The media is both a window into, and a shaper of the ideologies and behaviours of society. Through it, we can catch glimpses of society’s future trajectories. 

Working with actors from the social, political and research spheres as part of the EUARENAS project, we have conducted a snapshot analysis of contemporary media discourses from across Europe. These insights have provided us with an understanding of current issues within society and we have used these to begin hypothesising about the future of our democracies. 

From this initial work, we would like to pose three core questions that we feel are relevant to policy makers, researchers and civil society actors working in the domain of deliberative and participatory democracies: 

1. How do we mobilise people to be a part of creating the change they want to see and move from talk to action?
2. How do inequalities and structural issues impact on how our democracies work and who is included in them?
3. How do we work with differing priorities between different people, organisations and countries in ways that make useful progress on issues?

A short insight briefing titled ‘Future challenges and opportunities for democracy across Europe: An initial exploration of signals and drivers of change’ from this preliminary work on the project has been produced. In 2022, we will be unpicking these questions further as part of a conference in Italy… watch this space for further details.