar has attempted the essay “ Digital Democracy: Social Media and Public Participation ” on the given pattern, which Sir  Syed Kazim Ali  teaches his students. Sir Syed Kazim Ali has been Pakistan’s top English writing and CSS, PMS essay and precis coach with the highest success rate of his students. The essay is uploaded to help other competitive aspirants learn and practice essay writing techniques and patterns.

1- Introduction

• ✓Technology, indeed, advancing and improving worldwide with its diverse field of novelty
• ✓Forming digital spaces, like Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, etc., broadly encouraging the politically aware public to articulate their views openly while experiencing their freedom of expression right
• ✓Public participation changing the picture of democracy by making it more digital and strengthening it via using social media platforms across the globe
• ✓Therefore, the leader-voter bond formation, youth’s indulgence in welfare activities lessening leaders’ burden, and promulgation of transparency via e-governance initiatives by using digital tools, conjointly giving rise to digital democracy across the boards

2- Debunking the term ‘Digital Democracy’ from the broader perspective

3- How has public participation strengthened digital democracy via social media?

• Case in point:   According to the PEW Research Center, “74pc of the adults in the United States (US) who use social media platforms get news from them”, highlighting the role of social media in disseminating information
• Case in point: The mobilization and activism by people, physically and digitally, to support social causes in the form of movements, like the Arab Spring, Me Too and Black Lives Matter movements, to flourish digital democracy at all fronts is a glaring example of the case
• Case in point: The hashtag “MyCultureMyPride” has aided people on social media platforms, like YouTube and Instagram, to represent their cultures by sharing their cultural videos and pictures, further strengthening pluralism across the boards
• Case in point: According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), “White House utilizes social media platforms to engage citizens in discussions and gathers public input on policy issues.”
• Case in point: The online campaigns on social media platforms by infuriated public in the Zainab rape case, helping in the formation of the child abuse and rape-related laws in Pakistan, bolstering the power of digital democracy in the country
• Case in point: The enhanced usage of Twitter accounts by the leaders, like all Pakistan’s political parties’ prominent leaders, showing their online presence, helping them disseminate their parties’ ideology among the masses
• Case in point: According to the United Nations, Coronavirus related updates, the organization has highlighted ten young people’s names from all over the world led the coronavirus response by developing their digital communities to tackle and control the spread of the pandemic at that time
• Case in point: According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) report, “Those countries that focus on e-governance initiatives for development projects have seen improvement in their democracy indexes, along with the enhanced public participation.”

4- Case studies of different countries where public participation has strengthened digital democracy via social media

• ✓ Case study of Taiwan
• ✓ Case study of the US
• ✓ Case study of Pakistan

5- Critical Analysis

6- Conclusion

 Technology has advanced and improved worldwide with its diverse field of novelty. Additionally, the revolutionization of the modes of communication and masses’ interaction in the digital age with the advancements in social media platforms has changed the landscape of countries’ democratic processes and, thus, governing patterns. Indeed, forming digital spaces like Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, etc., has encouraged the politically aware public to articulate their views openly while experiencing their freedom of expression broadly. Consequently, public participation has changed the picture of democracy by making it more digital and strengthening it via using social media platforms across the globe. Looking at the intense magnitude of digital democracy in today’s world, civic engagement by using social media has enlarged the information pool for the masses, shaped their opinion towards their leaders and promulgated digital democracy, particularly. Besides this, social media’s activism and cultural assimilation practices, by people, have also contributed to the flourishing digital democracy on all fronts. Despite engaging citizens in decision-making procedures, political accountability via online campaigns has also lessened the trust deficit between the public and stakeholders, fostering digital democracy in societies. Therefore, the leader-voter bond formation, youth’s indulgence in welfare activities reducing leaders’ burden, and promulgation of transparency via e-governance initiatives by using digital tools, conjointly, have given rise to digital democracy across the boards. This essay highlights how public participation has strengthened digital democracy via social media.

Before jumping towards the maxim of how public participation has strengthened digital democracy via social media, the understanding of the term ‘Digital Democracy’ in the broader perspective holds the greatest importance. Indeed, the jargon encapsulates the concept denoting the introduction of digital infrastructures in the organizations’ structure via reforms to establish a more effective and unrestricted democratic setup, building the collective government body best suited for the efficient conduct of the current state of affairs. Speaking in a neutral vein, digital democracy has become a significant factor in the social media age, as it promulgates transparency in the institutions by empowering the citizen-to-citizen contact at large. Moreover, it helps incorporation and inclusion of different ideas and viewpoints in the overall functioning of the government system and gives rise to a new form of business-oriented teamwork-based environment in the system, along with technology-led public management skills of the leaders at length.

Talking about the maxim of how public participation has strengthened digital democracy via social media, it, in fact, has increased civic engagement for access to information on social media platforms, greatly influencing and shaping public opinion. For instance, according to the PEW Research Center, “74 per cent of the adults in the United States (US) who use social media platforms get news from them”, highlighting the role of social media in the dissemination of information related to the ongoing events at the global front. As a result, they build their opinion and act accordingly for the promulgation of democracy in their respective domains on the basis of that information. Thus, the elevated level of public participation has helped foster digital democracy in the countries through the productive use of social media.

In addition, creating awareness among the masses for the achievement of basic human rights also strengthens digital democracy via the use of social media. Indeed, it has shown in the mobilization and activism by people, physically and digitally too, to support social causes in the form of movements, like the Arab Spring, Me Too and Black Lives Matter movements, to flourish digital democracy at all fronts is a glaring example of the case. In this way, they could make public officials aware of the sentiments of the downtrodden segments of society. And via activism, they could seek social justice in all directions, which is necessary for the promotion of digital democracy worldwide.

Besides, the public actively participates in the fostering of cultural diversity via social media platforms, which is mandatory for flourishing digital democracy in all domains. For instance, the hashtag “MyCultureMyPride” has aided people on social media platforms, like YouTube and Instagram, to represent their cultures by sharing their cultural videos and pictures, further strengthening pluralism across the boards. By doing this, virtual people-to-people contact via social media enhances, and the public becomes a capable force that could overthrow power centralization in all political spheres. As a result, digital democracy takes its toll in full swing and negates all authoritative, feudal practices broadly.

Apart from it, active public participation with the productive use of social media platforms has compelled political heads of the states to engage citizens in discussions related to policymaking. According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), “The White House utilizes social media platforms to engage citizens in discussions and gathers public input on policy issues.” It clearly shows that government institutes, by following the general will principles, also contribute to the advancement of digital democracy by including active and responsible citizens in decision-making. Therefore, digital democracy has smoothened due to the social media platforms in today’s world.

Likewise, the public’s active participation through the usage of social media in the online campaign’s form has also reinforced the political accountability of the officials. Such as the online campaigns on social media platforms that infuriated the public in the Zainab rape case, helping in the formation of child abuse and rape-related laws in Pakistan, and bolstering the power of digital democracy in the country. After accomplishing this, child abuse has ceased for a longer period of time in Pakistan, and consequently, the incident has helped in bridging the gap between the public and stakeholders. Hence, public participation has helped maintain a transparency level in the country, furthering digital democracy with the help of social media.

Similarly, the zestful usage of social media by political leaders has boosted their one-on-one interaction with their vigilant voter diaspora . Illustratively, the enhanced usage of Twitter accounts by the leaders, like all of Pakistan’s political parties’ prominent leaders, shows their online presence, helping them disseminate their parties’ ideology among the masses. In return, the public, influenced by their views, supports them blindly in the electoral campaigns and rallies. In this manner, they openly demand them in office as their representative running the government functions for the effective development of digital democracy in the country.

 Moving ahead towards another justification proving the maxim, the augmented youth efforts during crisis situations using digital tools have kicked the digital democracy’s gradients upstairs. According to the United Nations coronavirus-related updates, the organization has highlighted ten young people’s names from all over the world who led the coronavirus response by developing their digital communities to tackle and control the spread of the pandemic at that time. Due to their diligent participation, the countries’ leaders were capable of tackling the birth of new evils and focusing on the achievement of Sustainable Development’s seventeen goals (17 SDGs) with a collective efforts strategy instead of a man show. Hence, vigilant public participation helps elevate the digital democracy rates via using social media.

Last but not least, the masses’ social involvement has stimulated the effectiveness of e-governance, giving rise to digital democracy in the contemporary world. According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) report, “Those countries that focus on e-governance initiatives for their multidimensional development, along with the enhanced public participation, have seen improvement in their democracy indexes.” By analyzing the facts, the countries’ people actively participate and gain information from their governance portals and question the validity of the officials’ actions, too, as they have the right to information as an accountability card for the enhancement of their country’s institutional transparency. Therefore, public participation indeed aids in strengthening digital democracy via social media.

The above discussion could be emboldened by giving examples of some developing countries where public participation has strengthened digital democracy via social media. The very first one in the row is the case study of the country Taiwan. Without any doubt, the country’s officials have developed the e-petition platform to include its citizens in decision-making. As a result, the empowered youth have actively taken part in the resolution of the Uber, a ride-sharing app, issue , further enhancing their consensus and participation in the country’s legal working and app launching activities. Thus, Taiwan’s public involvement has invigorated the country’s digital democracy through social media platforms.

Second, the United States also explains the strength of civic engagement by proactively using social media platforms, which has augmented digital democracy in the country. Delineating their citizens’ activity, the masses have actively used social media platforms during the US’s 2016 elections . In fact, they have shown their sentiments via slogan raising and hashtag development on their Twitter accounts to dominate their allegiance to their leaders. Through their online voting system, they have also ensured transparency in the voter turnout rates. Therefore, digital democracy has been raised to its height via social media in the country by the public.

Lastly, Pakistan’s case study has significantly outlined the increasing support of digital democracy by the public’s social media using capacity in the current global environment, which can be gauged by the availability ratio of the internet in the country. According to the Digital Pakistan report (2022), “61 million people out of 220 million population are internet users.” It clearly shows that the public has enthusiastically used social media platforms to raise their concerns and get connected with their leaders, the necessary element in the promulgation of digital democracy in the country’s multiple domains. Hence, the public’s interest has compelled the officials to ensure democracy in the country in today’s social media age.

In a critical diagnosis, digital democracy, standing on the pillars of social media platforms, has undoubtedly been promulgated by productive public participation. Speaking in a positive manner, the concept has gained so much popularity among the masses that it helps foster diverse perspectives in societies and encourages people to work collectively in a win-win situation instead of relying on self-help. However, the enhanced public participation that has strengthened digital democracy via social media could be proved as a double-edged sword in the coming future in the form of propaganda games, further raising prisoner’s dilemma for the future world order. But for now, social engagement has always borne fruits for society by boosting digital democracy in a positive way, paving the countries’ way towards development.

In conclusion, using social media platforms actively by the global citizens in the global village has raised the standards of democracy in the twenty-first century. Surely, the inclusion of digital telecommunication tools in the government structure has raised the living standards of the masses and ensured the active accountability of the leaders holding public offices. Furthermore, it also helped the masses become well aware of their rights and their timely dispensation, boosting the levels of digital democracy and taking it to an advanced level. In the end, digital democracy by using social media has strengthened due to the continuous struggle of the public, seeking pluralism by accepting diversity at all fronts. 

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Democracy, A.I., and the Future of Civil Rights

Shanthi Bolla

Senior program manager, tom latkowski, program associate, zaki barzinji, senior director.

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Last month, Aspen Digital brought together over 30 leaders from a diverse range of backgrounds including tech, government, elections administration, and civil rights for a frank discussion about the impact of technology on historically marginalized communities, and their access to vote. Entitled,  “Algorithmic Suppression: Democracy, AI, and the Future of Civil Rights,” our roundtable examined new forms of democratic suppression enabled by AI and other technologies.

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Shanthi originally joined Aspen Digital as a Program Manager in fall of 2022. As Senior Program Manager, she works on special projects across the teams with a focus on empowered communities to provide project management, research and operations support. Before joining Aspen Digital, Shanthi worked for 6 years in the tech industry in various public policy roles focused on stakeholder engagement at the state and local levels after beginning her career as a community organizer. Shanthi is currently based in New York City. 

Tom Latkowski is a Program Associate with Aspen Digital’s AI & Democracy team. Tom previously worked as a Google Public Policy Fellow at Aspen Digital, and has interned at the White House Domestic Policy Council and the Office of Senator Dianne Feinstein. Tom has previously worked on campaign finance reform, including writing a book on democracy vouchers, and co-founding an organization to advocate for campaign finance reform in Los Angeles. Tom holds a Masters of Public Policy from Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy and a B.A. and B.S. in Political Science and Applied Mathematics from UCLA.

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