Co-creation of the Digital Democracy and Data Commons Manifesto: alternative sociotechnical visions of data

Abstract

Amid public concern surrounding the proprietary and exploitative use of personal data by corporations and public institutions, and its consequences from a sociotechnical perspective, narratives around digital commons have recently emerged, framing potential alternatives. This paper presents the results of an experimental approach, methodology, and process, through which two main questions are addressed. Firstly, how to articulate co-creation dynamics for the structured and participatory elaboration of the Digital Democracy and Data Commons Manifesto, following principles of openness, diversity, and inclusivity. Secondly, how the manifesto, as a narrative and discursive artefact, can follow and conclude a wider process of sociotechnical discussion and positioning about data commons. Our approach is based on participatory design methods, more concretely on a collaborative writing sprint, to co-create a manifesto on alternatives to current datafication, digital inequalities, and lack of citizen control over personal data. On the one hand, we describe the process of implementing a sprint approach for collaboratively writing a topic-specific manifesto, in the context of the broader EU project DECODE (Decentralised Citizen Owned Data Ecosystems). On the other hand, we present and analyse the main results from the content structure of the manifesto over its initial and final versions, which moved progressively as a cohesive text away from a scholarly and policy-oriented tone.