Webinars on “Re-wiring Democracy: connecting institutions and citizens in the digital age”

Symbiosis-School of Political Studies in Greece has implemented the 3rd online Seminar: Webinars on “Re-wiring Democracy: connecting institutions and citizens in the digital age”, blended with a physical kick off workshop in the period during September to November 2020. The Seminar was implemented in English aiming to reach a more globalized target group of participants and strengthen the cosmopolitan understanding of democratic leaders.

The kick-off workshop implemented on September 14, 2020 at the French Institute of Thessaloniki. Eighteen persons attended (including refugees, migrants and local artists, sociologist, social workers and other front-line workers) and discussed art and change, exploring through short videos how art and humour work for equality, against urban segregation, about the movement black lives matter and making plans for future local art projects. Humour (aesthetic approach) and participatory arts (methods) are employed to guide interaction, dialogue, and cooperation between the migrant and host communities, inviting its members to share knowledge, respect and laugh together, at the same things and at themselves.

This Seminar focused on democratic participation and covered core issues related to cultural production and the challenges that the rise of the internet imposes to traditional functioning of representative democracy.

Particularly in the light of the COVID-19 pandemic, revisiting through the lens of communing the digital democratic citizenship and participatory democracy has been the core topic during the webinars. Is technology not sufficient to enable real impact of citizens’ voices, even in the digital age? Can digital organizing introduce safeguards and standards for e-democracy applications, encourage NGOs and other democracy agents to make use of these tools for a greater efficiency, accountability, and transparency? Can adequate level of media literacy become universal and e-citizenship skills be included in programmes for civic education, including civic responses to hate speech and awareness of digital surveillance? Can e-learning foster empowerment through education and the acquisition of competences for actively participating in digital society? In particular, the presentations that constituted the seminar focused on the following thematic: digital politics and digital democracy; digital organising; digital journalism and social media; media and disinformation; the digital and citizenship education; elections and the digital; the digital and governance, aiming to aware participants about several questions that arise for now and the future, in an intensive programme.

The presentations and discussions involved a range of excellent, globally recognized speakers, including high profile academics and experts. In particular, the speakers were: Carl Miller, Research Director, Centre for the Analysis of Social Media (CASM), Demos; Iryna Sabor, Senior Advisor, The European Wergeland Centre, Oslo; Syed Iftikhar Hussain Shah, International Hellenic University Partner – Project Coordinator of the “Co-Creating Misinformation-Resilient Societies – Co-Inform” Project; Ned Howey, CEO and Co-Founder at Tectonica Digital Campaign Solutions; Stavros-Nikiforos Spyrellis, Geographer, Researcher at the National Centre for Social Research, Social Research Institute, EKKE, Associate researcher at the Géographie-cités Laboratory, CNRS, Editor, Athens Social Atlas; Eleni (Lenio) Myrivili, Senior Advisor to the City of Athens, Chief Resilience Officer, and Former Deputy Mayor Atlantic Council Senior Fellow and Consultant, AARF Resilience Center Ass. Professor, University of the Aegean, Greece; Nikos Panagiotou, Associate Professor, Department of Journalism and Mass Communications, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Google Research Scholar, DAAD Scholar; Adrià Rodríguez-Pérez, Public Policy Researcher, Scytl.

Programme

Asynchronous Modules

Moderated Live Online Discussions Programme

Digital Lives & Politics I

Digital Lives & Politics II