BIT-ACT PhD presents a paper on digital whistleblowing platforms at the 2023 ECPR-COSMOS Summer School

Photo by AbsolutVision on Unsplash

Alice Fubini from the BIT-ACT team shares the early findings from the analysis of the diffusion of grassroots technologies in the Italian and Spanish anti-corruption arenas during the 2023 ECPR-COSMOS Summer School hosted by the Scuola Normale Superiore in Florence. 

Adopting a comparative qualitative research design based on Constructivist Grounded Theory, the paper investigates how grassroots anti-corruption technologies for whistleblowers are adopted firstly by civil society organizations and secondly by public administrations and anti-corruption authorities in two Southern-Europe countries: Italy and Spain. Although the research on whistleblowing is flourishing, few studies have looked at the relationship between the different actors involved in enabling information disclosure on wrongdoing based on technological advances. Moving its path from Weisskircher’s conception of a technology's development as an outcome in itself, this study looks at the dynamics of diffusion of a specific anti-corruption technology that constitutes the “skeleton” of the eight digital whistleblowing platforms under investigation.  

The research points out a main result: the institutionalization of a grassroots technology for whistleblowing in both countries. Indeed, the whistleblowing platforms under investigation are not only the result of the dissemination of a specific type of anti-corruption platform based on the open-source software GlobaLeaks: each of them represents an emblematic case of institutionalization of a grassroots technology made possible thanks to specific “drivers of innovation”: collaborative relational dynamics tied to technologies and platforms as “structuring agents”. 

The 2023 ECPR-COSMOS Summer School takes place from June 5^th to June 16^th.

Further information on the Summer School can be found here.