What form of democratic participation do you think will become increasingly important over the next ten years?
We expect one of the most important developments to be the increasing hybridization of contentious participation across physical, digital and institutional arenas. Rather than a transition from “old” forms of participation to digital ones, we are witnessing increasingly complex combinations of street protest, social media communication, direct action, petitions, engagement with journalists, and attempts to influence political institutions. This does not eliminate the organizational and material foundations of collective action. Digital platforms can reduce some costs of mobilization and enable movements to communicate without relying entirely on traditional gatekeepers. But the capacity to exploit these opportunities remains highly unequal. Organizations differ enormously in resources, professional communication skills, technological expertise, established networks and access to journalists and policymakers. Digital participation may therefore challenge some established hierarchies while simultaneously creating new ones.
We would also expect disruptive participation to remain important. In political systems where many citizens perceive institutional channels as unresponsive, movements have strong incentives to create disruption in order to generate visibility and political pressure. Climate activism has made this particularly visible, but the mechanism is much broader. The paradox is that precisely those actions that enable relatively powerless actors to attract attention may also expose them to delegitimization, repression or hostile media framing.
This makes the interaction between movements and communication infrastructures particularly important. Movements can increasingly produce their own narratives, document actions, challenge journalistic representations and communicate directly with supporters. Yet legacy media remain crucial for reaching beyond already mobilized constituencies and for transforming movement claims into matters of broader public concern. For this reason, the key question over the next decade may be less which single form of participation becomes dominant than who controls the interfaces connecting contention, public visibility and institutional responsiveness.