What is and how do we achieve a resilient digital democracy?

Political, economic, and everyday life are not imaginable today without digital technologies.

Falsehood reached more people at every depth of a cascade than the truth, meaning that many more people retweeted falsehood than they did the truth

Online misinformation.

Defines authoritarianism.

Defines fascism.

Digital capitalism and Digital fascism.

Digital democracy includes a variety of practices, including, but not limited to, digital participatory budgeting, democratic cyber-protest and cyber-activism, online petitions, political online debates, e-voting, online public consultations, digital town halls, online citizen assemblies and mini-publics, etc

In digital societies, we cannot separate democracy from digital spaces; democracy is not only but also always digital democracy

One could relate this to the electronic left perhaps?

Resilience is a concept that emerged in systems theory. C. S. Holling is the most influential theorist of resilience. He defines resilience as “the persistence of relationships within a system and is a measure of the ability of these systems to absorb changes of state variables, driving variables, and parameters, and still persist. In this definition resilience is the property of the system and persistence or probability of extinction is the result” (Holling, 1973, 17). For Holling, resilience means the capacity of a system to survive crises, disruptions, shocks, and attacks

That a system shows resilience means in the language of systems theory, that in a situation of heavy disturbance and chaos, the system does not break down but continues to maintain itself, which means that its elements, the relations between the elements (the system’s structure), the system boundary the delimits the system from its environment, and the system’s dynamic (the behaviour that the elements in relation to each other show as reaction to inputs) continue to exist

ut neither resistance nor resilience are automatically democratic. For example, a fascist system can use militarism as a form of resilience that allows the maintenance of dictatorship by violently repressing any signs of political opposition

Resilience to shocks. Capitalism is extremely resilient system. Bear in mind when designing a shock doctrine for the left

Democracy is dynamic, not static. It is a processes, in which humans, based on constitutional principles, engage in political actions and participate in collective decision-making so that collective decisions (rules, policies, laws) emerge that represent the collective will of those participating.

democracy is a political model of distributed power opposed to models where power is controlled by a few.

Digital democracy is the use of digital media in the practice of democracy

Data minimisation and green computing are strategies for reducing the contribution of digital democracy platforms to environmental crises

In authoritarian societies and societies where democracy is at risk of turning into authoritarianism or where democracy is step-by-step undermined so that there is a creeping form of authoritarianism, (digital) democratic activism and resistance are the best measures for struggling against authoritarianism. Such activities include, for example, protest movements, street protests, political campaigns, civic activism, civil disobedience, digital activism, and the development and use of liberation technologies

Citizens support authoritarianism because they feel alienated in multiple ways, economically, politically, culturally, and socially

Digital democracy projects can therefore help to renew democracy and supplement representation by participation and deliberation

A good starting point is communal and local democracy, where citizen participation can take place in the form of (digital) participatory budgeting, (digital) citizen juries, and (digital) citizen assemblies/forums.

Authoritarianism dominate the public sphere, or there is a lack of funding. The online spreading of fake news, deep fakes, hate speech, disinformation and post-truth culture, the formation of online echo chambers, and digital tabloidisation (a strong entertainment focus that displaces political information and communication, sensationalism, scandalisation, personalisation, simplification, emotionalisation, superficial and brief news disseminated news, digital acceleration and high speed online culture, etc.) are means of disseminating anti-democratic ideology online that disrupts digital democracy at the cultural level

Fact-checkers are professional journalists who know how to check if certain claims are true or false. They are part of a news culture that works for free expression and against political bias. Critics argued that the decision effectively benefits far-right disinformation ecosystems by reducing moderation capacity

The unsettling reality is that the video shows that (digital) capital does not care about democracy and might support democracy today and authoritarianism tomorrow, depending on what system enables better capital accumulation

making digital democracy resilient requires other strategies than imitation.

Regulation alone is, however, not sufficient. Resilient digital democracy requires democratic autonomy from the digital giants, which in turn requires democratic alternatives

Digital potestas signifies the undemocratic control of digital media. In contrast, digital potentia means self-managed digital media that try to serve the common interest so that all benefit. Digital autonomy and autonomisation form a strategy of digital democratic resilience where digital potestas is challenged by creating spaces of digital potentia, digital democratic spaces

Autonomy means that digital democracy is resilient against economic, political, and ideological control. Establishing and operating an autonomous democratic platform are measures that try to make democracy resilient against colonisation and

Platform co-operatives and public service Internet platforms are democratic alternatives to the digital giants that have the potential to support the creation of an autonomous and sovereign EU Internet

Using free, libre and open source (FLOSS) software is therefore another important strategy for advancing resilient digital democracy. Overall, using, developing, and supporting platform co-operatives, public service Internet platforms, as well as free, libre and open source (FLOSS) software in the context of digital democracy is an important economic and cultural strategy for making digital democracy resilient

Replacing public/private partnerships with public/commons partnerships that network public administration, public organisations (including public universities, libraries, museums, theatres, etc.), platform co-operatives, and civil society organisations in the provision of digital democracy platforms

The idea of combining platform co-operatives and public service Internet platforms in digital public/commons partnerships is an update of the cultural theorist Raymond Williams’ suggestion to create a “cultural democracy” (1973, 121) that combines public-service media, cultural co-operatives and local media and where “public ownership of the basic means of production [the means of communication and cultural production] should be combined with leasing their use to self-managing groups, to secure maximum variety of style and political opinion and to ensure against any bureaucratic control” (Williams 1979, 370).

The table of 'Processes that disrupt digital democracy' orovides a good set of things to counter.