International Forum on Digital and Democracy IFDaD 2022
The conference aims to be a meeting place between politics and academics a moment of confrontation, promoting international collaboration in the exchange of information, ideas, and good practices.
Since the first edition of the Forum, in December 2020, the stretching of pandemic control measures constrained furthermore individual freedoms. In some cases, it provided legitimacy to the authoritarian shift in frail democratic governance.
According to Democracy Index in 2021 global democracy continued its decline and experienced its biggest annual drop since 2010 after the global financial crisis.
Whereas even the United States, the stronghold of democracy, on the occasion of the Capitol attack, showed to be unshielded from the outburst of illiberal forces. For fragile democracies, difficult times lie ahead. However, if the spirit of democracy and its needs remains strong among people, recovery hopes are also to be placed in the righteous use of digital technologies.
The expected outcome of the Forum is to gain a greater understanding and shared view of how digital technologies can positively affect the electoral process and pluralism. As a follow-up to the debate of the first edition, the Forum will explore and develop the interplay between digital technology and data, political participation, and governance. Altogether with two additional focuses: the functioning of eGovernment and disinformation.
Invited Speakers
Romano Prodi // VP EU // Jeffrey Sachs // UNESCO // ONU
Call for papers
Internet and algorithms caused a transformation of the centennials democratic processes. When exploited for political purposes digital tools affect the functioning of institutions created to evolve at human speed and not at the exponential pace and massive scale of digital technologies.
In the effort to gain a better understanding on how democracy can be strengthened in an era of rapid technological changes, the Forum engages scholars and experts in a Call for Papers on one of the following areas:
1) Technology plays a major role in shaping the political landscape.
How technology can be positively deployed to underpin political institutions. How can equitable access to technology be ensured? How can digital technology encourage greater engagement in civil society?
2) The effects of the new ‘algorithmic power’ of States on citizens’ rights and on the Rule of law Do Constitutional States need to implement new guarantees in the algorithmic society? Centralized control from the public administration software/data represents a dominant power that could lead to abuse of people’s live scrutiny: from Surveillance Capitalism (GAFA) to Surveillance eGovernment. How should eGovernment systems be designed and deployed to be compliant with democratic principles? Can well-designed digital tools enhance liberal values and build up democratic participation in an algorithmic society? What kind of organizational and procedural oversight and accountability measures should be envisioned in a digital bureaucracy?
3) Technology-fueled disinformation has a toxic societal impact on democratic political culture, providing severe polarization which damages all institutions essential to democracy. Are social media to be considered a private space or a public service? How to fine-tune them to secure free and confidential communications? Does content moderation affect freedom of expression? Can online moderation of social platforms improve the wellness of digital communities?
SUBMISSION AND REVIEW PROCESS
The aim of the FORUM is to investigate the role of digitalization in democratic processes. Proposals will be reviewed single-blind and do not need to be anonymized before submission. Proposals have a length of no more than 10 pages in the Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) proceedings template. Proposals can be selected to be presented to the conference either as an oral presentation or poster presentation. The submissions to this special session must be made via: https://easychair.org/All submissions must be written in English.
IMPORTANT DATES
Paper submission deadline: August 31st, 2022
Notification: October 15th, 2022
Camera-ready: November 1st, 2022
GUIDELINES FOR CHANGES TO TITLES // AUTHORS AFTER SUBMISSIONS
MODIFICATIONS TO ABSTRACT/PROPOSAL ARE ONLY ALLOWED UNTIL THE PROPOSAL DEADLINE. Nothing can be changed after October 15th, 2022.
No exceptions will be granted.In case of any events such as Covid-19 travel restriction imposing the cancellation of the venue, 2022 IFDaD program would be all the same held by videoconferencing.
PUBLICATION
Accepted papers will be included in the proceedings of the conference and published by CEUR in the CEUR-WS.org: AI*IA Series. CEUR is a free open-access publication service of Sun SITE Central Europe.