This research area addresses issues such as the impact of Internet communications on democratic practices, transparency in public sector data, social movements and online activism, media literacy, and journalism and the digital public sphere.

In the ‘Voice or Chatter’ project, in partnership with IT for Change, India, we investigate ways in which ICT-mediated political participation can empower citizens. The project involved a number of countries, and InternetLab was responsible for the Brazilian case study, and in addition to producing a state-of-the-art mapping of the discussions on participation and the Internet in Brazil, compared two processes of online participation: the public consultation to elaborate the Brazilian Internet Civil Framework (Marco Civil da Internet) and the public consultation to amend the Copyright Law. Both experiments aimed to map the arguments, comments and contributions of various sectors of society and include them in the traditional legislative process. The results of these processes, however, were very different. The products of the project can be accessed here.

Another project in the area is the InternetLab School 2017 – Telling the Stories of the Future, a two-week intensive journalism school for 20 Latin American journalists about investigative journalism techniques and Internet policies. Read more about the school.