DEMOS OBJECTIVES

The main objectives of the DEMOS project can be summarised as enabling and encouraging citizens to easily participate in political discussions and public decision making processes. Partners in the DEMOS project come from a broad range of institutions and companies, all sharing a mutual interest in counteracting against the apparent disenchantment with politics, which has become a challenge for democracy.

To achieve these goals, the task is to develop and evaluate a new Internet tool to support democratic discussion and decision making by a large number of citizens. DEMOS is not only working on the technical aspect of this enterprise, but primarily on finding a way to attract and actively involve thousands of users with different cultural backgrounds and interests. It is not sufficient to provide discussion forums on various topics only, since users tend to get lost in a plethora of different issues, views, and interests.

So the overall challenge is to implement an Internet platform with enough structure, directionand external input to keep users interested and engaged.
The project is planned to make a substantial breakthrough in on-line consultation, where currently no acceptable means exist to handle large scale discussion processes and deliberative opinion formation.