Tackling
Biases and Bubbles
in Participation

What is BIBU?

BIBU – Tackling Biases and Bubbles in Participation – is a research project that explores how the global flux of economic restructuring, urbanisation, and migration, changes citizens’ political capacities, interests, and emotions, and how the political system responds to these changes. The interdisciplinary consortium is composed of researchers from the fields of politics, psychology, social policy, sociology, economics, and communications.

1.

We identify which citizen groups encounter participatory biases that prevent their voices from being heard in decision-making, and which groups operate in bubbles that polarise politics.

2.

We generate understanding, together with citizens, NGO’s, political parties, and interest groups, and search for solutions to participatory biases and bubbles.

3.

We build a democracy incubator, where innovations for bursting political bubbles and overcoming biases are developed through experimentation. The incubator also spreads Finnish best-practices in political inclusion and participation internationally.

More about BIBU

Project sections

Behind biases and bubbles: structural changes in global flux

Economic restructuring: How has it changed voting behaviour and political attitudes over the last 25 years?

Mapping biases and bubbles in citizen participation

Citizens’ capacities, political interests, and feelings: Who is invisible behind participatory biases and who hides in bubbles?

Feeling biases and bubbles: deep stories

Deep stories from citizen groups: The emotions of a society and the feelings of belonging.

Power in the bubble: political elites in flux

Decision makers’ capacities and deep stories in Finland, Sweden, and Denmark.

Biases in outcomes? Responsiveness of Nordic welfare policies

How are the aims and interests of different citizen groups represented in political decision-making?

Beyond biases and bubbles: future policies for a resilient Nordic model

How to reform the Nordic model? Future scenarios.

Democracy Accelerator

Democratic innovations and experiments with which to tackle participatory biases and bubbles.

People

BIBU’s interdisciplinary consortium is composed of researchers from the fields of politics, psychology, social policy, sociology, economics, and communications. The consortium includes researchers and coordinators from seven different organisations.

Democracy Accelerator

We develop and test different solutions for reducing participatory gaps and planting the best of these into Finnish society. Democratic experiments to tackle participatory biases and bubbles.

Bibu Talks

Demokratiakorjaamo 17.2. klo 13–16

Nyt voit katsoa Demokratiakorjaamon tallenteet!

Lue lisää

PERUTTU: BIBU Talks 3.2.2021

Ilmoittaudu 3.2. järjestettävään Tanja Aitamurron BIBU Talksiin osallistavasta lainvalmistelusta.

Lue lisää

Demokratiakorjaamo tulossa 17.2.2021

Jälleen järjestettävä Demokratiakorjaamo pidetään seuraavan kerran keskiviikkona 17.2.2021 – kutsu, ohjelma ja ilmottautumislinkki tulossa tammikuussa.

Lue lisää

Osallistuvan budjetoinnin loppuarvioinnin julkaisutilaisuus 1.12.2020

Katso tallenne OmaStadin loppuarvioinnista!

Lue lisää

Publications

A Tale of Two Professions in Elections: Party Choice Among Diaconal and Social Workers

Diaconal and social workers spend their days implementing social policy and exercising discretional power while being regularly exposed to social inequalities. As an occupational group, they are heavily influenced by official government decisions, which might be expected to shape their political preferences.

Lue lisää

Editorial: “Health and Political Behavior”: Towards an Integrative Approach

Nearly ten years of intense study has established that health affects political behavior. It has become increasingly clear that “health and illness shape who we are politically” (Carpenter 2012, 303). Physical and mental health influence people’s political interest and their sense of efficacy, electoral and other forms of political participation, ideological orientations, issue preferences and vote choice, and ultimately political representation and policy responsiveness.

Lue lisää

See all publications