Intelligent Engagement

Abstract

Chapter 10 analyzes the relationship between citizen participation and citizen expertise, particularly in the political domain. New types of intelligent citizen engagement are emerging like mass deliberation, mass voting, and social media activism. Mass deliberation describes the evolvement of new democratic institutions that aim to recruit citizens in direct participation. Two examples, the Citizens' Council in Ostbelgien and the online ideation platform Better Reykjavik, are part of this new trend. Mass voting is another type of citizen participation that has become increasing popularity because of the internet. Technological platforms make it easy to let everyone vote, such as the Five Star Movement does with its party members in Italy. Social media activism has also become increasingly important. This involves both informal political debate and political activism, which the social movement My Stealthy Freedom exemplifies. All these CI projects build on different conception of participatory diversity. In addition, transparent collective work is important in promoting intelligent engagement between large groups, both in scientific work like crowd peer review or political processes like the Icelandic constitutional experiment. However, there is a concern about the threats against democracy that dysfunctional engagement pose such as fake news and echo chambers in social media.