Critical Mess to Critical Mass: democratic innovation for collective climate action

New Project to Tackle the Challenge of Scaling Democratic Innovations | CoP CC on Participatory and Deliberative Democracy

The “Missing Link” between Research and Society

Oliver Escobar | School of Social and Political Science

Public participation, participatory and deliberative democracy, environmental politics, climate action, collaborative governance and partnerships, public dialogue and deliberation, facilitation and mediation, democratic innovations, interpretive policy analysis, political ethnography, mixed methods, in/equalities, participatory and deliberative methodologies, smart cities, social innovation, power, politics of science and technology, governance, democracy, civic tech, commons, digital public sphere, digital participation, online deliberation, mini-publics, citizens' assemblies, participatory budgeting, community empowerment, political economy, democratic economies, community economies

Connecting Research with Community - Civic Innovation Lab

Welcome to Civic Innovation Lab, where we drive social impact through collaborative solutions and empower communities. Join us in fostering sustainable development, co-creating initiatives, and advancing inclusive governance for a better future.

Citizen Participation (@oliverescobar.bsky.social)

Professor of Public Policy and Democratic Innovation | University of Edinburgh | Working on #democracy #participation #deliberation #commons #governance #power #research | RT≠ endorse | Own views | Profile: https://www.sps.ed.ac.uk/staff/oliver-escobar

Citizen Participation (@oliverescobar.bsky.social)

Professor of Public Policy and Democratic Innovation | University of Edinburgh | Working on #democracy #participation #deliberation #commons #governance #power #research | RT≠ endorse | Own views | Profile: https://www.sps.ed.ac.uk/staff/oliver-escobar

Stewardship of global collective behavior

Collective behavior provides a framework for understanding how the actions and properties of groups emerge from the way individuals generate and share information. In humans, information flows were initially shaped by natural selection yet are increasingly structured by emerging communication technologies. Our larger, more complex social networks now transfer high-fidelity information over vast distances at low cost. The digital age and the rise of social media have accelerated changes to our social systems, with poorly understood functional consequences. This gap in our knowledge represents a principal challenge to scientific progress, democracy, and actions to address global crises. We argue that the study of collective behavior must rise to a “crisis discipline” just as medicine, conservation, and climate science have, with a focus on providing actionable insight to policymakers and regulators for the stewardship of social systems.

Verification, Deliberation, Accountability: A new framework for tackling epistemic collapse and renewing democracy

Demos is Britain’s leading cross-party think-tank. We produce original research, publish innovative thinkers and host thought-provoking events.

“Policy Without Tools Is Just Poetry” - AT Protocol

Juliet Shen from ROOST joins the show to talk through the Coop 1.0 release, what open-source trust and safety unlocks for new builders, and where AI actually belongs in moderation

The New Geopolitics Of The Green Transition

The only path forward for tackling the climate crisis hinges on cooperative industrial strategies to coordinate clean energy investment and infrastructure development.

Toward a New Global Security Paradigm. Task Force 06: Strengthening Multilateralism and Global Governance

Amidst increasing global connectivity and accelerating global change, the global security framework has become insufficient, contributing to a crippling dysfunctionality in international cooperation. The current security framework, focused almost exclusively on a narrow notion of military security, is insufficient to address escalating ‘threats without enemy,’ such as climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution, which increasingly endanger the lives and dignity of all populations. This policy brief recommends a global social-ecological security framework, rooted in the science informed understanding of social and biophysical realities, to address the evolving needs and challenges of the 21st century. Our recommendations to operationalise this paradigm include: a reinvigorated commitment to multilateralism and peace as a pre-requisite; public participation in shaping the new inclusive international governance framework; development aid and green finance as key levers; a focus on building resilience (especially food security); and, strengthening anticipation of and response to interconnected global shocks. We propose a G20-initiated formation of a high-level working group to catalyse the creation of this new framework. Such a process must involve relevant stakeholders, leveraging new possibilities afforded by technological tools (such as AI). Implementing this ambitious agenda will be challenging, but continuing on a business as- usual trajectory is a ‘lose-lose’ spiral likely to trigger social and ecological crises. Bold leadership from the G20 is needed more than ever to reinvent multilateralism and thus ensure sustainable well-being for all.

Positech@CSCW2026

People care about climate change, injustice, and humanitarian crises. The challenge is not apathy but capacity: sustained engagement with large-scale problems is psychologically costly, and social media architecture often amplifies awareness while providing few pathways to meaningful action.

The Ecosystem

Create collective knowledge by crowdsourcing and adapting governance innovations.

Leveraging agency for climate change mitigation

Climate debates often frame individual behaviour and systems change as distinct pathways to action. We suggest that social change arises from individuals’ agency within their roles in societal systems, and that this agency should be actively leveraged to achieve meaningful climate change mitigation.

Beyond the Individual: Understanding the Evolution of Collective Intelligence

This chapter outlines the evolution of collective intelligence, starting from its ancient roots and concluding with modern digital platforms. It discusses intelligence theories, project examples, and the impact of technology on collaborative efforts. Key focuses include the role of the internet and online communities in boosting our collective IQ, with a particular emphasis on Douglas Engelbart's contributions and the open-source movement, as exemplified by Linux's development. The chapter examines how digital transformation has facilitated new forms of community and knowledge sharing, significantly influencing fields such as management, decision-making, and organizational learning. Various scholars and their definitions of CI are discussed, including Pierre Lévy's vision of universally distributed intelligence and the concept of swarm intelligence in biological sciences. We then move on to practically implemented CI projects, exploring crowdsourcing as a manifestation of CI in business and social projects and examining possibilities of harnessing the wisdom of crowds for problem-solving and innovation. The chapter concludes with a presentation of the current state of collective intelligence academic research.

‘If we don’t fight back, we don’t have a future’: the journalist taking on the ‘tech fascists’ of Silicon Valley

As Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and their peers have grown richer and more influential, Gil Durán argues they have all but abandoned democracy – and found the perfect government to enable them