Designing voting technology for participation
Vasilis Vlachokyriakos · 2013
Falling levels of participation in national and local elections and deliberation around public issues are major concerns of many modern democratic states. However, how exactly technology can support active citizenship is still an underexplored area of research. Digital technologies can provide more than ready access to electoral mechanisms. They can provide a platform for deliberation and therefore realize some of the fundamental goals of democratic systems. To extract the design requirements of technology for deliberation, exploratory prototypes are developed that serve as technology probes to explore psychological and sociological constructs that drive participation. In this article the theoretical framework and methodology of my PhD research are briefly introduced and some preliminary findings are discussed.