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Short Abstract

What if by 2036 citizen science became Europe’s democratic observatory of the digital sphere? This vision explores how participatory infrastructures can strengthen digital self-determination, counter disinformation, and build resilience in the age of AI.

Abstract

By 2036, digital governance will be central to democracy, sovereignty and trust in Europe. Hybrid influence campaigns (Wigell, 2019) and algorithmic manipulation (Zuboff, 2019) continue to test publics’ resilience and expose structural vulnerabilities. This vision proposes a citizen-science “democratic observatory” that strengthens digital self-determination (Remolina, Findlay, 2021) by linking citizens’ lived experience to governance and policy.

Current participatory mechanisms (e.g., platform reporting) remain narrow and platform-centred. While the Digital Services Act institutionalises trusted flaggers and vetted researchers (van de Kerkhof, 2025), citizen science can complement formal measures by enabling social scientists and lay participants to co-produce situated, reproducible evidence about regulatory blind spots, perceived insecurity and manipulation.

Methodologically, the observatory pairs AI tools with researcher-guided ethnographic diaries. A large language model (LLM)—a system trained to interpret and summarise human language—helps cluster citizens’ diary entries, generating thematic summaries. These community-curated models are complemented by human-in-the-loop validation (Mosqueira-Rey 2023). Expected outputs include publicly accessible datasets of citizen perspectives, maps of disinformation flows, and policy briefs for regulators and platforms.

An open question for 2036 is whether participation in such democratic observatories will remain largely AI-facilitated, or whether renewed emphasis on low-tech, human-centred practices will re-emerge as an essential complement. Can the limits and risks of AI truly be explored through AI itself, or must we step outside the digital paradigm to perceive its boundaries? This contribution invites discussion as groundwork for a prospective ERC/Horizon Europe project exploring citizen science for digital self-determination.