The third edition of our Innovating Democracy event was a full-day interactive debate on 30 November 2017 in The Hague.

This year has seen many new political actors gain power, and even win elections, with the help of social media and digital tools. It’s clear that the political landscape is shifting, and the use of democratic innovation to meet the needs of this new context is more pertinent than ever.

To discuss this shift, Innovating Democracy brought together political parties and movements who have experience with cutting-edge political innovation.

A number of key questions were addressed:

• How does technology influence the public and political debate and behaviour?
• Is technology empowering us to voice our opinions or is it providing a platform to disregard ethical boundaries?
• Do tech companies have too much power to influence the political debate?
• Where does technical innovation leave political parties?

The event was a chance to take part in interesting debates and learn from leaders in the field of democratic innovation. Speakers included academics and journalists, for example, Mike Hind, who outlined how people create fake armies of supporters to take advantage of the hyper-partisan political and social points of view that are built into social media platforms.

A number of political parties were also represented, including Podemos and En Marche. Significant contributors to the Trump campaign and Jeremy Corbyn’s 2017 campaign also shared their experiences using innovative technologies.

How did the #Trumpcampaign reach the right people with the right content. @babyak tells all. #inndem2017 pic.twitter.com/mD7RO9en92

— NIMD (@WeAreNIMD) 30 November 2017

Lastly, the participants learned from the creators of tools designed to increase democratic participation, for example, Kal Turnbull, who founded the ‘Change My View’ subreddit, and Nicolás Díaz, Founder of SeamOS.

Find out more about the participants and follow the discussion with news, polls and the programme, on the Innovating Democracy website.

The Innovating Democracy conference is a collaboration between NIMD, International IDEA and enabl.ist.