Hello world. My name is Joe Litobarski. I am currently a PhD candidate in the history of public cybernetics at Maastricht University’s Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASoS) in the southern Netherlands.
My research explores the long history of electronic democracy projects from the 1960s to the 1990s – a period stretching from the early development of computer networks to the mass adoption of the World Wide Web. Basically, I’m exploring the history of experiments using electronic citizen feedback to facilitate participatory decision-making – and what researchers and project funders hoped these experiments might mean for the future of liberal democracy and the public sphere.
Lately, I’ve become interested in electronic Delphi experiments conducted in the late-1960s and early-1970s, including on the Electronic Information Exchange System (EIES) at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, the PLATO computer system at the University of Illinois, and Project ORAKEL on West German television. Many of these experiments drew on cybernetic concepts, such as information feedback loops, often with the stated aim of promoting group decision-making and collective intelligence.
I’ve been tracing linkages and continuities between these earlier (mostly US-based) experiments and later attempts at implementing “teledemocracy” and “cyberdemocracy” through civic networking and the promotion of free-nets and “digital cities” across Europe and the United States in the 1990s.
More broadly, I’m also interested in the history of participatory media, cybernetics and information theory, participatory and deliberative democracy, and digital utopianism, as well as contemporary debates around the impact on democracy of technologies such as artificial intelligence and social media.
Before starting my PhD, I worked professionally in European online deliberative democracy for over a decade; connecting citizens with experts and policymakers via digital tools and facilitated virtual group discussions, as well as planning and moderating online panels and workshops.
I have over 15 years of experience as a mediator and facilitator; earning a BA (Hons) in Conflict Resolution from the University of Bradford in 2006, then training in facilitative mediation with the Peace and Reconciliation Group (PRG) in Derry / Londonderry in 2005-6, then with Portsmouth Mediation Service in 2007.
I began blogging about European politics in 2008. In May 2011, I crowdsourced questions on The Guardian and (together with German political scientist Ronny Patz) put one to EU Commissioner Cecilia Malmström during a Justice and Home Affairs Council press conference.
Based on that experience, I started working with the think tank Friends of Europe, co-founding their citizen engagement project Debating Europe, an online discussion platform focussing on European politics that crowdsources questions and comments from citizens and puts them to European policymakers and experts for feedback.
On behalf of Debating Europe, I interviewed thousands of politicians and experts from across Europe, including prime ministers, presidents, government ministers, European commissioners, MEPs, and national MPs.
In January 2023, after 11 years with Debating Europe, I joined the team at the European Journalism Centre (EJC) in Maastricht, where I was Programme Lead of Training & Events and organised both online and in-person trainings for European journalists.
While at the EJC, I led the team that delivered the 2023 News Impact Summit, bringing together over 200 journalists, students, and climate experts in Lisbon, Portugal, to discuss how journalists can tell stories about climate change using technology including satellite data, online video, and artificial intelligence.
Since November 2023, I have been a PhD candidate at Maastricht University.
Social Media
I have accounts on X, Bluesky, and Mastodon, which I mostly use to bookmark interesting links.
Public Writing
– European sovereignty and the empire of technology, European Policy Centre (EPC), 6 January 2025
– A New Social Contract for the Age of Artificial Intelligence, Defend Democracy, 2 February 2024
– What comes after neoliberalism? A new social contract, Friends of Europe, 25 January 2022
– The green digital transition will fail without citizen participation, Friends of Europe, 12 October 2021
– COVID-19 revived the social contract. Pandemic debt could destroy it, Friends of Europe, 22 June 2021
– What would you ask the EU’s justice and home affairs council?, The Guardian, 11 May 2011
– In or out? Labour shouldn’t fear a referendum on Europe, The Guardian, 18 February 2011
– Britain: Euroconfused not Eurosceptic, Left Foot Forward, 17 March 2011
Website Credits
– I use the Beaumont theme by Anders Norén, plus an adapted version of the Bootstra.386 theme by Chris McKenzie (converted to WordPress by Sal Ferrarello).
– My website is powered by the wonderful, crazy engine that is WordPress.
– Thanks to the amazing Oryx for his pixel art.