DEMOS Crowdsourcing on Populism

DEMOS (funded by the EU program Horizon 2020) is investigating populism today and its consequences on democracy in Europe. We believe that an impact of this research beyond academia is crucial - especially when it's about exposing certain research outcomes to citizens' direct experience and opinions. This is why we launched a multilingual crowdsourcing platform in 7 languages (in EN, FR, IT, DE, TK, PL & HU) to provide the possibility for every citizen to engage with the research findings and help to develop them further.

Both citizens and researchers will benefit from the platform. On the one hand, citizens can contribute with their ideas to reach better research outcomes. On the other hand, academics will receive direct feedback on their proposals to address populist movements.

The goal is to work together not only to understand populist movements better, but also to come up with concrete policy proposals for decision-makers that can be used to tackle populist movements across Europe.

This crowdsourcing activity will collect the opinion and recommendations of citizens on three main topics related to populism: (1) participation and democracy, (2) minorities and (3) media.

1. Participation: Populist politicians often criticise governments for not representing the true interest of the people. New ways of participation, such as participatory budgeting, could strengthen ties between citizens and decision-makers. We want to learn more about people's knowledge in the field: are they ready to explore these new ways of political participation?

2. Minorities: Many populists use hostile language towards minority groups. We want to understand what people think about those narratives: what solutions could work best to tackle them?

3. Media: In the last few years, the relationship between politics, journalism and citizens is constantly adapting to technological innovation. This has led to an increasing number of news channels for information, fragmentation and rising distrust in journalists. We want to understand people's view on these developments. How could we increase trust in the media throughout Europe?

This crowdsourcing platform is open from now (July 2021) till the end of November 2021. We invite you to support our research by providing your input.

In order to ensure the validity and credibility of every single input for our research, please make sure you register and login with your account to participate. (All data collected is protected and dealt with in accordance to GDPR.)