Digital Community Management: Potential for democratic institutions
The project “Digital Community Management: Potential for Democratic Institutions” explores how government institutions—from local authorities to ministries—can contribute to a more constructive democratic discourse through targeted community management. To this end, the Düsseldorf Institute for Internet and Democracy (DIID) and Agora Digitale Transformation (ADT) are pooling their expertise in a joint research project.
In recent years, digitalization has fundamentally changed public communication. While social media was once seen as a beacon of hope for democratic participation, polarizing debates, disinformation, and aggressive discussion cultures now characterize the image of digital discourse spaces. So far, state institutions have responded primarily with regulatory measures that mainly address legal frameworks. But this perspective falls short: communication itself must also be rethought. This is where the joint research project of Agora Digital Transformation (ADT) and the Düsseldorf Institute for Internet and Democracy (DIID) comes in.
The aim of the project is to explore the potential of community management as a tool for promoting democracy for state actors. Community management encompasses much more than moderation or dealing with problematic content. It describes proactive, dialogue-oriented communication that actively involves users and facilitates exchange. Community management can thus make a decisive contribution to strengthening trust in government action and shaping digital spaces as places for constructive public debate.
Despite its importance, there has been a lack of systematic research on government community management to date. The project aims to close this gap and examines community management from four perspectives: its contribution to democratic discourse, the status quo of government social media communication, citizens' expectations, and the challenges and best practices of community managers.
A multi-method design based on several work packages will be used for implementation. This includes an analysis of the state of scientific research on democratic community management, a content analysis of the social media presence of German municipalities and selected state and federal institutions, focus group interviews to determine citizens' expectations of government community management, and guided interviews with social media managers on challenges, solution strategies, and best practices.
The cooperation project, which was launched in November 2025, thus makes an important contribution to further developing digital public communication by government agencies in a dialogue-oriented and democracy-strengthening manner. The project is scheduled to run for 14 months and is coordinated on the DIID side by Marc Ziegele and Dennis Frieß. Anna-Maria Linstaedt is involved in the project as a research assistant. On the ADT side, Vivien Benert and Torben Klausa are responsible for the project.