Future of Digital Democracy

Digital democracy is a hot topic nowadays,its relevance growing along with the impact of computational platforms on our(political) life. Communication is the basal fabric on which society is defined, and itappears obvious that the civic organisation and politics itself should take the opportunitiesthe "digital revolution" offers. Institutional inertia, nevertheless, causes large delays in updating and adapting. Therefore, the balance between participation and delegatedrepresentation is now facing a crisis.A thorough understanding of the factors involved in participation is a first step towards providing solutions. Using the Internet to fill the gap and build a digital democracy provides an opportunity, along with several risks that need to be carefully analysed.It needs to be implemented using a fully inter- and trans-disciplinary perspective.The six contributions includedin this State-of-the Art Survey present research in the field of social sciences as well as mathematics and computer science and aim atcontributing toa better understanding of the potential and dangers of digital democracy,helping readers go beyond the misunderstandings, the misconceptions,and the conceptual and practical abuses that the very notion of democracy isundergoing during this age of technological revolution and social turmoils.