Mobilizing Citizen Engagement through Digital Platforms
In this section, we propose digital platforms as a tool for citizen empowerment and explore examples
Last updated
In this section, we propose digital platforms as a tool for citizen empowerment and explore examples
Last updated
While it remains essential to mobilize around issues by meeting in person, as our society becomes more and more digitized and digitalized, it has become essential to ensure that the tech around us empowers us, particularly when it comes to citizens and civil society (Dive deeper with Lucy Bernholz's annual "Philanthropy & Digital Civil Society: Blueprint"). Online spaces in the form of digital platforms are being carved out to do exactly that.
Digital platforms play a larger role each day in how decisions are made, from citizens to municipalities and businesses. Citizens are turning to platforms to:
Connect with and support one another
Share ideas and visibilise work
Visibilise marginalized voices
Democratize issues by building consensus and enabling decision making
And coordinate and implement actions
Digital platforms are being applied to do the same thing in food communities. While they are not directly creating food, these digital platforms that enable civic engagement in the food system should be considered an essential piece of food technology.
Implementation site: various regions
How the platform is empowering citizens and civil society:
Citizens that are passionate about supporting their local economy can use Make Works as if it were a library to discover local makers, producers, and manufacturers in their neighborhood. Its searchable features allow the community to search by industry, including “food production and transformation.” This industry is relatively new for the Make Works community and is currently growing. Presently, it includes everything from a shared kitchen space and traditional milk-processing plant to a fresh spirulina farm and a food waste collection and treatment service. Make Works is currently available in 10 regions: Iceland, Scotland, Derby & Derbyshire, Birmingham, Paris, Milan, Catalonia, Vienna, Budapest, and the United Arab Emirates.
Implementation site: Barcelona, Spain
How the platform is empowering citizens and civil society:
Decidim.Barcelona is a participatory platform used to build “a more open, transparent, and collaborative society.” Through the platform, the City of Barcelona places proppsals before the citizenry on topics that range from feedback on the City’s 2030 Food Strategy to how funding will be designated in citizen-driven initiatives in each neighborhood. In addition to municipality-led motions, citizens can raise issues before the municipality by proposing a motion on Decidim and collecting signatures, making the motion visible to all of Decidim’s community. Decidim is globally recognized as a tool that is democratizing decision making in Barcelona.
Implementation site: locally in Barcelona & distributed globally
How the platform is empowering citizens and civil society:
Food Tech 3.0 Discord Channel: the Food Tech 3.0 Discord channel is for Barcelona-based initiatives and stakeholders working on food system transformation. It includes the Food Tech 3.0 community (Advisory board, innovators, and key stakeholders) and an invitation is also extended to the local participants in other projects like FOSTER and FoodSHIFT Pathways.
#Food Channel on the Distributed Design Platform Discord: This Discord unites communities practicing distributed design, leveraging on the existing Distributed Design Platform members and their communities. Food is one of six focus areas for the Platform and has its own channel which we recommend that those from the international community, including our collaborators in Milan, Paris, and Hamburg, use.
This Channel is a global space for tech makers to connect and share tips and for communities to find useful food technology. The channel is hosted by the Distributed Design Platform, part of the Distributed Design movement rethinking how goods and services can be produced locally while knowledge can move globally. The Platform acts as a hub of exchange within the European creative and design fields to foster the role of emerging artisans and designers as part of this new digitized world. It was established in 2017, co-funded by the Creative Europe program of the European Union. The platform brings together a diverse member-base from 17 cultural and creative institutions from 13 European countries and has worked with over 2600 emerging creatives and designers. You can learn more about the collaboration between Food Tech 3.0 and the Distributed Design Platform here.
Implementation site: Ostend, Belgium
How the platform is empowering citizens and civil society:
The city of Ostend in Belgium has used both the CitizenLab and Wijkprikkels platforms to engage citizens in developing the city’s food strategy. Wijkprikkels is a participatory budget project enabling citizens to propose projects and vote on the allocation of funding. The coordinator of the Ostend food strategy was able to link citizen-led initiatives to food system innovations. Meanwhile, the local version of Citizen Lab was used to disseminate surveys to residents about food topics and engage citizens in the operationalisation of the city’s food strategy and activities in the agricultural park, Gardens of Stene.
Our Food Tech 3.0 community has emphasized the technology gap, which disconnects possible citizens communities from participating. Potential participants may have other more pressing needs and cannot begin to think about connecting online. At the same time, advisory board member Edith Claros noted that “when you find a community, you feel relieved” during the FoodSHIFT2030 Stakeholder Conference in 2021: platforms may be a source of relief and support for communities. It’s here that Food Tech 3.0 facilitator, Xavi Dominguez, highlights it’s important to facilitate access by bringing information and technology to the community as opposed to the other way around, particularly if the digital platforms have the opportunity to support and empower these communities.
Are the participants always the same? Which demographic groups engage? These are essential questions to ask when organizing work around digital platforms, particularly given the first challenge highlighted above. For key tips in reaching new communities through digital platforms, you can check the FoodSHIFT Citizen Empowerment Scheme.
As Lucy Bernholz writes, “digital systems can fuel collective change as long as people have agency over them.” She argues that for digital spaces to effectively empower citizens and civil society, they need to be outside of market and government control so as not to allow companies or municipalities to put digital bounds on participants. This is an additional concern as platforms not only enable citizens to connect but can, and often do, shape the relationships between them. Using open source platforms is one possible solution to this challenge, and platforms like Discord, wikifactory, and github are all well-established options.
"Philanthropy and Digital Civil Society: Blueprint 2021" by Lucy Bernholz
