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BY Emily A. Vogels, Lee Rainie and Janna Anderson FOR RELEASE JUNE 30, 2020 BY Emily A. Vogels, Lee Rainie and Janna Anderson FOR MEDIA OR OTHER INQUIRIES: Lee Rainie, Director, Internet and Technology Research Janna Anderson, Director, Elon University’s Imagining the Internet Center Haley Nolan, Communications Associate 202.419.4372 www.pewresearch.org RECOMMENDED CITATION Pew Research Center, June 2020. “Experts Predict More Digital Innovation by 2030 Aimed at Enhancing Democracy” 1 PEW RESEARCH CENTER About Pew Research Center Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping America and the world. It does not take policy positions. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, content analysis and other data-driven social science research. The Center studies U.S. politics and policy; journalism and media; internet, science and technology; religion and public life; Hispanic trends; global attitudes and trends; and U.S. social and demographic trends. All of the center’s reports are available at www.pewresearch.org. Pew Research Center is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts, its primary funder. For this project, Pew Research Center worked with Elon University’s Imagining the Internet Center, which helped conceive the research and collect and analyze the data. © Pew Research Center 2020 www.pewresearch.org 2 PEW RESEARCH CENTER How we did this This is the 11th “Future of the Internet” canvassing Pew Research Center and the Imagining the Internet Center have conducted together to get expert views about important digital issues. In this case the questions focused on the future of democracy, the problems digital technology has created and possible solutions to those problems. This is a nonscientific canvassing based on a non- random sample, so the results represent only the individuals who responded to the query and are not projectable to any other population. Pew Research Center and Elon University’s Imagining the Internet Center built a database of experts to canvass from several sources, including professionals and policy people from government bodies, technology businesses, think tanks and networks of interested networks of academics and technology innovators. The expert predictions reported here about the impact of digital technologies on key aspects of democracy and democratic representation and social and civic innovation came in response to a set of questions in an online canvassing conducted between July 3 and Aug. 5, 2019. In all, 697 technology innovators, developers, business and policy leaders, researchers and activists responded to at least one part of the battery of questions that are covered in this report. More on the methodology underlying this canvassing and the participants can be found here. www.pewresearch.org 3 PEW RESEARCH CENTER A large share of experts and analysts worry that people’s technology use will mostly weaken core aspects of democracy and democratic representation in the coming decade. Yet they also foresee significant social and civic innovation between now and 2030 to try to address emerging issues. In this new report, technology experts who shared serious concerns for democracy in a recent Pew Research Center canvassing weigh in with their views about the likely changes and reforms that might occur in the coming years. Overall, 697 technology innovators, developers, business and policy leaders, researchers and activists responded to the following query: Social and civic innovation and its impact on the new difficulties of the digital age: As the Industrial Revolution swept through societies, people eventually took steps to mitigate abuses and harms that emerged. For instance, new laws were enacted to make workplaces safer and protect children; standards were created for product safety and effectiveness; new kinds of organizations came into being to help workers (e.g., labor unions) and make urban life more meaningful (e.g., settlement houses, Boys/Girls Clubs); new educational institutions were created (e.g., trade schools); household roles in families were reconfigured. Today’s “techlash” illuminates the issues that have surfaced in the digital era. We seek your insights as to whether and how reforms to ease these problems and others might unfold. The question: Will significant social and civic innovation occur between now and 2030? By “social and civic innovation,” we mean the creation of things like new technology tools, legal protections, social norms, new or reconfigured groups and communities, educational efforts and other strategies to address digital-age challenges. www.pewresearch.org 4 PEW RESEARCH CENTER Some 84% of these respondents say there will be significant social and civic innovation between now and 2030, while 16% say there will not be significant social and civic innovation in the timeframe. Asked a follow-up question about whether humans’ use of technology will lead to or prevent significant social and civic innovation, 69% of these expert respondents said they expect that technology use will help significantly mitigate problems, 20% predicted that technology use will effectively prevent significant mitigation of problems and 11% responded that it is likely that technology use will have no effect on social and civic innovation. This is a nonscientific canvassing of experts, based on a non-random sample. The results represent only the opinions of individuals who responded to the query and are not projectable to any other population. The methodology underlying this canvassing is elaborated here. The bulk of this report covers these experts’ written answers explaining their responses. Respondents in this canvassing sound three broad themes about the changing technology landscape and how it will impact citizens’ political and social activities. First, they predict that overall connectivity between people and their devices will increase as more digital applications emerge that allow people to create, share and observe information. This trend could accelerate as people employ smart agents and bots to interact with other people or other people’s avatars. These experts say persistent and expanded human connectivity will affect the way people engage with each other as citizens and influence how they work to build groups aimed at impacting policy and politics. Some argue this will change the way people interact with democratic institutions. Second, the experts responding here foresee a sharp increase in connected devices – for instance, wearables, household appliances, cars – that could connect people even more deeply with their environments. Indeed, some believe the added aspects of connectivity will extend as the environment itself becomes “smart” – as buildings, streets, plots of land and even bodies of water become loaded with sensors that feed data into analytics systems. This will impact the level of knowledge that people have about themselves and their environment. That, in turn, could drive policy change, as evidence-based insights about the world proliferate. Third, most of these experts think the explosion of data generated by people, gadgetry and environmental sensors will affect the level of social and civic innovation in several potential directions. They argue that the existence of the growing trove of data – and people’s knowledge about its collection – will focus more attention on privacy issues and possibly affect people’s www.pewresearch.org 5 PEW RESEARCH CENTER norms and behaviors. In addition, some say the way the data is analyzed will draw more scrutiny of the performance of algorithms and artificial intelligence systems, especially around issues related to whether the outcomes of data use are fair and explainable. Two comments illustrate how these trends fit together and could prompt social and civic change. Melissa Michelson, a professor of political science at Menlo College and author of “Mobilizing Inclusion: Redefining Citizenship Through Get-Out-the-Vote Campaigns,” wrote, “I expect that by 2030 we will see increased pushback against the negatives of the digital age in the form of new technologies, more fact-checking and more skepticism by everyday Americans. What I see happening already is that people are more cynical but also more likely to engage in various forms of political participation, both on- and offline. There is an increasing recognition of the need for citizens to be savvy consumers of online information, and increased efforts by educators to arm their students with the critical tools they need to separate truth from fact. There is increasing pressure on social media companies to flag or remove information that is unreliable or inappropriate. Younger people are much better able to critically analyze online information in this way, and older people will age out of the system. Meanwhile, more and more tools are becoming available for helping everyone push back against disinformation.” Alexander B. Howard, independent writer, digital governance expert and open-government advocate, said, “I expect to see improvements to access to information through mobile computing devices, wireless broadband internet connections, open data from private and public sector sources and mature gestural and vocal interfaces. Virtual assistants driven by artificial intelligence and personal data will anticipate and augment the information needs of individuals, along with the descendants of today’s rudimentary chatbots. That which can be automated, will be. That in turn means access and equity and checking algorithmic discrimination
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