Building a Comprehensive Framework of Digital Democracy

As the lead of INNOVADE’s Work Package 2, Christian is tasked with leading the development of the conceptual groundwork that will underpin the entire project:

"Work Package 2 establishes the foundation of the Innovate project. [...] The Innovate project is about developing new digital democracy tools that are helping us to enhance the public sphere and democracy in Europe. So for advancing digital democracy, we first of all need to understand what is digital democracy really all about."

This foundational approach requires examining various models of democracy and their implications for digital participation:

"It's not so easy to define a concept like democracy in one sentence. What is democracy really all about? There are various models and approaches to democracy. For example, direct democracy and representative democracy. There is deliberative democracy and participatory democracy. [...] So we are concerned about what democracy really means in Work Package 2, what models there are about democracy, what dimensions of democracy there are, and we want to come up with a comprehensive understanding and models of digital democracy."

Addressing Contemporary Challenges to Democracy

Christian highlights the critical context in which digital democracy tools must operate, identifying several threats to democratic processes:

"Democracy is under threat today. [...] There are various trends in society that are questioning democracy. Think, for example, of fake news and misinformation that is spread, so-called filter bubbles and echo chambers in political communication online where people only talk to people who are like-minded politically, but not to those who have opposing points of view."

These challenges extend to broader societal trends that impact political discourse:

"There is what some call post-truth politics, where people are no longer so much interested in what the facts are in society, but they are led by emotions and what they like and what they dislike. And then there is a rise of authoritarian politics, of far-right extremism, even of fascist movements that are questioning democracy."

Methodological Approach and Practical Applications

To develop a robust framework, the research team will employ comprehensive desk research that examines existing scholarly work:

"In terms of methodology, [...] this is really a foundational work package. So we will use desk research. We will review the state of the art. There is lots of empirical research about digital democracy or on issues such as electronic participation, electronic voting, digital activism, which is also called cyber activism. And various other aspects which are sub-aspects of digital democracy."

The work extends to examining how digital tools transform core democratic concepts:

"Also it has to do with notions such as the public sphere. What happens if the public sphere becomes digital? There's the notion of deliberation. There are theories of deliberative democracy. [...] What happens to political communication and deliberation, political communication about democracy when we involve online tools?"

Ultimately, this theoretical groundwork will directly inform the development of practical democratic tools:

"These principles that we will generate, a new model of digital democracy that we will generate, will then feed later in the project into the development of a new digital democracy application that goes beyond the state of the art and that will be tested in two European municipalities. [...] For developing a new app that enhances digital democracy at the local, regional, national and international level, we first of all need to understand what digital democracy is all about and what we already know about digital democracy."

Christian's work illustrates how rigorous academic research serves as an essential foundation for creating effective digital tools that can strengthen democratic participation in contemporary European society.

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