iDEM – Innovative and Inclusive Democratic Spaces for Deliberation and Participation

iDEM will lay the theoretical foundations for the analysis of current marginalisation from deliberative processes of diverse under-represented groups due to language skills and propose, implement, and evaluate inclusive deliberative and participatory spaces. It will adopt a user-centred approach for making participatory processes more accessible and inclusive, developing advanced natural language processing technologies and artificial intelligence to empower under-represented groups with tools to facilitate communication and dialog in democratic spaces.

Deliberative and participatory processes currently lack full legitimacy due to the exclusion and marginalisation of several vulnerable communities from democratic spaces. Persons with language comprehension difficulties, intellectual or psychosocial disabilities (around six million individuals in the EU and over 90 million people globally) are currently excluded from deliberative and participatory political processes, democratic participation in civic platforms and the Web, due to the language used by policy makers and institutions. This is particularly acute at local and EU level to address its democratic deficit, as a recent extensive study found that the European Commission’s public communications since 1985 use “overly complex language, specialized jargon, and a nominal style that obfuscates political action.