Digital Democracies: At the intersection between technology, democracy and rights in the EU

ongoing

DigiDem-EU is a cross-cutting effort to integrate the democratic challenges of the digital transformation into CIDOB’s current work on European Union. DigiDem-EU project aims to analyse, discuss, and build citizens’ understanding and awareness on how technology impacts EU democracy, politics, civic engagement, and citizens’ rights. CIDOB already has European integration and EU fundamental rights as one of its main areas of study and dissemination. DigiDem-EU enhances the connection between the existing working areas of CIDOB and the new challenges that digital transformation entails for European democracies. The project builds on CIDOB’s recent work on the analysis of the digitalisation process in the EU, on a well-stablished research on disinformation, on the analysis of the state of European affairs and debates and on recent work on gender mainstreaming such as feminist foreign policy analysis; and on CIDOB's previous experience with participatory projects, on fostering knowledge-sharing, and expert and public debates. With the CERV programme, DigiDem-EU enhances CIDOB's work on disinformation and on innovative democratic approaches and tools to promote citizens participation. It will consider how new digital rights emerging from the digitalisation process impact fundamental rights and technological governance; and it will engage with citizens and communities to promote discussions and foster civic engagement. In doing so, the project will contribute to citizens’ understanding of EU’s political challenges, promote citizens’ rights, and protect the Union’s values and understanding of the world, always combating any form of discrimination. The final aim is to contribute to build democratic resilience in the EU through DigiDem-EU's research, dissemination and engagement work. These objectives will be developed through different kinds of activities: annual conferences, capacity building seminars, awareness-raising interviews, lectures and publications.