This chapter provides an exhaustive analysis of the core technological pillars defining the contemporary techno-political landscape: artificial intelligence (AI), surveillance technologies, blockchain and Web3, social media, and virtual universes (the metaverse). It begins by tracing the historical trajectory of AI and its diverse applications, specifically focusing on its transformative impact on strategic decision-making, foreign policy, and public opinion. The discussion then transitions into a philosophical and technical examination of surveillance, contrasting historical models like Bentham&s;s Panopticon with contemporary concepts such as Zuboff&s;s âsurveillance capitalismâ and the modern âomnipticon.â The analysis further delves into the ideological origins of blockchain, exploring the paradigmatic shift from the centralized structures of Web2 toward the ownership-based autonomy of Web3. Furthermore, the chapter evaluates the evolution of social media as a pervasive tool of power, highlighting its role in reshaping political participation and the dynamics of disinformation. Finally, it explores the emergence of virtual universes, addressing the critical challenges they pose to identity, security, and the nature of truth. By bridging technical evolution with political science and sociology, this chapter illustrates how these diverse parameters collectively restructure the dynamics of power, governance, and social legitimacy in the digital age.
In the era of digital revolution many contemporary events that changed the world were shaped through the internet. Nowadays, the emergence of internet of things (IoT), combining physical objects with virtual networks is expected to have even more influence. This new 'decentralised' structure in the world raises questions such as power, governance and the notion of democracy online. The aim of this paper is to investigate these notions. We have taken the examples of Bitcoin and Wikipedia and examined their decision-making process. Our analysis has found some inconsistencies in their policies, that are in contradiction with democracy and consensus principles of governance. Starting from our findings, we present further improvements that can be used to achieve more democracy and equity in the digital context.
Decentralized social protocols such as Nostr introduce a new paradigm for user-generated content (UGC) in the Web3 era, where content production, dissemination, and reward mechanisms operate without centralized governance. This paper presents one of the first large-scale empirical analyses of Nostr, based on 22.3 million user events collected from four major publicly accessible relays. Guided by three research questions, we examine (1) the temporal and spatial distribution of user participation, (2) the structural characteristics of decentralized UGC networks, and (3) thematic and incentive patterns in content creation and Zap-based rewards. Our analysis shows rapid growth followed by long-tail stabilization, while the interaction network remains highly modular and loosely connected, indicating fragmented yet persistent communities. Embedding-based clustering of textual posts identifies ten clusters on several topics: technical discussions, ideological debates, personal expression, community coordination, and media sharing, highlighting a hybrid ecosystem of social and technical discourse. We further find that knowledge-oriented content in Clusters 1 and 5 receives higher Zap engagement, suggesting the socialization of a primarily technical infrastructure. These findings advance the understanding of decentralized multimedia ecosystems by linking network decentralization with observed participation and engagement patterns in the absence of centralized moderation.
In Community in a Crowd: Bitcoin and the Quest for Liberty in Tel Aviv, Matan Shapiro offers a carefully crafted ethnography of Bitcoin socialities grounded in a long fieldwork at the Bitcoin Embas...
This study examines how Decentralized Autonomous Organisations (DAOs) could be incorporated into municipal administration to improve citizen participation and transparency. As DAOs in governance are attracting growing academic and practical attention, this research uses scenarios to analyze the conditions for their application at municipal and regional levels. It takes a conceptual, scenario-based approach to develop a model for DAO-based e-participation, identifying key concepts and their relationships to explain how DAOs operate as self-regulated systems for digital participation. The research is structured into three phases: First, in the foundational phase, this study synthesizes existing research on DAOs and participatory governance models, contrasting blockchain-based and traditional processes to establish a framework for DAO integration. Second, the application phase uses illustrative scenarios to explore how DAO mechanisms might influence participation and decision-making in municipalities. Third, the evaluation and recommendation phase consolidates insights into a structured model for implementation, highlighting task characteristics, contextual conditions, and organizational capacities that shape DAO feasibility. The analysis suggest that DAOs may enable new forms of participation and more transparent procedures, but only when antecedent conditions such as digital literacy, administrative capacity, and infrastructure stability are sufficiently met. Future work should look at long-term effects, compare cases across municipalities, and examine the role of legal and regulatory frameworks.
This paper explores how Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) could inform and shape participatory procedures in democratic governance. We apply DAO decision-making, such as rule-based input aggregation, transparent participation, and programmable decision-making, to a real-world case: the legislative development of the Swiss E-ID law, a proposal to establish a digital identity system for secure online authentication for Swiss residents. Using data from the official legislative consultation, we simulate how DAO-inspired mechanisms could have altered the aggregation of input and policy outcomes. Our analysis contributes conceptually and empirically to debates on digital democratic innovations, showing how programmable governance can be used not only to design new institutional forms, but also to critically assess the procedural dynamics of existing ones.
Abstract This essay argues that social media document (rather than fuel) the decline of political democracy while helping revive organizational democracy, including through âdecentralized autonomous organizationsâ (DAOs). Yet, despite giving everyone a voice and the ability to organize across borders, social media could overâconcentrate power if, in the future, a few large but siloed platforms ended up shrinking viewpoint diversity â the oxygen of democracy. How can we curb corporate platform concentration without dulling democracy? Due to tradeâoffs in platform design, no single service can deliver free speech, free usage, and safe usage simultaneously. Fortunately, this âtrilemmaâ can be transcended at the industry level with an interoperability mandate that fosters user multihoming and lets various platforms provide different bundles of democratic benefits. Email works across service providers, and so can social media. Interoperability thus represents a viable answer based on six advantages: practical feasibility; competition on merit; faster complementor innovation; jurisdictional flexibility; unlocking network effects between, rather than just within platforms; and alignment with democratic values. Platform interoperability can make social media social again and futureâproof democracy. This proposal is a clarion call for blaming the Internet a little less for democracyâs problems and instead leveraging its infrastructure strategically to address them.
This research examines how emerging forms of digital sovereignty, decentralized infrastructures, and anticipatory AI governance are reshaping nationhood in the algorithmic age. Drawing on the conceptual framework of Algorithmic Nations (Calzada 2018) and incorporating new empirical insights from embedded action research (2022â2025), the study analyses the Basque Country as a paradigmatic case of a âsmall stateless nationâ navigating the global reconfiguration of power between states, corporations, and communities. The presentation synthesizes three competing post-Westphalian paradigmsâNetwork States (Srinivasan 2022), Network Sovereignties (De Filippi 2024), and Algorithmic Nations (Calzada 2018)âas shown in the comparative table on page 19, highlighting their differing assumptions regarding governance, identity, participation, and technological control. Building on the diagnostic indicators of Europeâs digital dependence (page 10) and the transition from Gaia-X to EuroStack (page 11), the study evaluates the strategic implications of digital public infrastructures, data cooperatives, federated architectures, and Web3 ecosystems for stateless nations. Through comparative analysis of the Global North (e.g., Scotland, Quebec, Flanders), the Global South (e.g., Kurdistan, SĂĄmi, Tamil, Amazigh), and the Basque Country (pages 16â17), the work demonstrates how communities with diverse geopolitical constraints can articulate forms of AI sovereignty grounded in rights-based, culturally rooted, and community-driven governance. The Basque case illustrates how fragmented digital systems (.eus, EJIE/Izenpe, Osakidetza, MUBIL, etc.) can evolve toward an interoperable, multi-scalar technopolitical architecture, aligning linguistic, territorial, and infrastructural dimensions. The analysis argues that AI-driven infrastructures, data governance, and decentralized architectures are not merely technical layers but emerging geopolitical terrains where stateless, indigenous, diasporic, and minority nations can renegotiate autonomy. The concept of Algorithmic Nations provides a framework for understanding how community sovereignty can be built through data commons, federated systems, and anticipatory governance, particularly in multilingual and culturally distinct territories such as the Basque Country. Overall, the study contributes to debates on global digital governance, digital sovereignty, and the future of nationhood by proposing that algorithmic infrastructures are becoming central to political organization. It calls for democratic, inclusive, and community-oriented models of AI governance capable of avoiding techno-authoritarianism, Big Tech dependency, and âsovereignty washing,â while enabling emancipatory, culturally anchored, and future-oriented forms of collective self-determination.
Katja Leifheit, Judith Pies, Hilde Van den Bulck, Alessandro DâArma ¡ 8 authors
This article presents a quality assessment of Web3 coverage in mainstream media across four European countriesâGermany, Spain, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdomâas a starting point for discussing the standards of technology journalism that can meaningfully support an informed public. It begins with an overview of existing research on technology journalism and its role in fostering informed citizenry. This is followed by a mixed-methods content analysis, combining quantitative and qualitative approaches, to examine how the complex topic of Web3 is reported in the four European countries. Insights from journalists and editors contextualize the analysis. The findings highlight three key challenges across all countries: an event-driven rather than process-oriented focus, a narrow thematic scope on the financial applications of Web3 technology (cryptocurrencies), and a relatively limited diversity of sources. The article concludes by exploring how these challengesâand the broader trends in Web3 reportingâshed light on the potential and pitfalls of technology journalism in contemporary societies.
Roxana Maria DruČÄ, Elena Simina Lakatos, Radu Munteanu, LucianâIonel Cioca ¡ 7 authors
This study explores public perceptions, involvement, and barriers to energy communities in Romania, a country where decentralized renewable energy initiatives are still in their infancy. Data were collected through a nationwide online survey based on a quantitative research design, involving 118 respondents from all four macro-regions in Romania. The survey assessed awareness of the concept of energy communities, perceived benefits, technological and regulatory challenges, and willingness to participate or invest. The results show that the perception of energy communities is generally positive, with solar and environmental benefits being the most important. However, significant barriers remain, particularly in terms of financing, institutional support, and regulatory complexity. Urban, involved, and female respondents consistently rated benefits higher and identified more barriers than rural, non-participants and male respondents. Statistical differences between groups were confirmed using the MannâWhitney U-test. These results highlight the importance of targeted communication, improved policy frameworks, and educational initiatives to ensure broader public involvement and inclusive development of renewable energy systems in Romania.
Hongzhou Chen, Chenyu Zhou, Abdulmotaleb El Saddik, Wei Cai
In the rapidly evolving Web3 world, non-fungible token (NFT) communities are reshaping the formation, distribution, and activation of social capital in ways distinct from traditional models. However, despite their growing impact on societal prosperity, a comprehensive understanding of social capital dynamics within Web3 NFT communities remains limited. This study explores the Mfers community, a key example within Web3 NFT ecosystems. By analyzing social media and blockchain data and using a Delphi method-based human-large language model (LLM) collaboration, we uncovered unique social capital patterns across six dimensions. Our findings highlight a compelling blend of decentralization, inclusion, trust, and empowerment but also raise critical questions about wealth inequality, content quality, and ethical challenges. Based on the findings, we discussed the uniqueness of social capital in Web3 NFT communities, the tension between technical and power decentralization, and the multidimensional nature of societal prosperity. We also suggested directions for future research on decentralized online communities in the CSCW field. This study provides a systematic perspective on social capital in Web3 NFT communities and introduces an innovative human-LLM collaborative analysis, offering insights into the design and governance of benign decentralized online communities.
Recently, the DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization), where participants make decisions equally through online voting, has been gaining attention, while traditional methods involve a multi-stage approach, beginning with discussions among stakeholders to extract key issues and followed by evaluations from randomly selected citizens. However, it remains unclear which issues will gain social acceptance under these different methods. This study investigates whether the evaluation of these processes differs depending on the type of issues. A web-based questionnaire survey was conducted using a between-participants two-factor design with a scenario experiment. Participants read scenarios on local community issues (whether to build a geothermal power plant or how to revitalize a shopping district) and decision frameworks (decentralized online or multi-stage decision-making) and responded to related questions. The results indicated that decentralized online struggles with issues involving significant conflicts of interest. However, it is more accepted when applied to relatively low-conflict issues where participants feel empowered.
Web3 technologiesâcomprising decentralized finance (DeFi), non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs)âspark significant public discourse, balancing enthusiasm for innovation with skepticism about associated challenges. While previous studies focus on specific Web3 domains, they often overlook the interplay between thematic discussions and emotional traits, limiting insights into adoption dynamics. This study bridges that gap using a two-stage methodology: Stage 1 categorizes Web3 discussions into industries (e.g., Core Infrastructure, DeFi, NFTs, DAOs), and Stage 2 analyzes emotional traits namely optimism, skepticism, frustration, curiosity, and concern. Annotated data from X (formerly Twitter), YouTube, and Reddit are classified using fine-tuned Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) models, achieving macro F1-scores of 0.82 for thematic and 0.84 for emotional classification. Findings reveal that curiosity and optimism dominate Core Infrastructure and Decentralized applications (DApps) discussions, while frustration is more prevalent in NFTs and DAOs. These insights provide actionable strategies for addressing barriers and amplifying drivers of Web3 adoption. Future research should explore broader demographic and temporal trends or employ advanced transformer models like the Robustly Optimized BERT Pretraining Approach (RoBERTa) and XLNet to enhance accuracy and depth.
The dissertation aims to demonstrate that direct democracy is the new stage of democracy. Direct democracy has never been taken seriously. Most authors deem it unrealistic given space and time constraints and stress the risk that the ignorance of the masses could pose. Since democracy is the search for a legitimate and efficient system producing increased equality and respecting individual and minority rights, direct democracy seems, to many, a dead-end. In section 1, I analyze how direct democracy, theoretically, can answer these objections. Legitimacy is grounded in intersubjective and institutional trust. Distrust is not only targeted against the government but also toward others, fueled by and fueling polarization. Direct political participation in deliberating and voting is not only a solid human desire and condition of fulfillment but also a vector of renewed institutional trust, echoing a broader movement for more horizontal power. The efficiency of direct democracy is more debated. An increasing number of voters prefer decisions driven by experts over the crowd. Direct democracy must only prove that it is at least as efficient as experts or that experts are fallible. Given the epistemological value of non-experts, the private character of expertise, and the dynamic and inclusive aspect of pluralistic intelligence, this minimal test is passed. Direct democracy is, therefore, a powerful tool to solve the compromise/consensus conundrum. While consensus has turned into that of a particular elite, compromise is impracticable in a polarized context. Direct democracy creates new majorities based on projects rather than programs. The condition is that minority rights stay off-limits and that individual rights are treated through qualified majoritarianism. In section 2, I empirically test direct democracy's adaptability and margin of uncertainty. Direct democracy, in the 24 American States that allow it, leads to results closer to the majority opinion than legislatures. Initiatives present no constant political trend in their results and prove resistant to polarization. In recent popular votes on abortion, voters did not align with their parties on critical issues. In Taiwan, direct democracy helps re-unite on specific topics a divided nation, powered by online debate and decentralized fact-checking tools. In Estonia, citizens have had the possibility to vote via the Internet since 2005, a system that has increased turnout and overhauled the generational digital divide. The Swiss used internet voting for twenty years until it was halted in 2020. Security issues around e-voting still need to be solved regarding identification, devices, and verifiability. Nevertheless, both examples prove that, once these difficulties are solved or in contexts with higher trust or lower stakes, e-voting fosters participation, flexibility, and security. It enables direct democracy to self-institutionalize itself. In section 3, I make concrete propositions for a "digital direct democracy". The referendum is subject to criticism. Renewed fact-checking and tracking are needed, although fake news is no excuse for inaction. Citizens' assemblies can be helpful to deliberative and controlling tools if their recommendations are submitted for a referendum. Referendums always risk becoming plebiscites unless they are citizen-led. Multiple-choice voting, multi-stage referendums, or open questions need to be experimented with through e-voting. What does the future hold? Efficiency needs to be reconsidered with AI, potentially leading to "datatorship". Reversely, the development of e-voting has the potential to allow for a fully direct democracy. This model of "pancracy" could be powered by communities in a society with multiple individual affiliations. Decentralized autonomous organizations already provide an experimental framework. "Datatorship" and "Pancracy" are processual utopias. They allow us to understand the conditions of a true democracy.
The Metaverse represents a collaborative virtual realm blending physical and digital realities, fostering limitless avenues for online interaction, discovery and innovation. As technological strides propel immersive virtual worlds to the forefront of social media platforms, scholarly interest in the Metaverse surges, prompting extensive discourse. Drawing from social identity theory, this article introduces a novel framework for analysing online polarisation within discussions on the Metaverse, specifically on X (Twitter). Leveraging a multifaceted approach that integrates clustering, social network analysis, and text mining, our study delves into both group and opinion polarisation dynamics surrounding the Metaverse. Our findings uncover distinct community divisions and network structures, shedding light on prevalent themes, such as âNon-Fungible Token (NFTs)â, âVirtual Products and Collectionsâ, âBlockchain Technologyâ, âGamingâ, and âFinancial Marketsâ that resonate within the public discourse.
The Regenerative Finance (ReFi) movement is gaining traction in the Web3 space, with numerous blockchain-based initiatives claiming alignment with regenerative outcomes. However, many of these claims remain vague or structurally unsubstantiated. This study evaluates 40 self-identified ReFi initiatives to determine the extent to which their design, governance, capital structures, and impact logic align with foundational regenerative principles. Drawing from regenerative economics, living systems theory, and regenerative organizational design, a structured evaluation framework was developed covering six dimensions across three domains: regenerative finance, real-world impact, and regenerative organizational design. The framework informed two scoring-based questionnaires, enabling systematic assessment of regenerative and impact claims. Results revealed significant variation in alignment: 50% of initiatives were categorized as Regenerative Finance (ReFi), 45% as Sustainable DeFi, and 5% as Structurally Misaligned, reflecting limited coherence between regenerative claims and actual practice. The findings showed that team diversity and initiative maturity were positively correlated with regenerative performance, and that a lack of holistic impact evaluationâacross thematic dimensions and throughout operational, direct, and indirect value chainsâremains a key limitation across the sector. A typology of regenerative alignment and a replicable self-evaluation tool were developed to help funders, practitioners, and protocol developers assess which ReFi initiatives are structurally aligned with regenerative principles and which remain aspirational. This research advances conceptual and practical clarity around the term âregenerativeâ in Web3, supporting the evolution of more accountable, transparent, and transformation-oriented financial systems in service to the Global Commons.
âReFiâ is a rapidly emerging movement in the web3 space that seeks to leverage blockchain technology and decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols to deliver positive real-world impact. While ReFi is short for regenerative finance, regenerative practitioners query the regenerative claims of the movement. This perspective article explains why the regenerative claims of the ReFi movement are under scrutiny and highlights the implications for the Global Commons if the movement does not adhere to regenerative principles. Given that ReFi is a blockchain-enabled movement, the impact of ReFi on the Global Commons is implicitly a blockchain-related concern. This article provides a regenerative practitionerâs perspective on the ReFi movement as a point of reference for blockchain practitioners in the ReFi movement seeking to be a force for good. Long-standing research in ecological economics highlights the negative impacts of over-financialization and commoditization on the natural world. Given that blockchain technology enables more of the worldâs natural assets to become commoditized, securitized, and collateralized than ever before, the article asserts that DeFiâs drive to financialize everything could make the Global Commons the next, and final, commodity frontier. It also asserts that the ReFi movement has the potential to reverse this trend if it can genuinely adhere to the regenerative paradigm.
Abstract This chapter traces the development of a politics industry, and its contribution to the nationalization of campaigns and partisan polarization, with a focus on the United States. It looks at communications and campaign technologies as well as deregulation of campaign finance in the nineteen-nineties and early eighties. As parties have invested more resources in the data game of campaigns, they have outsourced many other functions---including mobilization, representation, and interest articulation---to non-party groups, which weakens the ability of parties to govern effectively. This chapter also provides a recent history of campaign finance, and explains how the decentralization of campaign finance makes it harder for parties to manage insurgent candidates.