The below text describes EDDY’s values and principles, and their implications for how we organize events as well as our governance structure. It is jointly written by Frederik Van De Putte, Jan Maly, and Arianna Novaro, regularly updated by EDDY’s core committee, and approved by its support committee. The purpose of this text is to ensure the continuity of EDDY as a collaborative project, while allowing the core committee’s composition to change over time or to take on new activities and responsibilities.
Discussions about (digital) democracy can sometimes be controversial and heated. As an organization that aims to foster collaboration and mutual exchange, we highly value tolerance and mutual respect for diverse approaches and methodologies, viewpoints, stakeholders, and modes of communication. At the same time, we take basic democratic principles as well as political and human rights as key constraints in all our activities.
We wish to stay politically neutral. That is, we do not wish to support (directly or indirectly) any specific political parties or movements, within the broad democratic political spectrum. We also do not wish to promote (directly or indirectly) specific companies, democratic organizations, or platforms, even if we do aim to engage and learn from experiences of practitioners all around.
We strive for inclusion and diversity in all our activities. Diversity includes, but is not limited to: gender, geographic and socioeconomic backgrounds, disciplinary backgrounds, and seniority. Also, we strive to be an open organization, both in terms of participation at and contributions to events, and in terms of the organization itself.
These values and principles are very dear to us, and we stick by them in all our activities as well as in our governance structure.
The following are key principles for the organization of EDDY events:
Diversity of Speakers: For all our events, we aim for a diversity of invited speakers, in terms of, among others, gender, socio-demographic background, and disability status. In particular, given that currently men are heavily over-represented in virtually all relevant fields, for the EDDY conferences, at least ⅓ of invited speakers, and ideally ½ or more should be non-male. For smaller-scale events (workshops, online meet-ups) we can deviate from this quota, but we nevertheless strive for balance.
Diversity of Academic Backgrounds: We explicitly aim to make our events open to a diverse range of scientific fields and (sub)disciplines, including but not limited to: computer science, political science, philosophy, economics, mathematics, communication sciences, psychology, and history. Any EDDY event with more than one invited speaker must have speakers with different (academic/professional) backgrounds.
Diversity of Organizers: In case an EDDY event or conference is organized by several people, we strongly encourage that these organizers are also diverse in terms of their (disciplinary) background and/or in other respects cited above.
Inclusion of Practice: We aim for a significant representation of practitioners in digital democracy to the events that we organize. By “practitioners” we mean: non-academic professionals or civil servants who apply, develop, or somehow systematically engage with digital democracy on a daily basis.
Openness: For large-scale events such as the EDDY conferences, we typically have an open call for contributions, and particularly encourage contributions from underrepresented groups (non-male speakers, junior speakers, speakers from underrepresented socio-demographic groups).
Political Neutrality: While we welcome contributions from political practitioners and opinion-makers (journalists, representatives of interest groups), in as far as they concern (experiences with or viewpoints on) digital democracy, we preserve the right to reject contributions that are of a purely political nature or merely promote a political program or worldview. Contributed and invited talks should be relevant to the aims of EDDY and to the audience. At the same time, we acknowledge that when speakers present at our events, they speak first and foremost in their own name and we cannot control or take responsibility for everything they say or presuppose when doing so. We find it most important to enable and encourage a civilized, tolerant, informed, and diverse debate, and given our subject matter this means that sometimes politicized or value-laden discussions are part of this.
EDDY’s activities are steered by a core committee of 4-6 members. The members of the current core committee can be found here. Every year the longest serving members rotate out and 1-2 new members join, which are chosen by the current core committee (they could also be approved by a vote at the “business meeting” of the EDDY conference). Local organizers of the EDDY conferences are typically invited to be members of the core committee. In addition, we aim for diversity within the core committee, especially in terms of gender, geographic locations within Europe, and disciplinary background.
Former core committee members join the support committee. The support committee consists of experienced researchers and practitioners who play a leading role in their respective fields or areas. It has an advisory and supportive function: major decisions and changes to EDDY’s governance are advised on and approved by the support committee, and members of the support committee contribute to the advertisement and broader support of its events.
The EDDY core committee decides on and contributes to:
EDDY’s own governance structure and principles, how these are formulated on EDDY’s website, and any changes to it
the organization of EDDY conferences: selection of organizers, selection of invited speakers, draft and announcement call for papers, selection of program committee
the coordination and advertisement of any other event or activity that officially involves EDDY
updates to EDDY’s website
The EDDY core committee decides on the above matters by having (online) meetings on a regular basis. At the annual EDDY conferences, we also have an open meeting of the core committee where every participant to the conference can sit in and make recommendations.