e-Democracy, e-Participation and e-Voting

Description

The traditional contours of democracy are being reshaped by digital innovations, where citizen engagement becomes a dynamic force, and where the very act of voting undergoes a transformative evolution. While different solutions for facilitating citizen engagement are being adopted at very different levels of administration, academia aims to stand at the forefront of this democratic revolution by delving into the nuances of e-democracy and technologically mediated citizen participation with an analytical lens.

Researchers have been focusing already for some time on the adoption and implementation processes of different digital democracy tools, as well as to its impacts on democratic principles and potential for an inclusive participation. Even that, given the evolving nature of technology and the numerous ongoing democratic processes where it is being implemented, the field offers a large number of challenges that are still not covered. Transparency, accountability, security, ethics or trust management represent a shortlist of them. Moreover, the field of digital democracy involves many stakeholders that might influence the outcomes of its digitization process: malicious actors spreading misinformation, decision-makers in need of evidence-based knowledge, activists demanding different forms of political engagement or citizens expecting convenient forms of participation. As a result, this research field has a great potential given the amount of open research avenues available and the different theoretical frameworks to tackle the.

The governance of digital democracy, hence, appears as one of the hot challenges of our current days and, as the digital threads weave through the fabric of democracy, it is imperative that academics collaborate to address the sociotechnical and ethical considerations that continuously arise. This mini track aims to provide the necessary room for those debates to happen, paying particular attention to the challenges arising from the different forms in which digital democratic processes are occurring, social participation and elections.

As a result, areas of focus and interest to this mini track include, but are not limited, to the following topics:

• User experience in e-democracy platforms
• Information accessibility and inclusivity
• (Dis)Information management and consumption in digital democracy
• Digital Literacy and Citizen Empowerment
• Impact of Social Media on Political Participation
• Trust and Distrust in e-Democracy systems
• Security in e-Democracy systems (actual and perceived)
• Algorithmic Bias and Fair Decision-Making
• Privacy Concerns in e-Democracy
• Blockchain Technology uses in e-Democracy
• Immersive Technology uses in e-Democracy
• Artificial Intelligence uses in e-Democracy
• Human-Computer Interaction in Civic Engagement
• Cross-Cultural Studies in e-Democracy Adoption
• Impact of Information Campaigns on political Behavior
• Evaluating Digital Deliberation Platforms
• Technological transformation of democracy models
• Collaborative Governance in E-Democracy
• E-Participation in Local Governance
• Policy-Makers’ use of e-democracy

Minitrack Leaders

David Duenas-Cid serves as an Associate Professor and holds the position of Director at Kozminski University's Public Sector Data-Driven Technologies Research Center (Pub-Tech). His academic journey encompasses a prestigious H2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Widening Fellowship at Gdansk University of Technology (2022-23) and roles as a Senior Researcher at the Johan Skytte Institute of Political Studies at the University of Tartu, a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Ragnar Nurkse Department of Innovation and Governance of Tallinn University of Technology, and a Postdoctoral Researcher and Lecturer at the Social and Business Research Lab of the Universitat Rovira i Virgili.

Having earned his PhD in the analysis of the Politicization of Social Movements, he later achieved a Habilitation in Political Sciences from Adam Mickiewicz University in Poland, focusing on "Res Publica Digitalis: Society and Politics in the Digital Public Space." His current research portfolio delves into Digital Sociology, Public Administration, Democracy, and Elections, specifically within the realms of Electronic Democracy and Internet Voting. His ongoing investigation revolves around the nuanced processes of creating Trust and Distrust in Internet Voting, supported by funding from the H2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Programme and the Narodowe Centrum Nauki, OPUS Program.

Beyond his academic pursuits, David Duenas-Cid is actively engaged in leadership roles. He presides over the Thematic Group on Digital Sociology at the International Sociological Association, holds the position of General Chair at the E-Vote-ID Conference, serves as Program Chair at the Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research, and contributes as an Academic Editor at Internet Policy Review. Demonstrating a robust international orientation, he brings extensive research and lecturing experience to diverse regions, including Estonia, Poland, Spain, Georgia, Hungary, and El Salvador

Uwe Serdült is a Full Professor in the College of Information Science and Engineering at Ritsumeikan University, Japan. He is also a principal investigator with a portfolio of e-democracy projects at the Center for Democracy Studies Aarau (ZDA) at the University of Zurich, Switzerland. He studied History, Political Science, and Computer Science at the Universities of Zurich, Geneva, and Pittsburgh PA. In April 2024, he became the head of the Digital Governance Systems Lab at the Osaka-Ibaraki Campus of Ritsumeikan University in Japan.

Many of his research projects are conducted with an explicit interdisciplinary focus, integrating political science, information science and legal studies. His research focus is on empirically studying e-governance systems such as e-petition platforms, internet voting, and voting advice applications, often applying machine learning techniques and natural language processing. During his career he initiated or was involved in building working software prototypes for internet voting (baloti), voting advice applications (Fokus Japan), and a process tracking tool (APES) which is currently being used in a Horizon Europe project for which he serves as a work package leader. Also, he initiated the DigiPart-Index measuring digital political participation options in all Swiss cantons. The index was recently extended to a representative sample of 40 countries.

He has published 140 scholarly papers, 60 in peer-reviewed scientific journals (eg. Government Information Quarterly, Policy & Internet, Electoral Studies) and conferences (EGOV, ICEDEG, ICEGOV, E-VOTE-ID etc.). He founded and for ten years chaired ASNA, a leading social network analysis conference. Over the years, he served as track chair for E-VOTE-ID and as a PC member for many other conferences. He and his DigiPart-Index team received a Best Paper Award at the ICEGOV 2022 for a novel approach to measure digital political participation opportunities.

Anthony Simonofski is Assistant Professor of Digital Transformation at the Business Administration department in the University of Namur, Belgium. He is also the co-founder of the Research Center on Management of Information and Digital Transformation (MINDIT) in the Namur Digital Institute. In 2019, he received his PhD in Business Economics from KU Leuven and his PhD in Computer Science from UNamur.

His research and teaching focus on the digital transformation of organizations through several lenses, including public sector transformation (smart cities, open data, digital government, e-participation), user participation, digital strategy, agile transformation, business process management and enterprise architecture. He mainly employs qualitative, action research, and design science methods to study those phenomena.

He has published over 40 peer-reviewed scientific papers in leading journals (International Journal of Information Management, Government Information Quarterly, Computers in Human Behavior, Business & Information Systems Engineering, …) and conferences (HICSS, AMCIS, DGO, EGOV, …). Over the years, he served as track or minitrack chair at various conferences (AMCIS, RCIS, DGO, EGOV). He received the Best Paper Award at the IEEE CBI in 2017 for his work about citizen participation in smart cities.