Scientific Coordinator: Alice Mattoni
Corruption is a global challenge that affects the lives of millions of citizens. In the past decade, digital media have become indispensable tools in the fight to reduce corruption, especially when employed from the bottom-up by civil society organizations. While pioneering initiatives in this direction have flourished, to date we only have unsystematic and descriptive evidence regarding how they work and the associated consequences.
With the objective of significantly advancing knowledge on this topic, BIT-ACT will employ the method of grounded theory to: assess how civil society organizations engage with digital media to counter corruption; appraise how digital media enable intersections between bottom-up and top-down efforts against corruption; evaluate how digital media blend with the transnational dimension in the struggle against corruption.
Combining corruption studies, social movement studies and science and technology studies, BIT-ACT will reach the objectives listed above through a cross-country comparative research design, focusing on nine countries across the world and considering the transnational level as well.
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