This article is written by Tom Steinberg, founder and director of mySociety, an international non-profit group, and Tiago Carneiro Peixoto, Senior Public Sector Specialist at the World Bank’s Governance Global Practice.

For the last couple of years, it has been virtually impossible to open a news website or turn on a TV news bulletin without seeing people worry about the impact on politics from social media.

Whilst it is possible to conceive of all this as historically unprecedented — the internet is new, after all — this current wave of anguish and analysis slots into a very long tradition of similar worries.  For at least two centuries people have been arguing that the latest wave of technology would be the one that would finally and permanently shift the relationship between those who govern and those who are governed.

Oftentimes the pundits have argued that new technologies would greatly empower citizens, or bring about “a new Athenian age”. But there’s also been a lot of worry that things would only get worse, on the back of the rollout of a new technology. Just think of all the all-seeing telescreens that feature in George Orwell’s 1984 for a spooky and memorable example.

How will technology change citizen engagement?

About a year ago, we decided that with so many fraught conversations focused specifically on the social impact of Facebook and Twitter, it was important to step back and take a wider look at how technology is impacting how citizens engage with governments today, and in the near future.

After all, it is easy to be blinded by the tools and experiences that we are very close to, and a huge number of politically minded people are exposed to every day on Facebook and Twitter.

Like any list of predictions, we have no doubt that we’ll be laughably wrong on some fronts

For example, there are a huge range of technologies that aren’t social media platforms which also affect the relationship between citizens and states. There are identity cards, complaints hotlines, credit rating systems, political party platforms, mobile phone SIMs and a range of other technologies that have impacts that are less obvious.

We wanted to know how these technologies impact society and the scale of their impact. To find the answers to those questions, we interviewed about thirty smart people from around the world, and then packaged what we found in a new report for the World Bank, “Emerging Digital Technologies & Citizen Participation”, which has just been published today.

We wanted to write something properly thought-provoking, so instead of reams of analysis, we’ve produced 11 predictions about how technology will change relationships between rulers and ruled. We predict that the fake news arms race will intensify; we predict that social scoring systems will become the norm in many places; we believe regulation of social media will change the face of political debate as we have come to know it so far in the 21st century.

Like any list of predictions, we have no doubt that we’ll be laughably wrong on some fronts. However, the point is not always to be right. Our purpose in producing this overview is to get officials and decision-makers around the world to think about how changes in technology might be creeping up on them, unawares.

We invite you to read the report, and we hope you will take part in the debate and share your thoughts and responses with us. — Tom Steinberg and Tiago Carneiro Peixoto

(Picture credit: Unsplash)