Artificial Democracy

Democracy and data have a complicated relationship. Under the influence of big data and artificial intelligence, some democracies are being transformed, for better or worse, as relations between citizens, political parties, governments, and corporations are being redrawn.

Artificial Democracy explores the ways in which data collection and analytics, and their application, are changing political practices, government policies, and even democratic polities themselves. With an international roster of multidisciplinary contributors, this highly topical collection takes a comprehensive approach to big data’s effect on democracy, from the use of micro-targeting in electoral campaigns to the clash between privacy and surveillance in the name of protecting society.

Artificial Democracy tackles both the dangers and the potentially desirable changes made possible by the symbiosis of big data and artificial intelligence. It explores shifts in how we conceptualize the citizen–government relationship and asks important questions about where we could be heading.

Author Biography

Cecilia Biancalana is a researcher in political science at the University of Turin. She has worked at the Istituto Carlo Cattaneo in Bologna and the Fondazione Giangiacomo Feltrinelli in Milan, and has served as a senior researcher at the Université de Lausanne, Switzerland.

Eric Montigny is a professor of political science at Université Laval and co-director of the Laboratoire international associé sur les partis politiques, la représentation et le développement durable (International Laboratory on Political Parties, Representation, and Sustainable Development) in collaboration with the Université de Lausanne. He is an associate researcher in the Groupe de recherche en communication politique (Political Communication Research Group) and the research chair on democracy and parliamentary institutions at Université Laval.

Contributors: Colin Bennett, François Blais, Pierre-Luc Déziel, Yannick Dufresne, David Lyon, Catherine Ouellet, François Pellegrini, Julia Rone, Pierre Trudel