Exploring the democratic challenges of ICTs and algorithmatisation as the game changers of politics

The basic structures and functions of democracy are continuously challenged by the surging political role of new information and communication technologies (ICTs) coupled with new divisions of social, economic, and technological forces cross-cutting the public domains of democracy – i.e. political participation, communication, decision-making, policy-making, and legitimacy, which increasingly are dependent on the access, ownership, and innovative use of ICTs and big data. These democratic challenges assume a myriad of shapes such as Facebook mediated communication or Google offering/selling alternatives to core functions of public administration as in e.g. city planning, welfare services, or dealing with citizen/consumer data in a wide range of private/public forms. These forms being intertwined with AI, algorithmic automation, and everything from chat/social bots to the bitcoin kind of blockchain traceability raise serious questions about democratic and administrative accountability. To what extent do these data-driven processes along with their digital beams of selective transparency create shades of data grey, which overshadow and re-write the classic cleavages of blue, red, or green, and what are their democratic consequences?

The democratic challenges of ICTs and algorithmatisation as the game changers of politics