The Düsseldorf Institute for Internet and Democracy (DIID) designed, implemented and evaluated an online participation process for the non-governmental organization Friends of the Earth in North-Rhine-Westfalia („Bund für Umwelt- und Naturschutz Landesverband NRW e.V.“). The NGO is active in the field of environmental protection and natural reserve.
The aim of the participation process was to gather and discuss ideas concerning innovative ways to participate in the organization. The project was implemented on an online platform using Adhocracy as software. Adhocracy allows the users to participate in three ways, reflecting different levels of engagement: rating, commenting and editing proposals. The online discussion started in June 2017 and was pre-structured along three topics including initial proposals. After the online discussion, the proposals that were put forward were presented to the NGO for a broader discussion.
After this process the participants in the online discussion were invited to do an online survey with the aim of evaluating the participation process.
Contact
Jun.-Prof. Dr. Tobias Escher
Board, Computer Science, Political Science, Sociology
Tobias Escher leads a BMBF-funded junior research group investigating the effects of participation processes on the quality and legitimacy of political decisions, especially in the context of the transformation to sustainable mobility in the local context. Previously, he supervised the DIID as well as the NRW Forschungskolleg Online-Partizipation at the HHU-Düsseldorf as scientific coordinator. He is a social scientist and holds a PhD from the Oxford Internet Institute at the University of Oxford. He can also draw on his basic knowledge of computer science when assessing the possibilities and limits of digitization.
His research focuses on the evaluation of political participation online and offline. In particular, he addresses the question of the extent to which citizen participation contributes to higher quality and legitimacy/acceptance of political decisions. He has developed a teaching module on the theory and practice of online participation, from which, among other things, a project on student participation in teaching has emerged.
Projects
Contact
Dr. Katharina Gerl
Board, DIID-Team, Political Science
Katharina Gerl has been a research assistant at DIID at HHU-Düsseldorf since 2016. She studied Political Science (B.A.) at the University of Bremen and Political Communication (M.A.) at HHU-Düsseldorf. For her dissertation at the Chair of Political Science II at Heinrich Heine University, she studied the impact of digital media on political parties as organizations.
Her research interests lie in the areas of effects and acceptance of digital democratic innovations in politics and administration as well as of artificial intelligence for political opinion-forming and decision-making.