Harness the power of civil society

In the Colombian democratic system, the ultimate source of power is the people. Yet, although there is a vibrant conversation in the country about political innovation and digital democracy, civil society initiatives on the use of social media to support democracy are still scarce and atomised. The following recommendations are suggested to support civil society’s efforts on social media and democracy:

Think and act collaboratively: As is the case with a multi-stakeholder approach, citizen-led digital democracy projects have a more significant impact when they are implemented between several organisations. This may be a challenge, given diverse agendas, competition for resources and transactional costs on partnership management. Still, the fruits in the long-term could pay off the short-term caveats. Initiatives that might be particularly useful if several organisations lead them are the ones intended to tackle filter bubbles and echo chambers when the alliance is comprised by individuals of diverse and even opposed views, that come together to engage in digital dialogues and spread content to depolarise digital spaces. These kinds of initiatives led solely by the civil society organisations could be helpful in contexts where other actors such as State agencies are not trusted.

Do not preach to the choir: During the plebiscite’s campaigns, a common difficulty faced by many citizen-led social media initiatives was that they did not reach people with different views. It is recommended to adopt a user-centred design approach when devising digital democracy projects, to understand better the diverse audiences the initiative should reach and how to reach them.

Pursue new sources of finance: A common challenge to civil society initiatives intended to enhance social media use is to secure economic support. Often, digital projects need a pilot stage that requires seed capital before producing any impact. This is usually not aligned with many grants and funding opportunities available, which typically want to support already proven ideas. The situation is even more difficult considering that, more often than not, this kind of initiative does not produce revenue, so relies on external sponsorship to happen and sustain in time. Nevertheless, this could create an opportunity' for organisations to find creative ways to finance the initiatives and even make them self-sustainable. For instance, one of the issues discussed during the workshop was the need for informing citizens about the legal risks and consequences of hate speech and their data privacy rights. This may be a prosperous scenario for generating consultancy offline and online services to educate citizens and enterprises about their rights, duties, legal consequences and possible actions.

Partner with academia: Academia has a strategic role to play in studying, analysing and theorising the way social media is changing democracy, so as to devise and implement specific evidence-based policies and educational strategies. Hence, it is suggested to nurture partnerships between civil society' and academia in projects that use participatory action research to help address challenges on the use of social media in democratic scenarios, while engaging in processes of critical thinking and reflection on the situations being dealt with and the approaches used. These collaborations should also consider that the language of academic publications in many cases differs from the one used by policymakers, civil society organisations or international cooperation. Consequently, it is recommended that academics develop narratives targeted to a broad range of audiences so they can apply more effectively the insights produced in academia.