Commission on Democracy and Technology in Europe
For the past few months, users have been sharing their thoughts on our website on the future of democracy and the role of technology in it. Many have shared concerns about the effects of technological change:
- Social media may be undermining the historic role of politicians to speak on behalf of their constituencies.
- Twitter favours brief writing and hence brief thinking, which may be leading to a deterioriation in democratic debates.
- The risk that the so-called ‘echo chamber effect’ undermines balanced and reasoned public debate.
But there have also been lots of ideas about how technology can help European democracies become more responsive and dynamic such as:
- The use of technology to better inform citizens and include civil society in decision-making.
- Sybil-proof identity verification for social network accounts operated by local municipalities.
- The development of non-profit personal data cooperatives as a response to the domination of Big Tech.
Now we want users help in shaping the final report. What do you think should be included?
We are opening up the report writing process and inviting you to take part and feed in your views. Work with us on a collaborative draft in Google Docs – comment, edit and get an insight into the black box of think tank research.
We’ll also be incorporating the most interesting submissions from the previous phase. If you’d like to make a submission, you can still do so here.
How To Join
To access the documents, you will need a Gmail account and to be registered as a user on demtech.chathamhouse.org. Each research question has its own working document, accessed via the Research Questions page.
The process is open to everyone. We look forward to working with you!