Although 'democracy' is perceived by many as a universal ideal, the overall assumption of the project is that the notion of democratic civic participation is intricately linked to a spatial and temporal organization – i.e., an infrastructure – which varies in context and over time. In a contemporary ‘digital’ context, we are witnessing how the web is changing from a ‘web of documents’ to a ‘web of data’: a large, shared database, or a so-called ‘semantic web’, that can be organized, connected, and processed using e.g., artificial intelligence, but where the mechanisms of what data is linked, by whom, how, for how long, for what purposes, etc. become increasingly opaque. The project stipulates that this infrastructural change affects the notion of democratic civic engagement and participation – that is, what it means to participate, be engaged, and ‘have a voice’. And, conversely, it also stipulates that these new understandings affect the practices of contemporary web infrastructures.   

Therefore, instead of asking how technology (the computer, the Internet, massive datafication, artificial intelligence, etc.) supports, challenges, or opposes democratic participation, one should ask how the notions and ideals of democratic civic engagement and participation change with the current developments in technological infrastructures, and what alternative visions this creates fertile ground for? In other words, what visions for organizational and technical infrastructures does it produce, and what novel understandings of civic participation do they potentially imply?

Within grassroot media and internet activism (i.e., interventionist, tactical, activist, artistic, media and network practices) there is a long tradition for critically experimenting with participation and engagement. These include for instance, the development of new understandings of how technological infrastructures mirror social and cultural ideals, and the production of digital objects that are attuned to these ideals. The project's theoretical and analytical foundation therefore relies on analyses of current cultural infrastructural practices rooted in grassroot media and internet activism, relating them more broadly to cultural studies of software and networks. In a wider perspective, the intention is furthermore to study and practically experiment with how grassroot media and internet activism can generate fertile ground for alternative infrastructures.