Citizens’ trust in democratic institutions is reaching new lows globally. The trust deficit primarily affects governments and representative institutions, but also media outlets and platforms spreading misinformation. In parallel, new forms of digital populism—bots, fake news, micro-targeting—are on the rise, degrading public debate and disempowering citizens and their voices. In the age of social media, paradoxically, citizens’ isegoria—the equal right to participate in the public debate—could come to an end.
Yet, these trends also coexist with ongoing experimenting and testing of innovative tools and strategies for civic action, such as crowdsourced data curation, deliberation, or decision making. A new generation of civic technologies is now enabling citizens to blend offline and online resources to achieve new goals and reinvent democracy in the 21st century. The interplay between people, civic technologies and open data can create participatory ecosystems where collective knowledge emerges and further civic action develops. Our book examines these formations as ‘linked democracy ecosystems’ and analyses their emergence and governing principles.
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