About
The European Digital DemocracY network (EDDY) aims to bring together academics and practitioners actively working on or with digital democracy, to foster collaboration and knowledge exchange. Digital democracy may be defined as the use of information and communication tools (like apps or platforms) to support democratic decision-making and public participation. More broadly, digital democracy refers to the integration of the digital world and democratic societies.
Vision
In recent years, digital democracy has become a subject of academic research and is being put into practice around the world. However, the science and practices of digital democracy are currently still living mostly in separate universes. EDDY aims to further advance digital democracy, by promoting connections and collaborations between theorists and practitioners.
What we do
We bring together theory and practice on the topic of digital democracy by:
Connecting people
Promoting the exchange of knowledge
Fostering collaboration
How we do it
We organize quarterly online meet-ups, where practitioners and theorists enter a dialogue on ongoing and future work.
We maintain a mailing list to help communication among EDDY’s members and to alert them of events or achievements related to digital democracy.
We plan to organize live meetings on a regular basis, inviting practitioners and theorists both from within and outside the network.
We plan to maintain a crowdsourced knowledge repository on digital democracy, with links to relevant organizations, academic work, etc.
History
EDDY was founded in October 2022 at the “Algorithmic Technology for Democracy” workshop at the Lorentz Center in Leiden (The Netherlands). The week-long event brought together academics and practitioners from multiple countries and disciplines. We experienced that the exchange between practice and theory was mutually beneficial, but we also realized that there are few occasions or structures for such exchanges. Thus the idea for EDDY was born.