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

Democracy for the Next Era

This live, event discusses the launch of new research & grassroots initiatives to support democracies in realising societal transformations.

Lue lisää

Rise of political discontent in Finland and Sweden – Panel Discussion on Tuesday 10 May at 13.30-14.30

Miksi tyytymättömyys politiikkaan lisääntyy Suomessa ja Ruotsissa? Millaisia tunteita, kokemuksia ja ajatuksia tämän muutoksen takana on? Miksi ihmiset ovat niin kyllästyneitä siihen, miten asiat ovat?

Lue lisää

Turbulent Times: The Political Consequences of Economic Transformations

Join a workshop with the Professor Mike Savage (LSE) on 31 May 2022 at University of Helsinki!

Lue lisää

Kahdeksan kuplan Suomi -keskustelu 1.3.

Tässä tapahtumassa keskustellaan siitä, millaisia ovat talouden murroksessa elävien ihmisten kokemukset itsestään ja yhteiskunnasta. Tapahtuma on osa Tiedekulman Haloo, Suomi! -ohjelmasarjaa 1.2.–1.3.2022.

Lue lisää

Publications

Striving for normality: Agency, citizen participation and intergroup belonging on the urban periphery of Helsinki

This article examines how the inhabitants of a culturally diverse suburban estate in Finland strive for meaningful encounters in their lives. The focus is on Kontula, a residential working-class district on the eastern periphery of Helsinki, which has become a powerful symbol of the ills of contemporary urbanity—poverty and social problems, as well as rootlessness and the failed integration of the immigrant populations—in the vernacular geography and media representations of the city.

Lue lisää

Psychiatric and neurodevelopmental diagnoses in adolescence and adulthood over-indebtedness among Finns born in 1987

Adolescence psychiatric and neurodevelopmental diagnoses are common but their link to adulthood over-indebtedness is unknown. This study aims to determine this relationship and explores the possible mediating role of upper secondary education completion.

Lue lisää

See all publications