Shaping the Future of Digital Democracy: Ethics, Inclusion, and Civic Engagement

In the rapidly growing digital world of today, we bear witness to the fast-paced development of the digital dimension of the public space for democratic participation. Importantly, we are faced with complex questions regarding how we would like future digital spaces for civic dialogue to be configured. At the same time, the success and ethical rigour of digital arenas for political engagement are hampered by a number of challenges, such as disinformation and misinformation, hate speech, discriminatory practices and low levels of digital literacy. There is a pronounced need for expert discussions that look into the ethics of creating and using digital tools to encourage involvement in democratic processes, as well as the policies and measures necessary to design instruments that promote equal participation, inclusion and fundamental rights protection.

To foster expert dialogue on the potential of digital technologies to support democratic engagement, CSD organised an expert focus group on 27 May 2025 in Sofia. The exchange revolved around what are the current needs of Bulgarian citizens, including members of vulnerable groups, when it comes to meaningful political involvement, and whether these needs can be catered to by means of digital language support tools. The event identified essential standards that such tools ought to meet in order to be effective, among other things in relation to protecting members of ethnic, religious and sexual minorities from discrimination. Particular emphasis was placed on the need to develop tools that integrate fact-checking and content moderation functionalities, and that seek to complement and support, rather than replace, in-person forms of democratic engagement such as local citizen gatherings. These recommendations will be supplemented with citizen perspectives collected in the framework of the IDEAL online survey.