Designing Digital Democracy: Student Visions for Participatory Politics

As part of the ‘Digital Media and Online Politics’ course in the Political Science Master’s programme, taught by Dr Julia Trzcińska and Dr Róża Norström, students developed projects focusing on the challenges of contemporary digital politics.

The main task for both teams was to develop a concept for an app that would support the development of participatory democracy, while also addressing the biggest challenges of digital politics: disinformation, clicktivism and a lack of transparency. Students discussed how they could create an online space that would invite users to help shape it together.

During the semester, two projects were developed: EasyCivic and e. eu, which combine features enabling discussion among citizens, the submission of proposals and contact with politicians, whilst ensuring the protection of personal data and the transparency of the algorithms used.