MultiPoD

Multilingual and Multicultural Spaces for Political Deliberation

Enhancing democratic dialogue through bias-identifying AI tools

GA number: 101178821

Funded by: HORIZON     Duration: 01/12/2024-30/10/2027


Challenge

Global issues have complex roots and repercussions, often only partially perceived at the national level in distributed international contexts and exacerbated by entrenched thinking within cultural and linguistic groups. At the same time, cross-national political changes affecting regulations in a given country might implicate European policymaking.

The interplay between siloed national interactions and political/cultural contexts affects global
events in complex ways. Cultural and linguistic barriers exacerbate groupthink, the bandwagon effect and a lack of diversity in local dialogue and perspectives around issues of international relevance. Socio-political and technological solutions can help overcome barriers to participation in political deliberations and ensure effective communication between European cultural and linguistic groups, as highlighted in the Conference on the Future of Europe (CoFE) (Proposals 1, 6, 22, 25, 31, 33, 35 and 36).

Innovation

MultiPoD aims to tackle barriers in political participation and improve political dialogue by creating an open, context-aware, multilingual, and cross-cultural platform for citizen deliberation across Europe. By developing advanced Generative AI tools, such as a culture-specific Language Model (CSLM) and Knowledge Graph (CSKG), it seeks to reduce biases and polarisation during political debates, thus promoting democratic values and fostering inclusion.

Action

A report identifying the factors that facilitate or obstruct participation in political deliberation among different linguistic and cultural groups, based on the findings of two survey experiments conducted in each partner country.

A visual analytics dashboard that identifies patterns in political communication—such as the origins and impacts of inclusion and exclusion strategies, inherent biases, and misconceptions—enhances transparency and supports multi-level policymaking at the European level.

A culture-specific Language Model (CSLM) and Knowledge Graph (CSKG) that automatically interlink content items and threaded discussions across cultures and languages, providing a better understanding of interdependencies between participatory processes, policy decisions, behavioural and communication patterns. Τhe CSLM and CSKG aim to foster better communication and understanding among diverse cultural groups, leading to improved collaboration and more effective, inclusive policies.

The implementation and testing of MultiPoD’s live debate interaction technology during virtual, hybrid, and in-person deliberative citizen and policymaker assemblies focused on policies related to the new European Union mandate.

Policy recommendations for the official adoption of MultiPoD tools, after quantitative and qualitative assessment of their impact in policy discussions.

Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research executive Agency. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.

Project Partners

KMOP, Greece
WEBLYZARD TECHNOLOGY, Austria
(Coordinator)
NOVA University Lisbon, Portugal
Ethos Lab – Centre for Governance & Sustainability Research,
Greece
THE OPEN UNIVERSITY,
United Kingdom
Associació de Software Lliure Decidim,
Spain
STORYPACT,
Austria
RE-IMAGINE EUROPA,
Belgium

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