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Joint Program with Mercator Foundation: Digitalization & Democracy (HMDD)
In a joint call for proposals, endowed with a total of 4 million Swiss francs, the Mercator Switzerland Foundation and the Hasler Foundation sought projects that shape the digital transformation of democracy for the common good. Five projects will now receive funding. No new project applications will be accepted.
New opportunities for political participation, greater transparency, easier access to information: digitalisation brings many opportunities for democracy. At the same time, however, phenomena such as the influence of AI on opinion formation, a fragmented digital media system and new concentrations of power among global companies pose new challenges for the local political system. The ‘Digitalisation and Democracy’ funding programme run by the Mercator Switzerland Foundation and the Hasler Foundation addresses this area of tension.
In January 2025, the two foundations launched a joint call for proposals: they were looking for projects that address the opportunities and challenges of digitalisation for democracy – both scientifically and practically. ‘Digital transformation is an issue that affects society as a whole. It was therefore important for us to break down the silos between science and practice. We wanted to support teams in which scientists work together with actors from civil society, administration or other sectors to research and develop multi-perspective solutions for the common good,’ says Riccardo Ramacci, who is responsible for the call for proposals on behalf of the Mercator Switzerland Foundation.
After a two-stage selection process with a total of over 130 applications, five projects have been selected for funding.
Photos: Cornelia Biotti
Explainable AI for Smart Decision-Making in Swiss Referendums (smartinfo)
The team from the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts (HSLU), University of Bern, Bern University of Applied Sciences (BFH), the Politools association and the Swiss Youth Parliaments Association (DSJ) are enhancing the concept and technology behind smartvote, Switzerland’s most widely used political civic tech tool. They will investigate how XAI (explainable AI) and GenAI (generative AI) can help to improve informed and inclusive democratic participation in Switzerland’s democratic system. The aim is to create a platform that advises voters on referendums and moderates deliberation among eligible voters. To this end, generative AI will be used that meets comprehensive criteria of transparency, traceability and compliance with data protection regulations. The long-term goal is to create a new, trustworthy source for political opinion-forming.
Duration: 3 Years
Project Lead: Dr. Luis Terán, Hochschule Luzern (HSLU)
Members of project team in picture: Dominik Wyss, José Mancera, Luis Terán, Carine Hunziker und Daniel Schwarz .
Human Machine Interaction for Democracy (HMI4D)
The project team—consisting of the Institutes for Business Ethics and Computer Science at the University of St. Gallen, the Pro Futuris think tank, the Center for Democracy Aarau, and Der Beobachter magazine—is investigating how AI-based language models can improve deliberative processes by further developing and scaling analog debate formats such as Lasst uns Reden. With the help of hundreds of one-on-one conversations and small group dialogues, a technical environment for democratic debates will be developed and empirically tested for its effectiveness. Ultimately, the tool developed should help make debates more constructive by analyzing arguments and suggesting improvements to the quality of dialogue.
Project Duration: 3 years
Project Lead: Dr. Thomas Beschorner, Universität St. Gallen
Members of project team in picture:
Johannes Schöning und Alice Martin
Ensuring Judical Consistency through AI driven Legal Reasoning
The interdisciplinary team from the University of Fribourg, the Fribourg University of Applied Sciences and the Federal Supreme Court in Lausanne is investigating the role of artificial intelligence in interpreting and structuring court rulings. The project combines approaches from law, computer science and AI ethics to explore the theoretical foundations of automated legal reasoning. It is developing an AI tool for courts and lawyers in Switzerland that will enable the use of transparent, trustworthy automated legal reasoning systems in courts.
Project Duration: 3 years
Project Lead: Dr. Sébastien Rumley, HES-SO
Members of project team in picture:
An Aixiu, Sébastien Rumley, Mark Drenhaus, und Daniel Brunner
Defending Democracy: Protecting Public Voices from Online Hate
The project team at ETH Zurich (ETH AI Centre) and the Public Discourse Foundation are focusing on protection against digital hate speech in public, democratic discourse. The aim is to investigate how digital strategies and tools can protect democracy workers from online hate and harassment without compromising freedom of expression. To this end, those affected are equipped with three strategies to develop greater resilience and capacity to act – empirically tested counter-speech, filters for hate speech on their own devices, and concrete legal assistance and advice. In addition to investigating the effectiveness of these approaches, the long-term goal is to prevent people from withdrawing from democratic discourse.
Project Duration: 4 years
Project Lead: Sophie Achermann, Public Discourse Foundation
Members of project team in picture:
Dominik Hangartner, Sophie Achermann und Elliott Ash
Democracy and Media Oversight in the era of AI and disinformation (DEMO-AI)
Members of the Idiap Research Institute, the Universities of Lausanne and Neuchâtel, the Initiative for Media Initiative (IMI) and the public broadcaster RTS want to use their project to investigate the extent to which the reliability and factual basis of the Swiss information system can be improved through the use of AI tools. To this end, the team is developing technical tools that can perform framing analyses and detect manipulation of audiovisual material. The tools are designed to enable media professionals and citizens to better recognise and classify manipulative content.
Project Duration: 4 years
Project Lead: Dr. Daniel Gatica-Perez, Idiap Research Institute
Members of project team in picture:
Daniel Gatica-Perez
Background
Digital transformation and democracy are deeply interconnected, particularly with the rapid advancements in artificial intelligence (AI). This research program aims to integrate expertise from computer science, social sciences, and normative sciences such as law and ethics in the context of the current and future impact of digital transformation on democratic processes. Furthermore, it wants to promote collaboration between disciplines and other sectors, to maximize the impact of research output beyond academia. Specifically, the program wants to enable empirically grounded projects, which make use of the potential of digital transformation to improve the public good and the democratic system.
Key areas of focus include digital transformation of democratic public infrastructures, shifts in information and communication due to digital media, and the surge in democratic participation facilitated by digital formats.
Goals of the Program
The Hasler-Mercator Digitalization and Democracy program supports intersectoral research projects with societal impact in Switzerland and beyond addressing these and related challenges at the intersection of digitalization, particularly AI, and democracy. Proposals should include initiatives to enhance long-term impact, such as education, information dissemination, reception and deliberation, inclusion, diversity, policymaking, or real-life societal experiments, planned from the outset rather than as afterthoughts.
The aim of the program is to enable projects, that ideally already try to address the identified and researched challenges and implement possible solutions as a direct consequence of the research planned. They should evaluate their potential societal impact from the get go by defining impact goals ahead of the project. In doing so, they should be structured as an intersectoral collaboration between actors rooted in larger society as well as traditional academia.
The program specifically wants to promote the intersectoral collaboration between academia and civil society actors. Whilst advances in information and communication technology as well as in computer science should be at the center of all research projects, only projects between several actors aiming for impact beyond academia will be accepted.