DemoCIS is a research project focusing on the humanities and social sciences. It examines the challenges facing our societies in the modern world. These challenges are divided into four categories:
- Studying democratic innovations in response to the crisis of institutions, particularly through the evolution of public spaces.
- Rethinking the places and forms of citizen expression in the new spaces available to citizens.
- To combat the polarisation of societies and disinformation.
- Strengthening threatened democracies by studying new democratic conflicts from the perspective of the rule of law.
Moreover this project is all the more important given that the World Economic Forum’s Davos report on global risks (January 2025) ranks disinformation as the top short-term risk and societal polarisation as the fourth-biggest risk. This highlights how significant risk affects all types of organisation, including private companies, NGOs, international institutions, governments, civil society, and academic institutions.
Acting against the polarisation of societies and informational disorder
The Institut Mines-Télécom Business School and IMT Atlantique are actively involved in this research project, which focuses on the challenges posed by polarisation and informational disorders. Specifically, the project is led by IMT Atlantique and the University of Lille and centres its efforts on on three key issues:
- The dynamics of the ecosystem of informational disorders (led by IMT Atlantique Business School in collaboration with CY Cergy Paris Université).
- Detection of systemic risks and development of indicators and monitoring tools
- Evaluation and proposal of countermeasures.
The players involved in the DemoCIS project
The DemoCIS project forms part of the France 2030 initiative, which was launched in 2021 with the aim of making up for industrial lag, investing in sustainable development, and committing France to mastering shared spaces, such as the digital realm, outer space, and the seabed. The University of Lille is leading the project, which includes a consortium of four universities (Lille, CY Cergy Paris Université, Jean Moulin Lyon 3 and Grenoble Alpes), two institutes (Institut Mines Télécom (IMT-BS) and IMT Atlantique), three institutes of political studies (Lille, Grenoble and Saint-Germain-en-Laye), the CNRS and INRIA. A total of 336 researchers and teacher-researchers, as well as 51 research units, are involved, with funding totalling €9 million.
*Democracies, Citizenship and Institutions facing the transformations of Public Spheres
