Announcing the 1st annual Digital Publics Conference 2026

We are happy to announce the first annual Digital Publics Conference taking place from October 21 to 23, 2026 at the DSI in Zurich. The conference is a continuation and expansion of the very successful Digital Democracy Workshop series that ran for six years  from 2020 to 2025.

The aim of the Conference is to bring together interdisciplinary researchers. We invite paper submissions on the relationship between digital technology and the transformation of public life, broadly understood. We are particularly interested in topics such as the role of social media and AI in (political) communication and deliberation, the quality of public discourse, AI and governance, civic tech and political participation, the regulation of tech platforms, and the political, social, and psychological consequences of digital environments, among others. We welcome submissions using different methodological approaches to study these topics.