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Paper short abstract

This submission investigates the role of data visualisation for agonistic public participation in climate assemblies. By studying Gipuzkoa’s Citizens’ Assembly, it unpacks how the conflict between the promise of sharing power and established procedures was articulated around accountability charts.

Paper long abstract

This submission investigates the role of data visualisation as a resource for oversight, contestation, and agonism in the context of climate assemblies—assemblies of citizens or residents discussing climate-related issues and measures. These processes make up a growing format in the landscape of democratic innovations, testifying how climate inaction is increasingly framed in relation to the crisis of governance institutions.

In both academic and non-academic contexts, data visualisation is more and more studied for its varied potential in supporting and enhancing public participation. If the institutional crisis is understood as a “crisis of elected oligarchy", visualisation’s role in citizen involvement is centred on countering the concentration of power in the hands of a few. This role can be fulfilled by revealing, analysing, and challenging unequal power structures.

We explore how contestation developed around data visualisation in the “accountability phase” in the Gipuzkoako Herritarren Batzarra (Citizens’ Assembly of Gipuzkoa). In four meetings held by the provincial administration, colour-coded charts were used to show, assess, and challenge implementation results: the members of the assembly acted as “guardians” scrutinising the work of the provincial council.

The case was engaged through desk research, observation and interviews of the various actors involved in the process. Questions focused on reciprocal expectations and use of data visualisation in the accountability meetings. The analysis performed followed an abductive approach.

Visualisations performed as boundary objects around which tensions and confrontations materialised and unravelled, ultimately articulating the conflict between the promise of sharing power and the established governance logics and procedures.