Beyond a ‘One-Size Fits-All’-Approach for Digital Participation Tools
The needs of youth are often overlooked when local governments implement digital participation instruments. Cato Waeterloos is a postdoctoral researcher at KU Leuven and an affiliate researcher at Ghent University, argues for a strategy of targeted diversity.
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Democratic Reform Cannot Ignore Reasons for Unequal Participation
In her answer to Julian Burrett's guest article, Juliane Baruck agrees with the problem identified but argues that Julian Burrett’s solution ignores the issue of unequal participation.
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Citizens Should be Able to Direct Parliamentarians
Julian Burrett is approaching his third UK election and is offering voters a direct say in the UK Parliamentary process via online platform valuemy.vote.
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Decent Digital ID – I Want It and Democracy Needs It
While we weren’t looking, identity systems for now critical parts of our lives became an absolute mess. Perhaps it’s time we did something about that.
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The World According to AI
Politicians are automatically men, and women are overtly sexualised: Our experiences with the biases of AI image generators.
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Our Favorite Books, Series and Podcasts of 2022
The team looks back at the books, TV series and podcasts that inspired them the most in 2022.
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The team tested how ChatGPT could be useful for Democracy Technologies
ChatGPT is the latest natural language chat program out of AI research lab OpenAI. Having taken the internet by storm with a surprising array of capabilities, we decided to see what the impact on democracy (and our work) might be, by asking it a few questions of our own.
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Elon Musk’s Lessons in Democracy
Elon Musk has been staging his takeover of Twitter as an exercise in radical democracy. The resulting chaos is further proof that the regulation of social media belongs in public hands.
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Bolsonaro’s Lies about Voting Machines Threaten Democracy
Trump has done it, Borisov has done it, and for a while now Bolsonaro has been doing it too: Spreading lies about voting machines to feed doubts about the outcome of a democratic election.
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AI Have a Dream
Artificial intelligence can certainly play a supporting role in our democratic future, but it won't be the main character.
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Reluctant Digital Immigrants: Why So Many in Government Resist e–Democracy
e-democracy has tremendous potential to close the democratic gap. Yet many in government see it as a threat to familiar ways of doing things.
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Democratic Innovation in the EU Goes Local
Vice-President of the European Commission, Dubravka Šuica, writes about the lasting inpact of the Conference on the Future of Europe on EU Democracy. She outlines the important role of local administrations as well as digital participation tools in this.
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Why Open Source Software for Public Institutions is a Bad Idea
Expecting future generations to simply devote their time and energy to the creation of amazing products and then simply give them away without any compensation is not only naive, it is senseless. Big challenges require big solutions, and these cannot be tackled by a decentralized team without any clear focus or goal.
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Why Open Source is a Must for Digital Participation Platforms
Public interest needs to be at the heart of every decision we make regarding democracy technologies. Our democracies depend on the trust of voters and their faith in the democratic process. The best way to cultivate trust is through openness. That’s why open source is the natural fit for digital democratic solutions.
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Why its Time for a New Approach to Civic Tech
As the leader of an organisation working every day on democratic innovation and citizen participation, it feels like the wave of civic tech innovation we saw at the start of the decade has lost momentum.
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