E-democracy refers to the use of electronic communication technologies, such as the internet and social media, to facilitate democratic processes and engagement. Participatory digital tools can in this context support decisions by mediating large scale collaboration among various stakeholders, through the exchange of data, endorsement, and opinion. The e-democracy tool Pol.is is an open-source consensus-oriented deliberative decision-making software for addressing controversial issues within potentially large groups of social media users. The tool is designed to address diverse types of publics and is oriented at second-order decisions on the exchange and synthesis of opinion. The tool enables consent formation at scale in situations where there is a low level of trust in pre-existing social networks. Pol.is enables low-cost participation in such a context via a series of embedded strategies and rules that reduce participants’ burden of decision and counteract flaming (provocative responses to posts). The tool is designed to inform agenda-setting by promoting organisation. It uses predefined ‘seed statements’ (SS) as input for the identification of clusters of consent (and dis-consent) around these policy statements. It allows people to first add nuanced comments on these prompts. Conversation then proceeds with ordering added comments around algorithmically structured themes which are then used to build a matrix that organizes comments around themes quantitatively.  

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The DUST experiments, which were run under the header Regional Futures Literacy Labs (RFLLs), tested the e-democracy tool Pol.is as part of a hybrid format combining digital and analogous design-led territorial participation instruments. The aim of testing was to increase our understanding of the complementarities between digital and analogue forms of participation, and of how these complementarities can be enhanced to increase the strategic positioning of communities’ interests in multi-level policymaking and democratic life at scale.  

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Between January and May 2025, DUST partners in the four RFLL case studies of Norrbotten (Sweden), Katowice (Poland), Lusatia (Germany), and Stara Zagora (Bulgaria) engaged with the Pol.is application during three stages. During the first preparation phase, the TUD Pol.is team educated RFLL case study partners on the use of the software, supported them in the preparation of input – the SSs, as well as opening statements and pages - for the application, and guided them in the preparation and first steps of a case-study-region-wide campaign to attract Pol.is users. In addition, the TUD Pol.is team prepared the application for use in technical terms (the application was hosted at TU Delft for data privacy and security reasons). During the second implementation phase, the collaboratively prepared seed statements (output of the third RFLL workshop) were set out in case study regions for digital deliberation. Case study partners monitored reactions to these statements, moderated deliberations if necessary, and further implemented the Pol.is information campaign. During the final assessment phase, the case study partners carried out a first quantitative assessment of Pol.is results in each case study region. Results of this assessment fed into a policy co-creation process in the RFLL WS 4. The data collection, which is presented in this deliverable, will finally feed into a comparative assessment of results per case study region, and an evaluation of Pol.is on its complementarity with other participatory RFLL tools and activities.