Digital Deliberative and Participatory Democracy in the COVID-19 Pande

This project is a collaboration between Newcastle University, Swansea University, Edinburgh University, Traverse and the Turin Institute and considers the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on public deliberation and political participation. The project involves the design and facilitation of two online deliberations in England and Wales considering aspects of data use in the UK’s response to coronavirus. These processes explored the practicalities of running public deliberations fully online, in a short-time frame, and responding to real-time events. These are significant firsts for this type of practice in the UK. Analysis of the two cases will produce research findings and public recommendations regarding the pandemic response and the role of public deliberation and political participation, which will be shared with policy and industry stakeholders, and will lead to a range of publications.