EJ: A Free Software Platform for Social Participation

Abstract : As the Internet grows on importance as a forum for political activity, it is necessary to occupy it with proper tools for democratic discussion, dialogue and deliberation. Currently, a substantial part of political debate is conducted on social media inside proprietary networks. Those solutions are flagrantly inadequate to build consensus seeking understandings and to mediate the interaction between the government and the citizenry. This work present EJ, a platform for crowdsourced social participation which uses machine learning based intelligence and gamification techniques to increase engagement and counteract the formation of opinion bubbles and the “echo chamber” effect of social networks.