Opinion on democracy in the digital age

Abstract

Democracy is in peril. Recent years have seen profound challenges to it, including the spread of misinformation, disinformation and otherwise misleading information (all of which we subsume under the label ‘harmful’ information). Together with other injustices, they increase political polarisation and populism and they widen inequalities, thus jeopardising democracy. Certain configurations of digital technologies contribute to these challenges, even if they are not their sole cause. At the same time, other ways of using digital technologies may help us to address some of these problems. For example, digital voting, while making it easier for some people to vote, can also produce formal or informal barriers for those who are less digitally literate, or who have limited digital resources. [excerpt from the preamble]